This weekend is my first one completely off (no weddings, no meetings, no site visits, nothing) since early March, so I’m heading to the beach to catch up on some sleep, some socializing, and some sunshine (although I may be planning to shoot a tutorial on signature cocktails, so it’s not like my workaholic tendencies have completely disappeared.)

Some things I’ve liked around the internet lately:

• Kathy Ebel’s amazing blog Fatherland: There’s No Place Like Home or, How and Why a Nice Jewish Girl Asked Germany to Take Her Back - some of the most engaging blogging I’ve read in years (I devoured the entire thing over a few days.)
• Our Feel-Good War on Breast Cancer – Peggy Orenstein is a national treasure, and one of the sanest voices out there on this topic.
• A wedding RSVP card that covers every horrible wedding guest that could possibly be invited.
• I inherited my grandmother’s diamond engagement ring and love it, but also love this piece from Business Insider “Diamonds Are A Sham And It’s Time We Stop Getting Engaged With Them“
• “There’s just some special sauce here that’s pretty nice.” Stranger than Paradise – The NYT tries to write about West Marin.

And: Lowe House Events is now on Facebook! “Like” us over there for more regular updates on goings on in our wedding world.

Here’s to summer weekends and the Pacific Ocean.

photo: polaroid by me, circa 2002, of the road over Mt Tamalpais.

Summer is by far my favorite time of year – somehow it makes everything feel more possible. Of course, summer also means busy season when you work in the wedding industry, and so I tend to spend it working overtime, last year to such a degree that I ended up feeling like I missed it completely. I’m thankful this summer that I get to work in a house with almost floor-to-ceiling windows, and a backyard that I can move to when I need to take a break. The smell of tomato leaves and hose water – together, the epitome of summer – will always be my favorite smells in the world, and right now the tiny tomato seedling I planted eight weeks ago is practically bursting out of it’s pot (it helps that I moved to the hottest, sunniest part of Oakland) and is covered in flowers and baby fruit. Plants are such a visual representation of time passing that it can sometimes shock me, and I’m working on letting them remind me to occasionally slow down.

Can someone please explain how it’s January 23rd already? Some random things for you:

• I haven’t actually tried them yet, but I’m excited about this line of colorful compostable ware from Susty Party. Made out of starch and grass fiber, in the US. Rad. (pictured above)
• If you haven’t seen Dan Savage’s brilliant column on weddings yet, go check it out.
• It’s a few months old, but Jessica Valenti’s post, She Who Dies With the Most ‘Likes’ Wins?, is a brilliant must read for everyone. “The truth is that we don’t need everyone to like us, we need a few people to love us. Because what’s better than being roundly liked is being fully known—an impossibility both professionally and personally if you’re so busy being likable that you forget to be yourself.”
• I wrote a piece over at APW on the dreaded Wedding Budget, and answered questions in the comments -  hopefully both are helpful if you’re currently in the thick of things!
• Great advice when it comes to your home – “Go Ahead and Make a Mistake” via Apartment Therapy
• Looking for non-cupcake like (or bank breaking?) flower girl dresses? I put together a board full of them over on Pinterest.

“Gun Violence is not something we have to accept, it is something we can do something about and our strategies can reap tremendous results.”
- New Jersey Mayor Cory Booker

oh hey! Things have been crazy lately – wedding season wrapped up for the year, I took my first non-working vacation in two years, friends have had babies who have needed to be adored (holding babies: one of my favorite things), and I moved (locally. pictured above). I have tons of good 2012 weddings to catch up on blogging, but in the meantime, a few things I’ve liked lately.

• 6 Things You Cannot Change “Better to be the happy, gently smiling sloth than the lemur who has developed a prescription pill habit to keep up with the snowballing disappointments of a life he/she did not choose. Be the sloth, not the crazy-eyed lemur. You’ll be happier. I promise”
• I am really into this coffee table. Now to find an extra $1000 somewhere…
• While I’m obviously a really big fan of weddings, this APW post on Why (Sometimes) Wedding Planning Isn’t Worth It is fantastic.
• I’m still in purging mode from moving, so these decluttering tips that Leslie put together are on my mind.
• Remains of the Day: A wedding photographer sets out to learn what happened to the couples who hired him for their big day from the Washingtonian

Hope that everyone is doing well!

The night ended with the best impromptu dance party ever – completely unplanned, that ended up going until I finally had to kick everyone out a little before midnight so that we could finish cleaning the venue and let the staff close up!

Congratulations again you two! (ps. we need to grab some drinks again soon!)

photos: the crazy talented Gabriel Harber Photography

some random thoughts:

• I love this piece on how to write a thank you note (via Mighty Girl)
• I spent this past weekend outside of Healdsburg on retreat (I’m on the vestry, which is similar to the board of directors, at my church) at The Bishop’s Ranch, one of my favorite places in the world (photos above.)
• I’m finally finishing decorating my office and I’m pretty sure that this print, by my friend the lovely Lisa Congdon, is going to need to make an appearance.
• these were some of my favorite shoes last summer, and they’re finally back in stock. Cute and comfortable enough to wear for an entire day of walking around a city. (oops, link was a zappos vip link – fixed now!)
• oh hey, I’m heading to Chicago for a few days on Wednesday! I hate cold weather a lot, but my work schedule for the year dictated that I make my annual visit in February. Suggestions for excellent indoor activities are appreciated.

The main ways I find books are:

• recommendations from friends & family whose taste I like
• recommendations from authors whose work I like (many authors keep book logs, write reviews, or mention books they like in interviews. Pay attention.)
• recommendations from bookstore employees (people who work in bookstores are almost always big readers. If you tell them what you like, they can almost always give you spot on recommendations. I’ve discovered some of my favorite books & authors this way.)
• Reviews, specifically from The New York Times.
• mindlessly browsing in local used book stores. In Oakland, Walden Pond Books is my favorite (as well as having been my closest neighborhood bookstore for most of my adult life.) I’ve discovered amazing things completely randomly by reading the backs of book covers while killing time.

So, how do I keep track of all of these books when I hear about them so that I actually read them later? Amazon. Let me say this: I am big, big, big supporter of local book stores. I’m also a big fan of buying books used, because I buy so very many books, and try as I might the library just doesn’t do it for me (I’m a giant believer of the importance of libraries to local communities. But I like to highlight books, fold down pages, re-read, and lend them out. Borrowing just doesn’t really work for me.)

Enter: the Amazon wishlist and my iPhone. Whenever I hear about a book that I want to read, I go into the Amazon app on my iPhone, and add it to my wishlist. Then, whenever I happen to be near a bookstore, and have some time to browse, I can pull up my wishlist, remind myself of what I’ve recently heard about that I want to read, and look for it in the shelves. Win. I do also order books from Amazon – mainly new releases that I’m dying to read so much I can’t wait for them to come out in paperback (if money were no object I would buy everything locally, and in hardcover.)

It’s probably worth noting some of my all-time favorite books while we’re here: Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner, Bel Canto by Ann Patchett, A Kind of Flying by Ron Carlson, and The Road by Cormac McCarthy.

Any other tips for good ways to find books to read? Any books you want to recommend that I read?

*In fact, I often joke that my only non-work related hobbies are reading and my social life. Not really a joke. And I’m not sure how legitimate of a hobby “my social life” is.

a few things I really liked from the last week or so:

• these snakeskin print velvet flats from daniblack. which are as comfortable as they are rad.
• buying tickets for my next trip – Chicago in February! (because apparently I’m a masochist – it’s very possible that I hate cold weather more than anyone in the world.)
• the big 60th birthday party I planned for my dad the night before NYE, complete with made-to-order street tacos, gallons of sangria, and a plethora of papel picado (above.)
• spending New Year’s Eve with some close friends, risotto, & champagne.
• oh hey! I worked with the amazing APW ladies to make some downloadable wedding-related spreadsheets. They’re pretty awesome, if I do say so, and you should totally use them if you have a wedding coming up.
• this piece from the Times on “The Joy of Quiet.” yes.

Stunning, no? Natalie did the flowers for Anita & Wayne’s wedding, which were equally amazing, and she loves doing weddings and is willing to work with budgets of all sizes. Bay Area couples, if you’re still looking for a florist, get in touch with her! You will not be disappointed.