I'm getting into a whole new flow this week, with my newest little love. A cavalier king charles spaniel puppy. Happy 2009!
A few people have asked me about the photographic prints section in the liquid shop. I'm planning to work on getting that section live this weekend. If you have any image requests please leave me a comment or feel free to email me.
As we were making the trek down south to move to Ashland last winter, I received an exciting email. Staci Dumoski the editor of Artful Blogging wrote to ask if I'd like to contribute to a future issue. It was such a unique opportunity to write about my blogging experience, and all of the doors that opened because of it. Last week an advance copy of the winter issue that Liquid Sky Arts is featured in arrived in my mailbox. I love the writing excerpt and photos they chose from previous posts (some of my all time favorite lanterns are now embedded in artful Blogging history, and my English cocker spaniel freckles gets a little dose of fame too).
My sister Christina, came out from Minnesota to visit my new digs in Southern Oregon for the weekend. We visited all of my favorite local haunts, and the nearby lake where we both spent the afternoon lounging around and drawing taking advantage of the lovely 78 degree weather on Sunday. (Today she's going home to snow flurries. We both cracked up with laughter as she informed me on the way to the airport this morning that in Minnesota there are two seasons, winter & road construction!)
Where do you even begin about Paris? It's the most enchanting place I've ever visited, yet also the most difficult. The pulse of the city was embedded in it's history, culture, and dignity. The people watching was amazing. Men with flipped up collars, wearing stylish glasses, with impeccibly trimmed sideburns. You wouldn't even flinch at the sight of a young beautiful man walking down the street smoking a pipe. Women walking their little dogs on leashes, while wearing heels on cobblestone paths. Scarves draped artistically around their necks. I could feel the sense of obligation to beauty & a higher sense of style from everyone living there. At times it felt like walking in a fine tailored dream.
We stayed on Rue Pont Neuf in a very old section of Paris, where the colors of every building bleed together, so every geranium, colored doorway, or awning gleamed in rebellion with their bright hues.
We heard every language imaginable, mused over all of the couples we saw enthralled by romance, and drank our cups of tiny espresso slowly at the corner cafe every morning as we watched the world go by.
I marveled over large gold gilt horse sculptures, and paintings by the masters in the Mus�e d'Orsay (the Louvre was closed when we tried to visit, never go on Tuesdays!), took note of all of the tiny cars and vespa lined streets, and met a very odd guy named Luke (pronounced Luuu--- ick!) who told us all about how he got kicked out of his exchange program in Bakersfield California. Which if you know anything there is to know about that area, there isn't much to say!
We saw every beautiful thing you could imagine in Paris and at the Maison Object show (a tradeshow so amazing it truly deserves it's own post). And I got very lucky. As one of the biggest highlights of this trip was that two of my friends who live in Europe came to meet me. On Sunday Yvonne took the train from Belgium to Paris. We took the day to sightsee, and got teary eyed as we rode the lift on the Eiffel tower and saw the city for the first time from above. It was so visually moving, I could feel my stomach float with butterflies as we rose up above the buildings. We took a water taxi on the Seine around all of the monuments and relaxed after a long day of walking with a glass of wine, on the deck of a boat cafe across from Notre Dame before we said our goodbyes at Les Halles station.
Later that week my fellow adventurer & PaPaYan Eli and I met up with my college roommate Pauline who now lives in Paris, for dinner and the following day took a trip to Sacre Coeur. As we were walking up the stairs of the monument one of the human statues sprang to life and pointed at her exclaiming "oh la la"! (Only in Paris!)
She guided us through the hilly streets of Montmarte (where Amelie was filmed). We had lunch at "Tire Bouchon" a cr�perie where notes, drawings, clippings, photos, etc. are tacked on the walls from travellers passing through Paris. My favorite was the tiny passport photo that said "Don't worry, I'm still alive!!". So it goes without saying that, we were destined to leave our mark too.
Next week we'll be pulling our rental house and garden apart to pack up and move again. My shoulders instantly slumped when the letter arrived saying we had 30 days to move in order to renovate and sell the place.
I'd become really smitten with this house, because it seemed like such a perfect fit for our arrival in Ashland. But as John Lennon once said, "Life is what happens when you're busy making plans". So, please wish us luck!
We just came home from a whirlwind trip down to Southern California, to visit our family and old friends over Easter. It was so warm and sunny down there, just look at that blue sky!
My Aunt lives near China Town (one of our favorite old haunts in Los Angeles), and suggested we take a visit together to check out all of the eye-popping colors that they recently painted the buildings. It was definitely one of the highlights of our trip.
(I took these photos with my iphone. I'm so amazed at how well it captured all of the saturated colors. I'm terribly hooked on this gadget!)
This is one of my favorite photos of all time. I was 20 years old, roaming the streets of Rome with my father who had taken me with him on one of his business trips in December. We passed this alley way and there it was, the perfect Roman holiday scene. Lined up vespas, a tiny fiat, surrounded by enchanting old buildings with graffiti on the walls.... with a living tree decorated in white lights so slight of hand. Like a Christmas magic trick.
This Christmas Eve was so unusual. We unexpectedly went 4 wheel driving on the beach, a very Oregon thing indeed. This time though we found ourselves avoiding all of the scattered tree logs and driftwood that had washed up from the recent storm. So many foreign things on the beach we'd never seen before. Clouds of weird foam bubbles were gliding over the wet sand as if they themselves were living too. While the sandpipers skipped over them. It was a little alarming, but there was also something that felt truly wabi sabi about it, when the sun began to set.
Before we moved up here, I had read stories of beachcombers finding interesting things after a big storm like, messages in bottles, and lost cargo fallen off of ships. So, Shawn kept teasing me, "now go find the rich stuff"! (Rotten luck, not even one Nike.)
Our extreme home make-over (a.k.a. architectural botox)
11.16.2007
The other day I was looking through all of the messy renovation photos from our first home. There's such a strong story that emanates from them. I really wanted to find a special way to put them all together in a special place for us to look back on them as we grow older. So I was excited to rediscover the link on making linen bound books, sitting right there in front of me on Iphoto the other evening. That ping of inspiration hit me. Since then I've been forging my way through all of the hundreds of photographs I've taken over the past few years putting together this book to give to Shawn this Christmas. (Shh-- it's a secret.)
The previous owner was using the home as a domestic agency, and hadn't given the house any love since the 1970's. It had all of the ugly details that would scare off prospective buyers in a trendy historic neighborhood. Dark faux paneling throughout the living room, old brown industrial carpeting, wooden shingles and mirrors on the bedroom wall (yes, that's true!), and a front yard that was 3 inches deep of rocks with overgrown yuccas and sego palms.
Her own decor was really interesting too, as the house was chock full of religious icons, faux flower arrangements, & old autographed celebrity photographs... for goodness sake, there was even a large poster of a holographic Pope on the kitchen wall! That and well, nothing was functional. But it had cute lines, and was in a really good neighborhood at a decent price, so we couldn't help but see it as anything less then a gem in the rough. A lot of people thought we were crazy, and told us so repeatedly. Yet something about it still felt right about it to us, and all of the doors opened up one after another to make this crazy feat possible.
We affectionately called the blue painted front of the house, the "hollywood effect". As the rest of the house (the sides that weren't visible to the street traffic) were still covered with old white crumbly paint for the first few months.
I loved our kitchen. It was huge! You can catch a glimpse of how it originally looked in the upper right hand corner. Our first mission in the house was to clean up everything, so a coat of white paint and sticky tiles were our quick fix until the floors were later striped down to the fir wood floor underneath. We also added wainscoting and subway tiles. (We couldn't part with our vintage stove, it later moved up here with us to Oregon!)
Most of the "before" photos are too scary to show here in public (at least for my taste), my favorite pages are the "after". I still like to look at them with a deep knowing that anything is possible. Even with our tight budget.
It helped to build an Oasis around the chaos of the mess of renovation and the noises of saws and hammers. 4 years later when we decided it was time for us to move on the buyer told me that it was our little "paradise on Glassell". Hmm, now wouldn't that be a great title for the book!? (I really need a good title though, any brilliant ideas?!)
My neighbor has some serious garden mojo! She has these enormous Oriental Poppies trailing over her stone wall, that's certainly snared me envious. Aren't they gorgeous?!
Since our move I often find myself missing things of the familiar. Silly things that were once so accessible I would've never thought twice about them. Like five minute drives to Target, and escalators. (Yes, you read that right. I miss escalators!) But on the flipside one of the best things I can atest to about moving out of state is that there are an abundance of things to do that we've never done before.
This Sunday we decided to take a drive, blissed out by the sunny weather we headed across the bridge that crosses the Columbia river into Washington state to go see the lighthouse at Cape Disappointment.
Amazing how Shawn talked me into hiking with the bad shoes I was wearing, up the hill and down again. But even out of breath, with shoelaces that begrudgingly kept untying themselves it was so worth it. It always is. When I really stop to think about it, Target and escalators were a pretty good trade off. Just look at all of the beauty that surrounds us here, we definitely made out like bandits.
Here are a few photos of our garden's "mystery bulbs" that I had been wondering about. It turns out (the hundreds of green stems) were all bluebells waiting to open. Utterly enchanting. I love the sea of endless color, I wish I could better capture it on film to mirror the way it looks in person.
I hadn't realized just how out of date my Projects section had become on this website. I built it back around 2002, crazy how quick time flies. It's in dire need of broken link fixes and new material. This week I'll be updating with fresh photos and links in the miniature section. Big thanks to Jill, for reminding me!
