if I had a million dollars

I would buy...{the winter weather edition: baby}

An organic velour bear hoody, from Baby Gap.

Mini Rodini's Fox Sweatshirt. Available at shak-shuka.

An under the sea long-sleeve romper, from Winter Water Factory.

Fable Baby's spot sweat pants.

And a pair of bear animal booties from oeuf.

Hetterson - f/w 2011

Some of my favorite pieces from Hetterson's fall/winter 2011. Hannah always designs the most lovely collections, and I think there's something especially appealing about this year's with it's abundance of cozy sweaters and charming dresses and tops. You can see all of the season's items on the Hetterson blog, and purchase them in the shop.

Matthias Heidrich - snow blind

Berlin-based photographer Matthias Heidrich has a great sense of composition and an eye for detail, even when his subjects are frozen, snowy landscapes.

There's something very compelling about Matthias' Snow Blind series. I love the subtle changes in color throughout the snowy winter landscape, punctuated only by muted blocks of color in the form of buildings, vehicles and other industrial structures.

(Via lemmemakeit)

Anna Emilia

Sometimes, an artist can be so indicative of a location, that both the place and their work get irreparably mixed together. Whenever I think of Finland, even though it's a place I've never been to, illustrator Anna Emilia's intricately drawn, naturalistic work always come to the forefront of my mind.

Anna's representations of the seasons are particular favorites of mine, with her choice of colors, patterns and imagery always seeming to be the perfect invocation of the changing landscape, and with her "weather diary" - an online journal featuring projects, photographs and words - as the perfect accompaniment to her work.

saying goodbye to 2010, list style

Well, this is it folks, time to say goodbye to 2010. And what better way to do so than with a some good-old-fashioned best-of lists? I thought about doing a looking back over the year in art, design and craft type of post, but found it way to difficult to pick out just a few favorite things for the year. Basically, if it's something that I post here, it's already because I think it's really wonderful to begin with. The task of shortening a year's worth of posts to a best-of list? Impossible. Instead, I thought it would be fun to focus on some of my favorite things of the year in categories that I don't generally talk about here much at all: books, music and movies.

So, to start the ball rolling, I thought I'd share my 5 favorite books of the year, with Jennifer Egan's A Visit From the Goon Squad as far-and-away my favorite. Now keep in mind, while I'm a fairly voracious reader, there a few books that won tons of praise this year that I just didn't get around to picking up yet (here's looking at you, Jonathan Franzen and David Grossman). Of the ones that I did read, however, there were quite a few that were pretty darn enjoyable.

1. Jennifer Egan: A Visit From the Goon Squad
2. David Mitchell: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet
3. Joshua Ferris: The Unnamed
4. Maira Kalman: And the Pursuit of Happiness
5. Aimee Bender: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

Next, it's on to the music. I was going to only do the requisite top 5 list, but just had to add on The Bird and the Bee as no. 6, mostly because I love a great covers album. So here you have it, in no particular order, and because 5 just wasn't enough:

1. Arcade Fire: The Suburbs
2. Kanye West: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
3. The Black Keys: Brothers
4. Cee Lo Green: The Lady Killer
5. The National: High Violet
6. The Bird and the Bee: Interpreting the Masters, Vol.1 - A Tribute to Daryl Hall and John Oates

Finally, I had every intention of ending this post with a best-of movies list, but it seems that I really didn't see many films this year, or at least, very few that I really loved. The King's Speech, The Kid's Are All Right and True Grit were probably my favorites, with Toy Story 3, The Social Network and yes, the adorable Babies, up there as well, but really, it was a pretty slow movie year for me, at least in terms of new releases. As for older movies that I saw and loved this year, the list is quite a bit longer, with A Single Man, An Education, Summer Hours, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and Mermaids (which I still can't believe I just saw for the first time), topping the list.

Anyway, that's about it for the unusually media-heavy portion of our blog today, as well as my last post of 2010. I just wanted to say one last thank you to everyone who stops by this little blog; I hope you all love reading and commenting here as much as I love posting. Wishing you all the best in the new year, and I'll see you back here in 2011!

walking in a winter wonderland

I know I said I wasn't going to blog again this week until Friday, but I just had to share some pictures I took this morning, after the blizzard that blew through last night left Brooklyn under about 20 inches of snow. Lucky for me, I got an awesome new pair of snow boots for my birthday, so I was ready to venture out this morning and see the winter wonderland that our neighborhood had become. As I mentioned on Friday, I was supposed to be leaving New York for warmer climes today, but sadly, both mine and many other people's flights were canceled, so it looks like I'm sticking around after all. Many of the city's trains, buses and subways aren't running so well today, and we saw a ton of stuck cars, so there was no saying whether I would have been able to even make it to the airport, but I am pretty bummed about missing out on some time with my family. Anyway, I am going to try to make the most of these next few days off, maintaining blogging silence (with the possible exception of some better neighborhood snow pics, and by better, I mean taken by Patrick and not me), and enjoying the snow before it turns in to slush. I hope you're all staying warm, and I'll see you back here soon.

good king wenceslas

Well, friends, I'll be in Florida visiting my family next week, and while I will have computer access, I've decided that I'm going to use the time not only as a break from work and the cold winter weather, but from blogging as well. So, to all of you who celebrate the holiday, have a very merry Christmas. I hope you'll join me back here next Friday to finish up December's Designer of the Month and to say goodbye to 2010, and then it's right on to the new year. See you all next week!



(Via oh, hello there)