When I was invited by a friend to go to the Bushmills Whiskey party in Boston the first thing I asked was:
“are they going to have anything besides whiskey drinks?”  I’m not a huge fan of whiskey (until last night).  My friend said “no, it’s a whiskey party, what’s wrong with you?”
Since I hadn’t seen this friend in a while, I went.  I assumed it would be another branded event where I’d be handed informational pamphlets, had the sellers bug me about how whiskey is made, why I should buy …

I just had to post this.  It looks like the coolest conference ever.  And it’s in a tent, so that’s pretty fabulous too.

Do Lectures Trailer from The Do Lectures on Vimeo.

3 years ago I fell in love with a painting I saw in a gallery in Santa Fe.  I stood there for nearly 2 hours looking at it.  From every angle.  First one way and then walking by it, and then going into another room before coming back.  Then  trying to decide if I could justify spending more than 2 months rent on this.  I took the card of the gallery telling myself that I could always have it shipped.
Over the next 3 years, I thought about this painting often.  …

I love this!  I love it because I am irked by networking events where everyone starts off with ‘what do you do?’, which is an insanely hard question to answer (Penelope just wrote a good post about it).  In fact, I was just laughing with a friend of mine over her impression of herself explaining what she does to her parents.  There are even 2 artists that created a whole series composed of videos of artists explaining to their parents what they do for a living. So it’s maybe safe …

I haven’t posted a unique piece of furniture in a while – but this is quite a comeback! Check out this chair by Maximo Riera

We’re only 4 days into the new year and already things are different.  Like, for example, that I’m going to be telling you how my life became not so fun in 2010.  The 2010 me wouldn’t have done that.  2010 was a year of Order (see right side of the poster).  So much order that it almost made me stop blogging.  Order is great, don’t get me wrong it’s just that too much of it can be, well, boring hard to write about. (hence embarrassingly long hiatus from this blog).
So …

desk – $350 from a flea market.  Don’t you love the industrial / farm chic-ness of this?  The bottom is made of metal pipes.
deer antlers – $50 for 3 sets. Flea market.  I love, love, love these and was going to spray paint them white but decided that we liked them au natural.
So this is the first post from my new office.  Well, what should have been my new office until the New Jerseyite’s job went virtual and now it’s OUR new office.  I didn’t handle the news terribly maturely.  …

Confession:  I love hearing about people’s morning routines, particularly artist and writer morning routines but basically I just love hearing how people spend their morning.  It’s such an intimate and creative time so I think what you do with it says a lot about you.
The Unclutterer organizes his morning routine around drinking coffee.  Architect Robert Venturi says he takes notes in the middle of the night so his morning routine is to organize those notes.  Here’s a whole site about morning routines.
When I stumbled on Sarah Wilson’s article about morning …

Made me smile – $18 by Jacqueline Dufresne.

photo credit – from moon to moon
When I saw author of “Eat,Pray,Love” Elizabeth Gilbert speak this spring she said “every afternoon I take a silence bath” in which she basically just sits in a room quietly and hangs out with her cat or falls asleep.  “Rough life” I thought “must be nice to be an author with a gazillion readers so that you can take silence baths every day”.  Sometimes I don’t even get to take a real bath every day and  the only silence I get is after …