Flickr Flavr O'the Week: Barbie-cakes!

Do you love Cake? Do you love Barbies? Do you want to combine your love of Cake and Barbies into an incredible, edible work of art? Then this Barbie cake post is for you!

Barbie/Southern Debutante found here.

Slumber party Barbie found here.

Barbie Emo found here.

Tiki Barbie found here.

Drunk Barbie found here.

Mud Wrestling Barbies found here.

Happy Hour Friday: El Presidente

There is something right with the world when a really smart progressive thinker becomes leader of the free world and manages to pass some form (any form, please!) of public health care in his first term in a country that has never had such.

Gracias, Señor Presidente!

El Presidente

2 oz. light rum

1/2 oz. fresh lime juice

1/2 oz. pineapple juice

dash of grenadine

Shake over ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Wave your little flag.

Guest Author: Sheila Weller

Today we are fortunate to feature an interview with Sheila Weller, author of the book GIRLS LIKE US: CAROLE KING, JONI MITCHELL, CARLY SIMON -- AND THE JOURNEY OF A GENERATION. Sheila writes social history for Vanity Fair (she penned the article about Ali MacGraw in Vanity Fair that we blogged about several weeks ago). She's also is a blogger on the Huffington Post (see here, here and here) and a senior contributing editor for Glamour magazine.

How did the women you profiled typify their generation?

For one thing, they had more creativity, ambition, and desire for adventure than they/we were led to believe, as children that we were allowed to have. We were little girls and preteens in the Mad Men era--and they, like we, burst out of that convention and re-made the rules, painfully, with risk (but also rapture), step by step. Not one of them had a stylist -- that de rigeur helper that Rihanna and Gwen Stefani and Taylor Swift count on. They styled themselves! But they were style-setters, showing millions of Americans a new way of dressing and embodying young adulthood. All of their looks have been recycled by designers over the years, again and again.

Photo found here.

Carole King got pregnant at 17 and so immediately shot-gun-married her (sexy, talented, brooding) boyfriend, but, while raising two kids (and taking care of this difficult guy) she became a worker-bee (this was very early for young women to embrace "work"), creating hit records. Then, most significantly for the generation, when the early '60s morphed in the mid-late '60s; when adventure, sensuality, communality, and hipness replaced earlier ideas of responsible adulthood -- she had a kind of second young adulthood: moved, with her young daughters, to Laurel Canyon, experienced different boyfriends, amassed a "family of friends," and embraced yoga and meditation. MANY early-married women in their late twenties threw off their "old lives" at this same time, and became "young again," and free, while still keeping the wisdom of their earlier selves. Carole was the wise, slightly older earthmother in her "family of friends," and the nurturance and loyalty she got and gave manifested itself in TAPESTRY, her 1971 masterpiece, which epitomized the entire early '70s, plain and simple. When Carole let her once-straightened hair grow out long and ripply, millions of girls like her threw away their straightening devices and stopped wanting to get nose jobs. She pioneered the natural earth-mother look with the form-fitting granny dress. The TAPESTRY photo of her at her window, doing her needlepoint set a template for girls for five years.



Joni, too, worked painfully to change from one kind of girl -- the dutiful, chaste, proper-proper '50s-bred Canadian prairie daughter -- into a new type that she in fact helped coin: the ethereal, dignified, creative bohemian....the evanescent, gossamer princess with her tastefulness, mystique, talent and high standards. She, too, got pregnant unmarried -- but instead of rushing to marry her boyfriend, she did the bravest thing...and something that, in 1964, some forward-thinking young women were just starting to do: She went through the pregnancy alone, in secrecy from her parents but NOT ashamed. She lived alone in a rooming house in Toronto, subsisting on stale donuts and pizza...but she sang every night in a coffee house, even as her pregnancy became evident. What a bold, brave move! To me, this life of hers (which other young women, in different ways, shared) was bolder than, say, Dylan's pretend life as a rail-riding hobo (he was a middle class boy from Minnesota, who got a ride to NY with a friend). Joni had the baby and, with great ambivalence and over a long period of months, first put the baby in foster care and then relinquished her to adoption. It was impossible to be a mother and a songwriter then (today, it's not only easy, but famous young women proudly tout their pregnancies and toddlers in US and LIFE AND STYLE magazine), and she made a choice that allowed another part of her -- an amazing musical and lyrical artist -- to emerge. After a brief marriage to the slightly "older, wiser" man we were supposed to want, she outpaced him, left him -- and truly embodied the new bohemian female spirit in the Summer of Love 1967: her antique clothes, her pen-tel'd psychedelic musings, her love of living alone in the roiling city ("Chelsea Morning") and her coining of a new way to take different lovers while not being viewed as vulnerable or pathetic ("Cactus Tree" -- she, and all of us then had to work at feeling emotionally and sexually liberated, we were literally "busy being free") finally evolved into a style of being female that she both embodied and described: the "Lady of the Canyon": mystical, sexy, glamorous, of few words, a man-magnet, hip, and earthy.

Photo found here.


Photo found here.

Carly was the woman of the whipsawing changes of the early '70s -- when feminism changed everything we knew. Young women were ditching their husbands and boyfriends because all of a sudden everything you thought you knew about man-woman relationships had...changed. The locus moved from the West Coast -- Laurel Canyon and SF -- to sexy-but-intellectual thinking-class New York City, where women from Seven Sisters colleges were writing political tracts and starring in political movies and writing sexy but political novels and poems. (Think: Gloria Steinem, Erica Jong, Jane Fonda, Ali MacGraw). Carly, who'd gone to Sarah Lawrence -- and who had come from an upper-crust family that had a comfortably liberated, even decadent, view of sexuality -- embodied this new '70s woman. Her "That's the Way I Always Heard It Should Be" was a ballad in which, for the first time, a young WOMAN questioned marriage because of the freedom that SHE, not he, would lose. Her spurt-of-fame whirlwind romances with the creme de la creme of guys -- Cat Stevens, Kris Kristofferson, Warren Beatty, Mick Jagger -- proved that you could be classy, respectable (her father, a publishing house co-founder), serious, intelligence...and still have a liberated love life. Carly's "You're So Vain" was the first (and most kick-ass) feminist rock song, proving that a woman could make fun of a guy who dumped her, with great wit and good will. It became one of the most famous and iconic rock songs of all time, but before that, it expressed women's new power and delicious comfort with power, in a myriad of ways. Carly was the young smart urban woman of the '70s -- high-topped felt hat, stovepipe pants, macrame shawl, tight, sleek, bell-bottoms: she embodied that 1971 birth-of-feminism/ smart Seven Sisters Girl look. Every woman wanted to look like her.

Photo found here.

Photo found here.


GIRLS LIKE US is now in paperback, with a new introduction and a special Book Club Readers Guide. You can order it from Amazon through the book's website www.girlslikeusthebook.com and see pictures, watch videos, and read reviews and author blogs as well. If you would like a copy of Girls Like Us, leave a comment. We'll have a drawing one week from today.

Mid-Week Mid-Century Roundup

Today's Craigslist offerings:


Set of 6 Danish Modern dining chairs, $400

Redwood/aluminum picnic table, benches, $395

Virginia House Maple vanity, for your ranch decor (check out other photo), $400

1950s rocking chair, $60

Walnut mid-century headboard (Hollywood Regency, anyone?), $95

God I Love My Neighborhood....

Just when I was starting to feel embarrassed that the XMAS lights were still up, I take a walk and see enduring testament to Halloween in my 'hood.



What's behind this grandiose statement? "F*** You" to the Fundies? Halloween fatigue set in before it was time to remove the decorations? Or is it just a permanent homage to the horror genre? Whatever the reason, I'm loving it.

God Bless America.

Happy Hour Friday: Manhattan

I was turned on to a delicious sweet vermouth, Dolin, by a very good mixologist girlfriend of mine, Lara Nixon, several months ago. She made me a Manhattan cocktail with Dolin sweet vermouth and I was changed forever. Friends, throw out your Cinzano, your Martini and Rossi, and get yourself over to your fancy liqour store for a bottle of Dolin sweet vermouth (while you're at it, get the dry one too--it is equally wonderful).

Here's the deal: when you've got a superior sweet vermouth on hand, change the ratio of your bourbon to vermouth to equal parts. Most Manhattans call for 2 parts bourbon and about one part vermouth, making a very strong cocktail (Maker's Mark, for instance, is 45% alcohol--most vodkas and gins are 40%). A high quality vermouth--usually about 16% alcohol--both enhances your drink and lowers the alcohol content. It's a win-win!

So friends, please revisit the Manhattan, and do it in this old-style classic way. And don't forget the bitters!

Manhattan

1 part bourbon

1 part Dolin sweet vermouth

a few drops Angostura bitters

Cherry for garnish

Stir bourbon, vermouth, and bitters over ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a cherry.

The Parker, Palm Springs, Dahling...

These lovely photographs from Tilton Lane found here on flickr beautifully capture the glamorous maximalism that is Jonathan Adler's Palm Springs Playhouse, the Parker...

Mid-Week Mid-Century Roundup

'70s lamp with shade, $45

Retro yellow lamps (2), $50


Vintage tallboy dresser, $190

King-size headboard, $150

Avalon dresser (teak?), $175

Redwood/aluminum folding patio chairs, $165

Retro-luxe Design on a Dime (or not)...

Fine readers, in this post we'll examine a well designed room and see if we can recreate this look on by shopping locally at vintage stores and perusing Craigslist.



For inspiration, we've selected this room for it's vibrant orange and nod to Chinoiserie, a Retro-luxe favorite.

First, imagine these in an energetic, acid orange:





Found here on Craigslist, and quite a bargain at $170.00!

Why not add these chairs for more of a maximalist effect? They'd make Kelly Wearstler and Jonathan Adler proud!





Groovy, plush, velvety goodness found here for $200!

Go with a cream color on these end tables so as not to compete too much with the orange:

Found here on Craigslist for $50.00.

Craigslist/Thrift Store gods are not smiling on us in the lamp department. So I checked Overstock.com and found this one for $139.00. It fits the vibe in the photo.



Or, you could go totally maximalist and get over to Room Service right now to score this over-the-top fixture. It would make the room come alive!

Classic Cher

Here is a medley of my three all-time favorite Cher songs. How I wish I could have been a back-up singer for her -- you know, if I could actually sing and wasn't 5 at the time.

This just makes me happy. Enjoy!!

Happy Hour Friday: Rosé

I am really diggin' the Rosé these days. It started one evening last summer in Anchorage, hanging out at a local wine bar with my sister-in-law, Kristen, drinking flights of Rosé . Now I'm hooked. Here where I am now, in the very low part of the lower 48, the weather has warmed, the trees are budding, SXSW is a few days away, and people want to be outside in the sun soaking up some much needed vitamin D. This is when Rosé is perfect. To me it's like making the transition between the seasons: from wanting red wine all winter to wanting white all summer. Rosé is the in-between and I am a happy convert.

Rosé is not a blush nor a blend. It is nowhere near white Zinfandel, thank Jesus. It is created by letting the skins of the red grape stay in contact with the wine before fermentation for a short period. Rose can be dry and fruity at the same time, a combo of personality traits that I find endearing in people and wines alike.

I recently discovered a lovely and very inexpensive Rosé de Malbec from Argentina. A lot of strawberry on the front end, a clean and crisp finish on the back end. I might be getting a case of this one soon, especially if we have more days of 73 degrees.

When Retro is Revolting...

Today's post, inspired by If I Didn't Have a Sense of Humor's recent post on smoking camels, illustrates that retro does not always equal fabulous. Though Don Draper may look sexy smoking on Mad Men, for the majority of Americans, smoking did not look so glamorous and it smelled worse. Remember the car? Let this ad take you back....




As I recall, those smokeless ashtrays weren't really all that smokeless...
Gum anyone?

Mid-Week Mid-Century Roundup

Okay, friends.

It's been a while since I put a Craigslist post up and I do apologize. This workaday thing is really cramping my blogging style!

Peruse today's offerings, which include some lovely dishes and some really unique pieces of furniture -- including Brasilia, my personal fave.

Hope you're all doing well, cupcakes.

Vintage green crystal "Tiara" brand dishes, $50

Awesome set of retro chairs, tables and lounger, $750

Broyhill Brasilia Cathedral table, $595. LOVE THIS!! Learn more here.

Drexel Declaration dresser, mirror, nightstands, $850 [Learn more about this line here]

Paul McCobb planner desk and dresser, $1500

"Sculptured Pine" MCM bedroom set (dresser, nightstand, mirror), $299

1950s Conant Ball dining suite, $750

Happy Hour Friday: Harry's Pick-me-up

This week my husband and I moved out of the home we have lived in for almost 15 years. We decided we wanted to sell it back in the fall and cash in on its ridiculously high current value in order to spend that money on building a new home that we designed, one that has more than one bathroom, lots of closets, and is in a part of town with lower property taxes and pecan trees. Our little 1940s bungalow has served us well over the years but we are ready to move on.

Well, we didn't know how quickly we would actually be moving on: the house sold before we ever put it on the market. A couple from California saw it in the paper (a nice little feature in our local daily), came to see it the next day, and we sold it to them the following day. Less than a month later, Tuesday of this week, we vacated and moved into our temporary rent house (another bungalow) as well as closed on the sale that morning. Needless to say, we are emotionally and physically exhausted as well as a bit upside down and topsy turvy; our little bungalow is still across town, but it has new people in it. Life sure can be surreal at times.

By the way, I'd like to mention that our dear friends Jodi and Erik came over the weekend before our big move-out and we had brunch and cocktails, the last in our little house, before we loaded 3 vehicles with stuff to move. I made us Alfonsos (featured here two weeks ago) and readers, let me tell you, they were delicious. Please do try these the next time you are in the mood for champagne. I used Gruet Brut on the recommendation of my local liquor store proprietor. Perfect.

So here I am now in our rental bungalow. While unpacking I came across a little gem. Some time ago my friend Mike Miller of Lo and Behold Antiques gave me the ABC of Mixing Cocktails autographed by its author Harry McElhone in 1938. On its cover is a caricature of "Harry", and on a second cover is a photo of the bartender proudly holding his shaker.

LOVE IT.

So this week I present to you, verbatim, Harry's Pick-me-up. I couldn't have found this one at a better time.

#148. Harry's Pick-me-up

1 teaspoonful of Grenadine syrup, 1 glass of Courvoisier Brandy, the Juice of 1/2 a Lemon.

Shake well and strain into a medium-sized wine-glass, and fill balance with Champagne.

Visual Accoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman

This will be so interesting!



For more info, visit http://www.juliusshulmanfilm.com/.