Happy friday from the happiest place on earth! We were here spending Christmas with my wonderful family and I’ve just got my pictures organized and developed. Looking through my pictures I realized I was having a Where’s Waldo moment trying to find my brother and his wife, who I know were standing in front of the cinderella castle in the crowd version of the same scene.  I still can’t find them…
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I was watching Emma Sunday night on Masterpiece Theatre.  It was a nice, light, visual dessert to my weekend and it had me longing for the simplicity of summertime things like arranging flowers, making reading lists, painting en plein air, even taking a turn around the room or the garden.

Winter in Seattle forces one inside and you can either be miserable and complain about the lack of light, you can book a vacation, or can get creative.  (Usually it’s a mix of all of the above.)  I’ve never really minded it too much.  Maybe because growing up here I didn’t know any different, or maybe it’s because we in the Pacific Northwest really know how to appreciate the warm season and make the best of our hibernation time.  For me, it’s this last stretch of winter right before February where I usually get a little bit itchy to feel the warm sand between my toes and the anticipation of spring starting to bloom inside of me.

So to make the shortness of days a breeze, I’m planning a trip for our family to take later in the year.  I think the paradox of choice has made me a little indecisive though, so maybe you could help us out.

Where are your favorite getaway destinations, near or far?  Family Friendly.  Maybe a little on the exotic side.  Thrill me.  GO.

It seems so wild to me that it’s been about three years since we were in South America, driving to the beach in our VW bug… it was such a fun toy!

Okay. So I know this isn’t exactly breaking news, but I am so psyched that Rio won the bid for the 2016 Olympics!! Even for a girl who loves to write descriptively and who has a fully active visual world, it’s always been really difficult for me to tell people just how beautiful Rio de Janeiro is. You have to go there to believe it.  And now with the city cleaning up it’s infrastructure, you will have a better chance. I sum up my fondness for the city as “the place you would imagine the highest degree of heaven to be like.” (There IS a saying that God is Brazilian.)

We happened to be in Rio when the Pan-American games were going on in 2007 and saw a lot of the athletes on the street. We would stop to talk to them any chance we got, asking them what they were competing in and every time, they were mutually happy to see an American. We would roll down our taxi windows for them when we passed by, chanting “YOU, ES, AY!” and get immediately rewarded with a recognition grin and big wave back.

Copacabana at night. We picked the quiet time of the year to be there – and had this pretty much all to ourselves. Paradise.

Perhaps it’s more difficult to lay out the pretty parts that I experienced in Rio because I lost all the photos I took there, save just a few. It’s one of those travel tragedies that just seems to occur every now and then… and of all the bad things that could have happened, it’s not all that bad.  But the fact that it happened in such a heavenly destination was hard to get over. (sniff sniff.) I found the bright side in knowing that I would just have to return to get those pictures back. By taking them all over again.

Max, wearing 3D glasses at night on Red Beach.

This year, Mars and I celebrate our ten year wedding anniversary and so we returned again to the magical place where we honeymooned.  We went to our family’s beautiful cabin surrounded by woods in Whistler, British Columbia.  The sun shined warm every day and as an extra bonus, this time of the year is a shoulder season (in between winter and summer sports) so the village was practically deserted, which is just what we love.

I brought out my watercolors, Mars read, we did some window shopping, lots of walking, cooking, a bit of eating out and lots of relaxing…

We’re back from a beautiful retreat in the Canadian mountains. It was quiet without the internet, a telephone or our seven year old. I only missed one. (And he was having a special stay with Grammy, lucky guy!)

It’s one of those road trips where you want to stay awake during a certain part because the scenery is breathtakingly awesome. Ahhh, Route 99…

Gathering my essentials for a really special getaway with my sweetheart, I realized that it’s been a while since our last trip – I’m so excited! (Click here to see what’s in my bag.) When you’re throwing in all your prettiest clothes that you don’t usually get to wear because they would get covered with flour, playdough, spit-up and the like, the anticipation grows even greater.  So it might sound strange, but to me, packing is almost as fun as the vacation.  Almost.

Speaking of sweet knits… for all of you in the Portland area, you have a fantastic opportunity to attend a special trunk show held at IDOM Designs Boutique this friday, August 21st!  (Click on the flyer for enlarged view with all the details.)

Textura offers handmade knits from Uruguay to consumers who value both high-quality design and fair compensation. Our curated collection has been crafted by a diverse group of women, including rural knitters, seasoned weavers and emerging urban designers. In expanding their market access to North America, Textura aims to preserve an ancient craft, promote economic and social development, and offer you, the consumer, modern knits that are both beautiful and practical.

Over a year ago, I was excited to find an email from Christina DesVaux, a recent Brown graduate who was then about to move to Uruguay on a Rotary Scholarship to do research.  She told me that she was looking for the relationship between Fair Trade and artisan cooperatives in South America and had some questions about my own impressions from living there.  So we swapped a few notes here and there, and since then I have often wondered what Christina’s adventures brought her.  I’m so excited to find that Textura is the result of her time down there!  I can’t think of a more meaningful way to shop, so lucky you if you happen to be in PDX and can make it to see this fantastic collection and come home with some gorgeous treasures to wear this season!

These are a series of photographs I took with an inexpensive, disposable camera I kept in my bag for a few weeks one summer, so that I could have snapshots of my neighborhood in Buenos Aires.  Something about the throw away aspect of the camera, the way the colors were processed and the borders  I intentionally keep on the pictures reminded me of postcards… I juxtaposed them onto the background of torn out pages from a 1960s book about the neighborhoods of BsAs and colorized some of them for a soft, continuous effect.  I wanted to show how little the city seems to have changed since then (in architecture, the elegant way some men and women still dress, the gracious trees) and how remarkable some of the similarities are between then and now. You can spot my boys in a few of the shots, and I did sneak in a polaroid for the first spread…

as i think about my time here closing in, all the many things i love about buenos aires come to mind… like the amount of cafes on every corner and the culture of meeting inside of them. borges said: “i think that one of the most important functions of the city is to bring the dialogue.” and as the sunlight tips a glow over the city in the late afternoons, the tables fill up. buenos aires cafes and bars are like those of paris and madrid: not only places to meet up with friends, but places where you can have your order and sit for hours on end reading and talking without any pressure to leave. though i once read that there are more cafes here than in paris…