The Last Bouquet

The frost has held off so far, but this could well be my last bouquet of the year. It's always when you're picking the last of the flowers that you appreciate them the most.


The vase is by one of my favorite Etsy sellers, Shoshona Snow. I just noticed that she's including a special gift with every order until she reaches 900 sales--fantastic!

Closing in on 1000

I'm getting very close to my 1,000th sale in my Etsy shop. *squeeeeeeel*

I want to offer a giant, heartfelt thank you to each and every customer who has helped to make my experience selling online such a delight. I've met some lovely people through my Etsy shop, and I'm so grateful for it.

In celebration, I'm giving away a special prize to the person who purchases item #1000: a choice of one pair of either the Snow Blossom or Radiant Daisy earrings, to be shipped with rest of the winner's purchase.

Thank you all so much!

UPDATE: We made it! The shop is at 1002 sales. THANK YOU!

I'm old.

I'm old.... according to the Haverford College Magazine. Remember when you were a "young alumn?" You were still a little psyched to drink in public, and you were heady with your new job, so much better than the one you had right after graduation. You were getting engaged, maybe moving to cities in far-off coastal regions. Then, suddenly, it was 10 years since you graduated. Now, "young alumni" are Class of 1999 and up. The rest of you? No better than Cloris Leechman, "dancing" on national tv.

I might as well don a tracksuit and buy a condo in Boca.

And so it begins.

On the heels of three steady days of rain, autumn has officially arrived. The chill feels permanent, the trees are gorgeous, and the green is fading quickly.


These are pictures from today's kayak at Savoy Mountain State Forest. There was a bracing wind at the boat launch, which made me catch my breath a little. The sky was dark but the colors were beautiful.

First Aid Kit

Two Swedish sisters, aged 15 + 17, covering the Fleet Foxes, adding haunting harmony and bringing a lovely song to life. I enjoy the original, I *adore* this rendition.

Thank you, For me, for you, for the introduction! Visit their myspace page for more.

Torino Calling

I just happened upon this shop and was absolutely bowled over by the product shots. LOVE. So beautifully composed, so fresh. And that hair!!! I'm totally jealous.


Made in Torino, Italy by designer Ninu, the bags are simple, roomy, and very limited edition—only 10 bags are made from any given pattern. All pictured here are the SHELL style, $65 each.

shopping with the girls

I love a good challenge! Ez at Creature Comforts issued a Chic for Cheap challenge: put together the perfect outfit for an afternoon shopping with the girls, on the cheap. She might as well have sent me an engraved invitation: shopping + bargain outfits. So I played around in polyvore for the first time and put together my perfect fall outfit, featuring my favorite color combo right now: purple and black.
Links:
Top by Forever 21
Jeans by Wet Seal
Scarf by Dorothy Perkins
Bucket Bag by American Eagle
Ballet Flats by Old Navy
Yellow Felted Bangles by OnTheRound

Want. Love.

An old-fashioned frame clutch has always seemed like the most feminine of accessories to me. With no handles or straps, it requires you to keep hold of it at all times, rendering one hand useless—and requiring others to do all those mundane things for you, like opening doors and paying at the register. Really, it's the ultimate throwback—but when paired with such modern, lush fabric as this, it takes on a new life as a must-have piece.


Refined but not at all staid, these bags by redrubyrose make me want to render one hand useless ALL. THE. TIME. Just look at the gorgeousness. And each one is lined with dupioni silk. *swoon*

YOUR MESSAGE HERE.

The crafty and creative duo behind Something's Hiding In Here has a brilliant new project, an installation in a window at Urban Outfitters in Philly. An old-fashioned marquee complete with lights and bright letters, the board will feature a different message every day, supplied by their blog readers and shoppers at the store. Simple, ordinary messages that take on new meaning when posted for the world to see. How cool is that?

Go on over to their project blog to enter your message.

Mine?

Come find me.

the letter C

I love the way Kristine styles her photos, always as cool and refined as her wirework. The letter C, $15 from kristinemays

take pity on me

I can't knit (crochet? I don't even know) to save my life. Please make these for me. I'll send you jelly beans. and kittens. Kittens stuffed with jelly beans. Jelly beans stuffed with kittens. Red Coral and Gentleman Prawn patterns, $3.50 from wunderkammer

love, Etsy

"Deer in the Forests of White Birch" is an original, one-of-a-kind paper sculpture by mollyjey. $160

Mass MoCA

"Tree Logic," the iconic upside-down maple tree installation at the front of Mass MoCA

Given that it's only 40 minutes away, it's criminal that I haven't visited the galleries of Mass MoCA before today. I'd been to the building a number of times, but never dedicated the hours to touring the whole place. My friends Brooke (a Western Mass native, like me) and her husband Adrian are over from London and we thought some "crazy-ass modern art" (Brooke's words, and she's a Ph.D. in modern art!) would hit the spot.

Adi entering the head terrarium

Steinkamp

A converted set of mill buildings in North Adams, Mass, MMoCA is all about installations. It's got the space to do them right, and the building itself has so much character it often begs the question: where does the structure end and the art begin? It's not the Guggenheim, and that's the point—these were buildings that were built for industry, not art. And yet they manage to nearly steal the show...nearly.

Projections, Jenny Holzer

The highlight for me (and Brooke and Adrian too) was Jenny Holzer's "Projections." It's only there thru November 16, so if you've been thinking of seeing it, now's the time.

A few of my favorite things

In honor of this auspicious day—8/8/08—I thought I'd list a few of my favorite things today.

My boys

The garden after a late summer storm


My new shoes (swoon!). Steve Madden (is that guy out of jail yet?), from TJ Maxx


My new jeans, gray Levi's (also TJ Maxx, the Best. Store. Ever.)


Happy Late Summer Luck Day :)

106 books of pretention

Oh my gosh, how I love these little games where you get to go thru a big list of books and prove what a Smarty von Smartenhauser you are (though if you were an actual smarty, you'd call it a meme--congrats to you if the wiki entry actually helps you figure that one out.)

I found this list via What Would Jane Austen Do? "Below are '106 books of pretention,' compiled from the books most frequently marked unread by Library Thing users." I believe this means the LT users have copped to owning but never reading these books.

So, herewith, all the pretentious books I've read (in bold); books I’ve started but haven’t finished (or skipped huge portions of) in italics; and books I own but haven’t read are marked with a dagger (†).

* Read: 37
* Never finished: 13
* Own, but haven’t read†: 3


1. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
2. Anna Karenina
3. Crime and Punishment
4. Catch-22
5. One Hundred Years of Solitude
6. Wuthering Heights
7. The Silmarillion
8. Life of Pi : a novel
9. The Name of the Rose
10. Don Quixote
11. Moby Dick--10th grade, I think. The teacher actually told us to skip all the chapters about the fishing industry. I skipped a heck of a lot more than that, let me tell you.
12. Ulysses--James Joyce hates me. The feeling is mutual.
13. Madame Bovary--In 10th grade, this was my favorite book, like, ever.
14. The Odyssey
15. Pride and Prejudice
16. Jane Eyre--this is how much of a freak I am for the English romances: freshman year in college, a guy on my hall was assigned this for frosh English. He hated it and threatened to tear it up. I said No! I'll take it, I've never read it. He mocked me, I read it--and loved it.
17. The Tale of Two Cities
18. The Brothers Karamazov
19. Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
20. War and Peace
21. Vanity Fair
22. The Time Traveler’s Wife
23. The Iliad
24. Emma
25. The Blind Assassin†--I'm sure I've got this one around here somewhere
26. The Kite Runner
27. Mrs. Dalloway
28. Great Expectations
29. American Gods
30. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
31. Atlas Shrugged
32. Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books†
33. Memoirs of a Geisha
34. Middlesex--One of the best books of the last 50 years, easily.
35. Quicksilver
36. Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
37. The Canterbury tales
38. The Historian : a novel
39. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
40. Love in the Time of Cholera
41. Brave New world
42. The Fountainhead
43. Foucault’s Pendulum
44. Middlemarch
45. Frankenstein
46. The Count of Monte Cristo
47. Dracula
48. A Clockwork Orange
49. Anansi Boys
50. The Once and Future King
51. The Grapes of Wrath
52. The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
53. 1984
54. Angels & Demons
55. The Inferno
56. The Satanic Verses
57. Sense and Sensibility
58. The Picture of Dorian Gray
59. Mansfield Park
60. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
61. To the Lighthouse
62. Tess of the D’Urbervilles
63. Oliver Twist
64. Gulliver’s Travels
65. Les Misérables
66. The Corrections
67. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
68. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
69. Dune
70. The Prince
71. The Sound and the Fury
72. Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
73. The God of Small Things
74. A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
75. Cryptonomicon
76. Neverwhere
77. A Confederacy of Dunces
78. A Short History of Nearly Everything
79. Dubliners
80. The Unbearable Lightness of Being
81. Beloved
82. Slaughterhouse-five
83. The Scarlet Letter
84. Eats, Shoots & Leaves
85. The Mists of Avalon--I should make an annotation that would mean "obsessed over for about two years in high school"
86. Oryx and Crake : a novel
87. Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
88. Cloud Atlas
89. The Confusion
90. Lolita
91. Persuasion
92. Northanger Abbey
93. The Catcher in the Rye
94. On the Road
95. The Hunchback of Notre Dame
96. Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything--this is on my Amazon wish list. Someday I'll get around to it.
97. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
98. The Aeneid--Oh, no, I mean, I totally read that all the way thru. Yup, that and Moby Dick. There was a quiz, you know.
99. Watership Down
100. Gravity’s Rainbow
101. The Hobbit
102. In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
103. White Teeth†
104. Treasure Island
105. David Copperfield
106. The Three Musketeers


There you have it, folks. Now it's your turn!