Airport security is such a pain. Here’s one little thing to make it easier. If your pants have belt loops and you don’t want to bother on-and-off-ing your belt, try tying a ribbon or small scarf on one of the front loops for a hassle-free polished look. I used one […]
Adventure & Travel
Ride ’em Cowboy! Yee-Haw Photos by Holger Eckstein
When my friend photographer Holger Eckstein sent me this picture, I gasped. Surely I am not the only one who does not like where that hind hoof is headed. But that is not why I gasped.
Springtime in France–A Friend Shares Her Travels
Honestly I have had the best time following my friend Sarah Gayle Carter blogging around France that I feel guilty keeping it a secret. Her photos are sublime–she is an artist after all–and her commentary is pithy, interesting and often funny. Here below is her latest. You can also click […]
Design Notes From Aspen’s “New” Hotel Jerome
Luxury hotels these days out-do themselves to out-“design” one another with decidedly mixed results. While many are impressive, few are inspiring in terms of ideas you might deploy in your own perhaps more modest domestic context. A hotel we visited in Aspen last week made me want to, well, get […]
Girls Just Wanna have Funghi
The post title refers of course to the famous Cyndi Lauper song “Girls Just Wanna Have Funghi,” but it later changed to “Fun,” which may be the version you are more familiar with. And do you remember this one… It ne-e-ver rains in California/But girl, don’t they warn ya/It pours/Man, it […]
The Shooting Box – Plantation House, Hunting Lodge, and a Piece of History
When people think of Southern plantation houses they may think of big big white columns and broad verandas, but the house we stayed in on a recent quail hunting trip down South was a far and charming cry from the ante-bellum architectural cliché. Nestled among the pines and surrounded by camellias […]
Quail Hunting the Old-Fashioned Way
It was a first for all of us. All of us being Sister Duvall, Brother-in-Law Rex, His Grace (aka my husband Tom, for new readers) and me. Not the first quail hunting per se, but quail hunting the Southern old-fashioned way, on horseback and mule-drawn wagons like they do down around […]
Stylish, Easy and Tropical Breezy – Design Weekend in Lyford Cay
As promised, more on the design weekend at Lyford Cay. What a treat to tour some of Lyford’s most stylish houses, and what a pity not to be able to show them all to you. But this is a private crowd, with a refreshing lack of desire to be photographed. […]
White Columns and a Pink Convertible
Is this the cutest car you have ever seen? It was parked in front of the Lyford Cay Club in Nassau this past weekend as a harbinger of cuteness, yes; but more accurately perhaps to signal stylishness, great design, darlin’ people, and fantastic houses. It was the club’s first design […]
The Beautiful Old Houses of Alamos and a Rufous-Bellied Chachalaca – Mexico Part 3
The once-wealthy silver mining town of Alamos, Mexico,where we visited with friends recently, is now welcoming ex-pat Americans and Canadians drawn to the area in part for its old colonial charm, including its beautiful and historic 18th and 19th century houses. Splendid in their day but ultimately ravaged by early 20th-century banditos […]
Hacienda de los Santos – Mexico – Part 2
As promised, here is the exquisite Hacienda de los Santos in Alamos, Mexico, where we visited during New Year’s. In case you missed, here is Thursday’s Mexico Part 1. We did not stay at the Hacienda but the lovely owners are friends and we ate there every night. It does not hurt that playing […]
Hola de Mexico! – Part 1
Prospero Año de Mexico! After a wonderful Christmas visit with family in Atlanta, we flew back west to Mexico to ring in the New Year–a little off the beaten path. Not Cabo or Cozumel, mind you, but an old Colonial city called Alamos, founded in the 17th century in the […]