Saw this on Huffington Post today (along with a larger collection of really beautiful images) and it made me soooo nostalgic for springtime. Any day now…
Shinjuku Park, Tokyo
DAVID MAREUIL/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images via The Huffington Post
bits of inspiration – #1.
The current wave of January-esque weather around Boston has left me feeling a little irritable the past few days. It’s frustrating when something totally out of your control can have such a negative impact on your mood, especially when I know that I have plenty for which to be really grateful. In an effort to boost my own spirits and practice some mindfulness, I’m committing to posting one image per day (either my own or found) that inspires some joy for me. For now, I’m calling these bits of inspiration.
The first of these is a photo I took yesterday while leaving my apartment. I look up to take in this view everyday and there’s something about the relationship of these buildings and the reflection of the greater city-scape that I never get tired of seeing. Even on a chilly day in April Boston is beautiful!
#techstyle at the MFA.
On Sunday I visited the Museum of Fine Arts for the opening of it’s newest contemporary exhibit, #techstyle. The exhibit explores technology’s influence on fashion design and was really remarkable to see. Several works were intended as performance art while others addressed the issue of waste and sustainability by utilizing repurposed materials. I was especially drawn to a number of pieces that had been created using 3-D printers.
The show runs through July 10 and I would highly recommend seeing it. Below are some photos I took during my visit. Enjoy!
Incertitudes shirt and shorts, Ying Gao
MFA Dress, CuteCircuit
Solar Dress, Pauline Van Dongen
Anthozoa Cape and Skirt, Iris van Herpen and Neri Oxman
Kinematics 8 dress, Jessica Rosenkrantz
Molecule shoes, Francis Bitoni
Wearable Drawings; leather jacket, Elvira ‘t Hart
Ensemble, Noa Raviv
Metallic Leather Fringe Dress, Giles Deacon
Engineered Reptile Print dress. Sally LaPointe
Wearable Art, Viktor&Rolf Haute Couture
decorating with portraiture.
I’ve always been drawn to images of people. For as long as I can remember, images that capture something truly human an intimate about an individual have always been infinitely more interesting to me than fruit on tables or anything else really. As a college senior, when it came to choosing a subject matter for my thesis show I naturally chose to paint a series of portraits depicting my closest friends and family. When portraits of any medium are present in a room, they have they effect of feeling like real presence in your home – they become characters that you live with. Below I’ve put together a few examples of decorating with portraiture from some of my favorite design inspiration sites. Enjoy!
long weekend in north conway.
“I prefer winter and Fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape–the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show. ”
–Andrew Wyeth
Over the long weekend my family celebrated my mom’s 60th birthday in North Conway, New Hampshire. Growing up, my mom’s family used to rent houses in New Hampshire and Vermont for ski getaways at least once every winter. As we’ve all grown up and kids have become adults, this tradition became a lot more difficult to keep up and we probably haven’t all been away together in about 15 years. I took on the planning of this weekend and I was so happy that everyone was on board. I had heard a lot of good things about North Conway and the town did not disappoint. The town’s center has a lot of little shops and restaurants that I wish we could have had more time to spend exploring.
One of my favorite parts of the weekend was snowshoeing for the first time at Peaked Mountain. It was snowing the whole time we hiked and really looked like a winter wonderland. On Sunday I went skiing at Cranmore Mountain but the conditions were pretty icy since there hasn’t been a ton of snow this winter. Luckily there’s always the lodge! Here are some photos I took throughout the weekend. Enjoy!
Here are a couple photos of the house we rented. This home was perfectly situated between the mountain and the town. Super cozy with two fireplaces. It was a great place to stay with a large group.
This was the house next door but I had to get a picture because of loved its retro chalet vibe.
Start of the hike
Here was Jared’s favorite of North Conway’s shops
Icy day on the mountain
But the view was still beautiful.
bedroom refresh.
If you saw my previous post about cohabitation and you may have noticed that I didn’t include any photos of my bedroom in the sampling of images of our apartment. At the time the bedroom was still a work in progress and I didn’t want to share anything until I felt more satisfied with the way it looked. Since that post we’ve made some upgrades to our bedding and a couple décor items, which I think have elevated the feel of the room in a great way.
Part of the reason this room took a little longer than the rest is because it was a complete departure from the way I’ve approached decorating my bedroom in previous apartments. As I’ve mentioned in other posts, Jared and I are living together for the first time in this apartment so the merging of personal styles has forced me to negotiate our shared space in ways I’ve not had to think about before. My personal tendency in terms of color palette has always leaned more toward cool tones, while Jared favors vibrant reds and oranges. To illustrate this, here is an image of my bedroom in a prior apartment where I lived with roommates.
When we moved in together I didn’t take my old bedding with me because it was several years old and beginning to show some wear. Initially we threw Jared’s existing bedding on the bed, without any frame or headboard, while we focused on unpacking and decorating other rooms.
“before” photo
When we finally got around to this room I knew that we would be hanging a very bright, mostly orange tapestry that Jared had bought on a vacation in Zanzibar years ago. Aside from the personal preference of my boyfriend, I didn’t think it would make sense to go with my typical cool blue/grey palette in this room when our most prominent piece of artwork didn’t really fit into that aesthetic.
we framed this ourselves with directions from this tutorial.
After a lot of pinterest-boarding and obsessive deal hunting I found a collection of red-orange bedding that I thought would work in our space. I had big plans to DIY my own headboard but before I got around to it a friend offered us a beautiful wooden bedframe that he and his wife no longer wanted. Here is the final result:
Duvet cover & shams – west elm
Embroidered throw pillow – One Kings Lane
Euro shams – Kohls
rooms with monochromatic molding.
I find myself really loving the idea of monochromatic rooms lately. One trend that I’ve seen popping up around some of my favorite design sites and blogs recently is this painting of crown molding to match the walls of a room. There’s something so elegant and bold at the same time about this look that I find really satisfying. Sharing some of my favorites below – enjoy!
SoWa holiday market.
On Sunday I visited the SoWa Holiday Market for the first time. Although I’d heard good things I arrived with pretty low expectations. I’ve been to other holiday craft markets and was envisioning a collection of kind of chotchkie ornaments and snow globes. I have to say that I was SO pleasantly surprised by the quality of really everything at this market. I was actually overwhelmed by how many things I loved and wanted. I kept myself in check and only made two purchases but the damage could have been much worse. Here are just a sampling of the photos I took.
and then the food…
My two purchased items:
a screenprint on vintage newspaper by Nate Murrell
and some gourmet hot chocolate by Yummy Mummy Brownies.
the arcs at the orpheum theater.
“I was born to love her, everybody knows
Just the way it is, just the way it goes
She’s a cold companion, like a desert rose
The worse it is, the more she glows”
-The Arcs, Cold Companion
Earlier this year I posted a brief list of albums I was enjoying. The list included “Yours Dreamily“, the first studio album by The Arcs. For those unfamiliar, Arcs is a rock band created as a side project from The Black Keys guitarist and prolific producer of incredible music, Dan Auerbach. I had learned about a month ago that The Arcs would be performing at The Orpheum Theater in Boston in December. Having just racked up a hefty credit card debt buying Christmas presents I thought I might have to sit this one out and try to catch them the next time around. Out of curiosity this week I decided to see if ticket prices had dropped at all and turns out they had had! I came across two 3rd row orchestra seats for $18 each on SeatGeek. I convinced myself that it was a sign from the universe that I was meant to see this show and bought the tickets.
The Arcs is a relatively new band and the show was not heavily promoted but this deal still seemed pretty insane considering The Black Keys have sold out TD Garden (about 17K people capacity). I was only about 60% sure that the tickets weren’t counterfeit but to my relief they scanned and we were let in and ushered to the best seats I’ve ever had at a concert.
The show was really incredible. Dan Auerbach seems like a mad scientist having an out-of-body experience when he’s performing. I have seen The Black Keys in concert before but being this close to the musicians was a totally different experience. There was some trippy projected lighting and a few potted plants on stage but otherwise the set was really simple and low-tech. The paired down set felt really fitting to this band that seems solely committed to just making authentically great music free of any other frivolity.
Below are some photos I took throughout the show. Enjoy!
Had to shout out the beauty that is the Orpheum Theater. Like a lot of theaters in Boston it is really old (1852) and could use a little love in places (the seats) but still.. such a beautiful space to see a show.
Now onto the concert
Back-up vocals and instrumentals are provided by Julie Justine Acosta, Mireya Ramos and Shae Fiol, three members of the all-female mariachi group Flor de Toloache. I spent at least half of the concert just watching them because they were so talented and seemed like they were having the most fun.
turkey day decor from around the web.
This year marks only the second time I’ve been tasked with contributing something to my family’s Thanksgiving dinner. Following the success* of last year’s pumpkin dinner rolls, I thought I’d stick with the festive breads category but wanted to try something new.
*note: success = edible, instagramable.
A couple weeks ago I did a little research for festive Thanksgiving bread/rolls and came across this jalapeño cornbread recipe by the most talented person alive, Martha Stewart. You can definitely make this recipe in any regular baking pan but because I happen to care as much (or more) about the presentation as the food itself, I knew I needed these Turkey molds. Unfortunately these are no longer available as part of Martha’s line at Macys BUT after a little perusing of the comments section, I found that you can now buy the same pans at William Sonoma!
I will be baking turkey-shaped cakes all year-round long to justify this purchase.
One thing that attracted me to this mold was that it felt unexpected in a kind of funny way. Sandwiched between Halloween and Christmas, I think Thanksgiving gets a little left out of the décor cycle. Part of the reason for this might be that turkeys aren’t particularly “cute” in the way that pumpkins or snowflakes or ornaments can be. I work in an area of Massachusetts where wild turkeys can often be seen roaming around in packs and yeah.. not the most beautiful creatures.
I decided to spend a little time looking around on some of my favorite home décor sites and see what was out there in terms of turkey-specific items that you’d actually want to put in your house. I was able to find a handful of items that I think are pretty cute. Enjoy!
Turkey Pheasant Wreath
One Kings Lane, $95.00 – $195.00
Turkey Napkin Ring
Crate&Barrel, $4.95/each
Turkey Napkins
Wayfair, $29.00
Maple Turkey Carving Board
Crate&Barrel, $24.47
Turkey Salt & Pepper Shaker Set
Wayfair, $25.95
Turkey Napkins
Crate&Barrel, $6.95/each
Turkey Platter
Wayfair, $30.99
Block Print Turkey Towel
AllModern, $15.95
*I’m not actually sure if I think this last one is cute or just strange but here it is anyway:
Trot Turkey Candle Holder
CB2, $12.95
littlebitsjournal.com 