Live and Dine L.A.

On a warm Sunday evening a couple of weeks ago I went to "Live and Dine L.A." at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica.  This was a fabulous food and wine event put on by Angeleno Magazine with the proceeds benefiting P.S. ARTS, an organization that raises money to put the arts back into the public schools of Los Angeles.  The event featured some of the best restaurants in L.A. and highlighted some of their iconic dishes and great wines.  We ate our way from one end of the event to the other and along the way were introduced to some great new restaurants, exciting new wines, and lovely people involved with the magazine and P.S. ARTS.  On a beautiful night in Los Angeles., I can't think of anything more fun! And it was all for a good cause.

The event coincided with Angeleno's Annual Restaurant Issue

Tar and Roses is a hot new restaurant in Santa Monica

These wines were excellent

Delicious miniature pot pies from Palihouse Courtyard Brasserie

This dish from Post and Beam was beautiful and delicious!

Black cod with pickled cucumber from Picca

The cooks were happy

Everyone was having fun -- the musical entertainment added to the festivities

We ended with dessert from Cooks County -- Huckleberry Meringues

And some great coffee from Handsome Coffee Roasters

If you live in Los Angeles or visit here next summer, try to go to this event.  It is a great summer night in Santa Monica with some of the best food and wines around.  And you will feel good about supporting a wonderful charity that benefits children.

Summer Beauty

"It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top."

-- Virginia Woolf

Summer can be a great time for inspiration.  It is well known that when we daydream our minds are free to roam and we can come up with imaginative creations or stumble upon creative solutions to problems.  And in the summer, when the pace is slower and we are often relaxing, we can get our best ideas and find inspiration for our everyday life. Sometimes it is just a matter of getting away from our own environment to see things more clearly.  Our thoughts take off and we suddenly come up with an inspired thought or notion, an idea or a plan  At this time of the year everything is fresh and lush, colors are vivid, and there is beauty and fragrance wherever we look.  We may be traveling or staying in our own neighborhood when it happens.  But no matter where,  the mood is the same -- relaxation, surrounded by beauty, and then the great idea.  Here are a few images that might lead to some summertime dreaming and arriving at that moment of inspiration!  

 Bougainvillea at the San Ysidro Ranch in Montecito, California

Lush pergola at the Getty Villa in Malibu

A vista in Napa, California that looks like the Italian countryside

The grandeur of nature in Sun Valley, Idaho

Closer to home, a neighborhood country mart on a summer day -- the beauty of a simple red barn

 A midsummer's night dream at "The Plow and Angel" restaurant in Montecito

Contemplating garden beauty in faraway places

Monet's home in Giverny, France

And places nearby, in a neighbor's vegetable garden

 Or in a Pasadena garden that was on the Garden Conservancy tour 

And right on the kitchen table -- hydrangeas and roses from the garden

Let your mind wander and dream, be sure to take notes, because as someone once said, "life is not a dress rehearsal."  Let's put some of these great ideas into motion!   Maybe it's an idea for that book or short story you've always wanted to write.  Or maybe it's a system for organizing your books or files, wherever it is you go for inspiration. Having it organized will make your life and your writing easier.  That is my current project, and I am loving how good I already feel!  How about that gardening or art class you have always wanted to take?  Why not learn a new language? I want to take more French classes, having taken them in the past and would love to pick them up again.  Or maybe joining a yoga class or taking bridge lessons is something you'd love to do.  Of course you could always start a blog! 

There are endless ideas out there for us to execute.  Fall is around the corner and it is always a time of exciting and creative activity.  Let's get ready!  Happy dreaming!  

The Summer Olympics in London

The London Summer Olympics are beginning this weekend.  Will you be watching? 

I am very excited about the Summer Olympics taking place in London this weekend.  Even though I am not a big sports fan, I love watching the Olympics.  I get goosebumps when the athletes make their first appearance in the parade during the Opening Ceremony.  And this time the London location is especially enticing.   For the next two weeks I will be watching the Olympics, looking forward to the sporting events as well as all the scenes around London!

Olympic Torchbearer at the Globe Theatre

Torchbearer in front of Hampton Court Palace

People take pictures of Prince William and his wife Catherine through the gates of Buckingham Palace as the Olympic Torch relay arrives

Enjoy your weekend in London!

Photos via here and here

Lily Pond Table

Lily Pond table

Photo via here

I am often amazed at how much I learn from my favorite blogs.  While happily reading through some recent postings on the Persephone Post, (part of their larger website which is chock-full of delightful information for book lovers) I spotted this image. It is the Lily Pond table designed and painted by British artist Duncan Grant  for the Omega Workshop around 1913.   I fell in love with this at Charleston in Sussex, England (the home of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant) when I visited there last September.  I learned that several of these tables were made by the Omega Workshop and that the one featured above is in an art gallery in Australia.

When I first saw the Lily Pond table at Charleston, I noticed how often the Bloomsbury artists used garden imagery in their creations.  Bringing the garden inside was something that they loved to do.  Because Charleston is in the country and surrounded by nature, it made sense that so many pieces of furniture, rugs, pillows, and wall coverings incorporated this theme.  It is one of the reasons the house is so exuberant -- flowers and leaves are everywhere.  The beautiful garden that is behind the house was often a subject of the paintings done by Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant.

The Lily Pond table is in Maynard Kenyes' bedroom at Charleston.  He was such a frequent guest at Charleston that he was given his own room.  Can you imagine having this piece in your bedroom?  I remember that the table was in front of a window which had a beautiful view of the pond and the nearby countryside.  That side of the house would have been covered with beautiful white clematis in the summer.  It seemed like a wonderful room for sleep and a peaceful room for work.   Duncan Grant's design for the table was based on the goldfish pond in Roger Fry's garden at Durbins as seen from above.  The paint was poured in puddles, rather than carefully applied, to achieve a more free flowing effect.   After doing a little research, I wasn't surprised to find out that the Lily Pond table was one of the Omega's most popular patterns for painted furniture.

If you you love beautiful books and don't know about Persephone Books,  you should take a look at their website here. They also have two charming stores in London.   They reprint neglected novels, diaries, short stories and cookery books, mostly by women and mostly dating from the early to mid-twentieth century.  These books are beauties!  All are elegant paperbacks with a dust jacket.  They have dove-grey covers with cream labels and printed endpapers often of a fabric from the original year of publication. The books come with matching bookmarks inside.  You can buy the books on their website or if you are in London, go to their store!  The one I visited was very cozy and English, perfect for lingering and browsing through all the great titles.

A post card I bought when I was there

And by the way, I just found out that they will be publishing "A Writer's Diary" by Virginia Woolf this summer.  Something to look forward to!

Virginia Woolf

Photo via here

Endpaper for the Persephone Post edition of "A Writer's Diary"

Photo via here

A Summer Afternoon with Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton

Photo via here

"We would love you to join our book club for a discussion of "The House of Mirth."  What a lovely invitation for a summer afternoon.  Some friends invited me to come as their guest to a meeting of their book club.  They were discussing "The House of Mirth" and knew that I was a big fan of Edith Wharton.  I was thrilled to be invited and delighted to spend a summer afternoon talking about Wharton.  On this beautiful summer day I could picture Edith Wharton's garden at the Mount, her home in Lenox, Massachusetts, and how it might look on this day in July.  I love the Berkshires in Massachusetts and have visited Wharton's home whenever I have been in that area.  The Mount is truly an autobiographical house, reflecting the owner Edith Wharton in so many ways.  She was an authority on architecture, interior design, and European gardens.  Her home, which she designed, reflects all these talents.  And it was there that she wrote the book we were reading today.

The Mount
Photo via here

This year is the 150th anniversary of Edith Wharton's birth and I was hoping to find time to revisit some of her books. "The House of Mirth" is one of my favorites.  When I arrived at the home of the friend who was hosting the meeting, we all sat down to a lovely lunch and dove right into a fantastic discussion of this book.  I hadn't read it for a long time and it was such a treat to discover this classic all over again.  I marveled at the beauty of Wharton's writing and the compelling story of Lily Bart's downfall as she struggles to win a place in New York society but ultimately is tripped up by her own mistakes and errors of judgement.

 The Fifth Avenue Hotel, a fixture of the Gilded Age social scene

Photo via here

There was so much to talk about!  We discussed the plight of Lily Bart, a woman with little money and only the currency of her good looks to buy her way into society.  She had no family or any real friends,  and was almost entirely on her own.  It was sad to think of her complete lack of a support system.   We talked about the financial anxiety that is at the core of her character and her desperate hopes to snag a husband based on her looks.  She makes mistakes all along the way and passes up several opportunities for marriage.  We all wondered if it was because she was foolish or she just couldn't face settling for a lifetime of boredom and a loveless marriage.

We discussed the fact that Edith Wharton was herself a member of the New York society that Lily Bart aspires to, and yet wrote books critical of this group.  The people that she knew, their values and mores, came under her critical eye again and again and she skewered them, not just in this book, but others.  We talked about the fact that Edith Wharton became a Pulitzer-prize winning writer despite the fact that she had no formal education and was discouraged by her family and friends.  But we weren't surprised that she chose this alternative life -- she was a brilliant woman with a deep intellect -- considering the empty and meaningless life she would have led otherwise, based on the way she depicted it in her books.  She became one of the most famous writers of the early twentieth-century and when she moved to France for the last few decades of her life, she moved in impressive literary circles.  She also lent her time and vast wealth to the efforts to aid refugees during World War I.  For her war efforts she was made a chevalier of the Legion of Honor.

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I loved revisiting Wharton through the book club's discussion of "The House of Mirth" and am looking forward to reading some of her other  books during this anniversary year.  When I got home I opened up "The House of Mirth" to look at some of my favorite passages.  Edith Wharton has a style that is distinctively her own and many of her passages of dialogue and description have a richness, rhythm and beauty that take my breath away.  They reveal a writer with real insight into the way people behave.  There is no one like Wharton for getting to the heart of the struggle in people between individual freedom and fitting in, and also depicting the world of old New York as it existed during the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth-century.  Wharton's ability to convey the accumulated damage to the emotions and hearts of her characters caused by the pressures of society has no peer.   Her novels are a gift to readers.  If you are in a book club you might want to read one of her books this year so you can celebrate her 150th birthday!

Inspiration from England

St. James Place, London -- October, 2011

Photo by Sunday Taylor

I am very excited about the Summer Olympics taking place in London this year.  If you are like me and have been thinking about England and London because of the upcoming Summer Olympics, you might enjoy reading a blog I love called "Inspiration at Ben Pentreath."  A while back the Telegraph published a piece listing "The 20 best interiors blogs."  Ben's blog was one of them.  I read it and have been smitten ever since.  It is the equivalent of opening up a box of chocolates.  Each blog post is visually delicious.  Ben is an architect and interior designer who lives in England. He has a home decor shop in Bloomsbury, London.  He also has a charming country house with an enchanting garden in Dorset called the Parsonage where he retreats on the weekends.  He often writes about the Parsonage and its garden. Behind the house is a small village church and the photos that Ben takes of his house and garden look like images right out of Jane Austen.  He also features his London store and his current design projects on his blog.  I am so inspired by his store and the great home decor items that he carries, his design ideas, his upcoming book, and his Dorset home and garden, that I frequently find myself checking in with Ben via his blog to see what he has been up to. Take a look:

Here is his London store:

He sells beautiful English home furnishings.  I love these chairs, hmmm... there must be a corner of my house where I could put one of these:

Bloomsbury Library Chairs

His book on English decoration is coming out in September.  I have already placed my order:

You can order a copy here

 He often takes us to the Parsonage (his home in Dorset) where we can see what he is up to in the garden:

The setting is right out of an old English novel 

His house is cozy and charming

 And the garden is beautiful

He gives us a peek into the inside of his charming country home

He has a flat in London and posts beautiful photos of the city.   In fact, his blog is often a love letter to London.

And also to the English countryside.  Ben happily goes from one to the other, enjoying the best of both worlds:

Recently he took us to Garsington Manor near Oxford where he attended a concert and picnic.  This is the house that Ottoline Morrell lived in one hundred years ago and where D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey, and Duncan Grant would go for summer parties.  (By the way, it is for sale!)  The property is now used as a summer concert site.   I was very happy to read this post and look at all of Ben's images of Garsington, because even though I have many books with black and white and grainy photos of Garsington, I have never seen it like this! You can read about it here.

Garsington Manor 

I am happily enjoying Ben Pentreath's English life via his fabulous blog.  Please go over and visit.  If you want to vicariously enjoy life in London as well as the English countryside, look no further.  You will also be able to keep up with some exciting English design projects.  With the Olympics coming up, we will all be thinking about England.   And I can't wait to visit his store next time I am in London.

All photos (except the first one) from Inspiration at Ben Pentreath