Influence.

This was the thought of the day over at Design is Mine yesterday. I couldn't agree more. Graphics by Sean McCabe.

2013

I can't believe I want to write about the New Year and we're already a month into it. That really puts in perspective for me why a year can fly by the way it does... Only 11 more of these to go. I was thinking yesterday--mostly because I haven't been in proper school since early December that I feel lazy and a little aimless. I had the itch of wanting to make more and do more and help more. Which led my mind here--as it often does, that the beauty of a silly little blog is that I can look back and see my own crafted words often. And posting them to the internet instead of jotting them in a journal makes it more of a responsibility and therefore more likely to occur. Anyway - on the flip side I hate coming back here knowing there is a risk that I'm not here to stay. I am making it a goal to write at least once a week. That seems reasonable, right ?

I was particularly inspired to start this today, the 5th of February, because I just came across this blog posting on Kris Carr's Crazy Sexy Blog. As I'm sure we all know where she is coming from I thought it a good one for the beginning (ish) of the year. I don't think I'm there yet but I do so appreciate her words. And as I graduate (once again) very shortly, it makes me wonder if finding your purpose externally is a myth... Maybe she is right.

[Image above courtesy of Jodi Housman--from our NYE spent with Jay z + Coldplay at Barclay's Center in Brooklyn]

I love.

On Creativity.

Concrete Bath.

I pretty much love concrete everywhere in a house. I'm not fully sure I can articulate why, but I like how much texture it has while still being smooth (does that make any sense ?). I like it's slight variations in gray, and I love that you can pour it into any form you want. There is a watercolor like fluidity to this very massive heavy material. Maybe you can't have a full concrete bath, but here are some great touches. Shave kit, toilet brush, soap dish (no longer available).Have a great weekend :).

More Spring 2013 For Your Monday ...

 This TRB might be my winner of the lot...

#wantitneedithavetohaveit

 Chris Benz

 DVF

 

Boy By Band of Outsiders

DVF

Images courtesy of Style.com

Officially Fall, The Most Perfect Time of Year.

And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places.
~Roald Dahl

Photo is my instagram from The West Village, last weekend (unofficial fall ;)

Kinfolk - Volume 4

I have been in love with Kinfolk magazine since its inception. In fact, before I'd ever heard of it I daydreamed of a beautiful entertaining magazine that felt more authentic to gatherings, craft, and beauty than anything you can find on the newsstands. Come to think of it I'm pretty sure I wrote about it when it first came out.

Anyway - Last winter Karen and I were fortunate enough to write / style / shoot (I wrote / we styled / she shot) a piece for them. Truth be told it was for their summer issue and we shot it in the dead of winter. In fact, I took at cab before sunrise to brooklyn in December so we could catch the first morning light, and I ever stripped down to a t-shirt for a shot.

It is a tiny little story but I am so honored to be including among so many super talented creative people. I dream of a life where I can do such a thing on a regular basis. For now, Ill ride this high for a while. Kinfolk can be purchased here.

Image courtesy of Karen Mordechai + Sunday Suppers.

Spring 2013 NYFW

To be fair I haven't looked at all of the shows. But of those that I have looked at, here a are few pieces that caught my eye :

 Alexander Wang - I have no words - this is gorgeous. It is feminine and sexy, yet it has structure and and a masculinity to its confident lines.

 Phillip Lim will always have my heart. I love the weaving use of I heart NY t-shirts here.

 Prabal Gurung. Maybe my favorite evening dress Ive seen for the season. It has a Carolina classic femininity about it but is younger and edgier. I would pillage to wear this to one of my upcoming weddings.

Marc Jacobs just gets better and better. It is more wearable, less predictably him. I love how feminine these pieces are despite cloaking the body almost entirely.




Its rare for my Spring choices to be so devoid of color. Perhaps Ill return with a second round after I do a bit more digging...


Images Courtesy of Style.com

Some of the best advice I've ever read ...

... That I happened upon this summer. It resonated so so strongly with the entire struggle of my past year, and years prior. You forget that not every great is born painting picassos or writing Joyce. You forget, when it's you sucking at something, that most of the beauty comes from that struggle and that most greats poured a lot of sweat, crumpled a lot of hard work into the trash, and got up every morning knowing they could do more. That they could be better.

Happy Friday !

Yes Please ... All of them.

The style may change, but picking out school supplies is as important to me now as it was in fourth grade - choosing the newest themed trapper keeper with its shiny plastic padding and Velcro closure. In fact, knowing what design means to me now it might even matter more. To me, the notebook I pull out says as much about my taste as the shoes I wear or color I paint my house. Call me crazy, but at least I know I'm in good company up here. I stumbled upon this guy, and a few others on a recent trip to John Derian just of the Bowery.

Leonard Pitts words are with me every day, but especially today.

It's my job to have something to say.
They pay me to provide words that help make sense of that which troubles the American soul. But in this moment of airless shock when hot tears sting disbelieving eyes, the only thing I can find to say, the only words that seem to fit, must be addressed to the unknown author of this suffering.
You monster. You beast. You unspeakable bastard.
What lesson did you hope to teach us by your coward's attack on our World Trade Center, our Pentagon, us? What was it you hoped we would learn? Whatever it was, please know that you failed.
Did you want us to respect your cause? You just damned your cause.
Did you want to make us fear? You just steeled our resolve.
Did you want to tear us apart? You just brought us together.
Let me tell you about my people. We are a vast and quarrelsome family, a family rent by racial, social, political and class division, but a family nonetheless. We're frivolous, yes, capable of expending tremendous emotional energy on pop cultural minutiae - a singer's revealing dress, a ball team's misfortune, a cartoon mouse.
We're wealthy, too, spoiled by the ready availability of trinkets and material goods, and maybe because of that, we walk through life with a certain sense of blithe entitlement. We are fundamentally decent, though - peace-loving and compassionate. We struggle to know the right thing and to do it. And we are, the overwhelming majority of us, people of faith, believers in a just and loving God.
Some people - you, perhaps - think that any or all of this makes us weak. You're mistaken. We are not weak. Indeed, we are strong in ways that cannot be measured by arsenals.
Yes, we're in pain now. We are in mourning, and we are in shock. We're still grappling with the unreality of the awful thing you did, still working to make ourselves understand that this isn't a special effect from some Hollywood blockbuster, isn't the plot development from a Tom Clancy novel.
Both in terms of the awful scope of their ambition and the probable final death toll, your attacks are likely to go down as the worst acts of terrorism in the history of the United States and, probably, the history of the world. You've bloodied us as we have never been bloodied before.
But there's a gulf of difference between making us bloody and making us fall. This is the lesson Japan was taught to its bitter sorrow the last time anyone hit us this hard, the last time anyone brought us such abrupt and monumental pain. When roused, we are righteous in our outrage, terrible in our force. When provoked by this level of barbarism, we will bear any suffering, pay any cost, go to any length, in the pursuit of justice.
I tell you this without fear of contradiction. I know my people, as you, I think, do not. What I know reassures me. It also causes me to tremble with dread of the future.
In the days to come, there will be recrimination and accusation, fingers pointing to determine whose failure al- lowed this to happen and what can be done to prevent it from happening again. There will be heightened security, misguided talk of revoking basic freedoms. We'll go forward from this moment sobered, chastened, sad. But determined, too. Unimaginably determined.
You see, the steel in us is not always readily apparent. That aspect of our character is seldom understood by people who don't know us well. On this day, the family's bickering is put on hold.
As Americans, we will weep; as Americans, we will mourn; and as Americans, we will rise in defense of all that we cherish.
So I ask again: What was it you hoped to teach us? It occurs to me that maybe you just wanted us to know the depths of your hatred. If that's the case, consider the message received. And take this message in exchange: You don't know my people. You don't know what we're capable of.
You don't know what you just started.
But you're about to learn.

Summer

I promised myself I would get back here by this week. I mean, I promised myself I'd be back here all summer but when I realized it was moving as quickly as the school year if not quicker, I dropped the ball. So here is an attempt to begin again.

My summer is rapidly coming to a close. For three months I have been working in an office, working for friends, catching up with friends while they don't live a train ride away, and dealing with the more colossal moments of life that seem to come in numbers. You know what they say :: When it rains, it pours.

A friend and I have talked many times about the scene of Magnolia with Tom Cruise and Philip Seymour Hoffman where it starts raining frogs. The movie jumps from story line to story line that previously had no common thread, and in each it is teeming frogs. The characters, understandably, are shocked and all activity ceases as they watch in awe--frogs hitting their windshields, windows, and heads. And just as suddenly as it started, it stops. The world is quiet. And every scene slowing begins again. Those that were eating continue eating, conversing, walking, driving. And no one ever talks about it again. It's not to say when our worlds crumble we ignore it and never talk about it again, but we do learn that life goes on. When events that are sadder or stranger than we ever imagined possible smack us in the face, we still walk into the office the next morning with a smile on our face, we still meet our friends for dinner, and life keeps rolling on around us, so must we.

It's a crazy phenomena that speaks to the layers and multiplicities of life that are constantly present. There is so much sweetness and so much sorrow that can be wrapped up in the same week, day, minute. I wish I could write about it as eloquently as Virginia Woolf or Jonathan Franzen, but instead Ill just continue to marvel at the wonder of it all.

There were so many sweet moments this summer and I feel so fortunate to have the people and family that I do in my life. I have so missed writing. Fingers are crossed that it works it's way back into my routine.

*Image taken last weekend in Montauk, New York at the Montauket Inn.

From "To the Wedding"

I was at a dinner party last weekend. A birthday, at a restaurant, with really fantastic people. It was the kind of evening where you start talking and laughing, and while you bounce from conversation to conversation, it feels as though there is never so much as a breath in between. You move places at the table, you eat only because food is dropped in front of you, and before you know it it's the next day. You feel as though you were part of a greater whole whether you know every individual at the table or you were meeting some of them for the first time. This is my favorite kind of night. Perhaps it didn't hurt that it was on my favorite island, and included a raw bar and dirty martinis, extra dirty. But even minus these pluses it was perfect. These are my favorite nights, and it wasn't until coming home that I read a quote from a book that perfectly described how these nights morph you from 16 individuals to one moving creature. It was the perfect way to kick off summer, and I hope there are many more such evenings to be had. Happy weekend.

"Everyone at the table in the orchard sits down to eat. With the meat they will drink dark wine. The guests start to touch each other more often, jokes pass quicker. When somebody forgets, somebody remembers for him or her. They hold hands when they laugh. Some take off things they were wearing before - a tie a scarf, a pair of sandals which have become too tight. The cutlets on the board demand to be picked up and stripped clean with teeth. Everybody shares.

The wedding guests are becoming a single animal who has been fed well. A creature half mythical [...] Probably as old as man's discovery of fire, this creature never lives more than a day or two and is only reborn when there is something more to celebrate. Which is why feasts are rare. For those who become the creature, it is important to find a name to which it answers whilst alive, for only then can then recall, in their memory afterwards, how for a while, they lost themselves in its happiness."

- To the Wedding // John Berger
Image courtesy of alecvanderboom.com

Met Gala

Who can wear a jean jacket to the Met Gala, and make it look perfectly appropriate ? Jenna can.

Photo courtesy of Jcrew.

More Spring

Even if it still sort of feels like winter. Happy May, Happy weekend.

April in Providence.

"Poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of light within whihc we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change. Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. In the forefront of our move toward change, there is only our poetry to hint at the possibility made real." - Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider

Marathon Monday

In honor of a big day here in New England, here is a recipe for bars I found over at Green Kitchen Stories. She still has yet to let me down with a recipe. I made these for my two newly found vegan sisters and one called them, and I quote, "life altering." Happy Marathon Monday !

Raw Hemp Protein Bars ::

Dry ingredients
1 cup (240 ml) pumpkin seeds
1 cup (240 ml) coconut flakes
1/2 cup (120 ml) hemp hearts
1/2 cup (120 ml) hemp protein powder (you can use hemp hearts instead)
4 tbsp chia seeds
2 tbsp bee pollen (optional)

Wet ingredients
20 fresh medjool dates, pitted
6 tbsp coconut oil, melted
4 tbsp (raw) cacao powder
1 tsp grounded vanilla or vanilla extract
6 tbsp rolled oats
2 tbsp poppy seeds

In a food processor or blender, pulse the dry ingredients quickly. Do not over-process, we want it crunchy. Place the mixture in a bowl and set aside. Add all wet ingredients to the food processor or high speed blender and blend to combine. This might take some time, and if your blender isn’t strong enough you might have to help out by stirring around a few times with a fork or add a dash of water.
Pour the wet ingredients over the dry ingredients, add oats and poppy seeds and stir until well combined. Spread the batter evenly into a 11 x 7-inch (28 x 18 cm) baking dish, make sure it becomes quite compact. Place in the fridge for about 30 minutes. Cut into bars. Wrap them in paper and store in an air-tight container. Will keep around a week in the fridge.

#Makeitcount.

All the quotes that flash in these four minutes are quotes you know. Just the same, their words we can never hear enough.