My mom arrives on Sunday for a visit. We don’t have set plans for the week, but I’m thinking both she and Margaret would enjoy a trip here. And we’re of course celebrating Father’s Day on Sunday. Dan requested farmers market pastries (doughnuts!)  for brunch and my Grammy’s chocolate sheet cake post-dinner. He’s so easy to please!

I’ve covered French life here and here, so I find this Vanity Fair piece particularly poignant. Plus, who could resist reading these two fabulous sentences?

Unlike her neurotic American sisters, a French bachelorette would never be caught dead moping on the sofa, digging into a tub of Häagen-Dazs because some doofus didn’t call, and she never goes out looking as if she just crawled out of a laundry hamper. And unlike some of her slaggy British cousins, she doesn’t get bombed on alcohol and barf on the pavement as the capper to an evening’s entertainment.

My friend, Jen, curated an event in Atlanta called Root City Market that’s tomorrow. I cannot wait to check out all the goods including pieces from my favorite jewelry designer, Asha Patel.

Isn’t Keira Knightley’s wedding style cooler than cool? I die.

Image: Courtesy of Landov

My nieces adore their American Girl dolls. This exhibit by photographer Ilona Szwarc is on display in NYC until July 3 and looks incredible. I so wish I could see it in person!

Image: Ilona Szwarc, Courtesy of the Foley Gallery

As someone who just this week was assigned a 900-word article for $75 (for those of you with mathematician minds, that’s not even a penny a word), this article, about a journalism degree being the worst return on an investment one can make, is a sad, but likely true, read.

Image via Mashable, iStockphoto, amdandy

I’ve been frustrated with Kickstarter lately. I blame Zach Braff! There’s a great article, here, explaining how celebrities are ruining the crowd-sourced funding site. That said there are so many projects that you stumble upon, like this one by Nick Fauchald. Short Stack, Fauchald’s food publication, combines two of my great loves, cooking and reading, with his gorgeous series of one-ingredient subjects. The Short Stack campaign runs through the end of this week and he’s already surpassed his 50K ask. I got a chance to interview Fauchald, where we talk goals, the joys of holding a physical book (dog eared pages!) and food writing talent.

danapop: How did the idea for Short Stack Editions come about and what would reaching the Kickstarter goal of $50K do for your vision?

Nick Fauchald: Short Stack was a way for me to work on a purely print-based project. I’d had my hands in so many digital things in recent years that I missed working with something you could hold in your hands.

We were lucky enough to reach our Kickstarter goal within the first week of our campaign. Any extra money we raise beyond this goal will go towards printing more copies of each edition, which in turn will pay our authors more for their hard work.

danapop: How did you choose the three singular ingredients you did of strawberry, egg and tomato? Was the publication purposefully timed (the tomatoes and strawberries) to correspond with peak season?

Fauchald: We want each Short Stack edition to be used throughout the year, but we’re also sensitive to seasonal ingredients. Some editions will be more seasonal than others; for example, you can get great eggs all year long, while the season for the best tomatoes and strawberries is more finite, so we’ll be sure to publish these editions near peak harvest times.

danapop: As much as I love my iPad and Kindle, I still love to hold newspapers and books in my hands. I like the weight, the smell and the overall feel of them. Your editions are darling in size, seemingly so simple, but so thoughtful – what do you want the person that buys and reads them to get out of it?

Fauchald: There’s something about flipping through a cookbook that you can replicate on a computer. The Internet is great for searching for a recipe, but I don’t trust just anything I find via Google; I want to know who created the recipe and if they took the time to make sure it will work in my kitchen. I hope our readers will keep their Short Stack editions handy for whenever they need a new idea for cooking a favorite ingredient. And, like all good cookbooks, we hope our readers will collect Short Stacks and pass them along to their friends and family.

danapop: Tell me more about Susan Spungen, Ian Knauer and Soa Davies. How did you connect with such stellar talent? What about the suppliers of the paper, the printer, — how did you determine all of these factors to create such high-quality literary gems?

Fauchald: We start each edition by finding the best author possible. I’m not interested in having a big-name author, writer or chef take on an edition unless they can deliver fresh, dependable recipes. Susan, Ian and Soa are all known for creating this level of content. Then we ask each author to pick their favorite ingredient, something that excites and inspires them to cook, and that becomes the theme for their edition.

Next, we met with a bunch of printers in New York; we want to produce these booklets as close to home as possible, and using the best materials we can buy. We could have printed these overseas and on cheaper paper, but I think the finished product wouldn’t have felt as special. I hope our readers will notice and appreciate the difference, even if it means charging a few extra bucks for each copy.

danapop: As far as lofty goals, what’s next for Short Stack and where do you want this to go?

Fauchald: After we produce and distribute our first three editions, we have a bullpen of authors ready to work on future Short Stacks. We’ll start producing the next editions right away—you’ll be able to buy them on our own website (ShortStackEditions.com) and through select retailers later this summer.

After what was a very fun weekend, the week that followed was rough. On the home front, Margaret cut her first tooth on Wednesday (second on Thursday) and the two days leading up to the big breakthrough were spent with her being incredibly fussy and clingy. When the first was finally visible, it was like I had my daughter back … all grins and playing coy showing off the new additions to her gums.

On the work front, I had a project move into a different direction than I hoped and had more than one difficult conversation surrounding it all. It’s awful, but I’m often reminded of my father’s, bad news doesn’t get better over time rule. I’m hoping to lay low this weekend, but on Sunday I have a 100^th birthday party to attend. Isn’t that incredible?

On Tuesday, I got a glimpse of Metamorphoses and Mighty Myths & Legends from Georgia Shakespeare before they open this summer. So good!

For all that Shakespeare-watching in the park, wouldn’t these adult sippy cups be great?

As someone who gets enough pick your brain emails to consider a side business as a creative consultant, Marie Forleo’s advice is fantastic.

I love Sofia Coppola’s take on privacy in Sunday’s T Magazine. Also, it’s interesting that this year, Lee Radziwill and Coppola traded interviewing each other for the same publication. PS – Isn’t that photograph stunning?

Image of Sofia Coppola in her West Village apartment: Photograph by Jason Schmidt; makeup by Aaron de Mey at Art Partner; hair by Ayumi Yamamoto at Defacto for Shu Uemura.

We’re just starting to think about babyproofing our house a bit, which means we’ll need a new coffee table soon. Wouldn’t one of these custom trays from BirdAria look cute holding remote controls and coasters?

Translation: Round the Dinner Table

From lulling Margaret to sleep with Carla Bruni, to whipping up baby food purees in a Beeva maker, a Mustela snob at bath time, coveting everything on the smallable.com site, to Sophie being the toy picked above almost all others, and the sweet and brave Madeline being a favorite read … without being fully aware of it, I’ve apparently gravitated to the French school of thought when raising a child. It could be because I’m drawing from my own experiences from childhood, particularly when it comes to eating.

I didn’t know it at the time, but my parents essentially raised us at mealtime. We learned how to debate, hold our own in interesting conversations, manners (don’t interrupt, napkin on the lap, asking to be excused), the proper way to set a table, try new things, and to finish what you start.

We ate dinner as a family nearly every night at a table my father made from a piece of reclaimed California Redwood, purchased in Chicago after my parents found out they were expecting twins. The table is still at my parents’ house, held up by two porcelain elephants found in Ho Chi Minh City (when it was still called Saigon), Vietnam. My father sent four back home to my mother—two brown and two green—originally slated as end tables. Only one brown and one green made it, so the mismatched pair was destined for a life together under that table. For seating, in lieu of chairs, were two long church pews that came from a chapel in-between Great Lakes Naval Academy and Ft. Sheridan in Waukegan, Illinois, just outside of Chicago.

The life lessons around that dinner table are not unlike those being taught in all of the of-the-moment parenting books written by expat authors touting everything from portion control to maintaining variety in what your kid is eating. I want all of that for Margaret. I want mealtime to be fun, be filled with a range of nutritious (and wonderfully tasting) foods and for us to be present as a family during that hour. I want to make these moments a priority—to unplug and really just be there. I hope I do as good of a job as my parents did.

I cannot believe Memorial Day was this week. I’m a firm believer in the summer Friday (which I actually take year round). Come Friday around 2 p.m. I find myself stepping away from the computer and starting my weekend. My sister and I often joke that if we were to ever start a company together we’d for sure instate bikini Friday. Meaning, grab your laptop, cocktail and head to the pool! Here’s to the start of summer!

I never read Jeannette Wall’s memoir, The Glass Castle, and honestly I’m not sure I could stomach it. This piece, Mommy Nearest, about Walls’s mother living in a cottage on her farm was a very tough article to read, but so beautifully written. It’s one of those pieces that I felt so uncomfortable and sad the whole time I was reading it, but had to get to the end.

Image: Courtesy of Ilona Szwarc for The New York Times

There’s always money in the banana stand! On Sunday, Arrested Development became available for streaming on Netflix and it’s like the return of an old friend you haven’t seen in a while, but feel as if no time has passed. We’re on episode six and hoping Franklin and Annyong show up soon!

Image: Courtesy of Marion Curtis/Startraksphoto.com

This is one of my favorite photos of my parents. Every Memorial Day, I think of my father’s 21-year career as a journalist in the Army and wish he were still around to tell me about it all.

I’m convinced Margaret is going to wind up sounding like Demi Moore once she starts talking. These days she’s certainly finding her voice. And by voice I mean something that sounds like a feral catfight with screeching and squawking at the top of her lungs. I’ve taken to calling her the little lynx because she sounds like a wild animal. So sad this one born recently at the Nashville Zoo passed away this week from pneumonia.

Image: Courtesy of Amiee Stubbs/HotSpot /Landov

Nathan Fielder’s last text prank cracked me up and this one might top it.

While visiting my older sister Susan’s house years ago, she made Dan and I this shrimp risotto that screamed springtime. It was fresh and lovely, using mint and lemon, and makes me think of her each time I make it (which is often when the weather is warm).

I play around with the grain on this one, sometimes using bulgur, as the recipe suggests, other times using quinoa or Arborio. I think I can sneak it onto our plates at least one more time before the season shifts into summer.

This was a tough news week. I’m so sad for Oklahomans. The story of the path of devastation hit very close to home. My parents met and married in OKC and we have family there. I hope the town of Moore and the surrounding areas can begin the long process of healing and starting over. Here’s to a weekend of remembering to hold your loved ones tight and taking a moment to appreciate just how fleeting and precious life actually is.

They don’t make ‘em like George Plimpton anymore! This looks so good.

I barely passed Economics 101 in college. My professor stumped me on day one with his explainer of the theory that “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” So, this piece about black market drug trade is both fascinating and baffling to me.

Image: Courtesy of David McNew/Getty Images

Isn’t this photo series on abandoned farmhouses stunning?

Image: © Niki Feijen

I can get behind the Donald Miller Storyline.

Image: Courtesy of Laura Dart

I’ve recently added salads into our weeknight meal repertoire. I’m not talking about the iceberg and mushy tomato piles of water I was accustomed to in the Midwest, but hearty greens that actually fill you up. I made this on Monday night. So good!

Image: Courtesy of Con Poulous

For the almost 12 years we’ve been together, Dan and my relationship with travel has changed quite a bit. But nothing so in your face as the current metamorphosis our family has undergone with we to three. When Dan and I were dating and newly married, we had a bit of disposable income and traveled whenever the whim suited. It was a time in our lives we had friends sprinkled throughout the country, we’d visit when the urge or reason struck us. It was that stage in our life we refer to as the wedding years, with at least two a year for a pretty good stretch, so a lot of our travel was to fun cities to shake it like a Polaroid picture.

Nothing could’ve prepared me for traveling with a small child. Not even helping my older sister, Susan, with her daughter on several business trips when she was still nursing some years ago. Let me tell you, there’s a very big difference with that second set of hands within the tight quarters of an airplane. Plus, it helps so very much when you know the person seated next to you when you’re trying to feed your baby. It’s about as up close and personal as you can get and getting a wee one fed trumps modesty.

Back in March, when I visited my mother, I was that person on a two-hour flight with the baby that screamed her head off the entire time, only to pass out from shear exhaustion moments before landing. It reminds me of the hilarious Bill Cosby little Jeffrey bit. My usually happy, content, grinning baby was swapped out for an absolute maniac that I couldn’t calm down. It got me thinking about things I wish I would’ve known. With that in mind, here are a few tips that can make traveling solo bearable.

1. Plan on traveling with some sort of carrier system. Ergo’s seem to be the trendy one of the moment, I’m doing just dandy with my older sister’s hand-me-down Björn. The more hands-free you can be, the better.

2. I cannot emphasize this enough – remember to pack extra clothes (everything from a onesie to a romper, sweater, hat and socks) in your diaper or carryon bag. Your child will need it when they (as if on cue) explode in the aforementioned carrier minutes before boarding your flight. Bonus points if you remember to pack a plastic resealable bag to put soiled clothes.

3. Before dressing (and redressing) your child, be sure to dress yourself accordingly (layers!). I made the mistake of wearing a very cute cream turtleneck sweater over a white tank top on a flight and proceeded to sweat buckets from shear exhaustion and couldn’t take my sweater off because I’d look like I was competing in a wet t-shirt contest.

4. Roll with it. Yes, their ears will hurt. Yes, they will most likely cry. Honestly do whatever you can to minimize their pain and just hunker down. Have multiple pacifiers (or whatever you use to soothe) at the ready. And remember make nice with the flight attendant because you’re going to need him/her to disinfect several of those suckers in boiling water after your kid throws them on the floor in protest.

It’s been week of change at our house. Margaret recently started on solids, so I’ve been experimenting with making baby food, which has been fun, but a little intimidating. I’m trying to just jump right in with it all, since this phase of Margaret’s development was one of the ones I was looking forward to the most. As the mother of a daughter, I truly feel that if I do nothing else for her, if I can give her a foundation for a healthy relationship with wonderful, well-balanced, nutritious foods, I’ll have done a decent job.

Here’s to a weekend of good eating, no matter your age.

I cannot wait to see this documentary.

For creatives (like myself) that set their own schedule, this Fast Company article is very interesting.

Image: Fickr user Rodrigo Soldon via Fast Company

Speaking of creative-types, The New Yorker recently published this incredible piece on parenting.

Image: Courtesy of The New Yorker

How cool is this couch?

Image: Courtesy of ZO_loft

This Washington Post article asks the question, Are foodies quietly killing rock-and-roll? Super interesting and the above photo I took of Crif Dogs hotdogs at Bonnaroo further proves the point.

I might be getting snarky in my old age, but one of my favorite sections in Sunday’s NYT Magazine is the Meh List. Those items that are just so-so. Not loathsome or great, but just meh.

Ever since I had Margaret my time is very limited, which in a lot of ways is a good thing because it weeds out the mundane, and mostly only the best things are left. In my spare time I want to be reading only the best blogs and articles, but there are several things that keep popping up in my daily reading on lifestyle sites. Here are five trends I’d love to see slip off today’s pop-culture radar that qualify as meh.

Mustache anything. On bartenders, on baby bodysuits, it’s not cute anymore. If I see one more kid birthday party on Pinterest with a ‘stache theme I might punch the computer. My nephew did that two years ago (had the party, not punched the computer, but he could’ve done that too).

Image: Via Bottle Your Brand / Pinterest

Barcarts. I get it you like to drink. Store it in your kitchen cupboard like every other normal person off the wagon and welcome to the year 2013. Don Draper, it’s no longer 1963. Also seen often as a sidebar to barcart stories is the use of “ista” on the end of anything. Remodelista and fashionista particularly are the most annoying.

Image: Courtesy of Brunch at Saks

I’m so over fashion bloggers talking about avocado toast like they cracked the ratio to the 11 herbs and spices in KFC’s chicken recipe. Seriously, get over yourself; it’s mashed up avocado on toast. (However, it is my everyday lunch of late; I just don’t need a recipe telling me how to make it.)

Image: Courtesy of Lauren Conrad via Sacramento Street

Can we stop naming children after presidents? Lincoln, Jackson, Monroe, Clinton, Harrison, Wilson, Truman, Taylor—you get the idea. Today’s Kennedy is yesterday’s Jennifer.

Image: Courtesy of Leah Rocketto via the bump

The Kimye and Royal baby arrivals. Baby bump, orca whale comparisons, nursery themes, shower registries … frankly, I couldn’t care less.

Image: Courtesy GMA