I love the idea of collections.

When I was a little girl, I randomly collected spoons (mostly because my dad traveled a lot for work and always brought me a souvenir spoon from wherever he’d been) and little porcelain animals that I stored in a glass-front cabinet. Nowadays, my collections are of the (sliiiightly) more practical sort:

I pick up vintage teacups whenever I find one that’s particularly beautiful.

I tend to immediately own any and all crystal skulls that I happen to stumble upon.

Q. Hi Jordan,

How do you pick artificial plants and flowers that look realistic? I want to personalize my room, [and] I thought some faux greenery might give it a lift.

-Jeannine

Brrrr.

OK, so you know how yesterday I was saying how people apparently didn't need closets in 1900? Well, maybe that's because their houses were so freaking cold all of the time that they had to just wander around wearing everything they owned.

Our house has new windows, so it's not especially drafty, but it also, sadly, does not have a fireplace (or central heating). I took a big step towards solving the coziness issue with our pretend fireplace, but still: it's chilly in here, especially first thing in the morning (I try to keep the thermostat turned down at night because (1) I sleep better in the cold and (2) whoa oil is expensive; one of the many Home Ownership Costs that I had no idea about way back when we started this process).