Wouldn't you just...

...love to spend the day with the curtains drawn....


...eating popcorn and watching....


...movie after movie?...

What would you like to see? Casablanca? Les Quatre Cents Coups? There's Something About Mary? Say Anything?

Anything at all?


(The credits: top illustration by Colorfly Studio and middle picture by
Distorted by Time. I have no idea who did the Scarlett GIF. Whoever they are, I applaud them!)

Happy watching, darlings!
xo

Plate Wall

I'm still gathering plates from thrift stores for my plate wall. I found another photo for inspiration on lovely Charlie's Design Diary. These are all Marimekko plates. What do you think? I love the black flower...

Whimsy, Stitched

I'm completely charmed by Sarajo Frieden's wonderful, whimsical embroidery. She just posted a new lot on flickr. (And she has a lovely website.)

Here we have "Stitched Bird with Coat," "Leaf Lady," and "Pocket Park." The leaf lady does not look pleased. She looks like she's saying: "Yeah, you try being covered with leaves." The lady with the plant: "My plant and I are on important business." The bird: "Eternal vigilance is the price of plumage."

Gouache on paper with collage and embroidery, done in collaboration with equally crafty Marci Boudreau. Love!!


UPDATE. Funny comment from Giulia:

"Marvelous. I agree with Tina about the (top) bird. I would add: sardonic & knowing. She carries off that red chapeau beautifully:) I have no idea why, but Diana Vreeland comes to mind. Maybe the noble nose & the red hat? Everything comme il faut? Forgive the franglais. I shall stop now."

Office Snapshots

Here are a few grainy Polaroids of my office, with a look inside my messy large desk drawer. The ballerina papercut is by the talented Tina Tarnoff and the Hollywood gum is from Paris (Thank you Terry!)...



I have a photo of Obama in silhouette (taken at a book signing party he had in LA two years ago). There are stacks of magazines. I can't seem to part with them. I use an old oil can as a ring rack and an eggcup to hold paperclips. (The colorful brooch was a gift from Tina. I love it!) A cachepot bought in Chinatown holds pens, pencils and plastic scissors. And there's a red polka dot change purse filled with coins. Centimes and shillings, pesos and liras.

Is House Beautiful the new Domino?

I stopped by the grocery store this afternoon to pick up medicine for my cold. As I was waiting for my prescription, I flipped through the latest issue of House Beautiful. I've always been a fan of the magazine. Editor Stephen Drucker (once a newspaper guy) is brilliant and my old Los Angeles Times colleague Barbara King works there as the executive editor.

As good as their previous issues have been, the April magazine feels different. It's more like -- dare I say it? -- Domino. (my former glossy fav.) In this new HB, my favorite feature -- an enthralling Q & A with interior designer Cristine Gillespie -- is called "Getting Cozy with Quirky." Like music to my ears. Some of the stills in "The Mix" also caught my eye. Here's a little sampling from both stories....



Dominoesque? What do you think? And there's something else delightful in this month's edition: There's a feature on Etsy artists. It seems like an unmistakable nod to the online decor blogs who have championed Etsy and its artisans from the start. (A quote from the magazine's website: "Etsy.com is changing the way we look at handmade and becoming the ultimate online crafts fair.") A few of the featured artists below...



I left the store with my cold medicine and the magazine, feeling much better.

If Drucker can really capture the still mourning Domino crowd, he is brilliant indeed.

(PS. The Etsy artisans starting from the top left: palomasnest; annaspots; jetsetpaper; jennyleefowler; whitneysmith; avrilloreti; jillrosenwald.)

Style, defined

I love these old Vogue photos...

Taken by the amazing John Rawlings...

He defined 1950's chic, don't you think?

My daughter and I spent the afternoon visiting a few of our favorite thrift stores. I found an old book of fashion photography. Rawlings' legendary photos are always the ones I love the most...

International Society of Girls in Flats

For the record: I don't have anything against heels. I think they're beautiful -- some of the most beautiful shoes that I own. But no matter what my plans are to wear them, I always end up tossing them off at the last minute to put on one of my beloved pairs of flats. It's become an ongoing joke with one of my girlfriends: she teases me that I should start the society of girls in flats.

So yesterday morning on Facebook, I decided to do just that. So here we are: the International Society of Girls in Flats. It's official! Within a day, more than 100 lovely women have joined. I'm so pleased. We're going to have our annual summit during the summer sale at the Emma Hope store in Notting Hill (Ha! I so hope!). Do you want to join? It's just for fun. Because life is too short to spend it on heels.

xoxo


PS: It's easy to sign up, especially if you're already a member of Facebook!

Here's the link: the International Society of Girls in Flats.

(PS: Photos from here.)

Simple But True

More from The Writing on the Wall....

(Photo credit: Here.)

Dreamy Bedrooms

What's the key to a perfect bedroom? White linens soft from years of gentle care? A bedspread from India? And a stack of photography and gardening books mixed with literature and pulp? Or....


Something pink and pretty, with pops of vibrant color? (And a fireplace! Perhaps the ultimate bedroom luxury?)...Or...


A room saturated with color, like the inside of a lacquered jewel box?
I guess I've been thinking a lot about this lately because I've been getting so little sleep! I get so involved with projects and before I know it, it's well past midnight. It would be lovely just to curl up...


and fall into the most restful and deliciously wonderful sleep....


(PS: Photos by James Merrell.)

Ethereal Spring

With the Oregon Coast as her backdrop, Alicia Bock's photos are the essence of Spring. Like the stills from old home movies, they're achingly lovely.

Alicia has a wonderful Etsy store.
And an awe inspiring flickr photostream.

Natasha Richardson

I'm feeling so very sad this evening about her passing. She was a wonderful actress and person. Positively luminous....I was fortunate to have met her at a charity event recently in Hollywood. She was there with her mother.

One of my dear friends knew the family very well. She sent me this email tonight: "Liam and Natasha were very much in love--he thought of himself as a kind of jumped up Irish tough and she was theatrical royalty and he often called her 'my princess.'"

Sigh...My heart hurts for her family.


(The story by my colleague John Horn on the LAT website.)

I'll book the flight...

Where do you want to go? San Francisco? Saint-Tropez? Lucerne? Lake Havasu? I'm so restless. I haven't been anywhere since January. Too long not to travel...I need a little getaway. What about you?


(Photo from the online portfolio of the fantastic Robyn Glaser.)

Woody Allen Cool

I've been noticing that Woody Allen is getting lots of hearts these days on We Heart It. Seems a whole new generation is in love with the legendary funny man. Are you?

The girl with the pink gloves

This is a story about beauty and obsession, sparked by a small photograph deep inside the New York Times Style section on a Sunday three years ago. I've tried, unsuccessfully, to train myself not to fall so deeply in love with objets. I'm a newspaper reporter. I lack the necessary requirement -- money -- needed to enjoy the hunt for beautiful and expensive things.

But there was something about this girl and the way she was captured (by the brilliant photographer Bill Cunningham) pulling on her pink gloves on a March afternoon in Paris. I wanted a pair of pink gloves just like hers, like they held the key to life's happiness. Granted, I live in Los Angeles, where people barely wear coats let alone long beautiful gloves. But I figured (and hoped) I would wear them on trips to cold, metropolitan cities while strolling along fashionable boulevards.

So my quest began: I combed all the usual Beverly Hills haunts. No gloves to be found. Especially not pale pink ones. I searched through Internet stores. Nothing. Then I turned to eBay. Surely someone somewhere was trying to unload a pair. Right? In fact, there were lots of pairs -- all made in the 1950s. It quickly became apparent why no one wanted those gloves: Only Hollywood actresses have hands small enough to wear them.

I should have just given up. But I didn't. I couldn't. Somehow these gloves became a symbol of luxury amid the mundane, a promise that the future would be grand. Or at the very least, anything but ordinary. Finally, I found a place in New York that made bespoke gloves with the finest Italian leather. I gave them my hand measurements and sent them my New York Times clipping. Six weeks later, the most gorgeous gloves you've ever seen arrived wrapped in tissue. Just like the girl's in the picture.

I have taken these gloves with me many places, to New York, Washington DC, Rome and Paris. I've pulled them on many times and admired them, fastening their little pearlized buttons. But I've always ended up putting them back in their satin pouch. I have yet to wear them out.

I'm saving them for the future, I guess. For the grand (or not). The promise remains the same.


PS: I found the gloves {here}!

Toast

The new Toast catalogue arrived today via Royal Mail. Always makes me happy. This issue is especially beautiful. I'm so looking forward to summer (and weekends at the beach)!

More gorgeous photos {here}.
And my previous Toast posts {here}.
PLUS! Toast stylist Twig Hutchinson.

I hope everyone is having a lovely weekend...
xoxo


PS: I always think of Joanna when I see bicycles now! She loves them. Visit her wildly popular fabulous blog, A Cup of Jo, {here}!

My Dream Kitchen

The Essentials: A killer range, gorgeous tiles, a marble table (for everything from making pastries to serving breakfast), oil paintings and folk art, colorful bottles, a dash of pink...

high ceilings, big windows (with a beautiful view), and one amazing upholstered chair (preferably tattered) for reading the newspaper and sipping coffee...

And finally, a long pine table for French-style dinner parties, flower arranging, magazine reading, purse organizing, bread making, inviting over the young Jack Nicholson (hah!)...What's in yours!?


UPDATE! A comment from the lovely Helen:
"A gorgeous place! I, too, want a tattered upholstered chair in my kitchen ...
Well, my cupboard is itsy-bitsy-teeny-tiny, so my perfect kitchen would be just a touch bigger than it is now ... a wall full of Majolica plates, small glass bottles for garden clippings, a big pedestal table in the middle of the room, mismatched chairs (at least one in turquoise), and maybe even a fireplace ... is that too much to ask?"

And from talented Tina Tarnoff:
"One of the things I have in my kitchen is my easel, my canvases, my paints... My studio is too small to hold it all and has been reserved at the moment for my papercuting gear. The kitchen is small and the easel gets in the way, the paint is all over the floor... but never in the food, I promise! But the easel looks so pretty in there. So in my huge dream kitchen (that looks very much like the one you are describing!), I would also have a huge, old, wooden easel, with a huge painting on it that I would be working on. I would like high ceilings and lots of light too. Oh, and flowers and copper pots."

From Char: "A battered pine table for friends to sit while I cook, a large range and fridge with plenty of room to hold whatever I'm working on, scads of counterspace, an old stone sink and a wide window sill with plenty of light to grow herbs to snip as I need them. And a coffee pot with well loved mugs so we can drink coffee together."

And from Anna:
"I found a house with an okay kitchen but beautiful arts n crafts decor everywhere else, with original early 1900's fixtures. I imagined 3X5 BW photographs of relatives and ancestors in rectangle or oval guilded frames of all types, hung in no particular pattern about the countertop on adjacent walls in the kitchen to bring it back to the age of the home. My kitchen would be the heart and soul of who I am, with reminders of all who came before, and who made meals for each other and nourished each other in their homes."

So lovely...

Photos by the amazing James Merrell. (I'm starting to run out of synonyms for the word beautiful. There simply are not enough in the English language. )

What's your sign?

This little sign--a traveling art installation by two wonderful Philadelphia bloggers--just lifted my spirits today. It belongs to Shauna and Stephen at Something is Hiding in Here. They built it, but they let their blog readers decide on what it says. (If you want to see it in person, it's in a window at the Fred Flare store in Brooklyn at the moment.)

Any suggestions on what the sign should say?  Perhaps: "I can't live up to my blue and white china"? Or Maybe:  "You are a jewel beyond price."

UPDATE! From Clare: "I'll have what she's having." 

 The all time great line from When Harry Met Sally.

(Thank you to the lovely Poppytalk for inspiring this post.)

Monroe

I love these old Life photos. The portrait, above, is pure Monroe. Photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt shot rolls of film of the star on a sunlit patio at her Hollywood home in 1953. Most of the photos are glamour pics.
But this one...

...seems to capture a real sadness. It struck me.

Viewfinder Flowers

Here's a picture I took of the dried hydrangeas in a vase on my dining room table. I love viewfinder photos, but mine usually don't work out. I was so happy that this one did. Wanted to share it with you. Hope you're having a wonderful Wednesday.

A Plateful of Records...

Found on illustrator Helen Dardik's fantastic blog, Orange You Lucky. Lucky to find you Ms. Orange!

UPDATE. Comment from Miranda:
I miss record jackets, particularly the big LP ones. They always looked so good propped in front of the stereo. . .like a rotating art exhibit.

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