Travel Mugs

There's something super appealing about a kitchen full of matching dishes and cookware. Look at me talking about cookware, that's hysterical. Anyway, I love the look of a uniform cabinet chock full of matching dishes. Or something like my friend Melissa's dishes. She has a great eye for pottery and has amassed a thoughtful assortment of coordinated ceramic dishes and mugs. With similar style and color, she's curated a great collection.

We don't have matching or even coordinated stuff. However, as I was putting away the dishwasher yesterday, I realized that our mugs tell a bit of a story. There are the two yellow and blue painted ones from Castellina in Chianti, Italy, a stop on our first adventure overseas as a couple in 2006. We wandered into a little pottery shop and fell in love with everything. In one of the largest purchases of our young relationship, we ordered a matching set of plates, bowls, and mugs for delivery to our Brooklyn apartment. A lot of it has broken over the years, but those two mugs remain. 

Or the duo of mugs sketched with the Brooklyn skyline. The pair of striped mugs in bold, bright colors we found in Barcelona on a 2012 trip with our buddies Kristi and James. The yellow and orange touristy souvenir mug with "Antigua" splashed across it in postcard-style print from our group getaway in 2016. The tiny terra cotta mug with a red macaw for a handle we grabbed at a gift shop in Costa Rica. The pale blue mug with hand-painted sheep from a local pottery shop in Scotland. The blue and white speckled mug purchased along the mother-daughter road trip through Nova Scotia. A small pale pink and natural clay mug with bits of yellow and black made by an artist in Uruguay. The vibrant, vivid painted mug from Costa Rica that had been a favorite of mine when visiting Janey on the Vineyard. 

I rarely think about this when I sip my morning coffee but a journey through the mug shelf is a little trip through time and places. It's fun to reminisce and remember. So it's a hodge podge and a mish mosh, but it's our little hodge podge of life and journeys and memories and travels and friends and family and love.