friday present: from fives to friends

After last week's Friday gratitude post, I've decided to continue posting this weekly gift of thanks. Five seems like a fair number for the list. 

1. Fives. 

{pretty chanel no 5 perfume bottle by ihearthome}

I like fives, their evenly intermittent evens and odds. How easy multiples of five add, multiply, divide. And square root (not that I ever do that). I like how "five" contains F and V, because I like the intimate relationship that F&V share in English. I like how if you write F&V like so, it looks kinda like fave.

2. Scones. 

I've been trying to bake up a heat wave inside the house. It works, sometimes, but still I'm mostly cold. When others stop by to visit, they often mention the words: sauna or Turkish bath. Yet, there I am in some wool sweater, shivering lightly. Yesterday, I baked some apricot-currant scones (with a touch of orange zest). 

I think scones are the world's perfect breakfast, tea-time snack and dessert. So versatile, light and delicately sweet! I have been using this simple scone recipe from Allrecipes and adding whatever pizzazz is in our kitchen. I substitute wheat flour for white and plain yogurt for the sour cream, because we can't get sour cream down in these parts. And I've found grating frozen butter with a cheese grater to be the best way to handle frozen butter ever, especially if your kitchen has a limited stock of pastry-making appliances. 

3. Bubblebathable tub.

{rose bath found here}

We are moving in a couple of weeks to a more comfortable house. Yay! It's much smaller than where we are now, but it's better constructed. There's a foundation, insulation on the roof and in the walls, the windows are properly sealed, the water pipes are underground and everything inside is new and sturdy. 

Most houses here don't have foundation, and insulation is few and far between. Houses here mostly consist of two layers of plywood--with nothing in between them--and a painted corrugated or flat tin wall for the outside of the house. The inner pieces of plywood are painted directly and all the electrical and gas guts line the outside of the walls. The ceiling is similarly, one non-insulated layer of plywood, a crawlspace and a triangular tin roof. While not ideal, it's supportable in the summer when it's not that cold, but in the winter... Oh, you can imagine. 

Construction faux pas aside, our current house has a large bathtub, which is a pretty groovy find in these parts. The house we're moving into has a tiny half-size tub, so I'll be taking advantage of a bubble bathing this week and next.

4. Old tunes.

{pink cadillac by bette blank} 

A while back, I searched and searched for a music player for Mac, other than iTunes. I couldn't find one, so I relinquished myself to the month-long task of organizing my music by hand (with the help of some applications, but nothing out there solved the disaster of my music library 100%). One of these days I hope to gather up some instructions for customizing your iTunes. There are lots of tutorials out there, but there are also lots of glitches making workarounds vital. Yesterday, I went to the Rock section of my library, and let it play for hours. When I left to teach classes Tom Waits was crooning, when I returned it was Dylan. Springsteen, Chris Isaak, Cat Stevens, David Bowie, Iggy Pop, a little Zeppelin. It's music we haven't listened to in ages, and it made for lovely lasagna making and eating music. Later we played Gin Rummy, which also reminded me how much I love fives.

5. Friends.

{finger friends by matildafail}

Who isn't just absolutely thankful for their friends. There are those friends that you may not speak to for months at a time, but you can just pick up easily from where you left off. There are the mini relationships sharing smiles and hugs in the supermarket, leaving you with a spring in your step. Then there are the lovely friends, who offer to send you things from the States (Thank you Laura and Tim!), the friends who mail you kindnesses (Thank you Ian and Claire!). And then there are blog friends. I had no idea I would start to feel connected to such people all over the world through blogging. Here are five of my current loves in alpha order. Check them out if you haven't already!

Acquainted With the Night

Bicoastally

It's Gonna Be a Lovely Day

Poppies and Sunshine

This Free Bird

{lavender scone (yum!) photo from Country Days}