New Beau

yes please!

monday fun: bookworm baby

As her baby sleeps, Adele Enerson dresses her up in adventure!

School starts on Wednesday..I'll probably look like this little one very soon.

Endless Summer

Don't let summer slip away!

Isn't this look from Vanity Fair's June 2009 issue so adorable?

ruffle bra, sweater, corset top, light blue shorts, white shorts, black shorts, khaki shorts

A Morning Morsel: Psalm 42

Hokusai's Great Wave off Kanagawa

Deep calls to deep
in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers
have swept over me.


By day the Lord directs his love,
at night his song is with me—
a prayer to the God of my life.


Psalm 42:7-8

A Morning Morsel: Jack Kerouac

I finally decided to hide from the world one more night with her

and the morning be damned.

-Jack Kerouac, On the Road

[The amazing art of Peter Breese via Classic Bride]

Art Imitates America

P and I had a chance to travel to Washington, DC for his job, and stopped in at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Through January 2, 2011 they have an amazing Norman Rockwell exhibit! All of the work comes from the private collections of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas.

Here is an excerpt from the exhibit:

Rockwell was a masterful storyteller who could distill a narrative into a single frame. His pictures tell stories about the adventure of growing up, of individuals rising up to face personal challenges, the glamour of Hollywood and the importance of tolerance in American life. He created his pictures with strategies similar to those used by filmmakers.

The Peach Crop

The Convention (Hat Check Girl)

[images courtesy of this slideshow]

Though beautiful, Rockwell's dames do occasionally look like they need rescuing, don't they? Ah, nostalgia.

The Happy Handbag

Because I live the (glamorous) life of a graduate student, I find myself toting a lot of stuff around all the time! Now I realize many others have similar on-the-go needs, so I thought I would share my latest discovery about simplifying life via handbag...

I need a bag with cup holders, preferably two of them. Keeping an aluminum water bottle and a travel mug with me is so helpful! This is the only way I can avoid spending a fortune on cups of coffee and bottled water throughout the day. It's also good for the planet, of course! In other words, cup holders more than pay for the cost of a handbag that has them in but a semester or two.

Conveniently, the latest crop of handbags from Gap actually has cup holders! In July I bought the silver version of this coated canvas number, as well as it's silver sister wallet (which looks suspiciously like Kate Spade "Neda" style wallets I remember selling when I worked there in DC!).

Another option -- buy a baby bag! I'm serious. These are absolutely perfect for school of any sort, and I would guess work as well if you can find a stylish one. They have my beloved cup holders (for bottles) and are also extremely easy to (wipe) clean. Baby bags tend to be roomy and usually close with a zipper or flap that make it perfect for stashing under a desk or airplane seat when traveling.

Here a few darling options from Coach, Target, and Kate Spade:

The only question is, if I get used to carrying a baby bag for my own stuff, what will I do if I ever have a baby? :o)

Outfit Inspiration: Sabrina

For a trip to the beach in Newport, Rhode Island, I wanted to channel Audrey Hepburn in this scene from Sabrina. Though the adorable haircut and miniscule waistline are somewhat beyond my reach, white shorts with a plaid shirt seems like a perfect look for a trip to the Atlantic Ocean.

[image via IMDB]

"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth;

whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul;

whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses,

and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet;

and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me,

that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street,

and methodically knocking people's hats off--

then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.

This is my substitute for pistol and ball."

Herman Melville, Moby Dick

monday fun: Nietzsche

"Has a woman who knew she was well-dressed ever caught a cold? No!"

-Friedrich Nietzsche

Simple Style: Love Story

Camel is the color of the season!

My first exposure to the East Coast Ivy League came with a classic camel coat -- on Ali McGraw, in Love Story.

[image via Portillon]

Everything old is new again -- look at one of the latest creations from Burberry.

A Morning Morsel: Wendell Berry

The wild cherries ripen, black and fat

Paradisal fruit that taste of no man’s sweat

Reach up

pull down the laden branch and eat.

When you have known their bitterness, they taste sweet.

Wendell Berry

[photo via Trek Nature]

Product Review: Powder Sunscreen

The smell of sunscreen always makes me feel like I am on vacation. Even though we all need to be wearing sunscreen year round, something about it just feels like summer.

However, my positive associations with the smell of sunscreen don't outweigh the reality that applying sunscreen lotion makes me break out! Always. I don't know if it is the lotion itself or simply the use of my fingertips in its application, but by the summer's end I usually look like I am reliving my adolescence.

So when I found out about powder sunscreen, I was thrilled!

Bare Escentuals makes wonderful mineral makeup (perfect for the faint of pore) and has come out with mineral sunscreen. I purchased my own about a month ago and I completely love it.

[Get yours here]

So far so good. My skin is happy and hopefully also future-cancer-free.

Simple Storage

I'm moving in to a wonderful new apartment in New Haven. The task of decorating and organizing is a fun way to settle into fall, but I am realizing how much stuff I have accumulated over the last few (as in, not enough to justify the # of things) years.

Options for dealing with this:

1) Get rid of things

2) Ignore problem, letting things pile up unattractively around the room

3) Buy another thing in which to store these things...by which I mean: purchase adorable storage containers.

For example, these boxes at the Container Store almost encourage hoarding.

[Find them here]

What a stylish way to hide one's addiction to collecting DvDs, school papers, or just about anything...

hip hyperbole

Sometimes you find that other person who knows exactly what you are going through. They can somehow peer into your soul and offer insight into your feelings that you have no hope of articulating yourself.

That is what it feels like to read the comics at hyperbole and a half!

[This is one of my favorites. The sneaky hate spiral.

Also, I found this blog through Emily at Don't Call Me Gringa]

simple style: the blind side

Usually, I don't like football. And I worry about cinderella storylines that might sugarcoat poverty. But I love The Blind Side.

I can't explain why!

Sandra Bullock plays Leigh Anne Tuohy, the real-life wonder woman who seamlessly embodies every character from Steel Magnolias, including Dolly Parton's. Their family is Southern royalty, it seems, and sweetly adopts this young man with no pretensions of fixing anything or changing anyone -- it seems that they simply react to someone who needs a place to stay by giving him a place to stay. It feels so normal.

Probably Leigh Anne's costume choices also contribute to my love affair with this movie.

[photo via IMDB]

Buying the clothes that Sandra Bullock wears in this movie will not immediately turn us into good people who shelter the homeless or run an incredible interior design business...but...maybe it will be easier to work on those things if we know what time it is...

[White DKNY Watch from Nordstrom]

monday fun: Myq Kaplan

Myq Kaplan, a finalist on Last Coming Standing.

18th amendment: prohibition
19th amendment: women's suffrage

Now that we aren't all drunk...maybe we should give women the right to vote.

Simple Style: Charade

"You should see your face!"

"Why, what's wrong with it?"

"It's lovely."

[image via Andrew]

Charade is my favorite Audrey Hepburn movie, I think. It's certainly the funniest. Of course, it doesn't hurt that in it, she is wearing the most amazing clothes. Her coat collection for the French winter is an inspiration to any new New Englander.

Kate Spade Coat

"You know what the matter with you is?"

"No, what?"

"Nothing."

First Impression

The de Young museum in San Francisco has the exhibit "The Birth of Impressionism" up, featuring pieces on loan from the Musee D'Orsay in France. It is spectacular. Not only is it a welcome insight into the skills of the impressionist painters, but it is an accessible history lesson that explains the climate in which the new painting became popular. Reacting against the strict Salon system, the impressionists were rebel realists, unafraid to depict real life's rugged beauty.

These two paintings captured me. The first, The Floor Scrapers, was Gustave Caillebotte's adventure into the every day, and as such was originally rejected by critics. Apparently, the second painting, Alfred Stevens' The Bath, was also controversial. Though fully nude women were the subject of many of the classically celebrated paintings, this partially revealed body too closely resembled reality! Only mythical women (glowing, hair-free, preferably rising out of the ocean...) were appropriate, painting a real woman in the intimate everyday? Vulgar.

[image 1 via American Society of Cinematographers

& image 2 via Steve Art Gallery]

Drawing Attention

How amazing is the art at Garance Doré?

Check out her blog. Though it sometimes doesn't make much sense to me (it's maybe half in french) that only adds to my imagined life as fashion savvy (french?) girl.

[images via Garance, of course]

something new

How pretty.

Also, I would save all of that time in the morning that usually goes to arranging my shoes in rainbow order after I've picked the pair I want to wear.

[image from February Lonny Magazine found via Classic Bride]