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bought a new dress this weekend, leopard print! but had to wear a winter coat because it snowed…record breaking for this time of the year in seattle.
i also…
+ painted some large scale canvases and hung them in our dining room. it feels so good to be painting again. like physical exercise, i have waves of enthusiasm come and go for painting, and when i investigate the possible reasons behind my procrastination i feel surprised because i sense a lot of fear for my first loved medium. but it never fails to give me in incredible feeling! i suspect that if i were to really let go and invite the true experience and practice of coming into my own as a painter, it would mean that i would need to do something about that talent. and that’s frightening to me. this is probably the most candid i’ve been about this for some time, but i’m feeling confident today i guess… must be from those big paintings!
+ i updated natural historie with some new glass rings, which are a very nice alternative if you have metal allergies. or if you like me and just obsessed with all the color cravings in fashion lately! you’ll find some other new things if you poke around the site a bit too.
+ i discovered a beautiful park nearby (quite by accident) that has incredible views of lake washington, enormous docked yachts, big rolling clouds, and even a playground. mallards fly around to ultimately land on the beach, making the place more picturesque. i have a picnic basket i’ve unpacked since coming home and i can’t wait to put it to good use there.
+ i watched beautiful films while baking some treats… i love glancing up while stirring or cleaning up after my mess to see breakfast at tiffanys, sabrina in black and white, and some jean-luc godard.
+ okay, don’t laugh… but i also decided to wrestle with some false eyelashes and practice wearing them just for fun… i guess you could blame all those films going on in the background… but you can’t beat a thick flutter of the lash, even if faked!
+ speaking of baking, i failed to mention that my blueberry muffin recipe was published in a pearle vision newsletter, which i thought was kind of fun. (thanks to kelsey to sending it to me!)
hope your weekend was lovely too. tell me what you are up to…. won’t you?
dear lovelies,
enjoy this little video i put together in praise of spring. the beautiful music is provided by alison sudol of a fine frenzy. i love these lyrics that speak of being brave about life, “staying inside it all goes by…” (thanks to jena for introducing me to this beautiful singer!)
besos… j.
come on, come out
the weather is warm
come on, come out
come on come on
a spot in the shade
where oranges fall
a spot in the shade
away from it all
watching the sky, you’re watching a painting
coming to life, shifting and shaping
staying inside, it all goes all goes by
a blanket unfolds,
a blanket to lie
the pieces of gold
they light up your eyes
and now we’re alone
and now we’re alive
watching the sky, you’re watching a painting
coming to life, shifting and shaping
staying inside, it all goes
all goes all goes all goes by
stopping the time, the rush and the waiting
leave it behind, shifting and shaping
keep it inside, it all goes all goes all goes all goes by
it all goes passing by
all goes passing by
watching the sky, you’re watching a painting
coming to life, shifting and shaping
staying inside, it all goes
all goes all goes all goes by
stopping the time, the rush and the waiting
leave it behind, shifting and shaping
keep it inside, it all goes all goes by
i have some exciting news… along with 25 other talented photographers from around the world who adore the art of polaroid, i am honored to be a contributor in this beautiful book. for more details, you can sign up at our mailing list. a grand applause to jen for beginning this project and gathering all of us together!
marcus helped me sort and select some polaroids friday night that i shot in south america… they were stored in a takeout box until we could unpack, which turned out to be a surprisingly perfect and safe fit for about 100 polaroids! right now i have displayed a giant grid of these on a wall in our home, using reusable white sticky tac – not only to prevent damage, but also so i can rearrange them as i like. i’ve really been meaning to order these clear archival polaroid protector pages to store all my other photos. (can you tell i cherish these little squares of joy?) has anyone found a better solution?
so what do you do with your polaroids? i’d love to know.
so many things i wanted to share with you this week… but the early arrival of easter has caught me by surprise! i’m so overjoyed to watch the world in renewal.. coming to life in blossom and color. what reverence that brings. happy easter friends.
meet my beret. plum and perfectly slouchy soft, it makes rainy days a little bit more special. and as i dash around in my car, if i squint my eyes a bit and imagine my gorgeous one and only as warren beatty and i channeling faye dunaway, we can make our getaway together… though it’s usually to a place to eat or a bookstore instead of robbing a bank, and our ending is certainly more happy versus tragic.
+ some different sort of flowers for spring… the kind found underwater! glass sea anemone rings are now at natural historie. i don’t think i’ll ever run out of inspiration from nature. take note – there will be another jewelry giveaway in april…excited?
+ aurora by bjork. mp3 +mostly because i have a deep desire to learn how to play the harp and can’t stop fantasizing about dreamily strumming away when i whenever i hear this song.
+ avant garde dressing and rich colors from thuy. i treasure pieces that balance drama, clean lines, and offbeat details. being a bold minimalist looks easy, but i think it takes fashion courage and a great eye to find something that says “artist” without saying cuh-razy.
+ i love my new stem mug from orla kiely. i love having herbal tea in it every afternoon.. just makes me so happy…
+ who the #$&% is jackson pollock? i watched this last night and profanity aside (sorry, my pet peeve!) i just laughed my head off. the documentary covers the story of a 73-year-old former truck driver with an eighth grade education who buys a painting in a thrift shop for five dollars. finding it so hideous she plans to throw darts at it when it won’t fit through her friend’s trailer door, the feisty woman decides to sell it at a garage sale only to find that it may be a pollock. i don’t know what is more grotesque, her stubbornness or the contemptuous snobbery she gets from the art world.
+ speaking of profanity, i’m now the newest member of the no cussing club. hey, everyone has their pet peeves right? mine is hearing an uncreative lack of vocabulary. can you take the challenge?
here are my salt and pepper shakers i promised to show you, displayed next to tonight’s dinner – a favorite asparagus tart i love to prepare when springtime arrives.
more happy home thoughts: back in 1888, frances willard, who founded the first and most powerful women’s reform organization wrote, “if i were asked the mission of the ideal woman, i would reply: IT IS TO MAKE THE WHOLE WORLD HOMELIKE.” (yes, written in all capital letters.) “the moral and domestic virtues long associated with femininity would set the whole human family aglow if women would extend their influence from the private home to the public realm.”
oh frances, you are a woman after my own heart. max is always saying that when he grows up, he’s gonna CLEAN UP THE WHOLE WORLD! (because it’s dirty, you know?) i love the way he says that too, like it’s all one word. and so i picture frances, air pumping a frilly sleeve with as much enthusiasm as a dainty lady of her time could, with the same altruistic and philanthropic zeal as my five year old. after all, keeping the city streets clean seem pretty similar to keeping the kitchen floor clean.
this is a very lovely egg cup i like to begin my day with at the table. isn’t she cute? even the little shaker that came in the set looks like an egg. she’s made in buenos aires by lola goldstein. i also have some shakers that you must remind me to show you some time. maybe tomorrow? they tickle me.
and i wanted to show you these houses i passed by the other day in seattle. the way the light was hitting them…
so lovely that you all identify with my feelings about home in my last post. and that you are welcoming me back so nicely! (even though most of you here “see” me the same way as when i was thousands of miles away!) a great artist who taught me in college once told me that home is the only environment where you have 100% control over, so it’s important to make it how you like it and accept nothing else. i love that. and it’s always stayed with me, especially since so much of what happens once you walk out the door isn’t always easy. home can be such a good feeling. and once you have that with you, the power to adapt in different environment is the stuff superheros are made of.
p.s. i made a tiny update to natural historie. more to come soon.
over the past several years of moving around, i’ve really come to believe that home is not just a physical place, but a state of mind.
thinking of home in this more profound sense sets me up with a great deal of patience for settling down. i’ve been willing to wait for “settling down” till now because i know that this may be one of the greatest things worth waiting for. having a base to a set of feelings and routines where you know and accept others, are trusted and forgiven, where you set to motion all of your rituals and where you can act accordingly and use your instincts… home can be the highest expression of familiarity and intimacy in daily life. it’s not just the four walls where you’ll hang your hat, but the community of familiar places and people. for keeps.
it’s easy to move from place to place. being the new girl makes you a rarity, even moving to another coast in your own country is exciting because everyone is always interested in the way you do things from where you are from and of course, things are different where you are. you can choose to hide things or never have enough time to completely reveal yourself. and if not everything suits your ideal, no big deal. simply wait it out a few months and and you are gone again with the relief of leaving things behind. and i found it easy to go exploring and traveling in a new country. you anticipate basic things to be difficult, and that’s what makes it exciting… mailing a letter or shopping for groceries becomes a triumph, talking to people in a different language with your funny accent, alluring. an automatic high standard of living, having a maid and attending embassy parties and fashion shows, how is this difficult?
committing to a place and people in a permanent sense has got to be the greatest adventure of all. it takes guts and total bravery to choose here and now. it takes creativity to prevent any sort of slipping into “ordinary and anonymous.” (because the things that once made you glamorous can now seem generic.) settling down means working with what you’ve got, and being willing to make changes where they need to be improved. and it means finding what you love in your own city.
there have been interludes of great satisfaction and contentment since returning that have me not wanting to be anywhere else. and i think that comes from being able to see my own culture with new eyes, a lovely and unexpected gift of awareness. standing outside the frame of normal reference and examining my lifestyle from the vantage point of a foreigner is beautiful. and now i realize that never living anywhere else would be a tragedy, because it would mean never truly understanding my home, or myself, at all. and i would still be wondering, as i always used to, if there was somewhere else that i would rather be. i’ve never lived in the moment more than i have recently. if that isn’t worth the price of a plane ticket, i don’t know what is.
no one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow. ~lin yutang
