Update: Blog Moving

blogspot sucks - my template, etc...is fucked up.  I'm moving over to tumblr.

more soon...

Happy Valentine's Day

Remember to be nice to stupid cupid or he'll be stingy all year long with those arrows.  Happy V day my nearest and dearests. BESOS on both cheeks!

Guten Freitag

Happy Friday! It felt like today would never come. Great news: tomorrow's temperatures will rise to 45 degrees! Unbelievable. I can't wait to feel the sun sprinkled on my face.

Above image is my current view and remedy for last night's lingering aches and pains.

XX everyone and have a very lovely weekend.

Let's Think Magically...

I SAW ETERNITY THE OTHER NIGHT from Alan Jensen on Vimeo.

Baby Bitch(es)

We celebrated some good news over the weekend. Shannon, my dearest, I love you. Monday night is ours.

Booya!

Winter Comforts

There are lots of things about winter I enjoy (even this winter) including consistently feeling cozy, down comforters, b-rate horror movie nights at home, fireplaces, complex red wines, plaids, LL Bean boots, soft snow falling, good hair days, lazy weekends and most of all is making homemade soup. I spend the few months every season perfecting each batch.  This season's favorites have been vegetable lentil (above), black bean lime cilantro and a cauliflower puree that is to die for. Just sayin'.

Yay soups! and to only 40 more days until spring.

Rip it Up

Best feel good Sunday song ever. I dare you to try not to dance.

Guten Freitag

Friday night is Sweet Leaf.

The (my) Train

Bushwick, Brooklyn
The village idiot, the student, the soul

(Not) the Sartorialist

So much for sexy sexy or stylin' in these damn shoes.  The wintry weather calls for more snow in New York City tonight and all week long.  See you all week boots. Oy vey!

Ikat Love

Anthropologie's new Spring furniture line is featuring the most gorgeous ikat designs. The Mathilde sofa is to die for. The eight-way hand-tied seat construction, luxuriously dizzying design, kiln-dried hardwood frame AND walker finish are just too much for me to handle. Too much!

If the steep, and I mean steep, price tag at $2,698 is a big bite out of your (and my) working stiff budget...you can always buy the adorable throw pillow above for a mere $68 instead. See, you can compromise good design.

Guten Freitag

Forecast: more snow today and next week. I'm not freaking out about it because I (honestly) love warm cozy Friday nights at home.  I'm enjoying a few beeritos, catching up on emails and watching Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti performance on the ol' boob tube. Yup, you read that correctly...AP is big time now.

Enjoy your weekends my dearest friends -- love your guts.

Apartment Swoooon!

Take a tour of writer Laura Santtini's bold and oh so very! lovely London flat. God, this is apartment is perfectly curated with antique finds, modern surfaces, ethnic rugs, flea market gems, fresh florals and endless dashes of charm sprinkled in every corner. I am so in love with every single thing in the place. This apartment is really tops; seriously it is quite perfect.

View the space here via Living Etc. Enjoy!

Silky Smooooth

Chew on Toro y Moi's silky smooth new disco-funk jam Still Sound.

Guten Freitag

Guten Freitag!! Happy three day weekend everyone! Cheers to having Monday off and to Dr. Martin Luther King.

I'll be at the usual volunteer gig tomorrow followed by hanging with my dearest friend Shannon indulging in wholesome deviant behavior.

Sunday is a serious bloody mary session at The Commodore with Shannon (again) and making bad decisions followed by a little soiree in Williamsburg.

Monday is a day filled with (unfortunately) painting my living walls Benjamin Moore Grey Horse. It's the perfect teen temperature thing to do I guess.

Currently enjoying some domestic beers, playing with the free iPhone app Instagram (above photos) and listening to El Guincho's FM Tan Sexy cozily at home. No big Friday out for me tonight.

Enjoy your weekends my dearest friends!! XOXO, V.

Analog Mail

Montag Series, 2011

The Essentials

So, the grocery stores were insane tonight -- only the strong could survive at my local Food Bazaar. I decided to bypass the lines, headache, stress, frustration, lost sense of humanity and stick to the essentials at my corner bodega. Yup, I am clearly a single woman living in Brooklyn.

Brace yourselves for the foot of snow tonight!

Jane Campion's A Girl's Own Story

If you have a few moments click here to view Jane Campion's short A Girl's Own Story. It was made in 1984 but seems much older. The story is so intenesly odd, twisted, honest, uncomfortable, dark, perverse, gentle and slightly fucked up -- very early Campion. 

Outer Haze

Chew on this sound of heavy, melodic, metallic, echoing, complex, rhythmic and dirty haze from San Francisco wonder band Weekend. Perfect for early Sunday evenings...

Digital Leather

Digital Leather's Not Now from the masterpiece (!!) record Warm Brother on Fat Possum Records. The performance was filmed last year in Texas. Every song on the album was recorded in a one bedroom apartment in Tempe, Arizona. Every song is a gem. They are all a perfect blend of over-blasted sounds from vintage synthesizers, haze, analog drum machines, cheap microphones and the most thoughtful lyrics. God, this album is on constant repeat in my home.

Shawn Foree, the one man band known as Digital Leather, is a true sui generis. Rock on.

Saturday's Sounds

Enjoying early morning sounds from the Spectrals. I'm currently enjoying Chip A Tooth (Spoil a Smile) and I Ran with Love But I Couldn't Keep Up here.  My favorite so far on the record is the cutest little love song Rot with Me.

This album is so very perfect for Saturday mornings and allows you to effortlessly ease into the weekend that awaits.

Served best with coffee.

Wintry Friday

It snowed again today in New York City and will continue to do so all weekend.  I've decided to spend my time doing cozy things like making homemade soup, enjoying yummy wines, digging out old records, organizing magazines, washing linens and giving my crown molding around my windows a fresh coat of Benjamin Moore's Decorator's White paint. I'm doing all the things I say I wish I had time for. Being 'snowed in' is the best time to do them and more. The goal is to not leave Brooklyn until Monday morning. Yay for cozy weekends!! I hope you are enjoying yours.

Currently listening to Mother; what an amazing song and quite possibly the most beautiful and saddest adult 'lullaby'. So sooo tender. Glucklicher Freitag und neues jahr meine liebsten freunde!!

Heavy Metal Pizza

Went to Patsy's Pizzeria in Chelsea last night for what I believe is THE BEST pizza in New York City.  I know we all have our favorites and opinions of who holds the crown for the ultimate pie but this is my winner; hands down.  Anyway, I went with my oldest and dearest friend Miss Erin Hogan (20 plus years as BFFs and counting) and as per usual, we polished off waaaay too much shitty pizzaria chianti, sangiovese wines and gossiped over slices.

Aaaah, I heart you Patsy! And Erin.

Photos: (1) ode to THE pie & (2) Erin post second bottle &amp

Not Simply a Chair...

Admittedly, I am obsessed with chairs.  Yes, they serve a basic utilitarian function but they also can dignify a room, a table or a lonely corner. My current obsession is this George Nakashima straight-backed chair.  The original 1945 design has found a re-introduction and currently being manufactured by Knoll.  I like to call this beauty "Japanese Shaker-style".  The joinery alone is phenomenal; a true art form.

At $634 a pop (not including tax, delivery and tip to carry up a four story Brooklyn walk-up), I may never sit in one but hey, I can fantasize.

Dienstag Fotographien

via Art Raffle

Winter-perfect Cozy Cards

Anyone that knows me understands how much I adore sending handwritten notes and cards.  I send for most occasions - never forgetting a birthday, a milestone, a memory, a thank you, a thinking of you, etc...I love letting my nearest and dearests know how much they mean to me and when I am thinking of them. 

Enter "Warm Heads" cards by W + K Studio. The designs range from adorable pom-pom to the tad creepy ski mask to the coziest of caps. They cost $20 for a box set of 8. This has winter-perfect written all over it! Use your local post office more and send handwritten notes; your friends and family will love you more (if that's possible) for it.

Blinky Palermo: Retrospective 1964 - 1977

Blinky Palermo: Retrospective 1964 - 1977 closes on January 16th at LACMA. Please try to see the national touring show if you have not yet done so.  The exhibition provides an in-depth examination of the evolution of Palermo's aesthetic. This is the first retrospective of the work and not to be missed. Next stop: The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC.

Image: Blinky Palermo, Untitled, 1964, oil on canvas, Collection Stroher, Darmstadt, Germany. Photo: Jens Ziehe, Berlin

Manchukuo

Visit Manchukuo from Sunset Television on Vimeo.

Another reason to plan a staycation. Here's to the full work week ahead!

This is my first post of 2011.