Seven years ago, I moved to Philadelphia to answer some questions about myself and where I might belong in the world. I didn’t know really know anyone, so when I wasn’t working, I took to the narrow, grimy streets, making friends with the concrete and the wobbly reflections I saw in the big store windows.  One sticky summer afternoon, my eye caught on a small, wooden table radio with unassuming brown knobs and absolutely no silver plastic detail.  The Mom & Pop electronic store was way off my beaten path, but I often found my way back to admire the radio’s simple, clean lines and modern aesthetic.  Eventually, gobs of overtime and loneliness allowed me the luxury of buying the tiny, electronic powerhouse.  After I took it home, I didn’t make it back to that neighborhood much, but my unlikely crush on that Tivoli radio was the beginning of a larger relationship to space and comfort for me.  I grew up  in a working class family, surrounded by material and emotional chaos.  Before I glanced into that store window, I didn’t really know if there was any other way to do things or be in life.   I’d come to that dark, rough, visceral city to see if I had what it took to live a life that made sense to me.  Never in a million years would I have guessed that the beautiful little radio would be the first connection I made to that real life, but it was and its been good company every day since that first.

Lately, I’ve found myself in the thick of this memory a lot as I dance around my tiny kitchen to Old, Old Fashioned, Frightened Rabbit’s joyful homage to the tech free afternoon.  The nostalgia of the whole situation got me thinking about beautiful radios.  I thought I’d share a few of my favorites to encourage you to invest in a good one, so you can do some joyful dancing of your own.

This little guy comes from a really amazing green design firm, Magno Radio and is made from sustainable materials.

This one, another from Tivoli, is a bit more modern, but its brightness could change the entire tone of a room. Cold winter mornings might not seems so daunting with this one perched over your coffee pot.

This Lexon Tykho radio is exactly what you need to move your dancing from from the kitchen to the shower. Made out of rubber and totally waterproof, it’s straight forward functionality will allow you to listen while you work outside or are camping under the stars.

Its time to get crafty, kids.   This Saturday, December 12, the sixth annual What a Load of Craft fair will be rocking the Johnson County Fair Grounds from 11 AM to 7 PM.  This is a new venue for the fair and with the larger space, comes more crafty goodness.  Live music starts at 12:30 PM with local performers Lipstick Stick Homicide, Kate and Amanda, Skye Carrasco, Olivia Rose Muzzy and Pete Balestrieri keeping things festive for the crowd.  Iowa’s own Leslie Hall of Leslie and the Lys will be MCing this year’s Craft Death Match and we can only hope that she’ll do a little Craft Talk while she’s got the mike.

The fair will feature some of Iowa City’s favorite DIY resources like Home Ec., The White Rabbit, and IAPATV, but will also include purveyors of craft that we don’t always have ready access to like Cookie Doe, Industrial Glitter, and Bug Snugger.  So bring your friends and see what WALOC has to offer this year!

This morning I made a happy discovery.  My usual peek at Grace Bonney’s Design*Sponge turned up an incredibly thorough guide to purposeful living in Des Moines, Iowa.  Our capitol city often gets a bad rap, mostly due to its close proximity to West Des Moines, a bastion of strip malls and cookie cutter tract homes that seems to suck a little bit of life out of you each time you pass through it.  Downtown Des Moines, with more than a bit of purposeful revitalization and a rechanneling of the energy and resources that run through it with each campaign season, is working hard to build a different kind of community.

Upon my return to Iowa five years ago, I spent about five months living and working in downtown Des Moines.  I remember being surprised by the slow food movement that was gaining momentum, the fast growth of the areas’ farmer’s markets, and the boom of new and interesting restaurants.  I probably shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was and then glad to have a fun, new place to explore while I was adjusting to being back in the Midwest after many years.

So much time has passed since I moved to Iowa City that I am grateful for Annie May’s detailed guest post on the city and its hidden and not-so-hidden gems.  I think its time for a road trip and a day of exploration!

I love books.  I revel in their weight in my hand, the texture of their pages, the ink and paper smell that escapes when you crack one open.  They are my most favored possessions and instead of tchotkes, I collect books.  Beautiful ones with classic, concise covers and bright ones with bold spines and clean fonts.  I am in in love with the possibility that comes with each one I bring home and comforted by their presence when I’ve finished them.  When I read, I feel more like myself than I do when I am doing any thing else and so, I prefer to surround myself with them instead of any other thing.

This is why I love, love, love this gorgeous poster from FloraFauna. Designed for the band, The Books, FloraFauna elevates PR to the level of art.  If you’ve never seen their stuff before, I highly recommend that you take a twirl around their website.  They produce some of the most incredible show art around.

Have you ever had anyone MAKE you vanilla?  I mean seriously.  Is that not the best gift ever?  One of my best friends has a sister who loves to cook and eat as much as I do and we’ve built a friendship from afar with the help of facebook and recipe blogs and a genuine love of food.  The vanilla is the latest (and most generous) manifestation of our friendship, but I don’t doubt there will be more.  Thanks, Jen! It was absolutely magical in oatmeal with a little a handful of rasberries and a little bit of brown sugar.  Absolutely magical.

A few weeks ago, I was reading a favorite blog of mine, The Art of Food, and stumbled across Alisa Barry’s post on the modern relevancy of this fantastic poster that was produced by the U.S. Food Administration in 1914.  I wanted to share the image because I love the font and the straight forward potency of its message.  I encourage you to take in Ms. Barry’s companion post, but also hope that you’ll take a moment to consider how what you eat impacts your happiness and health.

When it comes to music, I typically gravitate towards the ladies.  Its not necessarily intentional, though I am more inclined to invest my music dollars in a lady rocker over a man of equal value.  This is simply because the women tend to have smaller audiences or at least that is what the record execs think, and I like my money to go towards turning that idea on its head. We need better music in the world, period, but for now, its a purposeful choice to support  the girls as much as I am able.  This practice also extends to movies, books, and businesses that are lady written, produced, directed, or run.

The thing is that I can’t stop listening to boys.  Its a bit unusual, but still more than fantastic.  Who, you ask, has turned the sexist listening tides in my universe this summer?

The first was the Gaslight Anthem, a foursome of New Jersey boys who know how to walk the fine line between Bruce Springsteen’s legacy and their own blue collar backgrounds when it comes to writing (and playing) their songs.  They are beautiful in a rough, ill-fitting sort of way, but it is their obvious worship of women and their full-on committment to nostalgia that makes it so you can hardly listen to anything else.

If you’ve never had a listen, I’d start with their second album.  The whole thing is worth it, but Here’s looking at you, kid and High Lonesome are favorites.  The fact that they played Lollapalooza this weekend is the impetus for this post, but they are picking up shows all the time, touring with Mr. Springsteen himself in Europe this summer.

*The show poster shown above was designed by jrtmcp.com.

The only band that could knock the jersey boys out of the line-up after months of domination is Frightened Rabbit, a pair of massively-talented brothers out of Scotland.  The first time I heard the album, something resonated, but I was pretty much only listening to Neko Case’s Middle Cyclone.  I wasn’t ready.  Upon my return visit to the album though, I fell in love.  Or maybe it would be better to say that I fell in love with falling out of love, which is what the band was apparently doing when they wrote the record, Midnight Organ Flight.  It is almost painful to listen to, but that has never seemed to stop me.  It might be my own brand of masochism, but it is just too good to stop.  If you are new to Frightened Rabbit, stop reading immediately and go listen.  Their sound is grand and in some cases, downright hopeful.  Their energy masks the depth of the heartbreak that must have wrought this album.  I have danced around my kitchen with big fat tears in my eyes to these boys.  I hope you will, too.

**The Frightened Rabbit show poster was designed by James Fouty.

Last summer, I organized the repainting of our director’s office. The big, yawning space was dingy and crowded with piles of paper and previously important things, but I was convinced that it was recoverable. Our building is an old, once beautiful house and over the years, many of the rooms have been painted improbable (and sometimes disorienting) hues like butterfly yellow or an ashen lavender. It is a hodgepodge that you see at first, but like most details, begin to tune out over time. My boss was hungry for some kind of a fresh start and so, we volunteered to make the change as painless as possible for her. After picking a warm, rich maize, we spent a day taping and putting down a tinted primer. A second day was all we needed to get a few coats on and everything cleaned up. The room looks completely different and I think it really did feel a little bit like the fresh start she’d been hoping for when we’d first considered the idea. As a thank you for getting the ball rolling, she gave me a wonderful gift. Twenty-five dollars to spend at one of my favorite stores in town, Home Ec.. It took me an unbelievable nine months to spend it, but I found this absolutely gorgeous yarn and fell in love. Thank you’s can only be spent on things you cannot live without. The color and softness of the kettle dyed merino yarn from Malabrigo Yarn is bright and comforting and its potential for beauty, endless. Maybe it will be a little bit of my own fresh start.

Laure Joliet over at Apartment Therapy is experimenting with small succulent terrariums and is kind enough to share what’s been done so far.  I’ve seen the recent death of three of my most beautiful jade plants and am looking for a way to replace them without replicating the loss.  The glass could provide some protection from the intensity of the air and humidity that come with Iowa summers and basement apartments.  Now I just need to go container hunting…

While I work on that, check out the experiment at apartmenttherapy.com

I have a very tiny bathroom.  Tiny enough that when I sit on the toilet, my feet rest on the shower sill.  One might call it cozy, others claustrophobic.  Whatever the case, it is a room that I’ve pared down and added a root color (a rich taupe) to help make it feel less like the whole thing is one big shower stall.  I have been thinking that it could use a bit more love, though.

I stumbled upon this awesome idea on Design Sponge from Derek Fagerstrom and Lauren Smith’s  Wallpaper Paper Projects: 50 Craft and Design Ideas for Your Home, from Accents to Art. I think it might be the kind of small and subtle detail that could change but not overwhelm my lady room.