California knows how to party.

The Mister and I took a long weekend and headed up to Carmel. We took our time and headed up the coast and checked out the small towns along the way. Neither of us had been on the Pacific Coast Highway since we were kids so we relished it. California is truly the most beautiful state in the country. The only one where you can ski and surf in the same day. If you ever get a chance to drive this route, do it!

Here are my gratuitous nature shots:

See, I told you. I don't lie: Best state ever. It was a nice way to kick off the holidays. We visited with friends and had a nice mini road trip.

On a totally unrelated note Elizabeth Taylor's jewels sold at auction. You can see what they sold for here and my original post about them here.

Well Hello...

A few weeks back I bought my first Eames chair. Maybe you remember, maybe you don't. Your life is busy, I understand. 

It was a good deal but sadly I have no room in my life for a school desk, even with "LSD ACID" carved into the desk.  I needed to snag a new base but the problem was it was a wide mount. That might mean nothing to you and you're staring at your screen blankly, so in short. Eames shell chairs are either narrow mount or wide mount. The narrow mount has all the pretty bases the wide mount has the stackable bases.

You can change the mount but it involves wet sanding and epoxy and all that jazz. Which I know I could do but was feeling pretty lazy. I turned to ebay first and let me tell you those prices are crazy! There are plenty of affordable stacking bases which are fine but me being me I wanted a dowel leg base. Once again my champaign taste and beer budget rear it's ugly head. Finally I found the impossible. A wide mount dowel leg base.

A Seattle based company called Modern Conscience makes a variety of WIDE mount bases. They're all in the $100 range. It's more than I wanted to spend but again, I am cheap, I didn't want to spend more than $40 but the reviews I found were really great and it was made in the US and that counts for something (gotta stimulate the economy somehow). The husband agreed to it as an early Christmas present and it was ordered. I was happy, he was happy, the cats were happy, everyone with a butt was happy.

This is the part where I show you the chair. Are you excited? I'm excited.

Whaaaaaaaatttttt? How could I possibly own something so sexy? I don't even want to sit on it. I just want to hang it on the wall and draw it like one of your french girls.

Rose Bowl

It was a gorgeous day in SoCal yesterday. Low sixties and sunny. Perfect weather for walking around and looking at junk. I found two pieces of cookware yesterday. One as soon as I walked in and one right before we left. A nice bookend flea-ing.

Check it:

The aqua Kobenstyle was first. I spotted it immediately and grabbed it. It was $25 and in perfect condition. I didn't even bother to haggle. The lady said if it'd been red she would've kept it. I'm pretty sure she had no idea what it was. Later in the morning there was a seller with a red one who wanted $50 for it. Which makes me wonder with all the sellers who mark up stuff and know what they have, How much longer will we have people who don't Google things? Who have no idea what they're holding? I'm not sure but I hope they never go away, I love them.

The frying pan was last. It's Descoware (Julia Child's favorite) and in great shape except for some cooked on food on the outside, which should come clean with some oven cleaner. It was $10. It's heavy as hell. I'm going to be crazy buff from all this heavy cookware I've acquired.

Going green 1949 style, Bitch.

This video is making the rounds. You've got to see it. I blogged about the Eames exhibit and the Ice Cube poster (which I now own!). Check out Ice's video about the Eames.

Give a look at this Q & A with Ice from the New York Times as well and be sure to check out the movie "Eames the Architect and Painter" coming to PBS December 19th.

Flea Market Finds

This weekend we visited the PCC Flea Market. The crazy winds had died down enough for the city to clean up a tad and carry on with the more important things in life, flea markets.

Usually I leave the PCC empty handed. It's free entry and a good walk so I can't complain but this weekend I found some really great things. Check it:

Three classic albums Strange Days, Moondance and Some Girls. A dirty-ass piece of Pyrex and a super rad poster in a white acrylic frame. All for under $30. When I asked about the price of the poster I expected  the seller to say $75 but all he wanted was $20. I shoved that bill at him so fast. As for that gross pyrex, here's what two hours in a soapy sink did:

This is why I love vintage cookware. It cleans up like magic with minimal effort. Thanks PCC!