Road Food: Astoria, Oregon

I loved everything about Astoria Coffee House & Bistro: the food, the coffee, but especially the decor! Very vintage chic.

L'Amour Fou art

I'm crazy about the opening and closing titles for the film "L'Amour Fou" as illustrated by Aurore Giscard d'Estaing after Yves Saint Laurent's own designs.










What did I think about the actual film? Well, it was interesting to see how much of a toll being in the background can take on a person. Pierre Bergé, partner in love and business with Yves Saint Laurent for 50 years certainly loved his husband, but the film painted a dark portrait of Saint Laurent as someone difficult to love and live with. In one part, Bergé says that he only saw Saint Laurent happy twice a year: at the close of his runway shows each year. Within 24 hours of the end of applause, Saint Laurent would descended into a deep, deep depression. Perhaps it's not surprising that Bergé would want to sell the artwork they'd acquired together over the years, that they did not bring good memories, instead a reminder of a bittersweet life. Who knows. For his part, Bergé seems quintessentially French: stiff, reserved, formal, unsentimental. Not really a fuzzy bear to come home to.

Yet, I thought about how much of Bergé's own ambition was set aside in order to facilitate the life and business of the manic artist. Another casualty, it seems of Saint Laurent was his "muse" Loulou de la Falaise who the Guardian called "a fixer, friend and supportive shoulder to" Saint Laurent, but, given other circumstances could have had her own fashion empire without living in the shadows.

Ahhh, fashion. It's really not so glamorous underneath it all.

All aboard!

I saw this train on the tracks outside OMSI and I just about had a design-induced heart attack! What a gorgeous color combination! What tremendously cool fontage!

This is an actual operable train, though I have not been on it or taken a journey on a train in many, many years. I might be convinced to take Amtrak if it looks this great...

Summer's Last Splash

Richard Christiansen is the fantabulous brains behind Chandelier Creative in NYC. His weekend getaway house in Montauk is bedecked with fabulous vintage linens, Anthropologie globes hanging from trees, witty phrases written in lipstick on bathroom mirrors, and on and on. It's a glorious place and not any of it, down to the Hawaiian shirts made into cushions lining the dock is a mistake or the result of happenstance. As Penelope Green of the NY Times describes him:

Having grown up helping his parents package “the authentic Australian experience” for Japanese tourists on their farm (putting frozen crabs into a river to be “caught”), Mr. Christiansen is adept at creating stage sets and finding shortcuts that read as authentic.

Having worked with Richard for almost two years in NYC, I can attest to his nearly insane level of creativity. It comes out of his pores and he lives and breathes his work. Quite inspirational really*. And authentic, actually. He really loves his friends and the (usually) gorgeous creatives that surround him. So if he had to work extra hard to create an authentic surf shack, it wasn't fake. There was a lot of heart in there too.

(I love what Richard does, but I couldn't live the life he does, or did back nearly 10 years ago when we worked together. But what's inspirational was that even back then he said he wanted to have his own agency and he worked his ass off and did it. And did it fabulously, I might add!)




Photos: 1-3 via Garance Doré, 4 & 5, the NY Times.

1970s Film Posters

Fun & funky movie posters from the 1970s (Via wrongsideoftheart.com)

Basement Office Tour

Here are some pictures of my office that happens to be in the basement. I like to have a bed in my office not so much for napping (which comes in handy when I'm having a George Costanza moment) but for making piles of projects that might otherwise end up on the floor.

I'm also a big fan of bulletin boards:


I try to rotate pictures, but I love all of these images so much that I can't bear to take them down. There are Walker Evans postcards, paint chip samples, variations on "reclining lady" paintings, a poster from Leslie and the Ly's when they played in Portland, a trailer park motel in Arizona that I want to live in... But one of my favorite images is below, next to the zebra:


That's Leigh Bowery, a performance artist, and his parents. I absolutely love these two very proper British parents posing for a picture with their son who happens to be wearing completely crazy makeup. To me, it's the ultimate in acceptance of both child and parent. Or as they say in Hair: "Be whoever you are, do whatever you want to do. Just so long as you don't hurt anybody."

Here's a little nook that I crammed a bookshelf into and topped with one of my father's taxidermy birds:

This is a little vinyl letter art that inspires me:

Little Person lost in the desert.

What a terrible way to go.

Toddler appliqué!

About a week ago, I found this adorable T-shirt at Target. The very next day, the adorable shirt was involved in a very sad incident involving dirt, mustard, and other unknown staining agents. Upon washing, the multi-colored stain extended over the entire front of the adorable shirt. But, I refused to throw it away. So, I used a vintage pillowcase from my fabric scrap bin and cut out a rose design, pinned it so that most of the appliqué could cover the stain and sewed it on with my sewing machine. Here's the adorable shirt before:



And after:



Still adorable!

Little People Overboard

Ikea hack: Magnetic easel board

Here's Ikea's $19.99 MÅLA easel:



Seems like a pretty good deal, except that one side is a faux-chalkboard and the other other is a dry erase board. Maybe it's just my kid, but if there was a dry erase pen around, the only place it won't be used is the dry erase board. So, with $10 worth of metal sheeting from Lowes, and we've got a magnetic board for her letters:

More Creepy Little People

FisherPrice Little People. Who knew what their interior lives were all about...

Creepy cool Little People

These are photos that I did of my daughter's Little People collection. I love how they are so cheerful, but a little creepy.