One of my favorite places to shop for housewares and gifts is Maison Midi, which is on La Brea and 1st, adjacent to American Rag (a great clothing store full of brands I can't afford...case in point, I once saw Drew Barrymore there blindly plucking up clothes and then going to the register with an armload of new outfits, without mind to the cost).
Maison Midi has beautiful modern, bright, cheery linens, housewares, and all manners of things from France (like cheese knives and French bistro chairs), handblown glasses, art books, kitchenware, and John Derrian-esque decoupage paperweights and ashtrays. I wanted to register here for our wedding, but apparently their wares change so quickly with the season that it would be hard to pull off. It's a great place to grab latte at the cafe and pick up a gift.
Glass Rainbow
Oh how I wish I could afford you.
If you feel like spending a good $70 on your pepper mill...
And by stormy, I mean Dark 'n' Stormy! I first discovered this delectable drink a few years back when I was a travel host for a network called Voyage TV.
Ok, ignore my horrible host-y banter; see the dapper, pink-suited Bermudian gentleman seated to the left of me? That's Charles, our unofficial ambassador to Bermuda. He invited us into his gorgeous, well-curated home and treated us to some local eats and drinks on his patio while watching the Bermudian sunset. Not only did this amazing guy inspire me to own pimpin' house slippers (which he called his "house creepers,") he also introduced me to the local specialty drink, Dark 'n' Stormies. It's pretty simple: ginger beer, Bermudian rum, and a squeeze of fresh lime juice.
For our housewarming party months ago, we decided to make Dark 'n' Stormies our specialty cocktail since they were pretty easy to mix. My mixologist friend told me it's simple: put some ice in a glass, pour in some ginger beer (not brew, since it's not as strong), then top it off with rum and a splash of lime, and you get that cool gradient effect. What I didn't realize is apparently it's all in the ratio, as my first guinea pig friend whom I made a drink for can attest. Too much rum makes for immediate lampshade on head inebriation. Apparently 1:1 ratio isn't quite right.
So now with this end of summer weather and a lazy, holiday weekend, my betrothed and I decided to escape the heat by revisiting ol' Dark and Stormy land and hanging out in our garden with a few books. I used cool spherical ice courtesy of our awesome friend Sara, who gifted us cool Japanese ice ball makers.
Thank you registry for these Orrefors old fashioned glasses!
The ratio is more like 3:1, depending on the brand of ginger beer and how much spice you like. Looks like a storm's moving in...
