Quoting Nora

 

"My Old Kentucky Home"

Each hooked an arm through one of his and strolled to their box to the strains of 

“My Old Kentucky Home.”

True Betrayals

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Here's What to Wear to the Kentucky Derby

Quite a picture they made, he thought.

Naomi in her flashy red suit, the daughter in her flashy blue, both blond heads gleaming. 

Like a couple of sexy bookends for the tall dark man between them

True Betrayals

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By Bill Brine (Kentucky Derby 2014-0043) [CC BY 2.0

 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

The Kentucky Derby is the preppy fashion event of the spring. No matter if you're watching the race in Louisville or hosting a Derby-themed party, the key to any fabulous Derby event is dressing the part. Here, we've rounded up the best tips on how to perfect your ensemble for this year's Kentucky Derby.

TOWN & COUNTRY

Compliment Your Mom

Jackie grinned and blew her hair out of her eyes. "I love you, Mother."

Instantly, and in the way Jackie had always adored, 

Patricia's eyes softened. "I love you too, darling." 

Loving Jack

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By I, Alvesgaspar, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2502964

20 Simple Ways to Compliment Your Mom

MSN

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 “My family is important to me. Three Willows is important to me. And so are you.”

 “Well.” Naomi reached for the glass herself, and her hand was unsteady. “Thank you.”

 Kelsey resisted, barely, the urge to kick a pot of geraniums. “It’s hardly a matter for gratitude. You’re my mother. I care about you. I admire what you’ve been able to do with your life. Maybe I’m not satisfied about all the years between, but I like who you are. I’m certainly not going to go scrambling back and pretend you don’t exist because Milicent would prefer it.”

 To keep herself from buckling into a chair, Naomi braced a hand on the table. “You can’t imagine, can’t possibly imagine what it’s like to hear from a grown daughter that she likes who you are. I love you so much, Kelsey.”

True Betrayals

"Different roads sometimes lead to the same Castle" (Jon Snow)

Giff slid his hand into his pocket, fingered the small box he'd tucked there. 

"I had different plans for doing this. But I don't think I've ever loved you more than I do right this second."

He tugged the box out of his pocket, watching her eyes go huge and wide as he flipped open the lid with his thumb. The little diamond centered on the thin gold band winked out points of fire in the sun.

"Marry me, Alexa."

Her heart swelled and butted against her ribs. Her eyes misted so that the light shooting from the diamond refracted and blinded her. Her hand trembled as she pressed it to her mouth.

"Oh, how could you! How could you spoil it all this way?" Spinning around, she thumped the hammer against the edge of the wood.

"Like I said," he murmured, "you're always a surprise to me. You want me to put it away until we have candlelight and moonbeams?"

Sanctuary

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Kit Harington Adorably Fumbled His Proposal to Game of Thrones Co-Star Rose Leslie

Kit Harington and Rose Leslie only just got engaged, but Game of Thrones fans memorably watched the two actors engage in an iconic romance on the show before they announced that they were a real-life couple. But while Jon Snow eventually won Ygritte over with his smoothness, Harington's actual wedding proposal was pretty much an accident.

COSMOPOLITAN

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“You want flowers and candlelight, a ring in my pocket?” He’d meant to give them to her. The fact that he’d rushed his fences only infuriated him more.

True Betrayals

Dreaming of a rural idyll? Make sure you’re well prepared…

Staring up at the ceiling, she listened to the quiet. 
At times like this, it struck her how alone she was. 
There were no servants sleeping downstairs, as there had been all her life. 
Her closest neighbor was perhaps a quarter of a mile away through the woods. 
No all-night clubs or drugstores, she mused.


Night Moves 

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Colin Smith [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], 
via Wikimedia Commons

Things we wish we’d known before moving to the country

HOUSE TO HOME

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“Best to wear boots around here next time.”
“Yes.” Nonplussed, Kelsey looked down at her soft Italian flats. “You’re right.”


True Betrayals

Activity That Instantly Relieves Stress

But the paintings, large and abstract, were explosions of bold and

restless color. Violent works, Kelsey thought, sated with passion and anger. And signed, she saw with a jolt, with a blood red N C.

Naomi’s work? she wondered. No one had mentioned that her mother painted. No amateurish works these, Kelsey decided, but skilled and capable and disturbing.

They should have unbalanced the steady dignity of the room, she thought as she turned away. Yet they humanized it.

True Betrayals

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By Pedro Ribeiro Simões from Lisboa, Portugal [CC BY 2.0 

(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Have you ever watched in pure wonder at artists in full creative mode? It's as though they're channeling another force through their physical body. Their eyes, while fixated on the canvas in front of them, are merely vessels for translating the energy from within into a creative format we can all digest and enjoy. It's a beautiful thing to witness and, according to science, something we should all be doing too.

MY DOMAINE

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She walked to the canvas waiting on an easel, picked up her palette, and began to mix her paints.

Sun streamed through her windows. Several were open for the practical purpose of cross-ventilation, and for the simple pleasure of feeling the breeze. Music pumped passionately out of the stereo. What she intended to paint today required passion.

She could already see it in her mind, feel the power of it gathering in her like a storm.

She raised her brush, swirled it in color for the first stroke.

Her heart lifted. The magnitude of the joy was almost unbearable. She might burst from it if she didn't transfer it onto canvas.

The image was burned in her mind, like a scene etched on glass. With stroke after stroke, color blended on color, she began to bring it to life.

"You know this was always my deepest dream." She spoke conversationally as she worked. "For as long as I can remember I wanted to paint. To have the talent, the vision, the skill to be an important artist."

"Now you have it."

She switched brushes, glancing at Kane before she faced the canvas again. "Yes, I do."

Key of Light

Happy Derby Day

She winced automatically, then remembered. “The spring ball. That’s in May, isn’t it?”

“Yes, the first Saturday.”

That was the day when spring came to Kentucky, she thought. 
The same day every year. 
Derby day.

True Betrayals

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Photo by Kelly and Co. Design - Discover farmhouse kids' room design ideas

Your Home Can Say Happy Derby Day

Add a dash of fresh Kentucky Derby style to your home

Photo by Wallace Landscape Associates - Look for traditional landscape design inspiration

HOUZZ

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Only this was the Derby. Workouts were no longer a private affair. Even as exercise boys roused

themselves from bed, reporters were setting up equipment. Television, newspapers, magazines all wanted features; all wanted that definitive interview, that perfect picture.

Kelsey knew what hers would have been.

The soft dawn, that most magical time for horse and horseman, with mist rising, blurring color, muffled sound. And the signature twin spires of the track spearing up through it. Tubs of hot water added steam.

Birds sang their morning song.

Spring had come to Louisville, but there was still a vague chill at this hour, bracing, exciting. It touched off more white steam from the flanks and shoulders of horses returning from a gallop. Pampered and pushed, they slipped through the mists as magically as any Pegasus rising from hooves to wings.

But they were athletes. It was easy to forget that these half-ton creatures balanced on breadstick legs had been born to run.

Of the thousands of Thoroughbreds foaled every year, only a few, a special few, would ever walk

through the morning fog at this track, on this week. Only one would stand on Saturday with a blooming blanket of red roses over its glistening back.

Grooms carried the tubs and the wrappings, moving through the thinning swirl among the horses while the sun streamed softly, burning away the dawn, turning dew to diamonds. A cat meowed, boot heels crunched. And then the sound of hooves on dirt, eerily disembodied at first, then growing, swelling as the grayish mists parted like water, a colt swimming through them.

That was her picture, the memory Kelsey would take with her, quiet and comforting amid all the colors and the pageantry.

True Betrayals

How to Ask Someone Out on a Date

“Wait.”

As she stopped and turned, Carter laid a hand on her arm. “Would not misinterpreting include it being okay for me to call you?”

“You could call me. Or you could meet me for a drink after school.”

“Do you know where Coffee Talk is?”

“Vaguely. I can find it.”

“Four thirty?”

“I can make five o'clock.”

“Five. Great. I'll . . . see you there.”

Vision in White

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Por April Killingsworth de Los Angeles, United States (Flickr)

[CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], undefined

 

 

Whether it's in person or online, simpler is better when it comes to asking someone out. "Tell them that you enjoy their company and would like to see more of them," Petra Boynton, a sex and relationships columnist for the Telegraph, wrote in her advice column.

YAHOO!

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“I’d like to take you out tonight. Dinner, a movie, a drive. Your choice. A date,” he continued when she only studied him with eyes that grew more speculative. “I realize I’ve neglected that particular ritual with you.”

“A date?” She rolled the idea around. “Such as you pick me up, we go somewhere and do some
planned activity, then you bring me home and walk me to the door?”

“That’s more or less what I had in mind.”

“Well, it would be different.” She cocked her head, considering. “I have to be up at five, so we’ll need to make it an early evening. I wouldn’t mind seeing a movie, say a seven o’clock show. Maybe a pizza after.”

Now it was his turn to consider. It wasn’t the sort of evening he’d expected her to choose. Maybe it was about time they learned about each other. “An early movie and a pizza. I’ll pick you up around six.”

He tipped up her chin, kissed her almost absently.

“Hey, Slater,” she called after him. “Do I get to pick the movie?”

He kept walking but glanced over his shoulder. “No subtitles.”

“On a first date?” She laughed at him.


True Beatrayals