Brag Alert! Crowning Glory

My little Rock Star! Ski Season in Telluride has come to an end. She had ski PE every Tuesday afternoon for 11 or 12 weeks! TMS has an amazing awards ceremony at the base of the ski gondola at the closing of the season. Ms. Sophia took home Most Improved and the coveted Coaches Award for embodying the school's mission as well as their motto: WORK HARD, PLAY HARD. More video here.

Telluride Plum TV link to blog

April Fools?

There really is a new Ikea car coming out- let's hope it looks nothing like this! I have had to witness my darling husband put together some pretty intricate Ikea furniture in his day...I'm the annoying helper holding the useless baby wrench that comes with every "kit" suggesting new ideas and tactics. Sometimes I even hand him the wrong bolt! He still likes me- miracles never cease! Just don't mention Ikea dressers to him. They are not meant to be taken apart and reassembled -just FYI!
I love April Fool's Day but I'm a whole lot more mellow than I used to be. I packed 10 spongey pink hair curlers in my kiddos lunch box today...I wish I could sneak over there and watch them explode.
She wanted to wear something crazy and unmatching today....I'm thinking TODAY? Crazy is just another word for normal in our house.

The above "banned" commercial cracks me up. I was a Nanny in my early twenties. Just for the record I'd never would have owned a neon Love sign!

Deconstructing music, art, and my kid's skirt

Have you heard the KCRW's Guest DJ Project? FANTASTIC. The premise is having non-musician type celebrities share 5 of their most influential songs...I think most guests come in with 20 or so and have to painfully whittle away at their list until they get it down to 5. Great project, great stories. Jennie Lewis and the Watson Twins are featured on Ms. Silverman's list and Loretta Lynn's "The Pill" is on Sarah Vowel's.
What would yours be?

My favorite guest DJ's are 1st and foremost, Sarah Vowel and her hysterical and smart musical choices, then Janeane Garofalo, Sarah Silverman, and even the oh-so-cutey batootey John Cusack, who can take himself a tad too seriously.....

On another note entirely.....

Bettina Hubby , who I read about originally in the New York Times Magazine, makes the most amazing clothes/artwork. I especially love her deconstructed jackets. She did a necklace made entirely of designer clothing tags. From her site:

All of Hubby's work is one-of-a-kind. Each piece is made from a garment that
already exists. She works primarily on a project-to-project basis and enjoys the
challenge of presenting work in new ways. Hubby’s practice revolves around
recycling loved garments from her client's wardrobes and reinventing pristine
vintage and concept for her collections.

I recently finished making an A line skirt for my daughter that is so bad it's good...it's still pretty because she is bewildered by anything other than that. The teenage girls at her school, "the tall girls" as she refers to them, sometimes wear clothes that don't match and that are often "humongo." She keeps asking me why in the world they do that! To her they are pretty girls who CHOOSE to wear tight brown leggings, sneakers and greenand black tops...some of them even wear preposterously small pony tails in short hair! Her favorite babysitter would be perfect except that she insists on sporting holes in the knees of her jeans...can you imagine?

I surprised her by bringing out a few photographs of my outfits from the eighties...oh the horror! She liked the prom dress but that's about where it ended.

These days you should see the joy in her eyes when I actually wear a dress...it's almost worth the trouble.

babes, bikinis and hard drinkin'

The Last time my little one was in Mexico was 4 years ago!

She has been to other beaches since but it's fun to remember...

This time she has a whole arsenal of Spanish at her disposal. She can ask to go to the bathroom, ask to get her water bottle, count to 99, recite her colors and say hello and goodbye. FLUENT! Just like Mama!

4 years ago, A dear friend of mine was just coming off chemo and our families decided to test her health in a nice, safe, germ free third- world environment- clever bunch aren't we!? We had a magical time.

To tie this post in with the whole design aspect I seem to be running with, let me just say, we found some very inspiring finds- 2 beautiful lamps that we drug home for my friend, a weighty cactus wood bowl, and some woven lampshades that I was convinced I'd be using in my new home but never really did-even though we haggled hard for them.

I find the Mexican use of natural fibers to be very intriguing:

Palapas, fencing, floor mats, woven hammocks, coconut shell daiquiris...
maybe it's the "I'm on vacation" lifestyle I enjoy so much....

Near Ixtapa, Mexico.

Sticks and Stones, Let Them Eat Cake!

It's back to school time. Online school shopping mostly. I think I'm the one who needs to shop though...my little girl informed me that if I would only wear skirts and dresses more often we'd never have a bad morning (she was referring to her less than stellar behavior from earlier in the day) she PROMISED.
It's tempting. Very tempting.

We recieved a catalog in the mail this week that was over the top!

Chasing Fireflies is a Seattle company that specializes in cute- crazy cute. The twig alphabet is especially fun. The costumes are ridiculous- and I mean that in a good way- not in the "I'll buy it right this instant way", but in a "hey- I could copy that" way. The toadstool table and chairs tickles my fancy in the most fungus way! Can you imagine? Makes me want a retail shop selling only whimisical, fanciful and imaginative kid/kid at heart furniture. Then I remeber I swore off retail eons ago!

For the ultra modern firefly catcher- when serious deskwork calls.

My little girl needs indoor slippers for school- guess who saw these and deemed them perfect?- yes, and she agreed.

I realize I have created a monster...perhaps similar to the one below...it's how she sees herself I'm sure.

My eyeballs rolled to the back of my head when I saw little Marie Antoinette. That hair! She certainly is a spectacle! Reminds me of the film by Sofia Coppola. A friend of mine saw it and complained about the dialogue. "There was dialogue?" I asked, somewhat shocked. I only saw fabulous shoes, scenes that looked wonderfully edible- like cake and French macaroons, and costumes...and there was that fantastic music...dialogue, really? hmm.