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Maxx & Lucy
damn this is good baby photography.
all photos of Maxx and Lucy from Maxx & Lucy (click over there just to see their header, cause it’s good looking). Some photos by Christopher Kuehl.
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A Kitchen App
Oh man I’ve needed this app for awhile. Thank goodness for friends who share what free + delightful apps they’ve discovered. A ridiculous story: I lost my 1 teaspoon, months ago, and somehow I got it into my head that I should find some beautiful silver or ceramic, or french pottery, or whatever at a flea market and that would replace it. So here I am, months later, (a meticulous measurer, mind you) using my half-teaspoon for everything.
The free and beautiful designed Kitchen Dial app.
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Angela Liguori Anniversary Party
On Saturday for my weekly baby-free cavort that Joe graciously sponsors (wherein I put Lux down for a nap and sneak away for several hours. This is usually assisted by a bottle of formula too.) I went to the anniversary party that Angela Liguori threw for the one year existence of her studio. I’ve seen Angela’s things in shops around town and one of her products was the first place I could buy bulk red-and-white baker’s twine a few years ago.
It was exciting and inspiring to see a formerly grim storefront in Brookline turned into warm little studio filled with handicrafts. Angela sells simple things that are executed in a perfect way and is a an absolutely lovely person to boot. She succeeds mostly through online sales, this is just her dedicated workspace away from home.
She had homemade biscotti, a table with sugar cubes, fresh milk foam, and Nespressos, and baby glassine envelopes with old stamps to takeaway as souvenirs.
a few things I picked up: a stack of vintage glassine envelopes (love that word, glassine), a bundle of ribbon, and a spool of Italian cotton ribbon.
you can visit her online shop right here. -
just great stuff to read
Happy Weekend! I thought I would share some essays/hodge-podge that I’ve really enjoyed reading lately. These completely unrelated drawings of Joan Didion and Vendela Vida talking are by Wendy Macnaughton.
The Vital Importance of the Top 10 Korean Pop Songs, by David Cho. a funny writer who’s Korean explains the almost hysterical importance of pop music in Korea. You get to hear more about Girls Generation, that group of nine Korean girls that is apparently enormously, and economically influentially, popular.
Walking Dead recap, by Starlee Kine. I’m linking to a month old recap because I don’t actually watch the shows, I just read the recaps. Grotesque violence is so much fun to read related in a candid, distant tone. Here’s an amazing moment I experienced this week that reminded me of this recap: I’m sitting in a Bible study with free childcare (a big reason why I was there) and an older, very nice and soft-spoken woman, starts explaining connections between the passage and The Walking Dead episodes. Clearly not another woman in the place had ever watched a show, but this woman was a huge fan, and wanted to relate how much the scenes reminded her of the verses we were studying. I tried to nod along empathetically, but I was in the back row and I’m sure I was drowned out by the agape mouths that surrounded me.
A Rough Guide to Disney, by John Jeremiah Sullivan. (or, as I pitched it to Joe, “Dads finding nooks in which to smoke pot while at Disney.”) I saved the best for last! I’m reading a collection of essays by JJS right now, and I’ll just casually share that NPR suggested he might be the best magazine essayist alive right now. This essay is not in the book, but it is free to read online, and it so good and about so many different things at the same time, and illustrative of why you might want to add his book to your Christmas list.
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Stuart the Mouse Comes to Visit
Day one of petsitting a friend’s mouse (while said friend frolics in Paris): figuring out if this pet will entertain our other much noisier, much poopier, wheel-less pet.
He’s a brown and white character who loves his toilet paper roll cave and a few Carr crackers now and then. It’s a bit odd that we are actively trying to kill his urban relatives, who run free in our kitchen (not the same market for free range mice as there is for chickens), while he lounges in his entertainment room. Maybe he’ll convince them switch apartments?
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Start with the Underwear Drawer
Super savvy pop-culture blogger Monkey See once tweeted this caramel of wisdom:
Perhaps as evidenced by the enthusiastic 93 retweets, this is a very convincing argument for maturity. How many of us have undergarments as old as our high school diploma? How about those persistent ones we frown at every time we open that shiftless and chaotic drawer?
I don’t have much advice for the men in this area, although, like all many men necessities (undershirts, socks, white keds), it does seem that you guys can stumble into any old big box store and find some well made undies in classic designs.
For us girls, my remarkably picky friends say you can’t go wrong with the soft lace and festively colored options of Hanky Panky. And the effusive reviews, coupled with a personal tip from a friend, say this little lacy bralette at Urban Outfitters is cozy and looks great in just the right places.
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Meet the Neighbors
Babies can make late afternoons a little sludgy. So can jobs where you’ve been assigned a computer from the mid ’90s. That might be worse, actually. So reserve your pity for those folks.
anyway, in the sludgy hours between 4-7pm I like to contemplate my new year’s resolutions for 2012. One that I keep thinking about is MEETING MY NEIGHBORS. A nice couple just moved into the apartment next door. From our few brush-bys, when they smile eagerly at me and gesture mildly to Lux, I’m pretty sure they are super nice. Have I introduced myself? no. Have I mentioned that I hope they are settling in ok? no. IS THERE SOMETHING IN THE BOSTON WATER THAT KILLED OFF MY NURTURING MIDWESTERN ROOTS? if so, that would explain the hollow echo when I hunt for my empathy.
As an entry point to the intimidating resolution that I have chosen, I have decided we will fill out these door knockers designed by one of my A-list heros: Candy Chang.
You know how text messages are the total shy cop-out to actually calling someone? Well this is the shy cop-out to actually introducing myself. But A-list hero ms.Chang designed them so cheerfully that I just know they will pave the way to a future of sharing mouse-trapping tips, cups of sugar, keys to roof decks, and other perks of city friends.
Candy designed these for Good Magazine, but she made the pdfs available for free on her website.
Anyone else already making lists?
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junk shots at environmental livin’
New Year’s isn’t the only time for resolutions. I swear to dozens in my head every day. The queen dreamed several impossible things before breakfast? I aspire to several new identities before breakfast.
A big new identity that I quietly swear to–but actually skirt around because I’m afraid what it will do to me if I commit–environmentalism. It’s terrifying. Caring about something that is impossible to effectively protect? Read Freedom to find out what happens to people who attempt that.
But I can try to correct the little mythologies that I tell myself and murmor confidently as I make my choices in the grocery aisles. Here’s a random one:
Dish soap is a “by product”of oil, which means it is made of the extras leftover after they use the oil to make important things, like gas.
Haha, I have no idea how I came up with that clever twist. After a little googling, I learned that common scary-effective dish soaps, like Dawn, are a by product of oil which means they use fresh oil to make them. In addition to the oil they need to make gas. That fossil fuel that *might* be the cause of some tough international relations. Oh, but before you get all productive about this, here are all the other things made from oil.
Whenever I do google searches to figure this stuff out, I end up subscribing to a bunch of new blogs, skittering down weird message board warrens where people have fights about using dish soap on oily ducks, and cringing over whether I fell for the wrong marketing. It’s sooo hard to be an educated consumer.
But I’m committed. One product at time. What about you? Tell me your convenient lies you’ve come up with to feel less guilty. Or ways you’ve solutioned to stop buying the bad stuff??
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Closet Cleanup
I am in the heady midst of one of those reorganizations wherein I dump everything out of my drawers and make several piles around my bedroom: on the floor, in a chair, on the bed. These piles soon grow so large and embracing that I have trouble distinguishing them from one another. Then I start trying on items to see if they fit, and if so, in what way. Soon I’m wandering around the apartment in an outfit that I love, but that I never wore because the elements were buried, all built from clothes that I can’t wear now because the season has changed.
With this reorganization I am targeting a particular problem: because I save old clothes as well as clothes I really like, if I just glance in my closet it’s hard for me to see my best things right away. Instead I see a bunch of weary running t-shirts from the ’70s (I refer to these as “heirlooms” in my head) mixed in with several nice sweaters, one of which is moth-eaten because it has been abandoned for so long.
I’m also attempting something I’ve imagined for years, but couldn’t do before the iPhone: take photos in the mirror of completed outfits and create an album on my computer. Some days I can think of three great outfits, some days I can’t see anything but my duck sweatshirt (these days seem to be steadily growing). Solved!
anyone have a favorite fall trend you’re latching onto and turning into your signature look?
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Toastmaster
The Toastmaster 1B14 remains “the absolute end-all-and-be-all toaster there ever was.”
and you can still find it on ebay. Today’s Sunday New York Times includes the annual food issue of the magazine!
