Happy Valentine’s Day! A few weeks ago I was stuck on a muddy road outside Tarma, Peru waiting over an hour for construction to clear. Was I frustrated? Of course. But after awhile I stopped fussing about getting to our destination and started focusing on the unexpected beauty around me. I saw a good [...]
Happy New Year! I hope you made very merry over the holidays. So much so that you’re just now turning to New Year’s Resolutions. I haven’t made a single one, but I have enjoyed dipping into Susannah Conway’s Unraveling Workbook for 2014. The workbook is a free download and gives you lots of writing prompts [...]
All right. Time to stop getting distracted by stocking stuffers and get down to serious gift-buying. If you’re giving to someone who leans towards contemporary design on a less than stratospheric budget, consider the collection of well-edited designs presented in Remodelista: A Manual for the Considered Home (Artisan). The book culls ideas from the popular [...]
Woah. My busy week got busier last week with an unexpected death in the family—my Uncle Bob, patriarch of the Cool California Cousin branch of the Loosli clan, passed away and I needed to make my way to Newport Beach for his funeral. I had a lovely time with those CCCs and my mom and [...]
This is the time of year when we often get the chance to talk about things we’re grateful for. Do you have a regular gratitude practice otherwise? Or is counting your blessings a seasonal novelty like cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie? Years ago I started a practice of writing down good things that had happened [...]
I don’t know about you, but I’m finally tuning in to the holiday calendar and starting to think about gifts for friends and family. Right now I’m considering several recently released design books as possible gifts. Over the next few weeks I’ll share some favorites in hopes of helping you whittle down your own gift [...]
When we were young and broke it was a challenge to fill our empty walls with something more than inexpensive framed posters. We actually rented our first piece of original art through a rent-to-buy program at the Oakland Museum. That program has since been discontinued (though SFMOMA still runs one), but I’m grateful that it [...]
Yep. They’re back. Found them in the pocket of an apron I wore briefly on the day they went missing when I made dinner last night–safely out of Mercury Retrograde. Oh, and Miss Venezuela won the Miss Universe pageant.
This week there was mischief afoot. On Tuesday I lost my keys for good, as best I can tell. I remember using them last when I came into my house after walking with a friend and threw them in the little pink tray on the shelf above my desk. But Wednesday morning the keys [...]
If you’re design-inclined and traveling to New York or Boston in the next two months, you’ll probably enjoy one or both of the shows I saw when I wasn’t ogling leaves in New England. The first is the beautiful John Singer Sargent Watercolors exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston which showcases ninety-two watercolors [...]
