I Love Lamp: Hotel from Heaven

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I have been drooling over photos of the San Giorgio in Mykonos ever since it opened a year ago. So needless to say, when Steven and I decided to go to Greece I knew EXACTLY where we would be staying. For at least a night or two. Guys. It was HOTEL HEAVEN. Every damn detail was beautiful, the service impeccable, I just... I just... need to go back asap.

You check in here:

When you get a complimentary honeymoon upgrade, your room looks like this:

Hanging poolside, champagne in hand, looks like this:

Reading in hammocks in the palm grove looks like this:

Taking a dip off the dock looks like this:

And everywhere else your eyes might rest looks like this:

We loved it all so much, we fully committed to living the "gypset" bohemian luxury lifestyle and bought this private yacht:

I mean, drank beers on the dock and pretended it was ours.

If you or anyone you know is going to Greece GO TO THIS HOTEL. And take me with you!

(What is I Love Lamp? This is I Love Lamp.)

Off to GREECE!

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So far summer in Brooklyn has treated us well with bike rides, Gowanus Canal parties, and other good old fashioned fun with friends.

But tomorrow we are off to GREECE for a honeymoon adventure!

We are madly packing at the moment, which I have to admit is one of my favorite things. The packing part that is, not so much the "madly".

I don't think I'll be posting much here, but you can always follow me on Instagram at @caseyscieszka!

I'm excited for beaches and feta cheese and cobble stones and things that are thousands of years old. I'm also very much looking forward to doing one my absolute favorite things in the world: sitting somewhere with a drink and a view as Steven draws and I scribble away about the day and whatever other things have come to mind on the road.

I Love Lamp: LA Fantasy

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When these photos were taken for Freundevon Freundevon, Claire Cottrell had moved into this LA home a mere 10 days before. She is apparently a professional mover.

Cottrell is a creative director and producer for a film company. She also has a Masters in landscape architecture and runs this uber cool online bookstore called Book Stand where she sells rare art/photography/vintage books. (I'm currently sweating this book of hers.)

She is a BALLER.

The whole thing taps into this fantasy I have where Steven and I move to LA and live in an adorable bungalow in Silver Lake where the windows are always open and we have an amazing succulents garden in our backyard that's always filled with our hip, laughing friends who surf and are in bands. In this fantasy there is of course no traffic and no smog and Brooklyn is only a forty minute train ride away.

TOTALLY possible, right? I thought so.

Writing About Writing

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I'm usually wary of writing about writing and reading about writing, because (as this sentence probably already illustrates) it can get rather circular and confusing. That said, I've found myself thoroughly enjoying The Writing Life by Annie Dillard. And while I don't agree with her stance on work spaces, there are plenty of other bits that I've underlined, circled, and generally found very worthy of further thought.

For example, THIS bit about movies vs. books:

Why would anyone read a book instead of watching big people move on a screen? Because a book can be literature. It is a subtle thing-- a poor thing, but our own. In my view, the more literary the book--the more purely verbal, crafted sentence by sentence, the more imaginative, reasoned, and deep--the more likely people are to read it. The people who read are the people who like literature, after all, whatever that might be. They like, or require, what books alone have. If they want to see films that evening, they will find films. People who read are not too lazy to flip on the television; they prefer books. I cannot imagine a sorrier pursuit than struggling for years to write a book that attempts to appeal to people who do not read in the first place.

(Bold emphasis is my own.)

It can feel like the book world is dominated by this urge to win more readership by creating a reading experience that mimics all the good TV out there nowadays, but what a mistake! Thank you Annie.

I also had to laugh out loud at the way she described a day of failed writing that ended as such:

I decided to hate myself, to make popcorn and read.

I've been there girl. I've been at the bottom of that popcorn bowl before.

I Love Lamp: Studio Redo Sneak Peek

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Steven's and my work studio has undergone a serious overhaul that makes me SO HAPPY. It's not quite finished (then again, what home improvement project ever is??) so I'm just going to give a small sneak peek of the before / halfway through / after: BEFORE: Rather cluttered and uninspired...

HALF WAY THROUGH: So many dust bunnies and so much stuff piled everywhere else in our apartment...

AFTER: Pristine beauty... with a bar!

There's a lot more organizing and moving back in to be done, so the space will fill with more color as we pack our shelves with paints and books-- those photos will come soon.

So here I am feeling all happy about having a beautiful space in which to work when I read THIS is Annie Dillard's book "The Writing Life" this morning:

Appealing workplaces are to be avoided. One wants a room with with no view, so imagination can meet memory in the dark. When I furnished this study seven years ago, I pushed the long desk against a blank wall, so I could not see from either window.

Well shit.

Actually, I feel confident in disagreeing with her. I've worked in some windowless dungeons; I've stripped writing spaces bare of anything but a table, paper, and pencil; I mean, I had a studio in a radio station above a bus station in West Africa for god's sake, where I prayed to high hell that the monkish discomfort would lead to profound creativity. I'm sorry, but I WANT A ROOM WITH A GODDAMN VIEW.

Last year I wrote this piece for 20SomethingReads on this topic of the ideal writing set up.

“I wrote in bed in hotels in the desert,” said the author Paul Bowles of how and where he crafted his most famous book, THE SHELTERING SKY.

How romantic is that? It makes me want to chuck my laptop, trade it for a typewriter and head off to the Sahara to rent a simple room with billowing curtains and a quiet, whirring fan.

The only problem is, I’ve done that before. Not with the typewriter, but all the rest of it. I wrote in bed in hotels in the desert and you know what? It sucked. The heat was excruciating, the flies incessant, the food awful, and the loneliness completely debilitating. And I’m not a picky traveler.

Funnily enough, because hindsight in not actually 20-20 but all happy-blurry, rereading that here in my beautiful new studio I'm suddenly thinking, "Damn, maybe it would be really nice to write in hotels again..."

Yes, I'm nuts.

Glamping 2013

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So apparently when you get married you stop blogging. Or something like that. Either way I'm not having it. Anyway! This past weekend I went glamping in the Adirondacks with some pals to the same island we went last year. While the weather wasn't exaaaaaaactly on our side the whole time, we definitely still had fun.

(Not pictured: rain, black flies, cold gusts of wind.)

This year we took over both islands in the middle of Forked Lake. There were bad ass babies and kiddos (and their parents of course) on one island, and lots of swearing and morning beer on the other.

I'll let you guess which one Steven and I were on.

At this point I feel it's necessary to admit that I am listening to loons as I type this. Not the real loons we heard on the lake of course, but rather, a track called "Thoughtful Early Morning Loons By The Lake" on Spotify. And I'm not ashamed to admit I LOVE IT. It's always nice to bring a little bit of vacation home with you.

I Love Lamp: Granada Tile

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Ya'll know I love me some tiles. I've been especially in love with the simple French country style ones in my Moroccan host family's kitchen since 2004:

By the way, HOW CUTE IS MY HOST MOM AMINA?

Anyway-- before I get stuck in a caps-lock Morocco love fest: I was rather ecstatic to find the Grenada Tile Echo catalogue that not only has tiles like these but has this whole website set up where you can personalize each element by color! Yes, ECSTATIC over tiles. (Oops, there goes that caps-lock again.)

My favorite, of course, are the "Normandy" collection. I also like them softened with some grey details too:

And I kind of love the "Taniger" and not just because it's named after a Moroccan city... I went all green and blue for this one:

Naturally I wrote them to get a quote on what, say, 80 square feet would cost me and I got an oh so detailed response that essentially translated into: "Mother god, you like tiles but do you $2000 like them?"

(What is I Love Lamp? This is I Love Lamp.)

"The Slow Death of the American Author"

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Scott Turow's opinion piece in the New York Times the other day called "The Slow Death of the American Author" obviously caught my eye.

It's about how recent changes in the book industry are seriously diminishing authors' royalties, which may sound greedy and whiney at first but come on now, do people want to live in a world where we never pay for culture so then people never devote their lives to creating it because they can't survive making it?

This is a topic that's dear to me as both a writer and a consumer. But I'd be lying if I said I had a very clear vision for how to fix this.

Check out the whole article here.

I Love Lamp: HONEYMOON EDITION!

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So it turns out Tuesdays are great for... ELOPING!

Steven and I went down to Brooklyn City Hall this week and put a ring on it. Two rings on it to be precise. Then we went straight up to Graham & Co in the Catksills for a quick honeymoon. (It would have seemed weird to just go back to apartment and what, answer some emails? Rent a movie?)

Graham & Co, in their own words, is "an update on the traditional weekend away" aka it's an old motel now entirely design-ified with reclaimed wood furniture, vaguely "ethnic" textiles, edison bulbs, and mason jars upon mason jars.

To be clear, I say this with love. They're so damn on-trend it's adorable.

I can't wait to return some time this summer and get in on the pool and bonfire action!

(What is I Love Lamp? This is I Love Lamp.)

(Last two photos from Graham & Co website.)

I Love Lamp: Bathroom Art

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I like how people tend to let loose with their bathroom art. It's often where you find people's quirkiest stuff. I've had a hodgepodge of crazy stuff up in there for a while but I recently switched all to photographs from our travels. It makes me so happy to have all those memories smashed up against each other in a room I use every day.

I like brushing my teeth and thinking about that strange motel in Montana, that boat ride down the Niger river trying to get to Timbuktu, that day we spent drinking beers in the plaza of Villa De Lleyva in Colombia...

I had to hold onto one drawing though. It's still in our shower. Most people don't even notice it at first.

And when they see it, they think, "Is that what I think that is?" And they step into our tub to get a closer look and--

Yup. That's what it is.

P.S. That's a Steven original from a playbill we designed for a production of Dorian Gray.

(What is I Love Lamp? This is I Love Lamp.)

I Love Lamp: I GOT 'EM! I GOT 'EM!

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I GOT 'EM! I GOT 'EM! I GOT MYSELF 4 VERNER PANTON CHAIRS!

And I LOVE them. No really, I loooooooooooooooooove them! They're so sleek and comfy and bouncy. Every time I walk by them I smile.

The other two are acting as our desk chairs in our home office but this place is such a pit right now I cannot bring myself to photograph it. We've got big plans for up here though-- so get ready for a good Before & After some time soon.

(What is I Love Lamp? This is I Love Lamp.)

Gotta Love A Good Photo Essay

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I Love Lamp: Cozy Linen Bedding

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It's snowing/raining/slushing/being generally miserable outside so all I want to do is go back to bed and snuggle up with my fresh linen sheets that honest to god smell like summer.

And yup, that's a C + S monogram. Thank you Mom!

Here are some other cozy linen beds via the oh-so-lovely My Scandinavian Home.

Sooooooo sleeeeeeeeeepy...

(What is I Love Lamp? This is I Love Lamp.)

Website Updates

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My apologies to anyone who was poking around the website last night and kept running into lots of "UNDER CONSTRUCTION" nonsense. But we're back! And now we have the following New and Improved sections: To Timbuktu>>>> All about Steven's and my book To Timbuktu.

Other Books>>>> About, errr, other books I'm contributing to.

Graphic Design and Typography>>>> Ok yes, these titles are rather self explanatory.

The Little Witch

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Reading the paper in bed this morning I came across the obituary for children's book author Otfried Pressler.

In 4th grade I became rather obsessed with his book The Little Witch and filled sketchbooks upon sketchbooks with my own version of the the Little Witch doing witchy things in Brooklyn, like flying over a row of brownstones and water towers on a broom.

I almost never read the obituaries (because I'm a wimp and I get really saddened by sentences like "He is survived by his wife of 58 years"), but I'm so glad that today I did since I have been racking my brain for YEARS to remember this man's name and the name of his series. (Which yes, is quite obvious-- but it almost seemed too obvious, you know? The Little Witch?)

Years later  I still ADORE these illustrations. The line work, the supposedly simple yet deceivingly sophisticated color schemes. I'm honestly tempted to start drawing her all over again!

And looking at these illustrations again, it's no surprise that years later I am enamored with Steven's nib pen work:

Thank you Victoria Stitch for tracking down this version of the book! All illustrations from The Little Witch are via her website here.