Friday Favorites~a weekly series where we share our favorite books, decor, fashion finds, recipes, podcasts, articles and more.
FRIDAY FAVORITES NO. 592
Good morning friends! I hope that you had a great 4th of July. We have been on the go since Tuesday and having a great time. We’ve been to the beach club, to watch the fireworks, to a parade and then yesterday we hosted a bbq. Today we are staying home and Saturday we are going paddle boarding and to dinner with friends. By the time Monday gets here I will need a vacation from this vacation.
What about you? What have you been up to? How was your 4th? Did you go to a party? Host a party or maybe even travel?
As always, I have lots to share on Friday Favorites so let’s get too it.
FOOD
Lemon chicken pasta salad, with artichokes, pine nuts and parmesan. I cannot wait to make this!
These crispy parmesan cauliflower steaks look so good!
A refreshing quinoa cucumber salad with feta, dill and mint.
Cherry almond scones, perfect for breakfast this weekend.
LINKS TO READ+WATCH+LISTEN
How to cut a watermelon 3 different ways.
What a patchwork Kimono can teach us about sustainability.
Is the mobile phone starting to die?
Are Luggage-Free Trips the Future?
Olive Oatman, the Pioneer Girl Abducted by Native Americans Who Returned a Marked Woman
The Long, Strange Decline of One of America’s Most Influential Brands
Thought Provoking What the 3.2 Million-Year-Old Lucy Fossil Reveals About Nudity and Shame
A Tuscan garden with fragrance, texture and color
Stuck in a rut? How to enjoy your life again.
BOOKS
These are the books I currently have on order from Amazon or at the library or have recently read. What are you reading or waiting to be released?
A Rather Lovely Inheritance
After her Aunt Penelope dies, historical researcher Penny Nichols is astonished to learn that not only is she a bona fide heiress-but she’s also been invited to put her research skills to work. This time, the history she’s researching happens to be her very own. What she discovers about Aunt Penelope-a pair of wills, double lives, secret histories, and a family tree of vultures-is about to sweep Penny and a long-lost relative across France, over the hills of Italy, and throughout half of Europe on the adventure of several lifetimes.
Cooking for Picasso
The French Riviera, spring 1936: It’s off-season in the lovely seaside village of Juan-les-Pins, where seventeen-year-old Ondine cooks with her mother in the kitchen of their family-owned Café Paradis. A mysterious new patron who’s slipped out of Paris and is traveling under a different name has made an unusual request—to have his lunch served to him at the nearby villa he’s secretly rented, where he wishes to remain incognito.
Pablo Picasso is at a momentous crossroads in his personal and professional life—and for him, art and women are always entwined. The spirited Ondine, chafing under her family’s authority and nursing a broken heart, is just beginning to discover her own talents and appetites. Her encounter with Picasso will continue to affect her life for many decades onward, as the great artist and the talented young chef each pursue their own passions and destiny.
New York, present day: Céline, a Hollywood makeup artist who’s come home for the holidays, learns from her mother, Julie, that Grandmother Ondine once cooked for Picasso. Prompted by her mother’s enigmatic stories and the hint of more family secrets yet to be uncovered, Céline carries out Julie’s wishes and embarks on a voyage to the very town where Ondine and Picasso first met. In the lush, heady atmosphere of the Côte d’Azur, and with the help of several eccentric fellow guests attending a rigorous cooking class at her hotel, Céline discovers truths about art, culture, cuisine, and love that enable her to embrace her own future.
Haunted by the past, Henrietta throws herself into a new job transcribing other people’s life stories, vowing to stick to the facts and keep emotions at arm’s length. But when she meets the eccentric and terminally ill Annie, she finds herself inextricably drawn in. And when Annie reveals that her sister drowned in unexplained circumstances in 1974, Henrietta’s methodical mind can’t help following the story’s loose ends…
Unlike Henrietta, Annie is brimming with confidence—but even she has limits when it comes to opening up. Ever since that terrible night when her sister left a pile of clothes beside the canal and vanished, Annie has been afraid to look too closely into the murky depths of her memories. When her attempts to glide over the past come up against Henrietta’s determination to fill in the gaps, both women find themselves confronting truths they’d thought were buried forever—especially when Henrietta’s digging unearths a surprising emotional connection between them.
Could unlocking Annie’s story help Henrietta rewrite the most devastating passages in her own life? And, in return, can she offer Annie a final twist in the tale, before it’s too late?
Washington, DC, 1950. Everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, a down-at-the-heels all-female boardinghouse in the heart of the nation’s capital where secrets hide behind white picket fences. But when the lovely, mysterious widow Grace March moves into the attic room, she draws her oddball collection of neighbors into unlikely friendship: poised English beauty Fliss, whose facade of perfect wife and mother covers gaping inner wounds; policeman’s daughter Nora, who finds herself entangled with a shadowy gangster; frustrated baseball star Beatrice, whose career has come to an end along with the women’s baseball league of WWII; and poisonous, gung-ho Arlene, who has thrown herself into McCarthy’s Red Scare.
MORE BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS
If you have already read these books or missed something I have featured before on the blog check out My Bookshop on Amazon.
SHOPPING
OUTFIT OF THE DAY
This pleated A-line dress recently caught my eye as I was perusing the summer sales, I love the polka dots. You can dress it up or down but I paired it with a pair of simple sandals and a sweater just in case it it chilly inside stores and restaurants. Add your favorite jewelry and a bag and you are set for the day.
Outfit Details
You can find all of my outfits on LTK so be sure to follow me in case you missed one.
UNTIL TOMORROW
What are your weekend plans?
Tell me something that made you smile this week!
I hope you enjoyed the recipes, links and books I discovered this week on Friday Favorites. Thank you for spending part of your day with me, your time is valuable and I am grateful that you spend a little of each day with me. Have a wonderful weekend.
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Don’t forget that Kim, Juliet and I will be back tomorrow on Weekend Meanderings!
If you have missed a Friday Favorites post you can find them all here.
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On My Radar
I always enjoy the links you provide for interesting topics. The one about Olive Oatman, who was captured and lived with a native tribe in particular interested me.
I recommend The Color of Lightning, a novel by Paulette Jiles which about the same
situation for a family who settled in the wild west, and based on a true story.
Thank you Joan! I thought the one about Olive Oatman was interesting too, especially after she was let go. Thank you for the suggestion about the Color of Lightening.
Have a wonderful weekend.