Living and loving the Bay Area life. Dancing, dogs and decor included.
It’s still only January, but my new year’s resolution to blog more has already gone horribly awry. Suffice to say that it’s been an intense year so far, both at work (especially at work!) and home (our new home!). So, Rick and I are taking a quick, and well deserved break to re-charge, at the Bachelor Gulch resort in Colorado. Hopefully a lot of ski-ing, and lot of R&R will be on the menu!
Hope to be back at it soon.
x
As I start packing up for our next move, I’ve been trying to take the opportunity to de-clutter at the same time. Fifteen bags of trash later, I’m getting there. But we still have a lot of stuff!
Even so, there are just some things I can’t bear to part with. My piles of classic magazines are one of them! I know it’s not eco-friendly, and that I won’t necessarily do anything with them, but there’s something very comforting about knowing the recipe for a perfect margarita, details on the ultimate romantic get-away, or a guide to writing your first novel (while still looking stylish!) is just moments away once I dive into the pages. Unrealistic to think a magazine can tell you how to live? Sure! But I still enjoy the conceit that one day, I just might do some of the things they advise for life enhancement!
My favorite magazine by far is Red (a UK publication, which i buy from the lovely Smoke Signals on Polk Street), but i have (or to be accurate, had) an equal addiction to the sadly now defunct Domino magazine. This was the perfect magazine for design and interiors inspiration, and catered to those who had the ideas, but not necessarily the piles of cash, to turn their decor dreams into reality (i.e. most of us). As we pack everything up, I’ve found quite a few old copies of Domino, and even though I can see Rick pleading with me, silently, to start throwing these stacks of glossy bound paper away, i just can’t. One day, I will design the perfect living room with crafty salvage finds from the flea market and a few savvy purchases at Target! One day it will happen!
I wish the publishers, Conde Nast, would bring it back. It’s hard to believe they can’t find the ad revenues when the magazine targets one of the most valuable demographics: women who love to shop! I’m waiting for someone to start their own version of the mag, but until then, i’m making do with this great Flickr Domino Magazine pool, which houses images from the magazine over the years. How about these for design inspiration?
(Thanks to the Flickr Magazine Files pool for these images from Apartment102, Annesage82 and coco+kelley)
I’ll admit it. Checklists make my heart beat faster. And i know that they should be banned on this blog, given its title. But i can’t help it! Moving house in less than a month just about demands a check list doesn’t it?
Well, when you need something doing in the house, turn to Martha Stewart. The domestic goddess lays it out for every home mover out there in this great and very practical list. (OK, maybe she didn’t lay it out herself, but someone who worships in the house of Martha did!). Here are my top things to remember when moving (again, sigh…):
Martha has the full scoop, but those are my top rules for moving and preserving your sanity. If you’re doing it too – good luck!
Rick and I had an unpleasant surprise just before Christmas, when we were told we had to move out of our lovely cottage, due to the owner selling. Since then, we’ve gone through a large range of emotions, twinned with some immediate practical stresses, such as finding somewhere new to live! Moving house should be an exciting and positive time, as it usually signals some sort of life change. The last time we both moved, it was to move in together, and the cottage is where we started married life, and where we’ve been really happy. So, being told to move, less than 12 months later, is a bit of a kicker, and something that it’s been hard to get excited about.
Nonetheless, we have found somewhere new, and the excitement is (slowly) starting to creep in! One of the fun things about moving so often is that you get the opportunity to re-decorate, and can have some fun with it. Hopefully, we’ll be able to stay in the new place a bit longer this time, so will have the chance to actually follow through on some of our interior design plans. Hard to believe, but we still have some pictures we never unpacked from last time, so the golden rule has to be ’speed of decision making’ in the new place. I tend to agonize over things like rug choices, furniture placement for far too long, when the sane thing to do is probably just make a few ‘good’ decisions, and hope that a few of them turn out to be ‘great’. Here are a few other rules i should listen to when we move:
Let’s see how Rick and I do following our own rules! Meantime, here’s a snap of our latest design inspiration – enjoy!
The white type of inspiration
(Photo credit: Apartment Therapy SF)
On the first day of a new decade, I kind of like this juxtaposition between the old (yes, red mailboxes still exist in small English villages!), and the new – the stunning exterior of the Bull Ring shopping mall in Birmingham.
So, inspired by one of my favorite lifestyle bloggers, Anh Minh, here’s my year in cities during 2009. It definitely tells a story for me, this year, one of love and new family, and new experiences, book-ended by plenty of time in my home country of England. And no, it doesn’t include my lovely current residence of San Francisco (although outliers are included!) Here it is:
Pretty good I think! Represents plenty of both work and play, and of course, lots of family time too. And let’s just say, we definitely enjoyed the full breadth of Wine Country! On the wish list for next year? Rome and Positano for our belated honeymoon, perhaps a little more ski-ing if we’re lucky, and Minnesota to visit Rick’s family. Oh, and Chicago – has to be done! Let’s see how I do.
Usually by the time Christmas rolls around, i’m really tired, very stressed out, and often feeling very unhealthy indeed! Lots of social events, work projects that need completing before the annual pilgrimage to the UK, and not enough sleep – not a good combo for the body and soul. Especially when you throw in a 12 hour flight, twice in 10 days!
So this year, i thought i’d try a slightly different approach, as i needed to get back into balance. But no Blueprint Cleanse craziness for me, (although I hear great things about it, and might try it to kickstart next year). I needed something a little more accessible. That meant cutting out alcohol for a good couple of weeks, getting more quality sleep, cooking and eating home-cooked food (one of my life goals from a while back), and trying to focus on productivity vs worry at work. Nothing major, and nothing radical. But small steps toward a more balanced life, and good preparation for the guaranteed frenetic pace of Christmas in the UK.
It also meant taking control of some of the worries that overall anxiety can give rise to. That nagging fear of flying that cropped up a couple years ago, the recognition that I could be eating better. You get the drift.
So, a few weeks on, how did i do? Pretty good actually! Here are a few of the things that really worked for me:
I hope I can keep up some of these things into next year. I’ve found they’ve really helped me a lot. But I still have a long way to go! A diet and exercise overhaul is next, and after the huge slice of pizza I ate today for lunch, there’s clearly some work I have to do! Plus, we’re now entering the real danger zone of the festive season of excess – work parties, friends’ cocktail bashes, visiting family and friends in the UK (and you know how much English people love pubs!). So, i can’t promise anything, but at least I’m going into it feeling good! Wish me luck…
Just a quick ‘latent bridezilla’ shout out to Blurb.com, for making it really, really easy to put together an awesome wedding album. Even though the day itself was pretty low key, we still managed to spend some significant $$ (hmm, must have been those two dresses I bought…), so I turned to Blurb as a way to save on the album production. We had beautiful pictures and wanted to showcase them in a way that suited the style of the wedding itself: yes, low-key, clean black and white, with a slightly period feel. Even though I’d used Blurb once before, I was still a little wary of getting started on something as important as a wedding album. I mean, you can’t really mess up the photos that you want to look at for the rest of your life, can you?
But I needn’t have worried. It was super easy, intuitive, and definitely catered to a novice like me. My biggest problem was deciding what shape and size I actually wanted the book to be (square, for that slightly deco feel). The end result? Loved it! I wish there had been a more elegant way to mix the black and white with the color pics, and that I’d done a better job of cropping, to prevent image bleed and cut-off, but overall, i was really happy. And even though it still wasn’t bargain basement pricing, it was a lot cheaper than getting it done professionally, and we got to control the artistic direction. I even had a fancy glossy dust flap!
I’m sure we’ll treasure this for years to come, and now get to make Christmas gifts of the pics for all our family. Yes, they are that lucky this festive season 
I’ll leave this post with another one of my fave wedding photos:
I was reading Self magazine recently while waiting for a doctor’s appointment and read some great tips on how to switch off from work. The tips came from a women about oooh, a thousand times busier and more stressed than me, Mona Sutphen, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy. Not only does she have an incredibly demanding job, she also has a family to raise, and looks enviably slim, relaxed and polished. As someone, with no children (yet), who still breaks out the chocolate treats daily at the first sign of stress, I wanted to know her secrets.
They were pretty straightforward, focused on things like making time for regular work outs, good quality date nights with her husband and learning how to process a work crisis calmly, rather than just panicking! But I was impressed that she seemingly managed to put these good intentions into practice. Something I often think about, but don’t always do. It got me thinking about some of the ways I can instil a little calm and balance into my life. I’m not as busy as Mona, but I have my fair share of stuff to do! Here’s the stuff that works for me:
There are a ton of other things I could list, but these always work for me. Being creatively and physically challenged is always a good way to switch off the chattering monkeys in the brain, and who doesn’t love a cute dog? C’mon!
What are your best de-stress tricks?
Having tried to brave the Union Square crowds yesterday, Rick and I eventually had to admit defeat and seek shelter from the Thanksgiving sales. First off, we we tried out the new Burger Bar at Macys. This is Hubert Keller’s new casual outpost, where you can build your own burger, based on his famous high-end recipes. It’s a great new addition to downtown shopping eats, and I was thrilled to see Chef Keller very much in evidence throughout our visit. He didn’t just lend his concept to the place, he was practically bussing tables! Very exciting. And the banana milkshake? Fabulous.
Once we were full of great quality junk food, it was time to hit the movies. Rick and I have wanted to go see The Fantastic Mr Fox ever since we heard it was being adapted for the big screen. Growing up in England, and a complete bookworm, I devoured the books of Roald Dahl. Every single one. Hard to even say which is my favorite, but The Witches and The Twits are still up there for me. I loved Road Dahl because he refused to patronize kids. His books usually had a dark center and didn’t always have a traditional happy ending. He understood that kids don’t want always want or need things to be wrapped up prettily in a bow, and that the most interesting stories are those that don’t conform to the norm.
I remember loving The Fantastic Mr Fox, with its graphic descriptions of the evil farmers, Boggis, Bunce and Bean, trying to smoke out the wiley and charming Mr Fox. The movie version is also just wonderful. Filmed in stop motion animation, it feels simultaneously old-world charming and completely contemporary. What I loved the most was the very adult (but never inappropriate for kids) dialogue and interplay between the characters. These are foxes and badgers dealing with some very human emotions, such as sibling rivalry and marriage guidance! Chris Brogan, someone I admire in my working life, described it as “The Royal Tenenbaums in stop motion” and I couldn’t agree more. (They share the same director, Wes Anderson, and most of his favored actors are in both too). But there’s still enough slapstick and laugh out loud moments for children too.
George Clooney was divine as the eponymous Mr Fox, but my favorite character had to be Jason Schwartzman’s angst-ridden young cub, Ash. Very subtle intonation, but his lines were soooo good.
I’ll remain loyal to the original books, and particularly the illustrations of Quentin Blake, but this was a great movie experience, that showed that you don’t have to think at the lowest common denominator to appeal to the mass market.
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