Celestial Maps

(via Hubble Photo Prints)

I'd like to take these star charts, blow them up, print them out, and nail them onto my wall. Bring the celestial sky inside.

The Wild Unknown Revisited

I stumbled across The Wild Unknown last year when searching around the web for Christmas gifts and did a lil post about them. Hello one year later, and I find myself back at their online shop, still enamored with their calendars and prisms and delighted to see they've added new products to their range. And so another post to proclaim my love for the company. They have a new calendar for 2011 with lyrics instead of images, but my favorite product is the collaboration with artist Barbara Reiser, transfering one of her prints onto a candle. I am a candle gal, and this one is about as cosy and warm as a candle can be. I want. But really, I should gift and let others discover the wild unknown.

Haphazard Interiors

While I constantly claim that my student lifestyle relegates my interior design aesthetic to nil, I recently realized that it is more laziness than lifestyle. I don't have a design-point-of-view, rather my apartment is made up of furniture that was already there and Ikea necessities. I didn't think I was much of a nester, but when looking around my flat the other day, I realized I do have an aesthetic: haphazard. Books piled every which way on the bookshelf, a mantle overflowing with candles, pictures, and more books, a desk overrun with jewelry boxes that are over run with jewelry. Haphazard...or maybe just messy, but I kind of like it, which is why I was drawn to the various interiors in these editorials shot by Hugh Stewart . They are all a little scruffy round the edges, the eye darts around at all the visual stimuli, a bit like a Victorian haberdashery, disorganized but lovely just the same.







Photographs by Hugh Stewart found at kris atomic

the wild unknown

I quite like buying gifts for Christmas. I think part of the reason for that, apart from the simple joy of (hopefully) making others joyous, is I do most of my shopping online. That way I avoid the scary shoppers and can find so many interesting little things by just stumbling upon them. That is how I came across these calendars and prisms from The Wild Unknown. Each object is handcrafted in Brooklyn, but inspired by the Catskills and Great Lakes, where the glass is blown for the prisms. That's the other thing about buying online, I can support the artisans and small businesses, and that's kinda nice too.

Now I just have to find someone to gift them to, otherwise, they may end up in my own home. And that's not what Christmas is about...er, is it?

small comforts

I think I might be under house arrest. Informally, of course, but the combination of fucking cold rainy weather and the burden of deadlines has made venturing outside a rare occasion. But there are little things, small indulgences that are getting me through the increasingly shorter days. I'll make it through by staring idly at my new you-study-so-hard-you-deserve-them boots, consuming dubious amounts of coffee and homemade fudge (that travelled all the way across the Atlantic just for me), and adding some Christmas cheer to the house in the form of a mini poinsettia, the lovely poisonous plant of the holiday season. No cabin fever here...as long as I don't confuse the flower for the fudge, I'll be all set.

Ideal vs Reality

This would be my ideal outfit for a lazy day, lounging around with a cup of tea and a good book. But instead, I am putting on an ugly purple uniform and off to work. Byeeee!

(photo a la mr selby)

Interior Envy

GAAAH. Do you know how badly I want to be 'grown-up' enough to live in a space that I can actually get my hands on and decorate to my every whim and fancy? SO BADLY. Right now I live in a pretty amazing apartment, with stairs in the hallway and shabby chic charm to the brim; however, my landlord used to live in the apartment, and so is kind of attached to it, meaning no painting, no holes in the wall, no fun. Though I may have poked a hole or two, hey a cuckoo clock must be hung, I have been relatively quiet in changing anything. Plus, my life is a bit transient right now, and so I'm not one to completely invest myself into a place without knowing whether I will be there in a year. So, whenever I see supercool apartments, I have serious interiors envy. I have notes everywhere on inspirational places, and here's another added to the list: Gemma Ahern's apartment (fully photographed at Design*Sponge). When the time comes, and I have money and a space of my own to completely reconstruct, I have to have this wallpaper. I want floor-to-ceiling bookshelves anyway, but this wallpaper may be an awesome alternative while I build my library...

goodbye home

I found this shirt the day before I left London, and bought it on a whim solely because of the colour - it's kind of like that Rachel Comey tank that I was coveting (though mine photographs less yellow and more green than it actually is) plus it's slightly oversized so drapes wonderfully. The perfect comfy tee for a 7 hour flight.As for this hat...I bought it when I lived on Chappaquiddick (Martha's Vineyard) the summer after my senior year of college (2007). It was quite pricey, a real Panama hat made in Panama, but worth it because once I bought it, I didn't take it off the rest of the summer. When I got back from the island, I was moving to London, so left it home in my closet, where it has been sadly waiting, losing its shape, to be worn again. I think I'll be taking it back with me though my suitcase is already stuffed to the brim.
Today is one of those days where you wish time would stand still. The weather is perfect, and being home amongst the woods and the quiet, everything feels so serene. I can walk around outside barefoot and fancy-free. So while I should be packing, I prefer to sit on our porch swing and just listen to the quiet surroundings that I will soon be leaving. Goodbye home, I shall miss you.

[Sidenote: Within the next few days I'll be flying back to London, then taking the train to Marseilles and won't be back until June 9th, so the blog will be lying dormant until then. À bientôt!]

10 Again

So, in the last week that I've been home I have been taken for a 16 year old about, oh, 7 or 8 times. Which is quite usual, seven years off, but usual. Indeed, it's not as bad as the time when I went to Chili's with my family, and at the time my younger sister was 9 and I was 20, (note the 11 year difference, accidents happen, lalala), and the waitress asked if we would like two children menus...as in children menus that are intended for 12 and under. Uh, no thanks.

Anyway, today was another dreary wet day in Mass (must the rain follow me?), so there wasn't much else to do other than indulge in childish activities. For me that meant gorging on donuts and coffee while making friendship bracelets...er, but selfishly not for friends, but for myself. Or maybe not so selfish since I haven't done such a thing since I was a wee lass and there was a lot of cursing, mistakes and deknotting involved...many hours, a dozen powdered donuts and many Law and Order episodes later...I completed two whole bracelets, one thin and one not-so-thin. Woo hoo. They will now be permanently afixed to my wrist as proud badges of honor...though I suppose this will only encourage rather than dissuade the age-guessing. Alas, alack, I guess my inner child shall have to shine through a little longer.






Ps. See the ring on my middle finger? Got that in Maine at a Native American Jewelry Store. I loved the design so much and got it despite the fact that it is of Kokopelli, whom I was told, is a god of fertility and music. I choose to focus on the latter.

"i'm twenty-three now but will i live to see twenty-four, the way things is going, i dunno"

This is what 23 looks like:

Yesterday was my birthday. The big 2-3. I spent it studying, woot. So it wasn't a very exciting day, but I did get surprised with the best cake ever:

Red Velvet!!! I died a little bit inside with every bite. And that's a good thing.

And now back to studying. Boo.

silver lines in the snow

A bevy of winterness has been thrown at me this past week. Ice Storm - check. Powerless - check. Power returns then pipe burst, causing leak that causes ceiling in living room to cave in slightly and take down the christmas tree - check. Snow storm - check. Snow storm part deux - check. SIGH. After a while, I gave up even trying to venture outside the house and settled for fun things to do indoors. Such as redecorating the christmas tree, making graham cracker houses/village, drinking hot cocoa and decapitating snowmen cookies. Winter's a cold-hearted bitch. But at least the chocolate's warm and the snow's purty.

(EDIT: I finally figured out how to enlarge images in blogger, so I fixed that up and the pictures are as big as my skinny borders will allow. Not much bigger, but good enough. Hurrah.)

Jack Frost Nipping

I love Christmas. I really truly do. Decorating the tree, listening to cheesy music and watching the classics on TBS. And baking. Must not forget all the wonderful food that I gorge on at Christmas time. I cannot believe there are only 11 days left, but an advent calendar does not lie. So far this holiday season, I've...

Decorated a 3ft plastic tree aka my English Christmas tree. (A real pine one awaits me, 3000 miles from this one).

Baked shortbread cookies (with toblerone in the middle!)
And (already!) received the best gift ever. My fellow got me (and I opened early since I won't be seeing him) a 1920 edition of Alice in Wonderland, complete with amazing illustrations and that perfect used book smell.

Now if only it would snow...though from what I hear, I'll be getting plenty of that when I get home.

A Book & Its Shelf

I just spent all day yesterday laying on my couch and reading this from start to finish:
And the best part was, for the first time, I actually correctly guessed who the murderer was! Normally I'm kind of stupid about those types of things, and Agatha Christie, the sly little minx, always gets the better of me. Not today though!

Other than clothes, the thing I have to generally control my spending on is books, both new and secondhand, but especially secondhand. Any time I go into a used bookstore (one of my favorite past times, especially in London where they are so perfectly disorganized) I leave with at least 3 novels, normally one of them being a Christie... what can I say I've been reading her since I was 11!

When on the oh-so popular, the selby, I love to look at peoples' bookshelves, to see what the books they have, how they arrange them, etc. Maybe, it's cause I like to think a person's bookshelf/bookself (ha!) can provide pseudo-psychological insight into their personality, just like their clothes.

So, here are a few of my favorite bookshelves, and some of my own thrown into the mix at the end...

My two favorites:
Lesley Arfin: books in the kitchen = perfection! If I didn't have a gas stove and no fan, this would be my ideal arrangement.
Ingrid Schram- a bookwindow!And some others....





And some of my own various nooks of books: