Look Up - NYC

We were in NYC to meet up with our friend, Roopa, for lunch and then to spend the afternoon wandering around. As we were walking, I remembered my father’s words, to look up. Several months ago, I talked about the importance of looking up when you’re in a city. You often see details of the original architecture that have been eliminated or obliterated on the street level. Here’s some of what we saw.

The charming Puck, who stands over the entrance to the Puck Building. Who can resist a fat guy in a top hat?

Looking south to a building decorated a la Louis Vuitton.The front of the New Museum on Bowery Street.

The Bowery Savings Bank from the frontand the side. The incomparable E. Vogel, Custom Made Shoes & Boots. I had a pair of paddock boots from Vogel that were just stunning. Unfortunately, they were jettisoned when I moved to the UK. This building’s curved corner reminded me of the HQ of the National Trust in Washington DC. What you can’t see in the image were the amazing fluted columns on the second floor, which we could see through the beautiful huge windows.Sometimes you have to look down to see the unusual. Girl Props is one of my favourite places for funky and inexpensive costume jewelry.

And in NoLiTa, we saw a reminder of the area’s Italian heritage in mosaics on the doorstep, and also in the beautiful tile-work inside.

We saw this lovely gal hovering above an entrance just to the north of the huge Ralph Lauren store in Soho. All in all, a great trip up to NYC, a wonderful lunch with a dear friend, and lots of walking and talking with a pal.

Perfect Day

Do you ever have one of those days when things just move along seamlessly, that everything is fun, and you are just happy? I had one of those days on Saturday.

I met up with my new friend, Christopher to head up to Book Thing. Christopher had a HUGE box of books to donate, so we chucked them into the back of the Volvo and headed up with Connor riding shotgun. I always admonish people not to go to Book Thing expecting to find the exact book they’re looking for, since everything there is up to chance.

As I’ve mentioned before, the books are categorized, but they’re not in any order. Christopher was looking for Life of the Party, the book about Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman, and within two minutes, we found it. Then Christopher found the issue of Baltimore Magazine which had featured him as one of the top young interior designers, which I hadn’t seen.

We headed back downtown to go to Housewerks, which was featured in Daily Candy DC last week. The mention multiplied their web traffic by several hundred times! Since we knew that the owners would have been busy, we stopped to pick up lunch for everyone in hopes that they’d be able to take a brief respite and have a hot drink and lunch. We arrived at Housewerks during a brief lull in the traffic and had a fun, chatty break with like-minded friends. Since Christopher hadn’t been to Housewerks, he was thrilled to have time to explore the space and check out all of their incredible treasures, like the faience light above.

The late afternoon light was gorgeous and provided some opportunities to take lovely pictures, both inside the building, 

and out.As we were exploring the grounds, we found the resident tomcat curled up in a pile of leaves taking a late afternoon snooze. To catch the best of the late afternoon light, we headed over to Mount Clare Mansion which looks out over Baltimore’s downtown.  The light just warmed the old bricks of the mansion and glowed in the windows of the office buildings in the distance. Mount Clare is the only remaining Georgian plantation house in Baltimore City and it retains much of its former glory. I particularly love this door, which would have originally been at the back of the house. I hope that you had a perfect weekend, too!

We’re heading up to NYC on Tuesday to have lunch with our friend Roopa who was on Jeopardy last week and to do some errands.

Jeopardy!

I often say how lucky I am to have the family that I do, the experiences I have and the friends who surround me. One of those is a woman whom I am fortunate enough to call a friend. Her name is Roopa Kalyanaraman Marcello.

She is charming, stunningly beautiful and extremely smart (Yale and JHU Bloomberg School of Public Health). In addition, she’s a great cook, having had one of her recipes mentioned by Mark Bittman in the New York Times.Roopa is going to be one of the contestants on JEOPARDY! tonight and we wish her all the luck in the world!   

GOOOO ROOPA!!!!

Guest Posting @ The Blushing Hostess

The Blushing Hostess was kind enough to ask me to share some Christmas memories with her readers. I hope you will check out my story over at The Blushing Hostess, which is, by the way, a brilliant blog!

The Hallway: Part VI

My office is now looking like an outpost of the local paint store and I am collecting paint samples from far and wide. I understand that everyone wants to give their input, but some of the comments I’ve heard have not been pleasant. And, as always, I am getting new suggestions all of the time, the latest of which was burgundy.

We’ve decided that since we’re painting, we will paint the stairway, all the way to the top of the house. There is some light on parts of the stairway, but not on others, so there will be very dark spots.

I would like what ever colour we use to continue all though the stairway and the hallway. I put two new colours up at the suggestion of our property director – New England Green and Signature Blue.

I think that we need clear colours to help warm the north-facing space, not muted colours.

I applied a swatch of original favourite, Silver Sage, and really like the way it looks. I also put a coat of the Cowslip #4 on next to the Pale Cowslip.I am leaning towards either the Silver Sage or the taupey Spice Bounty, which you can see on the wall and also at the end of the hallway.But in the end, the decision is not up to me, it’s up to the CEO. However, your input is more than welcome and has been a huge help in looking at colours.

What Fresh Hell Is This???

Just when you think that things are going along swimmingly, a shark arises from the water and begins nibbling at your feet.  Prior to moving to Wales, I lived in my house for ten years. And now, I’ve lived in my wee house since I moved back from Wales. Between these two houses, I moved five times, so was glad to settle down.I just got word that the house where I am living is being sold. This is pretty much bad news, but as ever, I am determined to see the good side of things. Quite possibly, it will take a long time to sell. I can stay until it’s sold, but I haven’t decided yet. Regardless of what happens, the earliest I will have to move is the first of the year. I am going to launch my Etsy shop and start selling things to begin clearing out items that I’ve accumulated since I came back from Wales. Overall, this will be a good thing for a number of reasons. I will keep you posted.

P.S. Thanks to everyone who nominated me for a Kreativ Blogger award. I really appreciate it, Corinthian Column, Soodie Beasley and Victoria Art!