Autumn in the kitchen.

My kitchen was filled with autumn colors and savory smells last night.

Onions and leeks sautéing in butter.

Chopped butternut squash and carrots and a ripe tomato.

Butternut squash soup seasoned with curry and garam masala.

There are few things cozier than soup on a rainy autumn night.

Cute headbands...

...are the best part of growing out my hair.

The Anthropologist

Has anyone had a chance to poke around over at The Anthropologist? How on earth can I get hired to be part of Anthropologie's creative team?

People have already been all a-flutter about Man Shops Globe, the Sundance Channel show all about how buyer Keith Johnson travels the globe half the year searching for inspiration and treasures to sell at Anthropologie stores:



And on the note of inspiration, The Anthropologist is just another step into the world Anthropologie works to create...creative and dreamy, its focus now is pondering something that we all struggle with...inspiration and its source(s).

Some of the treasures you'll find there:

Valentine letter from director Jane Campion's Bright Star world.

Photographer David Eustace capturing one of the many moods of his daughter on a road trip they took together.

Just go peek at The Anthropologist. If you're looking for inspiration, you're sure to find some there.

Some romance for your Sunday.

State Library of New South Wales collection

Love is a hand-stitched heart.

Missed Connections as art.

Notte Sento (English subtitles) from napdan on Vimeo.

Thursday time.

Oh boy oh boy oh boy. Today I'm packing and thinking of country life and horses and riding boots and wool blazers and ruffled blouses and river houses and adventure. Then I will go to trivia night and drink beer with friends and laugh in dark corners and maybe even dance to the jukebox.

What are you doing this Thursday?

Modern Family

Modern Family is so stinking funny, I can't even handle it. My favorite character is Manny. He's strong, yet sensitive. He's a great listener and is in touch with his roots.

Meet the family:


Does anyone else watch this show? I am hooked.

"We are so many tiny pieces..."

So, I got t-boned today. That was pretty scary. It's also a fun thing to add to my "crappy things that have happened this year but will totally help build my character" list.

I am so ready for 2010. It's going to probably be the best, most amazing year of my entire life. Next to 2009, an uneventful year would look amazing.

Here are a list of resolutions I have for 2010:

• Successfully grow out my hair, and then get cute bangs (and then dye it reeeeed).
  
• Find someone to harmonize to "Afternoon Delight" with me.
• Write in my journal every day, even if it's boring.
• Finally open my Etsy store.
• Go thrifting at least once a week.
• Tour every historic home in Charleston.
• Less texting, more letters.
• Travel: I mean you, NY, LA, and Chicago.
• Bake treats, then give them away.
• Make more secrets.
  
• Less driving.
• More pictures.
• More and more and more music.
• Whisper more.
• Finally try a Pimm's Cup.
• Have a tea party with all the girlfriends I've made this year.
• Say yes to more slow dances.
  
• Spend an entire day barefoot in the park.
• Learn to make really good Indian food.

2010 is going to be a busy year, because this list is just going to keep growing.


I can't stop dancing to this:

From the basement.

Nigel Godrich's new website, From the Basement, is so much fun. I wish my Opa and Oma's basement had the goodies in it that Nigel's apparently has. Their basement has a furnace, storage bins, a freezer and some junk in it. Nigel's basement has Radiohead, Cold War Kids, PJ Harvey, Beck, Gnarls Barkley, and tons of other talented performers playing insane, passionate, beautiful music.

Some performances I enjoy:
Fleet Foxes, "Your Protector"
Andrew Bird, "Tenuousness"
Jose Gonzalez, "Down the Line"
Thom Yorke, "Videotape"
Damien Rice, "Rootless Tree"
Zee Avi, "Monte"

On a side note, Nigel Godrich said this about Andrew Bird: "I accidentally stumbled into Andrew Bird's show at a music festival at Conway Hall in London. It was a fairy-tale moment for me.. if slightly disorientating. He was alone on stage whistling and looping some seemingly random sounds, and I wondered what exactly it was that i was watching. Soon the noise grew to become beautiful and enormous. It was spellbinding."

Don't you just love music? How it works? How it layers? How it makes your heart beat funny? How it makes your palms sweaty like love? How it bothers your dreams? How the right song speaks to you in a way that makes your spine shiver? It haunts and titillates and inspires and overwhelms and rocks you to sleep and makes you dance.

I love music.

It's dirndl time.

Here we go. The dirndl I haven't worn since age 13-14. I hope it serves me well at Oktoberfest!!

Maya just has a lot of hang-ups this Halloween.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN, ONE AND ALL!

Today I'm obsessed with...

• Baggu's new canvas Duck bags:

Only $18 each! In 8 colors! Buy me one!

• This French Connection dress:

I like the UK/Canadian version so much better than the US version.

• In These Arms, the new album by The Swell Season. Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova broke up last year after falling in love on the set of Once, but are still writing music together. They were on All Things Considered today and the whole interview was fascinating. I think he's still in love with her.
  

• The thought of eating Mexican food tonight. Since Sunday, basically all I've consumed is soup,tea, grits, juice, and popsicles.

• Wearing my dirndl tomorrow and making a huge vat of potato salad for Oktoberfest.

• HALLOWEEEEEEEN.
  

The Halloween Dilemma.

Can I just wear a funny cat mask?

So, it's two days before Halloween and I still haven't solidified what I want to be. I'll be spending a large portion of the day rockin' my dirndl (which I haven't worn since I was 13 or so) at an Oktoberfest party but what do I wear for the nighttime?!?

I was going to be the Morton Salt Girl, but now I'm not so sure. I already look younger than my age, so dressing like a little girl is not as appealing an idea as it first was.

I need something that would be good for dancing and something that allows me to wear fun make-up. I think those are my only requirements. I don't like those overly saucy costumes, though. Ick.

Any recommendations would be great!

"There is no such thing as an unwritten life."

(I don't know why this poster wasn't used in publicizing the movie...it's so much better than the other one.)

Even though I was intrigued about The Brothers Bloom the first time I saw a trailer, I was kind of afraid to see it because I thought it was going to try to be a Wes Anderson-style film. But today, I finally watched it. I loved almost* everything in this movie, even the excessive cons-within-cons (within-cons-within-cons) that critics whined about. I loved the dialogue, the style, the cinematography...there were so many scenes I wish there were screencaps for, so I could just look at them over and over again. I loved the notebooks and card tricks and little white gloves and vintage cars and literary references. But what I actually loved most was Adrien Brody's character, Bloom.

I was intrigued from the beginning of the film, but knew it was love in the scene where he's flying down a large hill (small mountain?) on a Schwinn with a banana seat wearing pinstriped pants, a complementary plaid peacoat, a furry hat with earflaps, and goggles. Be still my heart. Bloom may now be the largest crush I have had on a fictional character. Everything he wears is perfection (everything in neutrals, with blazers and suits and ascots) and he's subtly funny ("A '78 Caddy? A controversial choice.") and, well, he is wildly charming. As are most things about this movie. So watch it, if you haven't already.



*Maybe it's just me, but I couldn't 100% enjoy Rachel Weisz as Penelope. I think she's a fantastic actress, but in this, she annoyed me! I like the idea of the character of Penelope, though.

Update: I still feel awful.

I have been moaning and groaning and moping around the house because I have the flu. Yes, that flu. But I seriously need to get over myself. Here are some things that have been jumbling around my head today:

Yogi Tea puts little sayings on their tea bag tags. It's one of my favorite things about drinking their teas. Mine today says:

Live from your heart and you will be most effective.

And I like that.

Also, my crush on Jack Kerouac has been reignited.

I was reading his list of 30 essentials for his "Spontaneous Prose" technique and I love them, so I thought I'd share.

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for your own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside your own house
4. Be in love with your life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
29. You're a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

The man makes it sound so easy to be filled with the right words, places, and characters. I need to have a secret notebook again. Why is writing so scary sometimes? I owe some essays to someone and I have them, just sitting here, but have issues letting them go and being done with them. I miss my writing classes in the Forest Theatre at UNC, where it all seemed so easy. We would have great discussions, surrounded by trees, and you couldn"t help but write pages and pages. Now...well, things are different in the real world. I need to shake things up a little.

Here's a little more Jack for you:

Down for the count.

I feel awwwwful. Save for a quick excursion to Poe's for a burger (the Tell-Tale Heart is highly recommended) and an impromptu tour of Fort Moultrie (how have I lived here 2.5 years and never been out there?) and a trip to Harris Teeter for supplies (cough drops, soup, vitamins, popsicles) I have been camped out in my bed watching movies and napping, which is what I will continue to do until I conk out for the night.

Happy Sunday!

P.S. I went to see Ghostland Observatory last night. There was smoke. And lasers. It may have been the most fun show I've ever been to.

"Moments."

Doesn't this make you just love life? It's all made up of tiny, countless moments.

At The Red House...

So, while I was hanging out with my friend Cathy in Vermont, she shared something with me that is so cool that I had to pass it along. The thing that is so cool is this: ilovelocalcommercials.com.

Basically, Rhett & Link, two dudes from the great state of NC (and NC State alums) work with local businesses to create original (and freaking hilarious...to me, at least) local commericals for them. The best part? The commercials are created at no cost (this means FREE) to those small businesses.

Would you like to see some of the work they've done? Well, OK then...look below:


"I used to be a gynecologist in Cuba. Now I sell cars here in America."


"At The Red House, where black people and white people buy furniture. And Hispanic people too. And all people."


"So come on down to Cullman Liquidation and get yourself a home. Or don't. I don't care."

You can nominate your favorite local business(es) so that they can get a cool commercial too, so go to their site and make stuff happen!

I have a Lolita complex...

...but not in a Humbert Humbert kind of way.



Probably my all-time favorite perfume is Lolita Lempicka. I bought it ages ago and now that it's on its last dregs, I only wear a dab here and there when I'm feeling just so. Besides getting little samplers of the other Lolita perfumes, I've never really worn them or tried them out.

But then I saw on decor8 that there is a new Lolita perfume "Si Lolita" out in France, and this pretty little commercial has been airing in Europe:



And now my interest is sparked again. Maybe once I finally run out of classic Lolita Lempicka, I'll try one of the others...they're all so pretty:





Learn more about them here.

On a scale of 1 to 10...

...how distinguished do I look?



I'm thinking an 11.

Burlington, VT + Montreal

Fog, rain, wind, and delays in Philly started the trip, but MAN was it worth the wait. Bundling up, shopping, snacking, playing, and laughing with your girlfriends is about the greatest thing ever. My bank account is now weeping openly, but I have a lot to show for it...all sorts of things to decorate my wardrobe and memories of delicious meals/evenings.

Vermont:

This is what I looked like a lot. (Photo by Cathy.)

Amanda shopping for veggies at Burlington's farmers market.

They close down 108 mid-October, but people still wander it on foot and hike the trails.

Cathy posing with our snack.

Cathy in the red hat.

The perfect post-bar hot dog.

A Sunday afternoon walk.

The best one.

My new favorite tree.

Chopped rocks.

Autumn colors.

Montreal (I don't have as many pics because I was busy pressing my nose to the glass of H & M and Zara windows.):

Vive la Montréal!

I am.

Painted walls and graffiti covered the Quartier Latin.

Kusmi Tea is my new obsession.

After shopping all day, since the place I wanted to go (Olive + Gourmando) was closed, Amanda and I went to L'Express. It's this really unassuming Parisian-style bistro filled with cute waiters. They bring you a jar of delicious little pickles and mustard to snack on while you wait on your meal. I had the soupe paysanne and croque-monsieur and it was perfectly warming after a chilly day walking around.

After that, we wandered down to Le National to see Dead Man's Bones. It was fantastic, for more than the reason that I was in the same room with Ryan Gosling for the latter portion of last evening. The event began with a talent/variety show of magicians and burlesque and the actual Dead Man's Bones performance was something of a multi-media event as well. Dead Man's Bones is basically attractive boys + Johnny Cash + your favorite childhood haunted house. Accompanied by a local children's choir dressed as "zombie skeletons" the band sang a number of catchy and spooky-themed songs (some odd ones, also). Maybe the best part: a six-year-old girl singing the Nancy Sinatra hit "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)". Also, "Pa Pa Power" is such a fun song.

How could you not be entertained?



In summary, I had an awesome trip.

All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go...

After much moral support and encouragement, I've finally been convinced not to bring everything in my wardrobe. Here's what I've settled on for the icy north:

I've packed:

• iPod, stuffed to the gills
  
• camera
• passport
• magazines
• sweets from a sweet one
• gray jeans
• black jeans
• gray thigh-high wool socks
• gray wool armwarmers
• plum fingerless gloves
• gray hat
  
• black skirt
• oatmeal wool skirt
• plaid peplum skirt
• a variety of striped shirts
  
• brown riding boots
• black high-necked peacoat
• gray military coat
  
• black platform heels
• black and brown flats
• black and gray leggings
• black tights, textured and plain
  
• off-white cowl
• necessary underthangs
• exercise garments
• gems and jewels and other belted accessories
  

While I'm gone, if you feel so inclined, leave me some inspiring things. Quotes, movie/music recommendations, knock-knock jokes, secrets, bits o' trivia, declarations of love, or whatever else you feel like.

I will return on Tuesday with photos, tales of adventure, and a new French-Canadian wardrobe.