Head To Toe Mistletoe Contest

I spent a little time putting together some submissions for the Head To Toe Mistletoe Contest through Effortlessly Anthropologie. Here they are...wish me luck.

My Perfect Winter Weather Outfit by Edith_Pearl featuring a leather bag

Dashing Through The Snow by Edith_Pearl featuring cargo pants

Pretty Party Girl by Edith_Pearl featuring cluster jewelry

Where Will I Be On New Years Eve by Edith_Pearl featuring chain shoes

We have a little break in the rain today; beautiful skies but the knowledge of impending storms.

Il Pleure Dans Mon Cœur 
du Paul Verlaine

Il pleure dans mon cœur
Comme il pleut sur la ville;
Quelle est cette langueur
Qui pénètre mon cœur?

Ô bruit doux de la pluie,
Par terre et sur les toits!
Pour un cœur qui s'ennuie,
Ô le chant de la pluie!

Il pleure sans raison
Dans ce cœur qui s'écœure.
Quoi! nulle trahison? ...
[Ce]3 deuil est sans raison.

C'est bien la pire peine,
De ne savoir pourquoi
Sans amour et sans haine
Mon cœur a tant de peine!

Rain Coat by Samuel Michael Casebolt

31 Rhymes With Fun

Happy Birthday to Moi, Happy Birthday to Moi, Happy to ali_edith_pearl_bird_heart_fox, Happy Birthday to me.

Well that sums up how I feel right now. I had a perfect weekend it was both relaxing and fun. The best part was spending time with M. followed by spending time with friends: walking on the beach, hiking in the Pogonip,  cocktails at 515, eating lunch at Pearl of the Ocean,a and more cocktails.

In my family we take birthdays seriously, in fact celebrating for just one day is unheard of so in proper style we celebrated all weekend and did a little shopping over the hill yesterday. Here are my lovely new wonderful birthday gifts thanks greatly to some wonderful gift certificates and my lovely M.

Layered Slate Skirt, Softly Soaring Sweater, Laser Cut Ornaments, Condiment Spoon,
Whale Ornament, Bialetti Espresso Maker, Stacking Wine Rack 

Baseball the Great American Past Time

Things I Would Like And Why

Here are a couple of items that I would like to procure:

Kick Plate: I didn't even know what these were until recently. Our front door sticks and because of that it takes a swift kick to the bottom left of the door to open it. After a year of living in our place there is a noticeable indentation in the wood, oops. Here is beautiful push plate that I found which I think would work equally well horizontally as a kick plate.

Globe: Not too ornate or big. I loved as a kid spinning the globe my folks had, stopping it's rotation with my finger and declaring I will visit Australia, the Maldives, Yugoslavia...

A massage: This one should be obvious and no picture required.

Fall & Food

Fall means that it is cool enough to turn on my oven again and in the past week I have baked two apple pies (why just one when you always make someone happy by giving one away) scones, croissants, I also baked sweet potatoes, a chicken casserole and roasted potatoes. I have made soup twice now and tea every evening. Incidentally M. really appreciates the influence that Autumn has on me.

As for my apple pies, I was inspired by a strawberry rhubarb crisp I made this summer that used hazelnuts in the crumb topping. For the pies I made them dutch style with a crumb topping and added a couple drops of vanilla and semi-finely chopped pecans. It made for a very subtle but nice change to my traditional apple pie, I will definitely make this a keeper.

Art that I can't get out of my mind

Yellena James, I originally found out about her work  randomly on ETSY, and then later saw one of her prints available on 20x200.  Her work is so whimsical, and I lover her color palette I wish sometimes that I could make art like hers but alas it is not my thing and I will appreciate hers all the more. I would love to own this and just maybe I will.

Myriad

I also love these two prints of hers.

Spurt

Shiver

One more person who creates in what think of as a similar vein is Leela Ford. Here is a beautiful gauche painting of hers.

Purple

The Frye Carson Oxford Fairies Have Arrived

I am an avid consigner of clothes, shoes, purses ect. A new store opened this last year in town Twist, cute name. I brought them some items back in August and last week went in to see if I had sold anything. Of course I can not walk by a pair of nice shoes without stopping so before I got to the front counter I was trying on a pair of Frye Carson Oxfords which look a lot like the oxfords I had posted about in September, remember this . The only thing is, the Frye's are better, and black they were more expensive which is why I didn't have them in my Fall Wardrobe Essentials posting. At Twist they were mis-marked as a 7, which I am not but I tried them on anyway and was more than pleasantly surprised that they fit like a glove. They are now mine. I had sold all of my items on consignment and made more than the cost of the shoes. I love the heel and they are breaking in nicely. I swear whoever sold them had hardly even worn them.

picture courtesy of Vamp Shoes

Bathroom Revamp

Dynasty Celadon

This weekend M. and I decided to each take on revamping one of the bathrooms in the house. He aptly chose the small master bath and I took the hall bath that also doubles as our laundry room. Months ago I had painted the room Pensive Sky by Behr, and the whole room came out looking baby blue not the subtle grey that I had wanted. This time I opted for Dynasty Celdon by Behr, a subtle green with a hint of grey and blue. I love the new color. M. tried something close to 7 different shades of off white and brown before deciding he didn't like the idea of painting a bathroom brown, oh well, and on a whim bought a gallon of Off White also by Behr, yes that is the name of the color. Well the master came out looking an awful lot like Pensive Sky so he'll be repainting it.

We had to remove the mirrors that had been GLUED to the walls, the master bath mirror came off in a nice 3 pieces. the hall bath mirror had so much glue attaching it to the wall that we had to literally chisle it off the wall in about a million pieces and shards, NOT FUN. Also not fun was realizing that much of the wall as either damaged or just plain removed in the process. While M. painted his easy small bathroom I took a picture of the mess and went to the local hardware/paint store, showed the nice old man working there the wall and left with a container of jointing compound and a spackle knife. I have now fixed the wall and feel very proud of myself for matching the texturing pretty closely and tonight will finish with my last coat of paint. Yay. This was way more that a weekend job.

I should still have about $250 to play around with for finishing off the bathroom. On my list and a few of these item may have to be birthday presents are:
Installing a tabletop over the washer and dryer
Replacing the mirror with one that does not glue to the wall, Ikea should do the trick
New hardware, I love rejuvination.com especially the Chandler porcelain collection
It would also be great to get a new sink and I have been eyeing one below from Overstock.com
Maybe in a different post I'll tell about how ugly the bathroom was to begin with but for now I'll leave with these pleasant images.

Ticor Vessel Sink

Urban Outfitters wall hook
I have a set of these I bought for $4.00 each

MacArthur Genius Award Winner Matthew Carter

Congratulations to font creator Mathew Carter who is responsible for Cochin, Sophia, Snell and more. He was awarded a MacArthur Genius award last week. 

Here is a link to a great video interview with him, enjoy.

Cords & Boots: Essentials

For the past two years every Fall I buy a new pair of Gap skinny 1969 cords. They're great, and I manage to wear through them every year. This year I will again be getting a new pair in the charcoal color. I know, I love grey and I have just about worn the color out. Maybe I'll be brave enough to get the bright tomato red cords too. 

Gap cords, Jeffrey Campbell boots

And on a frustrating puppy note, Penny adorable as she is tasted the sweet luxury of leather last week, much to M's and my dismay. First she found his iTouch, ate the leather case and in the process damaged the antenna. The next day she went into my closet and found, of course my favorite, most supple and expensive boots; which are not something that I can just find again on EBAY. Goodbye Hispanitas, studded, witchy, ankle boots that I have loved, loved, loved. I am seriously considering finding someone who can make them into booties for me, since Penny only ate the top of them off.  

So in lieu of wearing my favorite ankle boots this season I am hoping to get the Jeffrey Campbell East Village ankle boots, they have a low heal which I love and are the same warm brown as my poor Hispanitas. Although nothing can replace my chewed up boots these should fill the same niche in my wardrobe and I will from now on keep all of my shoes above puppy level. 

I am hoping that these will magically turn into birthday presents...hmmm.

Wednesday

Music: Julie Sokolow, Business as Usual from her album Something about Violins. The album has been out since 2006 but I still love coming back to it. Today feels like Autumn has arrived and for some reason that made me turn to this album because it sets a cool, quiet, cloudy but content sort of mood.

On a very different note I just saw on Verhext's blog her amazing wedding invitation/packages, they are worth checking out.

Today is Farmers Market day, something always worth looking forward to.

xoxo

Alphabet & Animals

I came across these while searching for gift ideas for a small child and I love them:
Animals Alphabet
Alphabeasties
From Actopus to Zelophant

Items on my Fall Wardrobe Radar

Here are a few Items I am spying and hoping to get this season:

Anthropologie To A Tee Blazer

Madewell Silk Shirtdress

Boutique 9 Brazen Shoes

I already splurged and repurchased my favorite jean jacket made by the Gap 10 or 11 years ago. I lost my jacket in Paris but luckily found an identical one on Ebay, yay I should have it soon.

It's true women in Paris have great legs

We are back after our 15 day long amazing trip to London, York, Alnwick, Edinburgh, Bath, Stonehenge, and Paris. I will post pictures at a later time. A couple of things came to mind during our trip: first people really do dress nicer, more put together and with a strong sense of personal style most noticeably in London and Paris, and Parisian women have great legs and great bangs-basically all of them. I hope that if ever managed to move to Paris for a year that maybe just maybe I will attain the miraculous french legs that I saw while abroad. I guess that walking everywhere will do that. Since being home I have undertaken a near boycott of my car, it now feels silly to drive to get coffee when I can enjoy a nice 10 minute walk to get there, or a 15-20 minute stroll to a  restaurant and then be able to walk off the meal on the way home. Penny, our dog is greatly enjoying our walking renaissance as am I.

Au Revoir

The Killing Moon

On both Saturday and Sunday M, and I went out for Chinese food, very strange as it is not something we usually do. Anyway I woud up with a plethora of fortune cookies that provided some entertainment this week at work. Yesterday my fortune read, "Killing time murders opportunities." which I thought would be a great motivational visual cue to tape to my monitor along with all the stickers that I peel off of my daily apple, my bird paper chain and the CMYK chart for work that I completely had blocked out of my mind until just now. Well getting back to the title of this post. My fortune did not have the desired effect of motivating me to work, rather I found myself with the lines, of an Echo and the Bunnymen song stuck in my head, and then realized that what was really going through my head was actually the Pavement cover of the song, sometimes I seriously question the things that I can remember considering there is so much that I can not remember. So here is a little bit of what I was listening to yesterday.

...and now for the pavement version

I am not ready for Fall

Today I noticed on several of my favorite blogs, pictures and mentions of Fall clothing and style for the coming year. My immediate feeling was of a moving car slamming on it's breaks. Hold on, I am not ready for Fall, in fact I am about to go on my summer vacation and have been obsessing over what light flowy summer clothes to pack. So don't start with this fall fashion in the beginning of August business, I am not emotionally prepared. Speaking of packing I am a firm believer in packing light, however that does not mean that I always do, in fact I tend to vacillate between the two extremes of complete overpacking and the opposite. So my conundrum, a two week vacation, with one week split between two of the most fashionable cities and one week hoofing it on and off trains and through the countryside. How do I pack light, when I have essentially 2 different trips and a serious chance of rain and 80 degree weather? Well here's my list as it is now anyway:

3 dresses

2 skirts

1 green bermuda shorts

1 grey cropped pant

1 Black skinny jean

Chambray long sleeve

Lightweight plaid long sleeve

2 blouses

4 tee shirts

4 tank tops

2 light weight sweaters

1 fleece/sweater

1 light weight jacket

1 rain shell

2 sets pajamas

undergarments

Sandals

Clogs

Ankle Boots

O.K. that does not look like a packing light list.

This would be a packing light list:

1 skirt (black of course)

1 dress

1 green bermuda shorts

1 Black skinny jean

Chambray long sleeve

Lightweight plaid long sleeve

1 blouse

3 tee shirts

3 tank tops

2 light sweaters

1 light weight jacket or Fleece not both

1 rain shell

1 set of pajamas (or none sleeping au naturale c'est tre bien)

undergarments

Sandals

Clogs

Ankle Boots