Home Again

We are home after our week at the beach. I like to go away. And then I like to come home. It's good to go away to get outside your daily routine and have a change of scenery and get a fresh perspective on things. Then it's nice to come home because everything is around you that you like: the colors you like, the objects you like, the pans you like.

Ted and I were forced abruptly two years ago to move out of the apartment that we had lived in on Jane Street for fifteen years when the house was sold. We had two floors with a garden in the back. Zac Posen lived next door. It was rather traumatic and we looked at a lot of apartments in an extremely daunting real estate market and fortunately found an apartment we like. Moving forced us to edit, edit, edit, and it was a creative and interesting process to see what came out at the end. For me personally, I like antiques, art, photographs, flowers, plants, floral fabrics, and furniture with legs, nothing overstuffed or with upholstery going down to the floor. I'm going back in time. I like candles, and shadows.

I brought this shell on a stick on the right back from a shop on Fire Island. I like how the pink and tan colors repeat on the piece of coral next to it. The metal snow drops on the left I bought at the Jane Street Sale, held in June, for $5.

Today I stopped in at the Barneys Warehouse Sale. Love the Barneys Warehouse Sale. It's a mob scene -- not for everyone. But I think it's fun, as long as I can keep my patience. Great looking people (and a lot of them) with great style rustling through cartons of clothes. The music is good -- Madonna, Britney Spears, etc. They're smart at Barneys, they make it into a fun event. I found these chocolate brown suede desert boots. They'll be great in the winter (let's not talk about the winter, not my favorite season) with grey flannel pants and a grey cashmere cardigan, or jeans and a Western shirt. $109. I saw some just like them in the Paul Smith store on Fifth Avenue for $539.

This watercolor by our friend artist Marc Pelletier was at the framer's, and Ted brought it home recently. It's of the Empire State Building, and you can actually see the Empire State Building out the window next to it. It's a dreamy watercolor -- very serene and peaceful. I love how Marc captured the scene with quick, broad, simple, watery strokes in shades of blue and grey. That is the artist's magic, no?