cute food, in general

There are books, magazines, websites, and blogs upon blogs about cute food.

To me, fashionably photographed food usually looks cute no matter what it is; the cookie doesn't have to have to look like a darling little penguin in order to be cute. I have a cookbook full of recipes for penguin cookies and panda oatmeal and stuff. It's very fun, but cookies can be cute enough just by being cookies.

Fruit is already cute. All you have to do is slice it neatly and arrange it with a little cute intention, or use it to BLINGIFY pretty much any other food or drink.

I don't automatically think of vegetables as cute, but why shouldn't the fruit principles apply? Like fruits, they're fresh, colorful, and unique. Lately, i've been making a mighty effort to eat not just more vegetables, but a greater variety of vegetables (and foods in general). I've been trying to eat five different veggies a day, so when i shop sometimes i just pick something i've never cooked or eaten or heard of, and after i get home i go to my cookbook indexes and the internet to figure out what to do with it. These are like small VEGETABLE ADVENTURES. (This week it was fennel and kale.)

A while ago i got to eat a vegetarian meal prepared by Buddhist monks, and it was delicious but also really lovely to look at. That got me really interested in all the different ways to prepare vegetables, especially the ones i'm not as comfortable with -- plus i get bored with the same old lettuce and tomatoes.

Bento box recipes (i have this book) have helped me with this. They're usually simple but just a little different from what i'm used to, and presentation is inherantly important. I also have a handful of bento recipes from a magazine i bought years ago that i'm working on translating and trying. They're very simple, tiny portions.

This Mollie Katzen cookbook doesn't have any glorious photos (and i have bought cookbooks solely to look at the pictures...) but it's full of cute drawings and very handy ideas for vegetables. I've also enjoyed A Midwest Gardener's Cookbook. It's organized by season and i learned from it that i can eat violets. I just get these out from the library.

I love fresh herbs right now, too -- i've been buying bunches of them and putting them in a vase on the counter. They're so green and bright, and much cheaper than fresh cut flowers! AND fresh cut flowers don't turn into tabbouli or pesto.

Now protein is another story. Little beans, nuts and seeds -- okay. But when it comes to meat, i'm going to have to say that vegetarianism wins the cuteness contest. I'm not a vegetarian right now but meat just isn't cute.

Except maybe sushi.

And then there's dairy. "The most popular and fashionable foods... were soft, sweet and milky, including ice-cream, cakes, milk drinks and soft deserts." [Kinsella] I happen to get most of my dairy by drinking lattes.

I haven't given much thought to making whole grains cute. My initial thought: onigiri. And there's the aforementioned animal-themed oatmeal.

But as for bread... loveliness abounds. Bread of course comes from dreamy French bakeries, where it's organized by shape in rustic baskets with handwritten signs by a cute girl in a pretty apron with a romantic boyfriend drinking espresso at the patio table near his bicycle with flowers for her in the basket. It's also closely linked to muffins, cake, and by extension pastries, ice cream, candy, and of course there is no question about the cuteness of sweets.

But really, even plain old toast with jam is kinda cute.

handwriting... oh...

Everything should be cute. Lovely girls write letters, and love notes, and dreamy entries in secret diaries.

Well, that ideal image is ruined a bit if the lovely girl has ugly handwriting.

I always loved to draw, even before i learned to write. As a toddler i didn't know there was a right or wrong way to hold a pencil, and just did what seemed natural -- as long as i could waste reams of paper by covering each sheet with a large smiley face. I soon moved on to drawing Funny Bunny and Friends, the Happy Mobile gang (the Happy Mobile was our big green truck), and by first grade I'd finally stopped drawing Dad's mustache above his nose. And by then, i was also learning to write. But alas, it was too late to change my well-established grip on my pencil, even with the special three-sided pencil clutch my teacher made me use for practicing penmanship.

I can hold a pen the correct way and write fine, but i never do. It's uncomfortable and I certainly can't draw that way. I can't see any benefit in changing that habit now. I already have callouses in all the right places.

I don't know if the way i hold my pen has anything to do with the neatness of my writing, but it's always been difficult for people to read it. When i rush, even i usually can't read it. I've envied people with beautiful handwriting. On the computer i like to be vicariously cute and use fonts like "Catholic School Girls," neat and bubbly, each i dotted with a heart.

Still, when i take my time, my writing's not that bad. I sometimes even get compliments. Once a friend shocked me and confessed that she envied my handwriting; over the past few years, I've grown to like my (neater) writing too.

It still probably wouldn't hurt to tweak it a little. Last year i decided i was going to learn how to write with my left hand, and i was surprised how well it came along after a bit of practice. I'm slow and it looks like a very old person's writing, but it's legible. So i feel like if i want to adjust my handwriting a little, i can do it. Here's a webpage that seems helpful. I think i will go to the library and look at some handwriting books too, mostly because it sounds interesting.

Last night i made a very profound diary entry that reads "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" about half a dozen times. After examining my several different styles (i'm most inconsistent) and flipping through previous pages, i decided i'm happy with both my print and cursive. But i picked out a few things that mean the difference between cute and anti-cute:

• no slant - when i make my letters straight up and down, cuteness is increased.
• no hurry - i simply have to take my time, or it looks awful.
  

Some articles i've read about cuteness in Japan, including the one i linked to in the previous post, mention a style of cute handwriting that became popular among teenage girls in the 1970s. Apparently the handwriting predated, or almost caused the widespread interest in cuteness that took over the country for the next few decades. It's strange to think of handwriting as being so powerful!

By all accounts, the girls used mechanical pencils and wrote horizontally, using rounded characters mixed with little pictures and English words like "happy!" It was described as difficult to read, which made me feel a little better about my own writing at first. But after more reflection, i realize there is difference between "so cute it's no longer functional" and "just plain sloppy."

I looked briefly for some examples of this cute handwriting and couldn't find any; but i'm starting to suspect it may have become the norm, rather than the 70s fad i thought it was at first. In fact, except for the "difficult to read" part, it sounds very similar to the handwriting of some Japanese friends i've had. I'm going to have to dig for some letters from a girl named Tomoko, whose writing i remembered first when i thought about that description. But here are some excerpts of other friends writing, who may have been influenced in their grade school years by the very powerful "cute handwriting."

cute research

I came by the article "Cuties in Japan" by sociologist Sharon Kinsella a while ago, i think through a fashion site. The article doesn't have that much to say about fashion actually, but plenty on how cute culture in Japan started and developed over twenty years or so (the article is 15 years old now). It's academic and so not particularly positive (or negative) about cuteness, but i find a lot of inspiration in it.

how to join the Cookies Club

Anyone who wants to live a cute life can join The Cookies Club. To be listed as a member, just comment on this post with your name, you blog or website URL, and -- just because i'm curious -- your favorite type of cookie.

Soon i'll tell you how you can become an OFFICIAL card-carrying member of the Cookies Club, complete with membership kit and bi-monthly newsletters! So stay tuned ♥

thoughts on fancy pens

I guess everyone has their favorite pens. Some favor a certain make and model, and sometimes you just come across an ordinary ballpoint pen that happens to write especially nicely. I think after becoming addicted to cute notebooks, it was natural to want my pens to correspond.

Now it seems obvious that the pen i use for letter writing should be something very special. Writing in my own very secret diary is another time when the pen is important. And the pen in my purse -- the one i pull out all the time when i need to write in my planner, put to paper some plans for an exciting project, or jot down some inspired lyrics for a brand new Watch Out Red Hood song -- that should be a pen that turns heads. Or at least makes me smile.

My favorite pen for years was a gift from a friend, a cute souvenir from her hometown on Lake Biwa. It featured Hello Kitty in a fish costume. It wrote nicely, and on the end that i normally chew on, it had a Fish-Kitty charm that I could make spin around the pen in a very satisfying way. I'm pretty sure my Sunday School teacher hated it. It doesn't work anymore but I still have it.

Now I have a few favorites. This past fall i was overtaken by an especially strong desire to have only cute things, and I fixated on all my boring, chewed up pens. So i got on etsy and ordered some flower pens from banana tree art. They are lovely. I think these are not too difficult to make yourself.

Then for Christmas, I got two special pens from two special sisters: a quill pen, which is kind of hard to write with but great fun; and a ballpoint pen that writes with lilac-scented ink. I love it.

I also have a good supply of Sakura gel pens, mostly in pink. They're a good stand-by, except for check-writing.

My friend Hannah wrapped an ordinary pen in ribbon and thus it became cute and interesting. I thought yarn would be neat but I haven't figured out how it'd work. I wonder how else we can take ordinary pens and make them worthy of THE COOKIES CLUB?

quick & cute decorating with photos

My friend Brianna wanted decorations for her dorm room, so for Christmas I decided to make her a lovely mobile with pictures from some of our fabulous picnics and secret club meetings.

But the mobile (which originally involved a wire hanger) wasn't coming out so lovely, so i simplified a bit. I printed out a bunch of pictures, as planned, then just glued them back-to-back along a length of ribbon.

Then i cut some hearts and stars from pretty paper scraps and glued those back-to-back along some shorter lengths of ribbon.

I was very happy with the finished product! The collection of pictures made us look like really fun people to hang out with! I don't know how true that is, but we sure look exciting. And i really loved the way the hearts and stars looked, and made up my mind to make some for myself sometime.

A few months later i've finally gotten around to it. Without this project in mind, i printed out a bunch of pictures my friend had sent me, mostly featuring clothes. I wanted to get a good look at them but i didn't want to be on the computer. I hadn't decided if i was going to display them in my room, glue them to a notebook, or what.

Then the other day i didn't feel like doing anything that really had to be done, and the pictures were handy and i thought of Brianna's present. A short while later, i had a new room decoration! It's prettier and more elegant than just taping photos to the wall, and it's not very much harder. I hung mine from my curtain rod.

The ones i made for myself (pictured left) seemed a lot quicker and easier than the ones i made for Brianna. Maybe because i knew it didn't have to be gift-worthy, or just because it was the second time around. But also i used photopaper for Bri's and regular paper for mine, so that might have been a factor. I also used a corner-rounder on hers for an added finish, but didn't bother for my own.

cute at home

The first thing I do when i get home from work is change my clothes. And if i don't have plans to go out, my natural instinct is to reach for my pajamas. They're so cozy, and nobody's really going to see me...

But most days I get off work by noon. That means I spend all day in my pajamas. Pajamas can be cute, but something about spending too much time in them doesn't feel very lovely. I'm comfortable, but i look sloppy and I know it. It someone stopped by, i'd have to change right away.

So I think I have two options: Princess Mode and Slumber Party Mode.

Princess Mode, as usual, is impractical. The only thing less practical is expecting myself to get dressed when I know I'm not going anywhere. Princess Mode is based on the one possibly cute aspect of staying in PJs all day -- it's very princess-like. Or at least aristocratic. Slightly spoiled, eccentric girls get to stay in their nightgowns all day, reading forbidden novels, eating indulgent chocolates and shooing away the cat. And of course there's Sleeping Beauty.

I guess the only real difference between Princess Mode and my current routine is that a princess would not be wearing flannel Halloween-themed pajama pants in February. So I would need some fancier nightgowns. And a tiara. And I'd still be embarrassed if the UPS man came to the door.

Slumber Party Mode is the plan I intend to follow. Here is what I need to do:

• Invest in some cute sweats or yoga pants. Most of my cozy pants are due for replacement. Today I'm applying Slumber Party Mode by wearing a pair of American Apparel sweats that are much more flattering than most of my selection, but they are a bit worn out. The guidelines for buying my new pants:

don't be cheap about it. i am on the thrifty side but this needs to be a splurge, a favorite brand.

they must be something i would not be embarrased to wear to the grocery store


i must never wear them to the grocery store or anywhere else

• Wear a bra all day.
• Take a moment to change my hairstyle. I usually wear braids or a ponytail at work, which i usually pull out when I change. It only takes a minute to brush it and rebraid it or pin some of it back into a cute, simple style.
• Put on a peice of jewelry. Just one. Literal BLINGIFCATION! A stretchy bracelet or a necklace and I look more put together and feel cuter.

Simple and just as quick, but so much better!
And as soon as I finished writing this, a salesman came to the door.

embrace whimsy

"...he thought about it and said he didn't think we should be afraid to embrace whimsy. I asked him what he meant by whimsy, and he struggled to define it. He said it's that nagging idea that life could be magical; it could be special if we were only willing to take a few risks."

page 167 a million miles in a thousands years by donald miller

Blingify

Once upon a time i produced a weekly newsletter with some of my friends. We basically printed just enough copies for ourselves, so no one else was very interested and we soon got tired of it and stopped.

In the newsletter, we talked about "BLINGIFICATION," which essentially means "making boring things pretty." (Obviously, the Cookies Club is not a new thought -- just a different way to explore it.) Unfortunately or not, BLINGIFY is still the most succinct word i know to describe the act of making an item lovelier than it was, although i suppose it does imply a certain amount of sparkle.

In fact, if i think to myself "how can i BLINGIFY this?", the first image in my mind usually involves covering it with stickers. And that's very often what I do.

But we had a few other ideas for making life fancier. Here are the ones we listed in the fourth (and final?) issue of BLINGIFY:

• Replace all the band-aids in all accessible First Aid kits with Hello Kitty band-aids.
• Garnish every meal you make with a cute strawberry, and every drink with a cheerful lemon slice.
• If you have not already done so, blingify your cell phone shamelessly.
• Never send a letter without a lovely sticker sealing the envelope.
• Adopt the philosophy if it's there, it might as well be pretty (or frilly or cute or plaid or whatever suits you), then go search out all the mundane things in your world (laundry baskets, school books, sweatpants) and BLINGIFY them.
  

everything should be cute

I feel a bit guilty for having this kind of interest in material possessions. There are important things for me to do in this world; i shouldn't care at all what my pencil sharpener looks like, as long as it sharpens pencils.

But still I think... if i'm going to own a pencil sharpener, why shouldn't it be somehow delightful?

My pencil sharpener is not delightful. I can't even tell you what color it is. Actually I'm not really sure where it is! So i have not always felt this way about pencil sharpeners being delightful.

Some credit has to go to Hello Kitty. When I realized that anything I could ever want might also be available in pink and with Kitty on it, i began to wonder why i would ever choose a non-Kitty pencil sharpener (toaster, hairdryer, license plate frame, etc).

(And yet I don't want Kitty on everything... mostly because I just don't want Kitty on EVERYTHING.)

Eventually, cell phones became popular and I decided to get one. I had just returned to the U.S. after a semester abroad. Mobile phones were already widely used in the country where I'd been living; you could easily get one in pale pink, baby blue, or various other stylish colors. But everything I found at my local American cell phone shop was black and very businesslike. I was unhappy with this. For some reason I even complained about the lack of cuteness to the salesman at the Sprint store. I think he didn't understand. I went home with a navy blue one that could accommodate the phone charms i'd acquired in my travels. Eventually i painted it pink using nail polish.

And that's about the time my devotion to living a cute life began to develop. They say study abroad changes your life -- apparently that's how it changed mine. (I had been hoping it would help me decide on a major.)

Years later there is still so much of my life that is just sitting there not being at all stylish -- the aforementioned pencil sharpener, for example. No more! And so i hereby form THE COOKIES CLUB. Let's think about how to have a cute life!