{speed painting}

Sorry for the late start today. I had some issues with my post for Little Pink Book, so you better visit and see the results! I did the first post for my Lazy Girl’s Guide to Looking Fab. Moving on… here is a totally unrelated video. Well, come to think of it, it isn’t totally unrelated. He speed paints a girl. I speed paint my face. Close enough. Enjoy!

And what a cute picture he painted 🙂

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{dream on boys}


Isn’t this every guy’s fantasy? Yes, my friends and I lounge around half-naked like this. Yup, you figured us out boys. And, one of us is always in a big ball gown, too. Just for shits and giggles.

{via} dripbook

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{a beautiful idea: package exchange}

Oh Hello Friend is hosting a package exchange. Now, you know that I’m a huge advocate of random acts of kindness and surprises. I think this idea is genius and incredibly sweet. Who isn’t excited to get a package in the mail?

button three.

Sign-up by Monday July 27th. Partners will be assigned on July 28th, and packages should be sent by August 14th. You’ll have about 2 and half weeks to put together a package for about $20-30 bucks {the suggested spending range.}

mosaic 2

Sign-up and more details here. So what are you waiting for? Go sign up!

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{everyday beautiful life: concrete & honey}

I’m happy to welcome Nicola of Concrete & Honey for this weeks {EBL}. If you haven’t visited it, you’ll want to by the end of this post. She really does have a talent for seeing beauty in everything. I’m absolutely terrified of spiders, but she can even make me appreciate a spider! {I tell you, that is no small task.} I also believe, as you likely will after reading below, that Nicola has mastered the art of beautiful manner and writing.

To the lovely Ms. Jenn,

What a beautiful series you have developed, I am so flattered to be part of it and have loved reading about the where beauty is found in the lives of the contributors so far. How do I live beautifully? How do I narrow it down to just 5-10? From creamy yogurt to magazines and books, pen and paper, fluffy muffins, a perfect coffee, my nephew’s white hair, my sisters bellies full of babies – there is beauty in most everything if you look hard enough, but it’s easiest to see in the things you love the most, these things for me are:

1. {flowers} – A reminder of the absolute perfection of nature, flowers feed my soul.

2. {hand washing} – I work long hours and drop my laundry off at the laundromat, but I make time to cook and I make time to hand wash my beautiful fragile items and hang them out to dry in the sunshine.

3. {bed} – Clean white sheets in summer and cozy pink flanelette sheets in winter. I love sleep and love bed. It’s where I study, draw, write, read, blog


4. {ceramics} – To acquire something fragile and beautiful made by capable hands is a gift and my favourite form of art.

5. {baking} – There’s only one thing more satisfying that baking a beautiful cake; and that’s…

6. {eating cake} …and sharing it with friends and family over hot tea, warm chatter and much laughter.

7. {collected in my travels} – I treasure the bits and pieces i have collected along the journey of my life and are all reminders of where my passion for travel has taken me and what my loved ones have bestowed upon me. i spend a lot of my time dreaming of Paris.

Photos by Nicola of Concrete & Honey

{burton’s alice trailer}

<a href=”http://video.msn.com/?mkt=pt-br&from=sp&vid=44ad7500-98da-43a6-b7ec-2796f73849c9″ target=”_new” title=”Trailer”>Video: Trailer</a>

Disney forced YouTube to pull the leaked trailer {which is quite stupid of them, really.} However, I found this msn one still works {for now.}

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{brideshead glamour}

I watched the recent film adaptation of The Brideshead Revisited and was not fully impressed. I have yet to read the book, but I’ve heard good things. The film was wholly uninspiring. However, I must say that I loved the costumes.

Just lovely. Hope you are having a wonderful day, too. Don’t forget to visit the links below.

{notables from the blogosphere}
+ decorating with black
+ just too ridiculous not to mention
+ great advice: stop becoming and just be!
+ paris apartment makes me drool
+ really pretty cupcakes

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{books, books, books!}

Holy Crap, yay! Barnes and Nobles just launched their e-book store! Currently, the e-reader is free and is available for iphone/ipod, blackberry, mac, and windows. B&N e-books will also be compatible with Plastic Logics e-reader when it is released, however there are no plans to make the books compatible with Sony’s reader or the Amazon Kindle.

When you download the e-reader, you also will get a free Merriam Webster dictionary and some free classics to start you off. You can browse samples of books before you buy them and every purchase is backed up, so you can re-download without charge. {That is really important for me, because I’m disaster prone with all forms of technology.} There’s also that partnership with Google Books that will allow you to download any of the 500,000 public domain books for free. {Read the FAQ here.}

{I’m looking forward to reading this}

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love having real books, especially pretty ones. However, I have thousands at my home at the moment and that pile grows all the time. It will be nice to read e-books (and by the physical copy if I really like it.) Speaking of which, some recommendations…


This book was inspired by the book in the picture below {which is from the lovely boudoir of Alison from Frou Frou Fashionista.} Elegance by Kathleen Tessaro was the first chick-lit type book I ever read. {I had always been against the genre before Elegance.} I found the book so fun and interesting that I tracked down a vintage copy of A Guide to Elegance by Genevieve Antoine Dariaux, who was the directrice at Nina Ricci for quite some time. {I believe the book may have been put into print again.}

While some of the advice in the book may be a tad dated, most of it is still applicable. Above all, Madame Dariaux prizes elegance and chic over being fashionable. Certainly a woman after my own heart. I highly recommend the book. {Besides, it’s pretty!}

Images {via} Harper Collins & Frou Frou Fashionista