Sweet post from Katie Dohman at Midwest Home here.

Pretty sweet words from a customer.

Simple Lovely

I start blushing when I read things like this.  It's amazing and wildly unexpected to hear about complete strangers finding their way to this little shop. Holy moly.  From the Simple Lovely blog down in Texas:

The seemingly awesome new Minneapolis shop The Foundry (billed as, "simple, useful, and beautiful objects for the home") via the exceedingly awesome Minneapolis ladies Dull Diamond ladies.But I especially love this from The Foundry's site:"The Foundry supports a life-long relationship with well-made and thoughtfully curated goods, while encouraging a non-disposable lifestyle with fewer and better home things.""A non-disposable lifestyle with fewer and better home things"... Yes please. 

dull diamond love

I love these ladies from dull diamond.  Emily & Jen are full of creative spunk and super dang sweet.  I am putting them on my new "favorite humans" list.

Love from Pretty Mommy.

Lovely blog post from Ali Kaplan here.

My design hero & very best friend wrote this little gem about the shop.

Opening Day

A windy and perfect morning to open the doors to The Foundry Home Goods.

Notary Ceramics

Just ordered some hand made, high fired stoneware candlesticks, water pitchers and mugs for the shop! These candlesticks are pretty darn sweet set alone or in a grouping of various sizes. From from the lovely NOTARY CERAMICS where Sarah, her family and her four very cranky chickens live and make beautiful pottery in Portland, Oregon

First Order | Common Good

Today was a big day.....the first purchase order was sent out via good old fashioned snail-mail.  Sacha at Common Good & Co was such a big help and sweetly, seemed as excited as I was about this big step for my new little shop.  I can’t wait to set up our new bulk soap refill station with their lovely product. 

That feeling.

Stealing this photo from my dear friend, Alecia's trip to Rome. It's encapsulating that feeling....that pit in your stomach, rush of blood to your cheeks, clenching the fists feeling. I want to hold on to it. So tender and so, so sweet.

Under Foot

Ring

Dawn

Border

I don't often come across a modern rug or textile with patterns or imagery that gets me. Antique rugs and vintage finds aside, modern patterns and prints seem to distract....they drive me batty. Of course, there are exceptions.

Fort Street Studio is one of those exceptions. Beautiful silk and wool rugs with quite and balanced imagery. Completely refreshing.

On the Street...

The most tender hearted man in fashion. It's about time someone turned the camera around on him.

So fresh. So clean.

Constellation Mirror

The Constellation Mirror

by Blackman Cruz

A big beautiful convex mirror done up in some pretty fantastic horn. Little bubble etchings make this mirror more fascinating than functional, but in the most wonderful way. It's like looking though a submarine window 20,000 leagues under the sea.

Little Pear Pendants

Sweet little perforated copper pendant lights from Egypt. From my favorite new Dutch design shop Le Souk.

Paperwhite Season

Some winter floral arranging that I did for our showroom last week.

Open Windows

This is an image from the film Bright Star about John Keats and his love, Fanny Brawn. A lovely film. The scene is so quiet and beautiful. The colors, the sound, the feeling...everything. I can't quite shake it.

Il Bisonte

Squash Blossoms

My mom sent me this picture with her iPhone yesterday. It always feels like a small miracle to me each time that she conquers technology to send me these visual nuggets from back home. She titled it "Anna Time/Harvest Time". Baskets nestled in the grass with their garden treasures. Usually around my birthday she calls me to tell me the story of when she was in labor with me, listening to the crickets at our old kitchen table, stopwatch in hand. Timing contractions on a hot and still summer night. Almost 30 years ago. Wasn't that long ago that I was just a squash blossom in a basket...fresh out of the garden.

It's been an amazing year.

New Bike

Beach-y

The beach via Steven Alan.

New Momma

A new little gosling has arrived back in Minnesota.

John Ringer Leavenworth

sending all my love to this new little man and my lovely Libby. xo

Blooms

I'm in heaven. I was recently hired by one of the most incredible design showrooms in the world to do what I love to do...make things beautiful. I am pinching myself every day. I work with fantastically lovely people, work around drop-dead gorgeous product and it's all set in the most stunning showroom you've ever seen. It's like walking into the pages of Architectural Digest every morning after I step off the train. Pure and crazy bliss. One of my many happy tasks is to tackle the floral styling of the weekly flowers as well as all arrangements for events and parties.

I grew up on a big country farm, where we gathered armfuls of lilac branches in metal buckets and bunches of Lily of the Valley crammed into milky glassed jam jars. Flowers were everywhere....on the kitchen table, in tiny vases in by the bathroom sink, abandoned on the picnic table next to baskets of ripe tomatoes. It was a different kind of "styling". The beauty was in the untamed nature of the arrangements. Huge single blooms of dinner-plate Dahlias on the dining room table were dropping petals in the most heavenly likeness of freshly fallen snow. Nature took most of the styling into her own hands. So here I am, in this outrageously sophisticated showroom in the most phenomenally design savvy city in the world,trying to translate what I know of floral styling on the farm into this big deal-big city situation....

After an early morning exploring the Chelsea flower market, this is what I come up with for week 1: a low lying bowl of peach and green Parrot Tulips arranged in a sweeping wreath, a swooping arc of greyish purple blossom in a giant hand blown glass vase and a leaning wall of Lisianthus flowers in a narrow grey acrylic vase. More to come...

Opening act