Lazy Saturday

Sometimes, you just can't beat a good ol' lazy weekend spent reading, cooking and watching a great movie. We had just such a Saturday last weekend and I couldn't resist snapping a photo of my sister Caroline relaxing in the living room watching an episode of the X-Files as I was heading in to my room.

Weekly Theme: Chaos

This was a tough one, Cayce! For the most part I like to keep my living spaces neat and tidy, however, that doesn't apply to my hidden-from-view spaces. Exhibit one: my closet. It's so tiny that I can't actually fit all my clothes in to it at once, and so I have to switch it out from summer to fall storing the off season clothes in large bins in my basement. With winter coming up, I will have to switch my closet in the next couple of days and it's a chore that I loath doing. bah!

Washington

My mom is an artist, she sacrificed quite a few years to raising her 4 daughters instead of painting, however, and that is one of the reasons I am so happy for her that she was offered a contract for representation by an art gallery in Washington, Mo. I had the day off work on Columbus day and we happily spent the afternoon driving around and enjoying the Fall colors and making our way to Washington so my mom could switch out some paintings. We ended the day by catching "The Duchess" at the movie theater - it was fabulous.

My favorite of her series of paintings of the Scottish countryside.

Knobby Root

Exposed root knob from the hedge behind my apartment. Sometimes I think it looks kind of gross, and at other times pretty neat. I can't decide.

Fall Purple

I know this is a plant. What kind of plant, you ask? I have no idea.

Pizza Pizza

I enjoy cooking and trying my hand at different recipes. But I've always quailed at the thought of baking bread because of how tempermental dough can can be - que visions of flat, burned bread husks coming out of the oven. I decided a couple of weeks ago to give it a try and found this simple and unintimidating recipe for home made pizza bread on Smitten Kitchen (http://smittenkitchen.com/2007/01/pizza-and-the-limits-of-diy/).

Add some fresh mozzarella, basil and prosciutto with homemade pizza sauce and you have a recipe for a fabulous dinner for four! It was seriously the best pizza I have ever tasted in my life!

Shroomapalooza

I love mushrooms. Imagine my happiness then, when I noticed this colony while getting out of my car at home!

They were huge!

Weekly Theme: Still Life

Janae, this was fun! I decided to go the traditional route.

Starburst

A chandelier located at a design store in the Central West End. I think it's pretty neat, but I don't think I would have it in my house. I am not a fan of direct overhead lighting. Something about it just kills my soul. So, yes, if you have exposed bulbs all over your house - I am quietly dying inside. ha!

Constructed Light

Finally, the last post on my visit to the Pulizter. In February, the Pulizter Foundation opened the first phase of their Dan Flavin light installations titled Constructed Light. From what I understand, this exhibit is unique in that Flavin is not here (having passed away in 1997) to supervise the installation of the light pieces. His work is usually highly specific to a particular space, so that is what makes this exhibit different from most others typically like this: (http://lucylucia.blogspot.com/2008/06/dan-flavin.html).

The Pulizter is only open to the public a couple of days a week, so it's not always the easiest thing to get over there. I had visited the exhibit a few months ago during the day, and found how the lights changed the space to be delightfull. I knew though, that the effect must be so much more dramatic at night. Thankfully the museum expanded their hours to include evening visits and I jumped at the chance to visit at night and photograph the lights.

How disappointed was I then, when a well meaning docent politely let me know that photographs are not allowed in the building? This, I find to be rather strict as both the Met and the MoMA in New York allow photography as long as the flash in turned off.

I was glad I was able to take a few photos before being informed of the embargo - and maybe just a couple of surreptitious ones after!

Grant's Farm

I took my nephew, Joseph, to Grant's Farm a couple of weekends ago and man, did we have a good time! The weather was great and the animals were in fine form.

There is just something wonderful about spending time with a 5 year old. It's my favorite age and I get no end of fun talking with Joseph and spending time with him. By the way, those yellow sunglasses he's wearing have smiling sun stickers sticking out on either side. I think that level of un-selfconciousness is going disapear in about 2 years.

We rode the tram all over the park and were able to spot Texas Longhorn steer and some buffalo!

We saw elephants, kangaroos, bald eagles, clydsdale horses, llamas, camels and monkeys. This little guinea pig, however, is what actually captured Joeseph's attention. He was in love!

Driving Past

I've always enjoyed looking at photos with cars zooming past and how the light are all blurred together. I assume that those pictures are taken by the pricey SLRs, well, I decided to fiddle with my camera and see if it is capable of taking such pictures, and it is!

Weekly Theme: Comfort

I've written about this before, I think. About how happy, peaceful and content I feel when staying with my grandparents in Costa Rica. My grandmother's home is full of mementos and photos of our family pretty much stuck in every nook and cranny of the house. It's wonderful to walk around and see our family's history. Costa Rica has a smell. And when I tell you that it's a musty, faintly moldy smell you're not going to get a good impression. I think it's a smell typical to most humid tropical places and I've come to associate wonderful and comforting feelings with it. When we were little, my grandparents would send gifts in the mail on our birthdays, usually underwear for some reason, anyways, the first thing we'd do is smell the packadge and say this smells like Costa Rica and my family would know exactly what we were talking about.

My grandparents at the local market buying food for dinner.

My lovely cousin, Yvonne and my sister, Caroline, posing in front of the house with my grandmother.

It's Finished!

A couple of months ago, I mentioned that I was loooking for new bedding for my bedroom. I've had the same comforter for about six years and was ready for a change. Unfortunately, I couldn't seem to find anything that didn't cost several hundred dollars or that was affordable but came in a tacky "box" set. As luck would have it, I was visiting the Crate and Barrel website, just for fun (to covet) and found this lovely duvet on sale for $48. How could you say no to that?!

Armed with new bedding, I had my mom come over to help me rearrange my bedroom - along with the addition of another bookcase given to me by a friend. All it took was an afternoon and I now feel like I have a brand new space. And I think the final cost was under $100 total. Awesome!

Photos of my old bedroom for reference. These pictures actually look nice, I think. But believe me when I say that the whole room had become dingy and completely overwhelmed with books. Now, I love my books and will never throw or give them away - so I was stuck with about 5 three foot stacks of them behind my bedroom door. The new room fits them so well now!

The Light Project continued

Untitled, 2008

Jason Peters

The artist strung buckets together, illuminated from within. He was interested primarily in the "physicality" of the work and had not much to offer for added insight. Which sometimes, I think can be just as nice as a long explanation of what the artist was trying to achieve.

Crystal World (after J.G. Ballard), 2006

Anne Lislegaard This last installation, was based on the dystopian novel, Crystal World by James Graham Ballard in 1966. In the book, a doctor working in Africa runs in to a village that has an infection which is slowly turning everyone to crystal. The projected images contained excerpts from the book allong with images of a house slowly becoming more angular or "crystal-ish". You can see my sister, Caroline, in the above picture in the red jacket taking it in.

Last but not least, Elena, Caroline and myself spent some considerable time looking for the last of the 4 outdoor installations, one called Sunset by Spencer Finch. We walked past an ice cream stand about half a dozen times before giving up and walking to our car. Apparently, it was the ice cream stand. Yikes. So, no pictures of that work. Sorry!

Chorus

My favorite art museum in St. Louis is the Pulizter Foundation on Grand Avenue. It's a private art museum funded entirely by, you guessed it, the Pulizter family. I'll write more about it in later posts, but this is the first post about their "Light Project" which began with their exhibit of Dan Flavin light installations. In order to expand their Constructed Light exhibit beyond the bounds of the building, the Pulizter Foundation invited four artists to create outdoor light installations at various sites surrounding the building. The first, and my and many other's favorite, is Chorus by Rainer Kehres and Sebastian Hungerer.

Ranier and Sebastian began by requesting donated lamps from St. Louisians in the surrounding area, carefully listening to their stories as the lamps were being deposited. They chose the site of a burned out church about one block away and began constructing a new "roof". I thought it was absolutely delightful!

It's a one time exhibit and I am so glad I was able to see it. The Light Project will be on view through October 17th.

Apple Cake

Last Thursday was just like any other at work - until our IT guy came in to the office and told us that the computer networks had all crashed and that we would not be able to sign on to our computers the next day. I immediately asked my wonderful program director if I could take Friday off as I didn't have any meetings scheduled with students and wouldn't it be great if I could use that work time wisely by baking an apple cake at home instead? Katherine agreed and let me use a random vacation day to chill out at home. Many thanks to http://justaplanerideaway.blogspot.com for the wonderful foodie links on her blog which lead me to Smitten Kitchen. I have recently recently become obsessed with this blog (http://smittenkitchen.com/) and have had no end of fun imagining menus for the dinner party I will be having sometime in the coming weeks. One dessert in particular struck me as fairly manageable and fun. I am speaking, of course, of the apple cake!

It was delicious! One complaint I have about being single is that making full out dinners and desserts feels like a collossal waste of time, since you're really only cooking for one. Thankfully, I had a friend over that night and I was able to take the leftovers to my family the next day, who all smacked their lips and paid me millions of compliments. ya!

Weekly Theme: Fire

I was experimenting with my camera a couple of nights ago, trying to see if I could capture the lights of cars zooming past. I finally figured out how to do so and for the heck of it took a picture of my lighter waving it across my camera just to see what would happen. So, Cayce - your theme fits perfectly!

Sundrops

Outside my mother's home in her garden.

Weekly Theme: Coffee

I am not a coffee drinker, I am a coffee mug collector, however. It's fun to get a mug representing trips or places I've spent a lot of time.

Janae, I think you'll remember this particular mug. It's still Caroline's favorite.