NEW CURSE WORD: BODY BAR

This morning I decided to go to a class at our gym. I've been exercising every day since my exorcism but today I wanted someone else to tell me what to do. I opted for the body bar class which interpreted means, "will someone come help me take a shower because I can't lift my arms up to wash my hair." As I was walking out on quivering legs one regular in the class said, "you'll notice a difference after about three classes."
So guess what? I'm going to go at least three times and see if she's right. Her body was fabulous so I reckon I shouldn't be such a doubting Thomas about it. But seriously, about that assistance in the shower...I'm not kidding.

I HEART ANIMAL DETAILS

Dominomag.com features some really great animal inspired pieces. I can imagine each of them adding flare and sense of humor to our house. Notice Victoria's room featured on the homepage today. Hooray for her!

These porcelain monkey bookends at Mottahedeh for $180/pair



















A great accessory for our bedroom since Nate is always packing and unpacking for business trips. I adore the hoof legs holding up this Dransfield & Ross luggage stand for $475.



















Arteriors Home has a delightful resin Macaw lamp that stands nearly 3' tall. I first saw it in the most recent issue of Blueprint Magazine. I think two of these {with colorful shades} would be fun conversation pieces in our big blue room.

DANE COOK MAKES ME LAUGH OUTLOUD

Liz Stanley posted some of Dane Cook's stand-up act from You Tube. I watched a few more segments and deem him extra funny; you just have to censor his language here and there.

WHAT TO DO IN PARK CITY

Nate and I spent a night up in Park City for the anniversary and had a great time. We arrived on Sunday afternoon and went down to historic main street to listen to Ryan's {Nate's brother} band play live in honor of Jazz Fest.
After a little R&R we dressed for dinner and had some amazing streaks at Prime. If you go, don't wuss out and get fish or chicken. Get the steak, attack it, and eat it all up. You'll think about it for the rest of the year. Garlic mashed potatoes and broiled asparagus are a nice compliment.
On Saturday morning we worked out at the gym and, still recovering from our bigger than life steak dinners, decided to skip breakfast. We got a late checkout and lounged around the hotel until we started feeling hunger pangs.
After scoping out Park City Mountain Resort we decided to have lunch outside at Legends Bar and Grill. Nate had the burger and I enjoyed the fish tacos {something I plan to make during my brief time off}. Good food is the perfect prelude to the alpine slide. I rode "crooked path" and Nate took down "last chance" and we rode like rock stars. Since the slide is a friction device, the lighter you are the faster you go {less friction} so despite my slight apprehension, I beat Nate to the bottom by about 100 feet.


















Still feeling full from Prime and even fuller from lunch we decided not to go to Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory for carmel apples but we did stop at an old used bookstore in SLC to buy each other books for our anniversary. I got Nate a first edition of H.G. Wells' Secret Places of the Heart and Nate got me a 1930's edition of Midsummer Night's Dream.
Still not full on fun we stopped off at Mulligan's in South Jordan and played some mini-golf, a game I am gifted at playing. I warned Nate from the beginning that mini-gold has always been my super secret, my stealth challenge. He didn't believe me but now he does. I won by a hearty ten points.


















So, we had no intention of eating dinner. But we did finish the night with some popcorn, sparkling orange cider from Ikea and The World's Fastest Indian. All strongly recommended.
I expect year #3 to be great. As I said in my toast, "here's to year #3. It will be so fabulous that years one and two will be ashamed of themselves."

DEAN & TORI INN LOVE

Okay, so there's a lot of TV that I haven't seen because about this time of day I'm usually stuck in a forgettable cubicle, enduring the office bully. But since my day of freedom, I'm exercising in the mornings, eating healthier, and I catch the occasional episode of Dean & Tori Inn Love and I, actually, find it pretty entertaining. Check it out on Oxygen.

I LOVE HIM TWICE AS MUCH

I think since I've been married to him for two years, it means I love him twice as much. Happy Anniversary Nate. It took me a long time to find you; but when I did...SHAZAM!

TALKING PAINTINGS THAT FOLLOW YOU WITH THEIR EYES

Justin Richel has done some fun work with talking paintings that come equipped with levers you pull to make them talk. And for the extra peculiar, suspicious paintings and combination paintings with movable eyes. We've all seen one of those old-time paintings where the eyes seem to follow you around the room. Well, these actually do. You can find them at The Curiosity Shoppe and Etsy to start. Now you know what to get the guy who has everything!

THIS IS...

I'm intrigued by the series of "This is" books by Miroslav Sasek. With stories about big cities and charming illustrations, this series dates as far back and the 1950s and can be quite expensive to collect. Sasek died all the way back in 1980. But oh, just think about it. Imagine the shelves in your nursery stocked with these stories. I'm sure the bebe would grow up with an urge to travel the world.

A NEW CALENDAR YEAR

With 2007 racing by, now might be a good time to start looking at all the cute calendars out there. Something pretty and inspiring for 2008. Anthropologie has loads of cute options. I like the idea of vintage maps on my desk so I can study all the places I'd love to visit. The paris calendar imitates vintage paris postcards.

I'M FREE!

{This photo is one I took at Oquirrh Lake}
That's right. I'm finally free from the office bullies and mental games. I got a great offer from an ad agency downtown and a few other options on the horizon. I walked out of the office today, for the last time, with an extra spring in my step. {Amie, there are a few of those 1oo calorie shakes left on the bookcase and they're all yours!}

Things I'm planning to do the next two weeks:
1. Have a wonderful 2nd anniversary
2. Go to the morning spin and yoga classes at our gym
3. Find a good painting class
4. Take a book binding class
5. Research cameras and look into a photography class
6. Read good books
7. Try a few new recipes for dinner
8. Meet my friends for lunch
9. Write my next magazine article
10. Try and blot the last year and a half from my mind

Sadly, I won't get my daily dose of Amie and have all those great conversations with her. But now we can just focus on being friends and scrap the whole co-worker thing.

ANNIVERSARY IN GREECE

If I were spending my anniversary in Greece {I'm not, but if I was} I'd want to go to dinner at a beautiful restaurant, sit on the patio overlooking the ocean, and wear this dress.


















With these shoes


















Both from Jcrew.

JCREW IN PARIS

You know how I feel about jcrew. All perfect; all the time. So it didn't surprise me to visit jcrew.com today and watch a video that would make even a Parisian fall in love with Paris. You'll want a messy bun, a cute yellow jacket, some pretty black heels and even an unshorn man to pose with. It makes me want to watch Amelie and eat a crepe and listen to Edith Piaf. {turn on your sound}.

SADIE'S RED DRESS

Polly made a copy of Sadie's Red Dress just for me. So I bought it. Can't wait to put it in my office.




















She's got other great pieces on her etsy shop that would look so cute in a woman's dressing room or big fancy closet. Here are some of my favorites. {black top and racy in black}

RUGS ARE NOT MY STRENGTH

Okay, I've posed this question probably too often on my blog, but I still need help and input from those of you who have a great eye for design.
Nate and I have decided to focus on finishing one room at a time in the new house. And our attention is now on the great room. I stewed over furniture layout for months but with the help of this genius tool from HGTV, I finally cracked the code. Finally we know what we're going to do and have a plan and a list of things to get {rug, two club chairs, one leather chaise lounge, wooden coffee table...to start}.
We found a super cool old world leather chaise from Horchow that I think will look great on an angle in front of the fireplace and it satiates Nate's taste for leather furniture {if he had it his way EVERYTHING would be leather in our house. Probably even our bedding}. It will add some controversy with the modern lines of the infamous couch.
















For smaller chairs I'm thinking something like this or this. But the real conundrum is the rug. Nothing too modern because if we are spending a lot we want to use it for ages. And nothing too light because it's a high traffic area and we don't want to have traffic marks after a week. What about this, this, this or this?
Does anyone have opinions, feedback, constructive criticism?

SMELLS LIKE A FAMILY REUNION

We had the Thompson Family Reunion this weekend and had a lot of fun. My sister-in-law Ruth kindly offered her family's cabin up American Fork Canyon which was the perfect place to hang out, eat too much, play lots of games, and take in the free feeling of being someplace without deadlines and bosses and marketing campaigns.
When my family gets together, we really take advantage of the opportunity to hang out and have fun. No one disappears or goes off by themselves; we all interact and laugh and enjoy the confusion of having six conversations at once.
This weekend included lots of laughing, games, 14 people sharing one bathroom, good food, fishing, tie-dying, more games, lots of blow up mattresses, and a whirlwind cleaning frenzie just before we left. All in all it was a great time and I look forward to the next one.
Here are some photos of our weekend.

I SOUND LIKE HER; I DON'T LOOK LIKE HER

I've been through it all. And what I'm left with is a hoarse rendering of my own voice. All the men seem to love it; surprise surprise!

UNDER THE WEATHER

Image from Getty
When Nate came home from San Francisco last week he brought a sore throat and some sniffles. But apparently, when the San Franciscan bug got a good look at my healthy throat and clear sinuses it decided to have a hay day. I've been a sneezing, sniffling, achey mess the last three days.
I'm hoping I'll feel better today so I can do some laundry and post. We'll see.

HOT SUMMER GOES RETRO COOL

Imagine grilling up some steak, playing some Cat Power, lighting a few citronella candles and just drinking in the milder weather of Spring and Fall out on your patio.

Now imagine having these cute retro spring chairs and gliders available at grandinroad.com. The red is darling.

Our back patio is covered so I could risk getting these beautiful chairs, but if your patio isn't covered you may want to consider wood furniture as an alternative. I can't imagine how hot these would get just sitting in the sun.

I HEART ART

After I saw this photo on sfgirlbybay last month I became inspired to purchase more original art {etsy here I come} and hang it in interesting groups on the walls of our home. At this moment, five months after moving into our brand new house, not a single thing hangs on our walls except for three mirrors. I'm too paranoid to hang anything and damage our currently unblemished walls. But, I have to ask myself, are they so perfect without the personality and charm of pretty art?
Here are some loves I found courtesy of etsy artists.

I know many of you are fans of the office so I thought a small grouping of my favorite characters might be fun. Question: should Pam and Jim hang next to each other? Elloh has some fabulous tributes to pop culture including Amelie, the late Bob Ross, and forever my favorite Johnny Cash.
























ashleyg has some cool images including this one called Windy Day.



















And I absolutely love this print by pollyjarman called Sadie's Red Dress. Hoping she'll make some prints and make it available again.



















Lastly, matteart has some fun owls and birds. One please.




















In the end, I think a nice evening at home with Nate is on the docket for tonight. He gets home from SF tonight, yay! And I think one of us will probably have our laptops humming so why not take a fun shopping stroll in the comfort of our own couch and start decorating our walls. sfgirlbybay told me she didn't have a single piece custom framed; everything was done by her using frames from Ikea. I love to hear stuff like that.