Event Hair: Updo that doesn't look like doo-doo

For a wedding, funeral, really any event that requires you to wear grown-up clothes, give air-kisses, and make small talk.

I give you: THE BEST HAIR EVER.



Plus instructions. I'm so good to you, no?


via wrinkled old Real Simple with coffee stains

Get thee to Miami

Almost none of my readers are in San Diego, so this won't apply to everyone. Sorry Charlies!

But remember this post where I lectured and cajoled about finding ways to travel?

$178 roundtrip, tax-inclusive, San Diego to Miami. Just...go already. That's, like, a "don't buy lattes for a month" price. You can do it.

Up next: a reason to go to Miami. Don't worry...I'll find you some great excuses.

O.K., here's what I've got so far:

1. Because you've never been
2. Reno 911 Miami
3. Miami Vice
4. It's almost Cuba, and Cuba's not legal, so you MUST go to Miami
5. Caipirinhas (scratch that-this is number one)
6. Oh yeah! Jaime makes a pretty good case for it here...

I will eat it here or there, I will eat it everywhere

Tart Cherry Crumb Cake, recipe and photo via here

Ack, this is officially a "lifestyle blog". I hope you'll forgive me.

Clare Vivier and the Fertile Years

Life seems particularly abundant and productive these days. The stasis, the expected, has been tossed aside. Like Seamus Heaney's famous poem, the fertile loam of life is being overturned everywhere I look, exposing the fresh underbelly of possibility.
Things I never thought possible have been put into motion, and everywhere I look I see change.

Part of the fertility is literal; among my friends and family there are eight babies born or soon-to-be. Other friends are moving, even leaving the country. One child turned a landmark age, the magical fabulousness that is NO LONGER TWELVE. Another is leaving behind the protection of elementary school. A momentous anniversary will be celebrated soon, and a villa in Baja's wine country will be visited. Kauai gleams like a wet plumeria leaf in the October distance.

I'm feeling a little more visual than verbal today, so consider this a pictorial diary of the past productive week.

Reason to blog: observant husband knows exactly what you want for your anniversary


I know, it's shameless. But she's hot and she knows it...



and she just kept posing



The rewards of growing things



Gambling with four-year olds and comparing muscles-a good way to pass the time waiting for a sister to be born/my first niece. Mia. FINALLY.



Modernhaus=Bounce Haus



Double anniversary party



How many cousins can fit on one chair? I don't know! Get up! You're crushing my &*#%@!!!



Sweet nerd



Hip-hop nerd



And you? What's shakin on your end?

Wedding Do-Overs

I don't know about you, but I still love to look at wedding stuff. It's sort of a microcosm of the design scene; letterpress, flowers, photography, fashion, etc.

And let's face it...even us not-so-girlie girls like a little fantasy eye candy. We only get to have one wedding (well, fingers crossed), but it's so much fun to imagine what we would do if we could do it again.

I think I'm a "wedding in the woods with vintage dress" kinda girl. There would be a barn dance with raucous fiddling to follow. I'm a fool for the fiddle. (I would put on boots for that part!)

What about you? Would you want to try a different style or mood if you had do-overs, or would you not change a thing?



Meanwhile, here's an adorable wedding inspiration board from Dog n' Bird. It's very sweet and simple, with a kind of John Hughes/80s feel. And the swiss dot reminds me of my mom and aunt, who wore yards of it along with big, floppy hats at their weddings. It was the must-have look of the late 60s!

Summer Song

This song goes out to all the lovely ladies, collating paper in their sensible pumps, punching the time clock, and drinking water out of paper cones in the hallway while the summer careens past their soundproofed glass windows. My pantyhose are off to you!

But most especially it goes out to Morgan, who is missing the summer too, but who manages to bloom in the withering and heartless terrain of Hemet.

Belle and Sebastian, I Know Where the Summer Goes

I know where the summer goes
When you're having no fun
When you're under the thumb
I know where the summer dwells
If your underarm smells
And your kitchen looks like hell

I know where the summer goes
If you're scraping a pot, and your head is hot
Put your head down, put your thumbs up girl
With the smell of hot desk
And the glitter of your step
He was right, he's the upcoming guru of the city
No one told the city councillors

I know, you can tell me again
I've got my mobile phone
Full of silicon chips
No one likes a smart arse
But I've seen a pattern emerge
I will race you up the hill
Where the boy who made records out of postcard messages
And flowering cherries rain on kids like you

Look twice at the kid with the crimped
And overheated hair
They ran a book on his looks
Odds on was the noble pose and
The denim hard riff of the Irish Troubadour
But the boy came from nowhere to
Steal the hearts of lassies in the lavvies of the club tonight

An Accidental Defense of Blogging by Dave Eggers

So I finally muscled through this hefty tome of injustice and loss, What is the What by Dave Eggers. And you know something? The "what" is revealed on the very last page, the very last paragraph, and it is quite possibly (and accidentally) the most exquisite explanation of the blogging phenomenon I can imagine:

"Whatever I do...I will tell these stories. I have spoken to every person I have encountered these last difficult days...because to do anything else would be something less than human. I speak to these people, and I speak to you because I cannot help it. It gives me strength, almost unbelievable strength, to know that you are there. I covet your eyes, your ears, the collapsible space between us. How blessed are we to have each other? I am alive and you are alive so we must fill the air with our words. I will fill today, tomorrow, every day until I am taken back to God. I will tell stories to people who will listen and to people who don't want to listen, to people who seek me out and to those who run. All the while I will know that you are there. How can I pretend that you do not exist? It would be almost as impossible as you pretending that I do not exist."

Sometimes blogging feels like speaking your words to the wind-they may get caught in a tree and flutter there unnoticed, high above the heads of passersby, or get swept into the void and disappear.
No matter. When we write (or photograph or design) we confirm our own existence, and yours too. It is an acknowledgement of sorts.
Sending a message presumes a receiver...willing or not, one reader or a million. And to see so many people finding so many ways to acknowledge and connect with each other...it's the most human thing, and the most hopeful thing, I can imagine.


photo via Real Simple