Duover

I'm really happy about what Duover is doing for my Wednesday morning. Take a listen and enjoy. Thank you Darling B for sharing with me.

Four Tier

This is on its way to me. Good for the upcoming fall to winter, winter to spring transitions, I think.

On Distraction

I discovered this post and this man last week. I can't stop thinking about it. I plan to stop by Chamblin's this week to pick up a copy of the first book he published, Essays in Love.


Taken from his website:

On Distraction, by Alain de Botton
posted 10.06.2010

One of the more embarrassing and self-indulgent challenges of our time is the task of relearning how to concentrate. The past decade has seen an unparalleled assault on our capacity to fix our minds steadily on anything. To sit still and think, without succumbing to an anxious reach for a machine, has become almost impossible.

The obsession with current events is relentless. We are made to feel that at any point, somewhere on the globe, something may occur to sweep away old certainties—something that, if we failed to learn about it instantaneously, could leave us wholly unable to comprehend ourselves or our fellows. We are continuously challenged to discover new works of culture—and, in the process, we don’t allow any one of them to assume a weight in our minds. We leave a movie theater vowing to reconsider our lives in the light of a film’s values. Yet by the following evening, our experience is well on the way to dissolution, like so much of what once impressed us: the ruins of Ephesus, the view from Mount Sinai, the feelings after finishing Tolstoy’s Death of Ivan Ilyich.

A student pursuing a degree in the humanities can expect to run through 1,000 books before graduation day. A wealthy family in England in 1250 might have owned three books: a Bible, a collection of prayers, and a life of the saints—this modestly sized library nevertheless costing as much as a cottage. The painstaking craftsmanship of a pre-Gutenberg Bible was evidence of a society that could not afford to make room for an unlimited range of works but also welcomed restriction as the basis for proper engagement with a set of ideas.

The need to diet, which we know so well in relation to food, and which runs so contrary to our natural impulses, should be brought to bear on what we now have to relearn in relation to knowledge, people, and ideas. Our minds, no less than our bodies, require periods of fasting.

BYOC (Build Your Own Cricket)

I think it'd be dreamy to build one of these bad boys and get lost driving it around the good ol' USA. The inventor is a "space" architect and has worked on NASA's International Space Station's habitation module (aka where the astronauts live). His most recent venture is the Cricket, where mobile camper meets tent. They're customizable, lightweight, compact, can be pulled by any car and fit inside a garage. Sounds like a dream-wander-mobile, I'm ready to go!

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Little Things

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My Thoughts Exactly

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Fantic

I knew my home was missing something... Something like a baby elephant named Fantic!

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Book of the Month Clutch

Kate Spade's gone and done it again. Paying homage to three beloved classics, these Book of the Month Clutches pack in the intellectual with the chic.

And for your desktop, free Book Club Wallpapers.

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Shiny Happy People

One of the best lovelies I know, a one Miss Rachel Best, gave me the most astounding book for my birthday this past weekend.

The Shiny Happy People Book is a cookbook by Neil Roake cataloging exquisite dinner parties and beautiful homes curated by the people he admires best: his good friends. When I fist unwrapped the book, my first reaction was "How Beautiful! It reminds me of my blog roll!" But upon further inspection, I found that not only was I interested in these people, and the food and decors they had to share, but that the author and his friends-featured were all located in South Africa, which I visited this past April and fell hard, madly, deeply in love with. This weekend has been a whirlwind of birthday celebration-chaos (Cheers, 26!), but each night I've found myself getting ready for bed, slightly (or maybe more) tipsy, thumbing through this book, marveling at the beautiful pages inside, planning the perfect dinner party occasions where I shall unveil certain recipes (to everyone's surprise and delight!) and also, feeling a certain (severe) longing for South Africa growing in my heart. The places I saw there were off the beaten path and truly unreal (I am so lucky!)! This book is filling me with a rush to get back to the Garden Route with a moment's quickness, as soon as possible. Thank you, Rachel Best , you've stirred South Africa up inside of me.

You Reap What You Sow

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Postcarden

I'd be so tickled to receive one of these Postcardens in the mail! It's the age old 'thinking-of-you' with a surprise packed inside: a garden to grow! J'adore. Postcardens are available in Botanical, City, Football and Allotment.

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Rebecca Thuss

Rebecca Thuss's site makes me get this rushing feeling that I need to hurry up and come up with a reason to throw a party stat! Big time ideas to spring off of going on in here.

Too bad the plethora of summer birthdays are almost over. Hoping to have a new pad soon, perhaps a house-warming party will happen. If it does, I'll credit it all to Rebecca Thuss.

Yeah, Ya'll.

FFFFOUND

Jacksonville City Guide

My beloved hometown has made it to the big leagues, with its very own Jacksonville City Guide by Design*Sponge. I'm so proud, our city has made its way to recognition on a blog I admire so much!

Edit: Two days in a row of Jacksonville references on D*S??? Unusual, but I like it!

2010 Reads: January to July

The Awakening, Kate Chopin

Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert

Summerhouse, Later, Judith Hermann

The Pigeon, Patrick Suskind

Slightly disappointed I haven't accomplished more reads so far this year. Though Madame Bovary alone took quite a bit of time to push through. Hoping August - December will allow for more time to dedicate to more reading.

Tiny House

I want to build a tiny house. I don't own any property or have anywhere to actually put a tiny house. But I want to at least know how to build one. Vermont Tiny Houses offers weekend workshops to teach you how to build your very own 300 sq. ft. or less space. In one weekend! Everything you need to know! Vermont isn't exactly down the street, but I think a long weekend road trip for a project like this would be worth going out of the way for. I've always wanted to see Vermont anyways.

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Outstanding In The Field

This is one of the best things I've seen in a long time. Outstanding In The Field is a roaming dinner experience, a restaurant on wheels.

They travel across the country setting up their long tables outside in the middle of fields, crops, mountainsides, and shorelines. The food they prepare is locally grown from the region they are in and often prepared by a local chef icon.

Once the meal is prepared, the dinner guests (local farmers, producers and members of the community) gather around the long tables to dine, drink and enjoy together.

The majority of their tour list takes place out west. Unfortunately, I see no dates in Florida and only one in Georgia. Nonetheless, I joined their mailing list, in the hopes that they notice at least one Floridian is interested! They also have plans for a European tour in 2011.

Ernest

Found out recently that we are separated by only four degrees. I'm quite pleased about this news.


"I've plenty to learn everywhere." -Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

Bright Star

Finally saw Bright Star the other night. What a gorgeous film! And lovely music too. And who doesn't love a good period piece about a famous author and his lover? I'm a sucker for all of the above.


'Bright Star'

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--
No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever--or else swoon to death.

- John Keats