Posted in Environmental Consciousness, Portland, Style, Vintage + Thrift, tagged clothing, free, maine, portland, recycle, swap, swapmaine on September 29, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Exciting news, Mainers! SWAPmaine is back for round 2!
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These are some of the amazing finds that I scored for free at the first ever SWAPmaine event that was held this spring. I’m pleased to announce that the organizers have decided to host another free clothing swap this fall. The details are a bit different this time, so make sure to check out their blog by clicking this link!
Now get sorting! You’ve got time to sift through all of your clothes and decide what stays and what goes!
xx.
Posted in Crafting, Shop Talk on September 28, 2011 | 2 Comments »
| Some things I’m really excited about these days |
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- My Mr. coming home with flowers that he picked for me. Aren’t they lovely?
- Helping out with some sewing at The Merchant Co.
- Working on a big-deal guest post for an amazing international company’s blog!
- The fall + harvest season!
- The possibility of sharing a display at a local shop with Paper Taxi in November!
- Spending four days in the Lakes Region for Columbus Day Weekend!
I hope your days are filling with anticipation for something wonderful, too!
xx.
Posted in Lists, Reading, Social Consciousness, tagged books to read, essential reading list, in your lifetime, influencial, list, literature, must reads, novels, plays, the hobbit on September 25, 2011 | 9 Comments »
My best friend loves to read even more than I do.
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She came over last week, and together she, Ryan, + I compiled a list of books that everyone should read at least once in their lifetime. I do often feel like I’m a bit behind when it comes to the classics, and before I get any further from my youth, I thought I’d just nip that one right in the bud.
So here’s what we came up with:
| I will read every single one of these classics |
- Catcher In The Rye - J. D. Salinger
- Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
- Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë
- Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
- Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
- 1984 - George Orwell
- Macbeth – Shakespeare
- Much Ado About Nothing – Shakespeare
- Civil Disobedience - Henry David Thoreau
- To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee
- Of Mice + Men - John Steinbeck
- Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
- The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
- The Crucible - Arthur Miller
- Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
- Pride + Prejudice – Jane Austen
- The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
- Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
- A Room Of One’s Own - Virginia Woolf
- Dubliners - James Joyce
- Madam Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
- War + Peace - Leo Tolstoy
- Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
- Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
- Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut
- The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
- On The Road – Jack Kerouac
- Lord of the Flies - William Golding
- A Farewell To Arms - Ernest Hemingway
- The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
- Moby Dick - Herman Melville
- Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
- The Stranger - Albert Camus
- Paradise Lost - John Milton
- For Whom The Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway
- Light In August - William Faulkner
- The Sound + The Fury - William Faulkner
- 100 Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez
- Walden - Henry David Thoreau
- Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
- Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
- The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
- Into The Wild - Jon Krakauer
- A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
We tried to represent as many influential writers and eras as we could think of, but it’s pretty likely that we’re leaving someone out. You did so well at filling in the gaps when I asked for your help with summer movies, so I must ask again…
am I missing anything?
xx.
Posted in Reading, Social Consciousness, tagged articles, autumn, bookstores, e-readers vs. books, fall, going out of business, hello giggles, reading, you've got mail on September 24, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
I operate seasonally.
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This is something I’ve come to know about myself. In the winter I knit and sew a lot, in the summer I need to be outside, and in the fall I read and write. The weather in New England is as pervasive to my mood as that of Wuthering Heights.
And it seems I’m not the only one. Hello Giggles posted a fantastic piece recently called “Get Thee To A Bookstore Before It’s Too Late“, and as soon as I read the title, I just knew I’d be so fired up about the article.
You see, I’m rather opinionated at times (perhaps you’ve already figured this out on your own). And I just love the atmosphere created when books are stacked and piled and displayed as they are in bookstores and libraries. To think that I’m standing amidst a sea of stories is something akin to standing at the top of a hill during the worst of a storm — it’s powerful, bewildering, and most of all, exciting.
So I do worry about the future of our bookstores these days due to the prevalence of e-books and free/cheap downloads. When I moved to my city just three years ago there were at least five bookstores that I applied to for a job just within walking distance of my house. Since then, not only have three of those five have closed, but so have their locations in other towns, and we all know about the recent Borders disaster, don’t we?
Basically what I’m trying to say is, I think bookstores are simply magical, but they’re in serious danger now that we’re all too lazy to get off of the couch and walk to them. Shall we all decide together that we’ve learned a lesson from The Shop Around The Corner in You’ve Got Mail, and know that the internet will always be here for us, but that our bookstores might not?
After all, autumn is the perfect time for reading…
xx.
Posted in Free Giveaways, Music, tagged 1996, autumn, downloads, fall, free, mp3, music, ryan marchand, songs on September 23, 2011 | 4 Comments »
In honor of the first day of fall, I’d like to present you with my very first giveaway!
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A lot of the blogs I follow have frequent giveaways where one lucky commenter (in about 200) will get a bag or something. It’s great! I love getting free things! But I comment on just about every single one, and I’ve never actually been the lucky winner. So, I wanted to have a giveaway on my blog where everyone wins.
| If you’re reading this right now, you have won a lovely free download |
My darling writes the most beautiful music. He’s been writing a lot lately and has just started up his own BandCamp. Download a pretty little autumn song for free by clicking this link, then have a look at his page later if you like what you hear. There’s nothing uploaded to his site just yet, but if you check back next week there should be some great songs for you (maybe even with backing vocals by me)!
It’s my way of saying thanks 
Enjoy, friends! And happy autumn!
xx. julia
Posted in Environmental Consciousness, Lists, Our personal history, tagged everything in its place, hoarding, live simply, minimalism, organization, stuff on September 22, 2011 | 2 Comments »
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Poor Ryan. When he met me I came with a whole bunch of stuff that I had been collecting my entire life and was desperate not to part with. Nothing really that important, just stuff — even things that I had gotten as gifts years before I met him (sometimes they remained un-opened and stuffed in the back of a closet). I just couldn’t bring myself to part with this stuff because someone was kind enough to think of me when they saw it all.
Throughout my entire life, my bedroom was a nightmare and my Mom eventually gave up making me try to clean it + keep it clean. She realized that it’s just who I am — a messy, messy girl. I was always too excited about doing the next creative thing to go back + clean up from the last. Or, maybe I just found it easier to locate things when they were spread out on the floor in front of me rather than tucked away neatly in drawers.
Either way, I have to say I felt very sorry for Ryan when we moved in together and I knew I was bringing my mess into his rather minimalistic lifestyle.
But, it seems that over the years that we’ve lived together his way of life has surprisingly impacted mine. If you had told me three years ago that by the time I was 25 I would be in the habit of vacuuming the entire apartment every week, scooping the kitty litter every night, and putting the clothes away as soon as they came out of the laundry (please don’t tell my Mom these details, she might have a heart attack), I would have told you that you had clearly mistaken me for someone else.
I really can’t say I’m upset about the change, though. I’ve always wanted to be one of those people who had things pulled together. The key, I have found, is time management + mindfulness.
Here’s a list that Ryan showed me that seems to really highlight a lot of the things that I’ve learned in the past couple of years about time, space, + personal management. It’s simple, and it feels incredibly refreshing to live in this way.
To live deliberately, what else could anyone ask for?
xx. Julia
Posted in Uncategorized on September 21, 2011 | 14 Comments »
So, being a Zooey Deschanel fan, I’m wondering how her new show New Girl is!
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I usually really like not having cable since it eliminates an obscene amount of distraction and obnoxious advertising. But every once in awhile there’s something I’d like to see on TV which really makes me question it. I can say that during high school I stared at that glowing screen for far too long, and I don’t really want to have that temptation back in my life, but the internet just doesn’t cut it when it comes to shows like this.
So, I must ask:
Did anyone get a chance to see the pilot last night? And, what did you think? And, can I possibly wait another week to see it, or will I perish for lack of spur-of-the-moment personal theme song writing and gratuitous Dirty Dancing viewings? You be the judge.
I suppose that now since I’ve scoured the internet looking for any random web host of the pilot episode and come up empty handed, and also asked for your help, maybe I can get on with my life and do something productive with my afternoon. I’ll just have to hold tight until next Wednesday…
Have a lovely one!
xx.
(Click image for source!)
Posted in Style, Things I Love on September 20, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Once again, I’m just enamored with those Red Velvet girls…
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This video is their Fall Look Book, and I swear I’d love to bring every single piece in it home with me! Each article was carefully and thoughtfully designed by Elsie Larson + her team of equally lovely ladies over the course of the summer. Quantities are very limited — some have already sold out!
Elsie’s can-do attitude is evident in every video, blog post, shop mention she does, + it is so very inspiring to me. She is constantly outdoing herself! Pop over to the website to check out those dresses before every last one is gone
Here’s the dress I’d choose:
Which piece would you pick?
xx. Julia
(Click photo for source!)
Posted in Portland, Style on September 19, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
I had so, so, so, so, so much fun last Friday at Mod Night!
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I have a strange sort of background in music for my age range. Most babies of the ’80s grew up with Madonna, Michael Jackson, Gloria Estefan, and artists of that ilk. But my parents are a bit older than those of my peers, so the only songs I heard from birth through middle school were the hits of the ’50s, ’60s, and early ’70s.
I actually never minded this. I was happy belting out all of those old Motown jives and doing the twist with the best of them. I quite enjoyed it! But as I got older, I started noticing that this wasn’t the normal soundtrack for a kid my age. Nevertheless, this was the music I grew up with, and there wasn’t anything I could (or wanted to) do about it.
So you can imagine my excitement when on Friday night, for the first time in my life, I got to dance with my peers (and a lovely couple my parents’ age) to the songs I grew up with — I was totally in my element. I didn’t leave the dance floor once after setting foot on it, and Ryan practically had to drag me away at the end of the night. If I had had my way, I would have kept on grooving until the sun came up.
Needless to say, I was remarkably fatigued, and not feeling my best the next morning. Although very comfortable in comparison to most of my other shoes, these new wedges I wore did end up taking their toll on me after so many hours of dancing. I actually had to pass up an amazing family trip on Saturday just to recover from my Mod madness on Friday night — it was that good.
But it was well worth it. Especially when they played Dizzy Miss Lizzy.
xx.
Posted in Good Eats, Locavore Resources, Our Local Summer 2011, Portland, tagged deering oaks, farmers, maine, market, portland on September 18, 2011 | 2 Comments »
Walking down to the Deering Oaks Farmer’s Market here in Portland is a weekly tradition for Ryan + me.
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There are several markets a week in our area, but this is without a doubt the very best one. Reason being, it’s located under tall, tall oaks in the middle of our city’s largest park. During the height of our locavore diet, we would frequent any market we had time for, and fill up our totes with produce galore. But the other locations don’t lend the same exciting fair-feel as this one does.
Not only is there freshly grown food a plenty, but the Deering Oaks market is also a-buzz with music, and laughter, and the main path through is lined with the booths of handmade venders. A tight rope walker regularly sets up his wire between two trees and children learn to hula hoop by practicing, practicing, practicing while their parents do some shopping.
Since you may be too far away to experience this weekly ritual yourself, here are some photos I took last week to share with you:
So there you go!
If you’re ever in Portland on a Saturday during the growing season, make sure that a trip to our Deering Oaks Farmer’s Market is on your to-do list.
xx. Julia
