snowy day off

it's been snowing all day here, big pretty flakes. this is the backyard around 1 PM.

Today and this weekend I'm focusing on organizing the house and cleaning things that do not regularly get cleaned. Hoping to start all fresh and clean for the new year.

I can't lie though, in between cleaning I played a LOT of Guitar Hero. I'm hooked.

So what was the bigger accomplishment of the day--sweeping and mopping the kitchen, or beating the Tom Morello guitar battle on Medium difficulty? Hard to decide.

peace

Happy, happy Christmastime. The past few days have been so full of family and friends and nice quiet moments with Mike and the dog too. This is the little princess asleep in a sunbeam this morning.

The days have been so peaceful and I'm grateful and humbled by that, feeling so blessed. I strive for peace and seek it out, balancing myself by making art and saying small prayers and trying to live in the present, happy moments. Taking all these things and pondering them in my heart, you know, the true meaning of Christmas.

So today I have the day off work and am just puttering. I'm hoping to clean up the house a bit and send some things on their way to Goodwill, evening out the flow of new things into the house by sending others on their way out. Though I will say, I haven't done any of that yet since I always get distracted when I'm in the house. Taking a few photos of some recent art to share.





a new page in my art journal. and the journal, almost full. maybe I'll try to finish it in the next few days so I can start fresh in the new year.

larger sizes at my flickr.

Songs of 2007.

i did a little quasi-scientific research the other day to determine my favorite song of 2007. The research consisted of sorting my songs by play count on my itunes and ipod. so, here are some of the tops:

(fyi, i'm linking to myspace so you can enjoy some of these fantastic artists' sweet sweet tunes.)

plasticities, andrew bird

lake shore drive, the innocence mission

legs of bees, fruit bats

fake empire, the national


cast a hook, laura veirs. as you can see, there is a video with NARWHALS in it. of course it's one of my favorite songs of the year!

i feel it all, feist

myriad harbor, the new pornographers

empty hearts, josh ritter

two, ryan adams

every song from caitlin cary's "begonias" since i tend to listen to it obsessively when i make art or clean or whatever.

I also think i should add that "can you please crawl out your window," the hold steady and "ring them bells," sufjan stevens, both from the i'm not there soundtrack , probably deserve to be on this list. i'm way into both of these songs right now but since they were only added about a month ago the scientific itunes thing is kinda misleading.

and my number one most played song of this year? flossin', mike jones.


i like to listen to it on repeat at work. for like, hours at a time, no joke. i can't say i can really explain this. but it probably has something to do with my little brother.

if $130 fell from the sky right this moment

these would be mine:

michael kors shoes from zappos.

the dumbest part is, i barely wear anything other than my cowboy boots these days so they'd probably collect dust until the snow melts. but aren't they pretty?

last december's book

december 6, originally uploaded by oltremare.

last december was a big month for me, a big transformation month. i made a book out of old envelopes, with collages on both sides, and then put journal entries or whatever ephemera I picked up during the day into the envelope. making a collage a day was really doable especially since I used the same materials over and over and just left everything out on the desk all month. it was a great project, one of my favorites, and I don't think I've ever shared it online. there are a few more pics on my flickr right now and I will try to add more soon.

i haven't made many collages lately. . . .I'm not sure why. I've been working on other craft projects, some holiday decorations and felt ornaments for gifts and things. the collagey inspiration just hasn't been around lately, which is too bad. i love looking at the old books I've made because they're sort of like esoteric scrapbooks, memory-evoking even if it's ambiguous.

friendship + darjeeling limited

So, first of all. Yesterday my best friend came to visit and I took the day off work, and it was pretty much the most relaxing day of all time. We sat around in my living room with the fire on and a teapot on the coffee table for about five hours. then thai for dinner and to the glen ellyn art theatre (totally cute and old-timey) to see The Darjeeling Limited. It's been a weird week around here so the uber-laid back day was appreciated. As is the friendship, of course.



I was way pleasantly surprised by The Darjeeling Limited. I was pretty disappointed by Life Aquatic and was kind of feeling like maybe the Wes Anderson thing was over. But this totally redeemed him for me. It was definitely looser than his previous few films. . . just not so calculated. I mean, it was still like, fastidiously styled, but somehow not quite so uptight about itself. I really enjoyed myself and would actually go back and see it again in the theatre if I could find someplace still playing it.



And seriously, how can you go wrong with luggage and costume designed by Marc Jacobs? what a great partnership.



One of my favorite lines from the film:
Patricia (Anjelica Huston):
All right. Let's make an agreement: A) We'll get an early start tomorrow morning and try to enjoy each others' company here in this beautiful place. B) We'll stop feeling sorry for ourselves. It's not very attractive. C) We'll make our plans for the future. Can we agree to that?

boo!

sad news! blueprint is done.

when i read this today I felt like I was punched in the gut. Over the past few months this has really become my absolute favorite magazine, and that's saying a lot since i LOVE the mags. A lot of others have kind of taken nosedives in my opinion (lucky isn't nearly as good as it used to be, i haven't read vogue in years). . . . Martha Stewart Living is still great, but a little stuffy. Blueprint was perfect though, the best mix of fashion & home with youthfulness. Guh.

I'll have to go through my tearsheets to find some Blueprint pages to scan and share. then we can all cry together. :(

comparisons. and weekend fun to balance.

got it?, originally uploaded by matirose.

this is one of my flickr favorites, from matirose. I believe you can also buy a print here.

earlier today i was feeling not so good. just got into a bad mood, mostly comparing myself to others, and not in an honest way either. in the kind of way where I suck, and everyone else is talented and fashionable and also somehow able to keep a sparkling clean house. which I know isn't the truth, but it's hard not to see beyond what people present, online and in the real world.

after pinning this quote up on my corkboard and cleaning my desk, I felt a lot better. and basically all I needed to do was read my last blog entry. there really isn't too much for me to complain about these days. so I'm back to feeling grateful.

on a more lighthearted note! yesterday we went and played football with a bunch of mike's friends. even though it was freezing and i only caught one pass all day it was still great. here we are on our teams, enjoying a halftime beer.

just so you know, the socks in the pockets are our football flags. :)

belated thanks

thankful list. 11/26/07.

as with most other things in my life, i'm less than punctual on this one.

I was going to make this a numbered list but it's hard. really there isn't a lot for me NOT to be thankful about lately: wonderful husband, nice house, great family, good friends, continually amusing co-workers, hilariously sweet dog. i feel really lucky.

other than that, the four day break is tops on my list of thankful. it was so nice to do the cozy homebody thing for a few days. made some christmas gifts and decorations (I'm finding hand embroidery really satisfying/relaxing right now). watched lots of movies; Elf, Chocolat, Don't Look Back (an old favorite). The fire was on most of the time. drank a lot of hot cocoa. made pumpkin cheesecake and three kinds of soup. GOOD all around.

all the best to you at the beginning of the holiday season. i really hope it's a bright and cheery one for us all.

weekend recap

max's apple tart, originally uploaded by oltremare.

as much as I love to bake, and love baking for other people, i very rarely have enough foresight to actually do it. this weekend I got ambitious and went for it, yay! so this is the little apple tart/galette I made for my friend max and his girlfriend. the recipe is from alice waters, via smitten kitchen.

it was a great weekend overall and I spent a TON of time in the kitchen. saturday I made chicken stock from scratch, which was pretty easy, totally rewarding, and made the house smell great. I went a little overboard, which is good since I'm freezing a lot to use later, but when it came time to find a place to store it. . . well, saturday night our frig was pretty much full of stock. i made the tart on saturday afternoon, too. then sunday morning was apple crisp, and chicken vegetable soup.

So domestic, but what else are you going to do on a chilly weekend? I mean, besides watch America's Next Top Model marathons on VH1 for hours on end.

anyway, visiting Max was great since I don't think we'd seen each other in like three years. Old friendships are the best though. I know it's cliche, but I honestly feel like no time had past.

holiday season inspiration

holiday season inspiration, originally uploaded by oltremare.

usually I'm not the kind of person that starts thinking about christmas in november, but this year is different for some reason. I'm really excited to decorate the house and make gifts and be festive.

I LOVE flickr favorites because it gives me a way to map a general visual style. for this christmas I'm thinking: homemade, natural, sparkly, somewhat vintage, icy blues and cherry reds. these photos give my ideas some substance.

art + time

i don't know why it took me 27 years to figure certain things out. maybe that shouldn't surprise me as much as it does. but. music and art and literature have been incredibly meaningful to me lately and I've been feeling a little baffled by it. like, where did this all come from?

last night I watched a documentary I'd recorded on PBS (side note, i have turned into the kind of person that records documentaries on PBS) about art in the twenty first century. it was later in the evening and I've been going to bed so early these days so I was a little zonked. i was drifting off to sleep to the voice of Jenny Holzer talking about horses and her hope for her art to be "lovely and exacting." that dreamy feeling put my mind on this track.

the novel about grace changed the way I think about nature and the world, all the glorious/mundane ways the world works. infinite jest, well, that's enough for another post, but it sparked so much in me. i think about the Ghent Altarpiece almost every sunday when i go to communion. even music makes more sense. after owning blonde on blonde for half a dozen years i think I'm finally starting to "get" it.

ghent altarpiece: adoration of the lamb, jan van eyck + others

so again . . why would it be that NOW, of all times, when I'm not taking classes and learning and seeing new things all the time, that I would finally get hit over the head by all this?

last night i had a little mini revelation about it. right now there is not really a lot to ponder in my life. i make coffee, go to work, make my logos and text changes, come home, read, cook, watch tv. It's stable, comfortable, unchanging. So of course now, when my mind isn't filled up with looking for a new job or boyfriend or neighborhood to live in, there's plenty of room to really let things soak in. It's a nice feeling, especially because I know I will not be young and childless and have plentiful free time forever. I'm enjoying it and feeling really happy.

+ / -

November 1. It is finally appropriate seasonal weather outside, chilly in a real, winter coat kind of way. It's nice, but not really. Today I am cold, grouchy, bored at work, and I have one of the most depressing songs ever stuck in my head. (he stopped loving her today, george jones.)

I'm trying to look on the bright side though:
+ project runway starts in two weeks! once again, meaning and order will return to my life and my weeks will rotate around wednesday evenings at 9 PM.

+ my mom is coming to visit this weekend.

+ have I ever talked about how igoogle is the greatest thing of all time? I know I say a lot of things are the greatest thing of all time, but this one might really take it. everytime i open my browser i'm presented with my gmail inbox, my calendar, the weather, an image of the Biblical Art of the Day, and a Wikipedia search box. This is everything I ever needed and more.

+ also, late this afternoon, I did my little parlour trick for my co-workers: drawing things on command in illustrator. I made this snowmen and then we dressed him up. "do an elvis!" "a ninja!" etc. Here's the carnage from my illustrator pasteboard

.

a nice bright spot in my day

late october

saturday afternoon mike and i walked our bikes to the nearest gas station since both our tires were low. i brought my camera along with the intention of taking some fall-y pictures of the neighborhood, but this was the only one I took. oh well.

it was a really pleasant weekend. took a few walks, made granola, cleaned my art desk up a bit. i also made apple turnovers from scratch, including the puff pastry. super yum. And the puff pastry-I think I'm addicted now. It's really fun to make and tastes about a thousand times better than the frozen stuff. So of course I started thinking and had a little daydream this morning about becoming a pastry chef. All this from one batch of turnovers! But you know I get lofty goals sometimes.

$1000 shopping spree. . . .

. . . . I wish.

BUT I did just finish a small freelance project and have some "fun" money." this is what I've been looking at blowing it on:

j. crew sweaters and skirts

these adorable shoes from zappos

also this sweater from anthropologie that I can't seem to save a photo of. you should look at it though. the magic is all on the back.

j.crew has a great lookbook up right now, too. i think the purpose of really great fashion photography and wardrobe styling is to make you want to overhaul your whole life on the basis of one photo. such as this:


well, i'm off. . . . it's time for me to move to scotland, get a bike with a basket, and start wearing argyle.

movie film

this weekend one of my coworkers is making a short film. and i'm in it. it was actually pretty fun this morning. plus we've all been talking about the project for so long that it's good to actually get it going. and tomorrow there's more. It's been an interesting diversion. plus also, my character wears some sweet vintage shoes that are definitely going into my personal rotation after this.

After filming, spent the late afternoon painting and collaging, listening to wilco. seriously. . . . the less i watch TV the happier I am. working on that a lot these days.

Lately I feel like I'm improving myself by really TRYING to overcome some of my shortcomings. I made a chore chart, and I almost wish I were joking about that. Something about this has an adverse affect though, in that it really highlights all my other junk I'm not figuring out. The essence of most of it? I need to spend less time thinking and more time DOing. I'm also kind of a sloppy perfectionist, if that makes any sense. But I realize I've been dealing with this most of my cognizant life, so it's not going to go away just by writing a list and doing daily chores. Or will it? Hmmm. . . . Small revelations.

Boston '07

right up next to the green monster!

Last weekend we went to Boston for a short trip. It was a nice time, very baseball-centric. (Obviously.) We ate great seafood and walked around in the park. Saw some historical stuff and some cool art, ate gelato. Can't ask for more.

This wasn't my first time in Boston, I was there once, for one day, during the summer I worked at a camp in Connecticut. The strange thing is, it felt totally different this time, like my memories were of an entirely different city. I can't explain it but it kind of weirded me out the whole time.

Also. I've been rereading Infinite Jest this summer. I get really into the books I read and this one is, of course, no exception. So the whole time we were in the Boston MAMA I kept expecting to see like Don Gately on the T, or some ETA kids running around. We did see a lot of questionable people on the streets so I guess that satisfied me to some extent.

And on that note. . . I finished IJ this weekend and almost cried. It felt like losing a job or a best friend, I've been spending so much time with it in the past two months now I don't know what to do with myself. I guess it's time to start reading another 1000 page, unbelievably engrossing novel. Any suggestions?

in my dreams

in my dreams, originally uploaded by oltremare.

another flickr love-fest.

my nighttime dreams have a few repeating themes. there's this gauzy half-real destination that i return to again and again; a partially crumbling european city set in the water. kind of like venice, but not exactly.

so, searching for pictures of venice on flickr a while ago, i realized i could create a more tangible representation of this through my favorites. what you're looking at right now is pretty much where I go at night. isn't it lovely? this has made me really happy.

it's also made me realize i should visit croatia at some time . . . apparently my dream world looks a lot like croatia.

fashion week: hats

it's spring/summer 08 fashion week and you know what that means! i've wasted at least an hour a day online looking at clothes I'll never be able to afford.

there's a lot of stuff I'm liking, and for some reason, one of the things is: seriously nuts headgear. next spring you can either look really chic, or like a half insane vagrant, depending on how you style yourself. check these out:

"spare some change?"

detail shots from style.com. proenza schouler, marc by marc jacobs, and 3.1 phillip lim.

seriously though, i kind of love it. i mean honestly. you have to be pretty daring to wear hats like these in a non-marching band / community theatre public situation. i give props to anyone who actually pulls it off.

Feist - 1 2 3 4

Feist, 1234, from youtube

i'm obsessed with this video. seriously. everything about it is perfect. I can't remember the last time i loved a music video this much. (I'm assuming it was mo money mo problems back in 1997? ten years man.)

anyway, part of the reason i love it is that the song is tops on my list of Tracks to Listen to on Repeat. Runners up include Roscoe by Midlake and Myriad Harbour by The New Pornographers (fyi, links go to myspace and the songs are there, DO IT, listen). I estimate that about half of my music listening in the past five days have been just these three songs.

oh yeah, and PS: in case you're wondering, the answer is YES, i am already teaching myself the dance to this video.