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Faded Plaid
Joe made this design over the weekend and submitted it to Threadless. I proposed the idea of an altered plaid pattern and Joe scurried away and came back with this remarkable thing. My favorite part might be the wood floor backdrop. You can give it a thumbs up (do!) right here. (actually you can vote 0-5, but I think we know what score a thumbs up equals, right?)
Tomorrow I’ll post a few pictures of our tour of America’s Test Kitchen. We sat on set and watched the filming of a couple shows, got to try the result (chocolate pudding), and browsed their amazing cookbook library.
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The Magical art show
Last weekend a good friend of Joe’s from college, Brad Johnston, had his graduate art thesis show at Savannah College of Art and Design.
We’re so amazed by his work, I thought I would share a few pieces here. Click on each image for closer inspection.
I love the animation of these foxes. Close-up:
I have seen these two of his prints used as iPhone wallpaper and they look awesome:
Brad’s website. and for good measure, his wife’s super cheery HuckleberryGal tumblr.
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the ribbon effect
Boston turned gray and chilly over the weekend.
So when I saw these photos of a friend’s wedding I was immediately pulled in. Color is a great theme but it can be tough to make a space feel full of it. I think Jenny did an absolutely amazing job. I’ve been thinking of the easy yet remarkable effect of ribbon ever since seeing Design Mom‘s elegant and springy Easter decorations.
Jenny did nearly everything herself, including decoupaging the centerpiece letters and stapling chicken wire to the frames. Even the bridesmaids wore different color dresses, and the gray rain outside somehow manages looks like the perfect backdrop. Read more about it, and see a few more photos over at Love the Day.
Here’s Jenny and her new husband Jamison. I love her wedding jacket!
Photos from Love the Day and The Remsnyders.
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Laser Cut Art
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/23621548]
I might have just stumbled onto everyone else’s already favorite artist, so I’m treading lightly because I never noticed him. But I really liked a few things about this show. Namely: laser cut art. kids buying art. kids (Olly is 24) making art and having shows.
Sometimes when things get liked instantaneously all around the internet you think, “but no one would really show up and buy this.” But they do!
Video first seen on Varsity Bookmarking.
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Paintings of favorite tshirts
The attitude of these tshirts is exactly right. They frolic. Mary Matson did them for Chance, but I bet Gap is wishing they thought of it.
Prints of the paintings are $50 each. Looks like you can see them at their popup shop in Nolita.
photo from Chance on Facebook.
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Cook’s Illustrated’s Perfect Cookies
Recipes go into the Test Kitchen (which publishes Cook’s Illustrated) and reappear as runway models of their former selves. Inefficiencies, widely accepted rumors of what works, weird unnecessary steps, and disproportionate ingredients are trimmed, firmly reprimanded, frisked, or tugged into place.
Their recipe for chocolate chip cookies is full of just these alterations, challenging everyone’s favorite back o’ the box recipe by Toll House. Lighter on the flour, more and darker brown sugar, higher oven temperature, one less egg white…everything focused with undivided attention upon creating the chewiest cookie possible, with flavors of toffee, butterscotch, and serious butter love hiding inside.
The result speaks for itself. In your mouth. While you debate eating three in a row.
You can get their detailed recipe to add to your repertoire (do) right here, and here’s a visual guide to the key elements.
This post is my entry into Cook’s Illustrated delightful blogging contest. Read more about it right here, and see the other contestants here, here, here.UPDATE: E&D won! Joe and I get to visit the Test Kitchen next week! You can see the top finalists here, I love the judges’ comments. In true Test Kitchen fashion, they took the contest seriously and gave great commentary on what they liked. So fun to participate with all the other bloggers. Read about our visit to the Test Kitchen right here! -
Lilac Sunday at the Arnold Arboretum
We spent Mother’s Day at the Arnold Arboretum, a free park located in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston, sticking our noses into the dozens of newly bloomed lilacs. Loads of people were there and it felt like a fair, but all about flowers! (I’m just realizing the strange parallel to us spending last weekend at the Daffodil Festival….)
Something I love about the Arboretum is that almost every tree and bush is labeled with a little tag. It’s so nice to immediately learn what you are looking at. (Of course, if I wanted to go around using this app, like an iPhone addict, I might have labeled them all myself.) A bunch of the lilac varieties had beautiful names like Mme. Lemoine.
The best part of the day was spotting tough guys carrying roses, teddy bears, balloons, bundles of flowers—everything in shades of red, pink and floral, all heading to the significant mom in their lives.
Joe wore blue which looked just great next to all the shades of purple. I wore horizontal stripes (why?) so I’ll spare us the photo of that.
Have you spotted lilacs in your neighborhood? When I worked at a flower store we would sell them for their tiny season and it was always sad because they just aren’t meant to be cut flowers. They die so quickly. So now I just appreciate them happily grounded in the dirt.
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Finding New Music
Guest post! by Wilson Cusack, age 17, high school senior. Because this post is about an abstract, music, I slid in a few beautiful visuals to accompany it by William Goldsmith. His landscapes remind me of the planets of the little prince.
Talking during car rides usually annoys me. Car rides are for music. When I first started going to school with my siblings I woke up every morning excited almost solely for the car ride. We’d fight over who’s iPod we’d use, and whoever was the current DJ had the perfect opportunity to show off their latest and greatest music, or perhaps pull out an old song we’d forgotten about. There were always those songs that made the car quiet, that made you not want to talk, just listen.
Everyone would just stare blankly out the windows, captivated by the sound. One of us might casually grab the iPod to see who it was, but we’d play it off like we just wanted to check the time or something. After all there was almost no greater compliment than the, “Who is this?” If you did come out and say that, you might say it with tone of disgust,to make it seem as though you were unimpressed, when really you’d have the song on your own iPod by the next morning.
Finding the latest and greatest music became a game, and the game was taken to a new level when I picked up my own musical escapades. Everyone expects a musician to have great musical taste, so I was always searching for the best thing. The blogosphere has made that job 100x easier, even if it does feel like I’m letting someone else do all the work for me. I tell people about the blogs I like or follow, but it is kind of like giving away your recipes, or showing the secret to a magic trick; you’ve taken away your luster.
But, as I like hearing other people’s new stuff as much showing them my own, giving away my secrets has become a habit. Which is precisely what I will do now.
The best music site, in my opinion, is HYPEM. It is not a music site so much as a music aggregator. They have hundreds of music blogs that post to their site, so rather than going and checking all sorts of music blogs, it’s all in one place. If you create an account you can follow blogs, like a music version of google reader. You can click on the latest tab and you can see what your favorite blogs have been posting.
So far as who to follow, I have a couple favorites:
Indie Shuffle
We All Want Someone to Shout For
Sunset in the Rearview
Earplugs Not IncludedAnd, two blogs I like that aren’t on Hypem:
Pretty Much Amazing
The Sixty-one (this is a site for mostly indie artists, the artists post their songs and then people vote on them, “hot right now”
consistently has good stuff. I don’t like their new site so go to this one: old.thesixtyone.com) -
A Musical Visitor
Tomorrow on E&D we’ll have a very special guest: my 17-year-old brother Wilson!
There he is. He has a band, Rosemary iii, and if you’re in Grand Rapids, they have a wonderful show coming up.
Like my four other brothers, he looks just like me. Or I look like him. Whatever, the point is that in my hometown people recognize us by our dark hair, squinty eyes, skeptical smiles, and narrow chins. “Hey, are you a Cusack?” is a pretty typical question from a stranger.
Somewhat demonstrative photo (we’re missing my older brother here):
As I mention here about every six weeks (ahem, asking you guys for tips) I’m always looking for ways to find new exciting music. My brothers are definitely my secret source of most of the good stuff. And Wilson, in particular, seems to have figured out how to tap the great musical vein of the internet. So he’ll be here, talking about that, for your Saturday morning delight. Thanks Wilson!
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the Unknown Hipster at the Royal Wedding
I love these fictional painting of the Unknown Hipster stumbling into the Royal Wedding. He looks delightfully hapless. Great colors.
