Blogger's Favorites -- Lucia of Paper Weight

Every once in a while, I have the privilege of posting a Blogger's Favorite list from someone who I not only admire on the Internet but is also a soul-sister in real-life. My dear friend Lucia falls squarely into that category, and she is truly spectacular friends.

I am so enamored of/impressed by/obsessed with her blog, Paper Weight, that I filch images from it regularly. It's smart and quietly opinionated and thought-provoking and artful and beautiful and a little edgy...Basically it's pretty much the embodiment of Lucia.

So without further ado, herewith Luicia's favorites. Enjoy and have a splendid weekend!



stacks. I love the implicit order of stacks -- stacks of books, stacks of towels, stacks of papers, stacks of dishes, stacks of pancakes, stacks of napkins, stacks of wood, stacks of chairs -- vertically fending off chaos.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude. They were a mighty pair. Their approach to changing the world through interventions of tremendous beauty, and their creative partnership and vision, have shaped the way my husband and I think about our own work in the world. I can't say that we don't try to emulate them on a regular basis. Our motto is basically WWCJCD: "What would Christo and Jeanne-Claude do?"

heirlooms. Growing up, for every special occasion or milestone birthday, my mom gave me something of hers, pulled out of a special drawer in her dresser or from the china cabinet: scarves for my unruly hair, a charm bracelet, a clutch for parties, a ream of pink damask silk bought by her grandmother, a tarnished tea service, wooden and tortoiseshell napkin rings. Her entrusted gifts taught me to treasure things with a history. Subsequently, as an artist, memory is the thing I think about most.



creative clutter. I grew up in an academic household with professor parents that accrued massive piles of teaching-clutter around their desks and reading chairs. While it drives me a little nuts that I've inherited their habit of saving everything, I do feel inordinately comforted by the sight of scribbled-upon legal pads and books full of margin notes, paperweights and paperclips, as well as coffee cups, cups of pens that don't work, and the ubiquitous unsharpened pencil. (Louboutin's workspace photo via Ivan Terestchenko)



Juliette Binoche. Graceful, fiery, measured and brilliant. My favorite role of hers is in the movie Bleu, by the Polish director Krzysztof Kieślowski, where she plays a grieving widow with an exacting poise and unruliness that is just phenomenal art-making.



rooms like this. I love a room that's part white and crisp, part worn-out, lived-in, loved. (image via eco stylista)



reading to kids/kids reading. Gosh, I love to read to my littles, especially books full of impossible adventure and heroics (which is probably why they're all obsessed with sword fighting and horses). Even more than I love read to them, I love to walk in on them lying on the floor engrossed in a big old fashioned book.

Some Goodness and The Final "Beach Week" Giveaway...

image via clear north...

Given the current circumstances, I thought it would be helpful to my state of mind (which continues to improve, thanks in part to all your immense loveliness yesterday) to revel in some goodness. Practicing gratitude was, after all, one of my 2011 goals.

So herewith five things I am thankful for at this very moment:

• The green curry that lovely cousin Erin brought over for dinner last night.
  


• The peals of (genuine) laughter (not the usual laughter followed by fighting) coming from the girlies' makeshift sleeping quarters in the den this morning.


• My tinyDallas partners -- I am immensely grateful for those lovely, smart, funny, kind ladies.
  


• Watching Audrey and Bryan painstakingly construct a LEGO house last night which lead to a marathon session on the Internet looking at Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture. Man, I love those two together.
  


• This post... it's just so right on. You are a wise one Elizabeth!

Ok and now, as promised, the final "Beach Week" giveaway that I completely dropped the ball on last week. The lovely Meg and Teresa, the ladies behind one of my all-time favorite kid's lines, Kit + Lili (the girlies wear their K+L dresses non-stop), have offered up a sweet size four "Franny" dress in lavender leaf stripe...pictured below. (It could also be worn as a top by a five or six year-old.)

Just leave a comment on this post by Sunday, May 1st at Midnight CST, and I'll announce the winner on Monday.

And, without further ado, some of the things that inspired Meg & Teresa as they created the Kit + Lili Spring/Summer 2011 collection.


image via Leslie Williamson

Light -- we love how the sun rays stream in our studio/office.

image via Saipua

Nature -- Wood, Pebbles and Roses (my dad loved roses and cultivated them, had tons of books on roses in his library).

The Beach

Girls -- they love to twirl, spin, skip, jump, somersault & have high tea!

Prints from Past Collections -- apples, waves, leaf stripe, hearts & fish...

The Anatomy of A Breakdown

Have you ever seen the movie Ponyo? The girlies are completely obsessed with it...love it...watch it non-stop. I, on the other hand, am completely irked by it. Specifically, I'm completely irked by Sosuke's mom in the movie, Lisa. She's a complete basket-case, careening down seaside cliffs in her car in the pouring rain, leaving her five-year old son to fend for himself in their house during a tsunami and, upon learning that her husband will miss dinner because he has to work an extra shift on his fishing boat, throwing herself on the floor face-down in a heap of sobs...but not without popping open a can of beer first. (By the way, this is an animated movie, in case you're wondering.)

Come on Lisa...pull yourself together for God's sake!

Every time the girls watch the movie (did I mention they watch it a. lot.) I throw in my two-cents on how lame Lisa is...I just can't help myself.

So it was perhaps the lowest moment of my mothering existence when, after finding me face-down on Audrey's floor sobbing last night, Millie declared, "hey, you're just like Sosuke's mom."

No, if I were Sosuke's mom, I'd be drinking a beer too, thus feeling a lot better than I feel right now.

Why was I sobbing, you might be wondering? Well I'll tell ya (finally...sorry about the long intro). On Monday, just as we were finally settled in, unpacked and organized post-vacation, the plumbing leading to our toilet sort of well...exploded, spewing water everywhere, for a long, long time. Bryan came home from lunch to find our master bedroom, the hall and various other spots in the back of the house (+ part of the living room) under a couple of inches of water.

Good times.

So now we're in the thick of it, weaving our way through a maze of giant de-humidifiers and industrial fans (needless to say, it's loud), watching baseboards get pried off, wood flooring get ripped up, and gumball-sized holes unceremoniously drilled into the walls. Our stuff is turned upside down, the furniture is all caddywhompus...it's quite a sight really. In the meantime, we've decamped to the front of the house, occupying the guest room and an air mattress in the den. This novel arrangement would be sort of fun if it weren't for all the chaos happening around us. (In fact, I would highly recommend camping out in your guest room or living room a few times a year. It's like going on vacation without leaving home, but I digress.)

I held it together pretty well in the beginning, but late yesterday afternoon a trio of happenings lead to my Lisa-esque breakdown: my OCD firmly kicked in, making the mess my house had become completely freak me out, I stubbed my toe hard on a de-humidifier, and then I bumped into my dresser (which was wedged in front of the laundry room door) and knocked off and broke one of my favorite little vases that was perched on top of it. And then I promptly lost it. It was ugly.

image via my lovely friend Stephanie's fantastic blog, let it be.

Thankfully, the sobbing combined with Millie's damning assessment of the situation seemed to prove cathartic, as I woke up today feeling pretty optimistic. Rest assured, I am still supremely bummed about the whole enterprise. My house (that I so lovingly scrubbed and organized and primped and prepped for that home tour a couple of weeks ago) is a complete shambles, oh and did I mention I'm throwing a party for 30 people on Saturday!? But, somehow, things seem a bit less dire.

And on the upside, the whole experience, has me (yet again) re-evaluating my relationship with all the stuff in my house, if not fueling my über-minimalism fantasies -- I'm pretty close to chucking it all and moving into a teeny, tiny abode somewhere... just me, Bryan, the girlies and our ten favorite possessions.

Sounds nice, doesn't it?

Loving...

Calypso's "Maiden" dress, which, despite not adhering to my normal M.O. on the dress front (i.e. it's long and printed) I can't get out of my head. To me, it somehow feels like the perfect summer dress...

More perfection from Commune (via Architectural Digest). I love this room. L.O.V.E. I think, unchanged, it would feel totally modern 20 years from now -- my ultimate test of good design...longevity. (Spotted on the lovely Caitlin's blog.)

Edward Gorch's dreamy photography...I'm wishing I were that girl right about now, rather than dealing with the aftermath of some wicked flooding in our house...more on that later. (spotted via First Came Love.)

Gertrud Vasegaard's pottery. All of it. (Spotted via Lucia...of course)

Andrew Paynter's "Working Artists" series. I especially love the shots of Serena Mitnik-Miller.

This perfect vignette...love the art and the little bit of green breaking through that otherwise neutral scene. Stunning. (image of Kettle's Yard via Remodelista)

Jesse Kamm's new totes. In terms of summer-worthy properties, I'd classify them up there with that dress at the beginning of the post...

Scenes from The Week (Beach Edition) + Giveaway Winners

Each year, for seven days in mid-April, here's what we don't do: listen to NPR, open our computers, look at our blackberries, talk on the phone, drive, brush our hair (frequently at least), wear proper footwear, eschew ice cream as a viable lunch option, make any solid plans, rush...

What pretty much goes down during that early spring week is such prosaic (and highly essential activities) as cruising around on our bikes, pondering the merits of shrimp tacos over pulled pork sandwiches, deciding between spf 30 and spf 50, and digging holes in the sand (maybe one of the most underrated activities of all time -- highly satisfying...who knew?)

Here's the thing about our annual beach vacation. It's just that, a vacation. It's easy in all the right ways. We go to the same place, with the same people (who we love dearly) at roughly the same time of year. And this familiarity coupled with the novelty of how different the rhythm of our days and the landscape are from that of our day-to-day existence is somehow the perfect recipe for relaxation. It is by far one of the best weeks of our entire year, prompting us to start counting the days until we can return the minute we set-out for home at the end of the week.

For some reason, I'm especially melancholy this year since getting home. Maybe it's because the girls were older making the trip easier (despite sweet hubby's cast-bound arm, Millie tumbling off our friend's shoulders into the ocean and Audrey getting stung by a jellyfish and attended to by a screaming firetruck toting seven strapping firemen...good times!), maybe it was how badly we all needed a vacation going into it...who knows. All I know is I'm not ready to be back yet.

But I keep telling myself that part of being sad that vacation is over is what makes vacation special... Right?

Ok and now for the "Beach Week Giveaway" winners...the Wolfum napkins go to Megan Taylor, and the winner of the f. is for frank necklace is Kristin Orser. Congrats ladies!

I should also acknowledge that I totally flaked on posting my third giveaway last week due to the altogether slakerish mindset I adopted while basking in sun and sand. So I'll post it later this week -- a little "home from vacation" giveaway if you will. Stay tuned.

Hope you all had a fantastic week!

"Beach Week" Giveaways -- f. is for frank

Next up in the "beach week" giveaways, f. is for frank.

I'm lucky to call the lovely and hugely talented ladies behind the line, Shannah and Casey, friends in real-life. I truly love the things they create. It's interesting and wholly unique...really unlike anything else that's out there, which in this era of "sameness" is saying something.

They've offered up one of my favorite pieces from their latest collection -- a gold kiss weight on a rose gold chain.... The charm is cast pewter and plated with a satin gold plated finish. Just leave a comment on this post by Sunday, April 24th at midnight, and I'll announce the winner on Monday.

And now for a few of the things that are inspiring Shannah and Casey of late. Enjoy!

Nature and Nuts... Nature has always been a huge inspiration to our design process. We love texture and organic shape and there is no better place to find those two elements than in nature. While living in Washington, DC, Shannah picked up a hickory nut shell and held on to it for a few years. She found the natural heart shape in it particularly intriguing. When we started designing our newest collection, we cast the nut and decided to design a whole series around it.

Friends... Our friends are always inspiring us in the most unusual ways. Shannah’s friends created these masks out of leather last Halloween and she decided to create something special for their spirit animals!

Peacock... We have been talking about incorporating the peacock somehow in our design for a while. The particular peacock that we ended up using was an image Shannah had used years ago for some pieces she made for some friends. We decided to revisit the image for this collection in order to create a graphic yet fluid design series.

Mad about plaid... Plaid was out in full force this season and it totally inspired our woven series. I knew I had to make something large, square and plaid.

Inspired by random pictures... When designing we sift through tons of catalogs, magazines and blogs to pull out anything that grabs us. The African charms specifically inspired by this picture.

"Beach Week" Giveaways -- Wolfum

To sort of celebrate my vacation -- with you guys -- I wanted to do something a little different this week...a few giveaways, with a twist. I've picked three designers that I highly respect (and whose products I own and love) and asked each of them to share what inspired them as they created their latest line. They've also each generously agreed to offer up a gift to one of you.

I'm kicking things off with Annabel from Wolfum. I am hugely fond of Annabel's interesting, modern, artful textiles. I bought two of her "Blue Love" pillows recently, and they are among my absolute favorite purchases.

Annabel has offered up a set of her "flame stitch" cloth napkins (pictured above). Just leave a comment on this post by Sunday the 24th at midnight, and I'll announce a winner when I'm back on Monday!

And without further ado, here's what's inspiring Annabel...Enjoy!

"Lokki" fabric by Maija Isola for Marimekko – I bought this fabric on eBay and then stretched it to use as wall art. It is a perfect example of how a simple shape is made wonderful through color and proportion. Clean, organic, balanced and totally modern. I admire this recipe.

Architecture in Nature -- Whenever I’m designing, it helps to imagine the homes in which I see my product. This is my favorite home, all nestled in the woods. It is so quiet yet makes quite a statement.

Family -- These are my paternal grandparents when they were first courting. He was Italian and imported textiles; she was a New York socialite. They were both very eccentric and strong willed and I love how they complimented and contradicted each other. He inspires texture and vibrancy while she evokes order and etiquette.

Alexander Girard – So much to love! His work is prolific, his colors are surprising and his designs find that perfect balance of sophistication and quirk. The folk art elements remind me of my childhood and the use of print with product serves as the roots of Wolfum.

Kelly Wearstler -- "living without color is like living without love"