Saints for Sinners

"The Saints are the Sinners who keep on trying."-Robert Louis Stevenson

This is one of those blog posts that has been on my to-do list for ages! But I am glad that I waited because rather than just blog about how awesome Saints for Sinners hand painted medals are, I can show you the wonderful gift that I recieved over Jazz Fest.  Rob Clemenz (the artist behind these medals) is a dear friend of our dear friends and he had a "sneaking suspiction" that I was pregant, so he delivered these three specially picked medals to our place of lodging during the fest.  My three saints are Saint Philomena (Patroness of expectant mothers, newborns and infants), Saint Anne (Patroness of mothers, grandmothers, teachers and grace) and Saint Margaret (Patroness of pregnant women and nurses).  I adore them and have not taken them off since Jazz Fest. They are the perfect mix of my Catholic upbringing, kitsch, and art. Can you tell from the photo how magnificent the colors are?  Rob imports the medals from Italy and then meticulously hand paints each one and updates the Saint's story for modern day. They are the perfect "token of comfort and serenity!"

(Sorry for the iPhone photo but the camera is packed away in the hospital bag.)

Happy Weekend

Hope you have a fun-filled, creative, productive, relaxing weekend! Hopefully by the end of the weekend I will have settled on what to give up for lent.  

Love this fragrance bar at Bond No. 9 in New York, using a vintage brass offering table and quite a colorful assortment of perfume bottles. [Please pardon the grainy iPhone image.]

Laissez les bons temps rouler

Heading out the door for the weekend.

Sorry I haven't been around here much this week...our internet was on the fritz.  Let's catch up next week!  Have a great weekend.

Drop me a line.

It's National Letter Writing Week!  Time to bust out the stationary and pens for a little old fashioned correspondence.  

Although they are not yet released, I am highly anticipating the new Forever Stamps to be issued this summer.  

New York City calls.

No this isn't 1947 and this isn't my ticket but it was my grandma's! Have a wonderful weekend!

Update:  Sorry this was supposed to post last Thursday but didn't so I am throwing on here now.  I hope that you all had a wonderful weekend.    

Carving up a good time

This weekend Whole Foods had such an assortment of pumpkins.  If I carve pumpkins this year, I am certainly going to break out the power tools as found in This Old House magazine [the article isn't online yet so I posted the magazine pages below].  I much prefer creating patterns in my pumpkins to scary faces.  These remind me of a design I did in college which won the pumpkin carving contest in our studio.  Yes, I am hanging on to that victory because it was the first time I won a contest, and since I was a nervous first year design student, it sort of validated my decision.  For my design I scored and cut tons of lines and dots creating lots of rhythm and repetition.  No pictures though...my fellow interior classmates threw all the pumpkins off the balcony late one night.  I wish I would have been there for the stress reliever!  

[Lucy scoops out the innards of the pumpkin Linus brought]
Linus: [groans] You didn't tell me you were gonna kill it! 

-From Its the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

Pretty good excuse to break out the power tools!  Maybe a power tool happy hour is in order.

So long summer...

It was a good summer wasn't it?  Here are a few iPhone pictures from those sunny days of summer>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

long days>> baseball>> ice cream>> cold Coca-cola>> junk food on road trips>> crab boils>> west Texas sun>> and The heat.


Now onto my favorite season of all, FALL!

Before (During) and After + Under-Standing Water

Friday night we went to the opening of Before (During) After Louisiana Photographers Respond to Katrina and Under-Standing Water at DiverseWorks.  Before (During) After explores the evolution that 12 Louisiana photographers' work has undertaken in the years surrounding the storm, featured in the show are a few of my favorites Frank Relle and Zack Smith as well as some new favorites.  Under-Standing Water is comprised of sculptural installations integrating household memories damaged and discarded by the flood.  The water faucet by Rondell Crier is a phenominal piece with various flood discards from his mother's house forming a faucet on the wall which puddles out into various photographs on the floor chronicling the two year rebuilding efforts on his mother's house.  In an interview with Culture Map, Crier says "I want people to be able to bend down and be close to an image, to have the feeling of digging through things." 

Faucet by Rondell Crier...[sorry for the iPhone low res.]

The installation by Rontherin Ratcliff is a series of floating houses with plexiglass bottoms which call to mind all the photos he saw drifting and submerged in the waters of his parents' flooded home.  The effect is beautiful and represents what is to me one of the worst aspects of flood damage, the loss of family history.

Rontherin Ratliff [sorry for the iPhone low res photo]

While I highly recommend seeing the show in person if you can't make  it out become a fan on facebook to see more photos, or buy the book.

Mexico on the geaux

Here are the "on the geaux" photos that I was intending to upload last week had a storm not taken down the internet.  So we did have one adventure our last night in Mexico.  We chartered a boat to the nearby town of Bucerias.  It was a beautiful sunset ride on our last evening in this lush tropical location.  Have a great weekend!