coupling up

As the weather turns colder, there is no notion I like more than Sean and I each grabbing a kid to embark on some cozy adventures for two.  These mittens and slippers are offering some seriously great inspiration.

{I spotted the mittens on M Stetson Design and the slippers on Handmade Charlotte.}

Thomas O'Brien

I rarely, if ever post photos of an entire home.  Typically this is because I like details here and there, but am not sold on the feel of the entire space.  It has been two years since I first laid eyes on Thomas O'Brien's Soho apartment and I believe I have thought of this home more than any other that I have laid eyes on.  The funny thing is that here I may not be in love with every detail but the space has me sold from start to finish.  Casual, elegant, rich, masculine, - I am referring to the space not O'Brien himself - though it's not a stretch to believe he may be all these things as well. His home feels highly personal and the colors make me want to move right in and stay a good, long time.  I think that if I had to choose one entire home that achieves the feel that I am going for, this may well be it.  Though I would have to go all out color in the kids spaces, at least.

{all images via Aero Studios}

moomah

Have you ever come across a concept and felt tinges of pain in you heart that you didn't come up with it?   What I'm feeling is a bit more than a tinge and it's over moomah, in Tribeca.  If I'm not genius enough to create this space, I'd settle for living near it. 

The brain child of Tracey Stewart (Jon Stewart's wife!), this multi-purpose destination is a kid friendly space like no other.  I just wrote to inquire about franchise opportunities and no, I'm not kidding.  Doesn't ever city deserve such a wonderland?

This is "Supertryer", moomah's mascot.  He has an assortment of ways to encourage young and old to try new things.  Here you find him enjoying afternoon tea.

And don't even get me started on their logos, branding and materials.  Really phenomenal.

See more of moomah here. 

{all images via moomah, Design*Sponge and Apartment One}

giverslog

Have you visited the site giverslog?  Holy Smokes, guys.  It is such a fantastic resource.  Amber has built the most beautiful site all around great gift giving.  She is immensely talented and her tutorials, gift guides and roundups are worth gold.

I was so honored that Amber asked me to kick off a new series of interviews on - what else - great gifts. Head over to her site to check out some of my favorite gifts - given, received or dreaming about.  Thank you, Amber!

{Oh, and I think you guys will be thanking me soon for sharing this phenomenal resource!}

{images: a stack of photos: a class in calligraphy: a trip to France, a vintage book: flowers in a jar}

the fun theory by VW

What if life were really like this?  If we designed our lives and the world around making the good choices, the fun choices?

Thanks Andrea!

pie-in-a-jar

I just spotted this amazing tutorial for single serving pie in a jar over at our best bites.  These look amazing and would make such a great little gift or finale to an autumn dinner party, perhaps even for Thanksgiving.

I think I just decided what my first fall project will be.  I've got some lucky neighbors.

Mexican paper flags

I have always had a thing for Mexican paper flags but it was just after a little recent exploration that I came to find out that these little flags are quite event specific as seen through all of their beautiful intricacies. {those shown below, for example, are for a wedding, spring & valentine's day}  I have typically seen these in the multicolor variety but there are also plenty of single tone garlands as well.  All of the flags that I have pictured below are available here.

I made this collage of the flags and then fell so in love with it that I am considering having a large print made and framing it in our house.  It's just so...happy.

{top image from Martha Stewart Weddings}

Heritage Restorations

Ya know when you come across a new product or company and you fall fast and you fall hard?  That's how it has been for me and Heritage Restorations.  My sister sent me that link to this company and within five minutes we were on the phone ooohing and ahhing. 

This is the description from the site:

"At Heritage Restorations, we locate, dismantle, restore, and re-erect 18th and 19th century timber frame barns, hand-hewn log cabins, gristmills, and other historic buildings. These time-tested, hand-crafted structures are then finished with modern, innovative, energy-efficient designs and materials. The completed structures make beautiful and unique homes, guest houses, commercial spaces and even.....barns!"

Totally fantastic. 

Check out these before and afters:

Yeah, I know, right?

And this one.

I want to go to there.

You can find more here.

cold tangerines: a giveaway!

The sentiment on the last envelope of my anniversary gift to Sean was inspired by Shauna Niequist's wedding vows which she wrote about in her first book, cold tangerines.  I have been gulping this book down as quickly as my heart can stand it because, you see, this is one of those books.  The kind that feels like it was written specifically for me, in this instant in time, to grind me to dust and then put me back together again far better than when I began.  This book is about the discipline of celebration.  It has the capacity to change the way I live.  I hope I let it.

Here's the part where Shauna is talking about her wedding vows and about becoming a family with her new husband:

"When I said to him on our wedding day that when I was with him, I was home, I did not mean, "Let's move to Michigan and see if I'm right, okay?"  I meant, "I love you so much, let's stay in Chicago where my parents and my friends are, how about that?"  But I said, before God and seven bridesmaids, that Aaron is my home, my partner, my number one, and so now I live in Michigan.  The moral of the story, I suppose, is that, if at all possible, you should make your wedding vows very noncommittal and easy to keep.  Things like, "If you have an idea, I'll consider it, most of the time," or "If it doesn't interfere with my own plans, I'd be happy to hear your request."  I, however, was quite naive and promised to live, no matter what, with and for and deeply connected to this other person.  Thank God.

September 11, 2001, was a Tuesday.  Aaron and I had been married for two weeks and had arrived home two days before from our honeymoon to Sydney and the Great Barrier Reef.  And I'm using the word home loosely.  Aaron was moving into my little house, and I had not made any space for him or his things before the wedding.  The floor of the loft was covered with wedding presents and ribbons and torn wrapping paper, and every available surface was littered with one or another wedding related item - leftover programs, clothing for the honeymoon that didn't make it into the bag and needed to be returned, favor ideas gone awry.  All of his earthly belongings were piled into the basement and the garage, and I remember secretly thinking that that wasn't a bad place for them, given the limited space in the house.  The bathroom and the closet were of special concern, and he lived for a few days like a college student in a dorm, with his toothbrush and razor packed into his shaving kit, toting it in and out of the bathroom. 

Immediately before the wedding, I had acted on an ill-conceived idea to use the tiny dining area as a sort of Roman, reclining-and-dining area, with two enormous but extremely uncomfortable wicker-ish throne-like chairs, each with an ottoman.  I guess that I thought that rather than a little table for four wedged in between the kitchen and living room, this would be a more interesting and less conventional use of space, and I liked the idea of us curled up on these palatial chairs, watching the news and talking about our days.  They were so big that we had to turn sideways to get to the kitchen , and so uncomfortable that Aaron boycotted them almost immediately.  The only reason that I remember them, I think, is that on September 11, we sat on them and watched the news for hours.  Later that week, the chairs went back to the store at Aaron's insistence. 

I remember coming home from work that day and having the clear sense that that night, the evening of September 11, was one to be spent with family.  At that time, and at our age then, we didn't totally understand the implications of what had happened.  No one did, of course, but perhaps least of all us, who had grown up in an age of so little violence and war, at least to our awareness.  We knew, though, instinctively, that that was a night to spend with family, and we realized with a jolt that that's hwat we were.  We were family. 

It's hard to imagine now, now that we have been married for five years years, now that we live in another state, in our home, one with space for me and space for him.  Now we are, certainly, family.  Aaron is my first thought and last thought, the companion with whom I walk through every part of life.

But he wasn't yet, at that point.  A wedding didn't make him my family, or a honeymoon, or grudgingly giving him one half of the storage space in the bathroom (let's be honest - one quarter).  What did make him my family, though, was the decision to stay home with him on that Tuesday night, to sit in those horribly uncomfortable chairs, holding hands across their massive, prickly arms, watching the news for hours.  Our first impulse was to go home, to my parents' house and to his, and we stared at each other for a moment in the living room, wondering what to do.  We stayed in a house that didn't feel particularly like home for either one of us at that point, and I think it became a little bit more of a home that night.

That's how family gets made.  Not by ceremonies or by certificates, and not by parties or celebrations.  Family gets made when you decide to hold hands and sit shoulder to shoulder when it seems like the sky is falling.  Family gets made when the world becomes strange and disorienting, and the only face you recognize is his.  Family gets made when the future obscures itself like a solar eclipse, and in the intervening darkness, you decide that no matter what happens in the night, you'll face it as one."

I have two signed copies of cold tangerines to give away.  Trust me, you want one of them. 

Just leave a comment and i'll choose two winners next Monday.  Thanks Shauna.  Really, thank you.

this week I'm loving ... internal motivation

{images: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7}

far foods

Due to my reading choices as of late, I have been immersing myself in the concepts of slow food and eating local. So when I just spotted these images on swissmiss, they really shook me. Perhaps it takes a visual like this for people to see how ludicrous some of our choices are.

You can read more about the far foods alternative packaging concept here.

downtown chic: a giveaway!

There is a lot to envy about Robert & Courtney Novogratz of Sixx Design but I am going to try to keep my jealousies at bay.  First off, this family is impossibly cool.  Seven kids in (including two sets of twins!) and these parents' hip is clearly here to stay.  Did you hear that the entire family has a modeling contract with the Ford Agency?  I didn't even know that that kind of thing occurred.  And they seem to somehow have stumbled into the position of NYC (and beyond) rock-star decorators.  Not decorators to rock stars.  You see, Robert & Courtney are the rock stars and their style is all their own. 

Rarely do I read a decor book cover to cover - but theirs, I did.  Downtown Chic chronicles the Novogratz's journey from their early days as an aspiring actress &  Wall Streeter to some of the most innovative interior designers today.  They are also generous with insider tips and the book is full of sumptuous photos detailing the before and afters that have made them famous.

Of all of their projects it is their Great Barrington home that really won me over.  I would move in to that house in a heartbeat. 

 

 

I just so happen to have an extra copy of Downtown Chic on my hands.  If you want to be inspired into a style that is all your own, leave a comment below.  I'll be choosing a winner next Tuesday. 

Alice Waters and Chez Panisse

Can you humor me with just a little more talk of Alice Waters?  I started reading her authorized biography a couple of days back and well, it just as the tag line says - "romantic, impractical, often eccentric and ultimately brilliant."

There are these two paragraphs, in particular, that I keep coming back to:

 (p.31)  "Much of the food that Alice had most loved was la cuisine du marche -   market cooking.  She had seen in in action many times.  A French housewife would stroll through a village market, sniffing, appraising, thinking.  If some farmer's basket of bristling, just harvested cardoons struck her fancy, and a particularly nice rabbit was hanging from the butcher's hook, the Frenchwoman would devise in her mind a rabbit-with-cardoons dish and then shop for harmonious accompaniments...the housewife would compose her bourride as she paced along the quay."

and then this other:

(p.37)  "Alice took to Martine immediately.  Alice's notions of French elegance were somewhat general; Martine's were highly specific.  Martine knew how to draw the perfect warm bath, just the right temperature, with a perfect little vase of flowers on the windowsill.  She knew how to arrange the curtains so that the light filtered through just so.  Martine had learned from her mother to search through the marches aux puces for the thing unanticipated but just right, and now she and Alice began to haunt the Bay Area's flea markets together."

For me, these seem to encapsulate many American womens' obsession with France.  I am no Francophile but without hesitation I can admit to being enviable of their je ne se quois.  And such a perfect phrase that is, for even if the French do know, they're not telling.  In the meantime we Americans live our lives: plastic water bottles, take-out food, Target & spray tans.  But it isn't our fault, it isn't our fault I tell you!  The French have been perfecting this je ne se quois for centuries.  Our mothers could not teach us what they never learned.  So instead we spend more money on more stuff thinking that this will give us style or grace or elegance.  Quite the opposite occurs. 

And perhaps, subconciously, that is what this blog has been to me.  An experiment in learning the subtleties, the small nuances in the everyday that make our living rich and beautiful.  I want to be a student of these things.  Will it change the world?  Most assuredly not.  Is it of supreme importance?  Again, no.  But I belive it will change my world, and the world of my children and theirs.  That it may effact our friends and our extended family.  That it may altar all us.  And that is more then enough.

Julie & Julia: sort of a book review

Let’s start of with the truth. Sometimes I swear. Not often and not too loudly, but nonetheless - it occurs.  The hypocrisy hides in the fact that I get easily turned off by books or films with too much swearing. Gran Torino, nearly killed me. Fantastic story. So. Much. Swearing.

And then just this weekend, I read Julie & Julia, in nearly a sitting. Not really but I did read it in less than 24 hours which means that there couldn’t have been too much standing in there. I am not coordinated enough to read & stand at the same time. It makes me dizzy. Where were we again?

Oh yes, swearing. The author of Julie & Julia makes a point out of people like me throughout the book. She snorts at us prudes that have trouble stomaching a recipe laden with obscenities. And even while I knew that I was being condescended I couldn't help but make clear within my interior which line in the sand I was standing on.

And yet, I still swear. Perhaps the difference lie within the fact that I do not like that I swear. I find it to be a nasty habit that I am attempting to cut back on. Others swear with gusto. It is a trademark or at the very least, a distinguishing characteristic of their persona. And yet, maybe this equates to no difference at all. Swearing is swearing and for all my righteous indignation I smell just like Ms. Gusto when the day is done. I don’t know.

So far as Julie & Julia goes – I was clearly compelled by the story as I did promptly finish the book so soon after beginning it. And yet, I can’t say that I loved it or would even recommend it. Perhaps I was so busy judging the heroine that it was difficult for me to simply enjoy her journey. And a day later I find myself liking the book even less but being inspired even more. Figure that out.

Today, like Julie,  I want to go buy a cookbook and work through it – cover to cover. Though in my case I would be choosing Alice Waters over Julia Child. I simply cannot conceive of ingesting that much butter. The mind reels.  Today, like Julie,  I want to risk. To step into that frightening abyss of the unknown irregardless of the consequences. I want to risk because I refuse to waste these precious days amongst the walking dead and risking is a sure fire way to pump some life into your living.  And today I want to acknowledge that I have skills and talent. Just because I am presently unaware of what those skills and talents may be does not negate the truth that surely they must be in there somewhere.

And, folks – in my world, that is quite a lot for today.

So thank you, Julie Powell - for so graphically sharing your inspiring story. Maybe one day, I too, will have an inspiring story to share, albeit with less f-bombs.

Ben Franklin

Still watching John Adams.  So I am loving the additional insight provided by Maira Kalman's latest installment - this time on the life of Ben Franklin.  I particularly love his "daily chart".  What many wonders would we all invent on such a schedule?

storypeople

Years ago my friend Katie bought me the above print "Kindred Spirits" by Storypeople. I remember finding it to be just the most meaningful gift.  For a time it hung in my husbands' classroom when he taught junior high math to inner city kids.  I often hoped that perhaps art might silently teach the lesson junior high kids so desperately need to learn - our differences are a gift.

Quietly, willingly - Brian Andreas' prints tell a story with but a few brief words & some watercolor.  And yet these stories are enduring and compelling.  That, as I see it,  is no small feat. 

Catalog of Love

I am already plotting when & how I can use this idea that I spotted over at Poetic Home.  Grace came up with the idea of re-purposeing a old wooden card catalog box as a perpetual anniversary gift for her husband.  What a great way to record special dates, favorite quotes or poems, and even the mundane "Pouring just one cup of coffee started my missing you all over again" - that I was thinking this very morning.  The little moments and large all cataloged away for future reference. 

You can use this handy Catalog Card Generator to get you started. 

orange party

For me, with each new season comes the inevitable desire to throw a seasonal party.  Few of these events actually ever occur but I love to plan them nonetheless.  Currently it's an "orange party" that I can't get off my mind.  It's a casual, outdoor, summery brunch.

The menu would be:  Orange Julius' (these were pretty much the starting point of the party) & Mimosas, Marmalade stuffed french toast with Orange Syrup, Grilled Peaches with Mint, and Mandarin Salad.  (I'd try to make the orangey accents in the dishes subtle as to not cause orange overkill.)

 

As a parting gift my guest would receive Orangettes & Orange Blossom Water.

Oh, and I'd be wearing this:

{images: canopy party, drink bar, orange votive holders, daisy tray,  straws, baostar's cupcakes, use real butter's orangettes, orange blossom water, dress}

guest house

Ever since I saw these images in Blueprint Magazine Cottage Living, I have thought of them often.  I love how this former bird sanctuary has been turned into a fantastic space - what I would use as a guest house.

I am also often reminded of a little blurb from an old Susan Branch cookbook of mine -  "Heart of the Home".

Susan writes: My house is very tiny and I wanted a place for my guests to feel comfortable, so out in the backyard I built a little "shed" exactly the size of two king size beds.  Half of it is bed and the other half is chairs, a table, etc. It's whitewashed, dried flowers hang from the rafters.  There's no electricity but lots of candles & windows.  Very cozy & romantic.

I just love this idea.  Even with really small home (or especially with),  how fantastic to have a totally private little spot for your guests to make themselves at home.  It needn't be lavish, just thoughtfully prepared.  

I love to have guests but rarely like to be the guest.  Perhaps that's because so often we feel "in the way".  One day I hope to have little guest house.  Simple, but lovely enough that the guests just keep coming.

light-hearted parenting

As soon as Jora mentioned this article, I knew that I had to check it out.  As soon as I had checked it out, I knew that I had to post it here.  It was written by Gretchen Rubin from the Huffington Post and the piece is entitled "10 Ways to be a More Light-Hearted Parent."  I was so thrilled to find this, as the topic is something that I am continually pondering. 

One of my Twelve Commandments is "Lighten up," and I have a lot of resolutions aimed at trying to be a more light-hearted parent: less nagging, more laughing. We all want a peaceful, cheerful, even joyous, atmosphere at home -- but we can't nag and yell our way to get there. Here are some strategies that help me:

1. At least once a day, make each child helpless with laughter.

2. Sing in the morning. It's hard both to sing and to maintain a grouchy mood, and it sets a happy tone for everyone--particularly in my case, because I'm tone deaf and my audience finds my singing a source of great hilarity.

3. Get enough sleep yourself. It's so tempting to stay up late, to enjoy the peace and quiet. But morning comes fast. Along the same lines...

4. Wake up before your kids. We were so rushed in the morning that I started getting up half an hour earlier than my children. That means I can get myself organized, check my email, post to Slate, and get my bag packed before they get up. It's tough to wake up earlier, but it has made a huge difference in the quality of our mornings.

5. I've been researching the hedonic treadmill: people quickly adapt to new pleasures or luxuries, so it takes a new pleasure to give them a jolt of gratification. As a result, I've cut back on treats and impulse buys for my kids. The ice-cream sandwich or the Polly Pockets set won't be an exciting treat if it isn't rare.

6. Most messages to kids are negative: "stop," "don't," "no." So I try to cast my answers as "yes.""Yes, we'll go as soon as you've finished eating," not "We're not leaving until you've finished eating." It's not easy to remember to do this, but I'm trying.

7. Look for little ways to celebrate. I haven't been doing holiday breakfasts long, but they're a huge source of happiness. They're quick, fun, and everyone gets a big kick out of them.

8. Repetition works. A friend told me he was yelling at his kids too much, so he distilled all rules of behavior into four key phrases: "keep your hands to yourself"; "answer the first time you're asked"; "ask first"; and "stay with us" (his kids tended to bolt). You can also use the school mantras: "Sit square in your chair;" "accidents will happen," "you get what you get, and you don't get upset" (i.e., when cupcakes are handed out, you don't keep trying to switch).

9. Say "no" only when it really matters. Wear a bright red shirt with bright orange shorts? Sure. Put water in the toy tea set? Okay. Sleep with your head at the foot of the bed? Fine. Samuel Johnson said, "All severity that does not tend to increase good, or prevent evil, is idle."

10. When I find myself thinking, "Yippee, soon we won't have to deal with a stroller," I remind myself how fleeting this is. All too soon the age of Cheerios and the Tooth Fairy will be over. The days are long, but the years are short.

Have you found any good strategies to cut back on the shouting and to add moments of laughing, singing, and saying "yes"?

{image by mainemomma2007}