Be Afraid

Hmm, a couple of things caught my attention on the internets this morning. Firstly, I don't know whether to be disappointed or relieved I don't live in Australia. Then there's this eco-streetwalker look that I found deeply disturbing but not really frightening. But this, well, it just scares the poop out of me.

Double Celebration

In February I posted a photo of fireworks with the news that The Cool House had a big birthday to celebrate. I promised a fortieth birthday party, to be held in June because the blueprints for the house date from that month. In the usual way of things here that date got pushed and shoved back until a couple of weeks ago when I realized that Halloween had passed and nothing has been done. At this time of year we are usually planning to celebrate the winter solstice with a few friends, so I thought as we're already planning special food and decorating the home why not ratchet up the festivities and toast the anniversary of Beach House's 40 years as well?


Of course an event this important requires a certain amount of preparation. Before we decorate for the holidays we clean the house thoroughly. This will be the last thorough dusting and scrubbing that some spots will see until the holiday ornaments are put away and the greenery is burnt on January 5th, so I want it to be as good as it can be. We wash the windows so they sparkle to reflect the candlelight at night and let as much natural light in as possible during the day. Once all the housework is done and the guest rooms are ready for partygoers who want to stay over we can start making the house warm and welcoming.


For the solstice, we have a yule log that, at nightfall, becomes a roaring fire and we gather lots of greenery from the conifers in the yard to make wreaths for the front door and exterior lights and a saddle for the mailbox. I place branches of holly and fir into tall vases, and lay juniper branches and more holly on the fireplace surround and credenzas. To make the greenery stand out I add citrus fruits, lemons, limes, satsumas and tangerines, or naartjies, as The Guy calls them, and votive candles. I push cloves into oranges and pile them up throughout the house, and heap more cloves and lightly crushed cinnamon sticks under candles in votives, which makes the house smell great.


And what's a holiday party without scrumptious rich cakes and puddings made with dried fruit and brandy; cookies with butter, spiced with ginger cinnamon and nutmeg, and Stollen? Not only do they taste great but the enticing smell permeates the whole house. We'll toast the winter, and the house, with champagne, dark Trappist ales from Belgium and gluhwein. If all goes well we may even sing a few wassailing songs, too.


This year the party will be more important than ever; we will celebrate not only midwinter but the serendipity that brought us to Beach House, this wonderful creation that has been a home for forty years and provides us endless delight in its uniquely modern design.

Double Celebration: Winter Solstice/40th Anniversary has been entered in the "Home for the Holidays Contest", run in conjunction with Right@Home. This post was written for Houseblogs.net as part of a sweepstakes sponsored by SC Johnson’s Right@Home.

A Perpetually Merry Modernist Tree

The Richard Babcock designed Possibilitree from DWR: Limited. Only seven were available and they seem to have been snapped up quickly. DWR:Limited is just what the name suggests - a limited run of items, vintage and modern, with a different one available daily for the next three weeks. Enjoy!

White Bouquet

Happy Monday morning!

Calorie-free Gingerbread House

Do you think I'll make a better Gingerbread House with this holiday card and its stickers?


With luck it may end up like this. Lots and lots of luck, that is. And a steady hand. Hmm, don't hold your breath. I think I'll just send them out.
Available from MoMA at a huge discount if you buy any three packs of cards and are a member.

Cake or pity?

Houseblogs.net is having a Home for the Holidays Contest, with a real live prize, so I was flipping through my photo files to get inspiration for this year's holiday decorations when I happened upon this gem from our first end-of-year holiday at The Cool House back in 2004.
No, a two year old did not produce this monstrosity, I did it all by myself. What's worse, I used a kit. Deeply, deeply sad.
The houseblogs competition ends Wednesday November 19 2008, so get yourself over there quick if you want to enter. Me? I'm off to hang my head in shame.

Impressions of Fall

A little later this year than last, and a little less well-defined, fall has finally arrived at The Cool House.

Remarkable

How fortuitous is it that Richard Fuld, ex-Lehman Bros CEO and chairman and his wife Kathy put their art collection in the hands of Christie's with a guaranteed price of $20 million back in September? The Guardian called this deal "remarkable" because the guarantee ensures that even if the art market has tanked and the auction fails to deliver that much the Fulds will get their $20 million anyway.
The auction, which includes three Willem de Koonings and an Ashille Gorky appropriately entitled Agony, is going ahead as I type.

Streetwalkers

We'd gone to the Moma to see the Van Gogh and the Colors if the Night and the Joan Miro: Painting and Anti-Painting exhibitions but it was Kirchner and the Berlin Street that really thrilled us. This small show, that sadly finished its run on Monday, was a true delight. Depicting Berlin's working women in the years just before World War I, the colors are thing you notice first about Kirchner's art; vibrant pinks and luminous yellow, moody greens and blues. The stylised figures, elongated streetwalkers and their furtive clients with blackened eyes, reminded me both of El Greco and the masked characters in James Ensor's paintings.

Potsdamer Platz, 1914

Danger is here on the Berlin streets, you feel the furtiveness of the figures in the background, but there is also vitality, the women dress alluringly in furs and plumed hats. It's almost like looking at stills from My Fair Lady or mannequins in a department store window.
This exhibition along with other works by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner can be seen next at The Brücke-Museum in Berlin, if you are planning a visit to Germany between December 13 and March 15 2009.

11.11.11.

Today is Armistice Day, the 90th anniversary of the end of World War One. Even in this time of war it is difficult to image the trauma that millions went through fighting "the war to end all wars", but if you have lived in Flanders there is a constant reminder in the landscape and the rebuilt city of Ieper.
One of the starkest, most powerful experiences is to visit the Menenpoort or Menin Gate and see the names of the missing 54,896 soldiers inscribed into the walls. No one leaves there unaffected by the sacrifice the mostly very young men made in the name of civilisation. Further out of town there are the Cemeteries where thousands of soldiers are buried and the harrowing but compelling In Flanders Fields Museum that tells the story of The Great War from the perspective of witnesses, both soldiers and civilians, to the misery and horror of Ypres, Passchendaele and The Somme. The war ended at 11 am on 11th of November 1918, and is remembered every year at this time with a minute's silence. Lest we forget.

In Flanders Fields
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
- Lt.-Col. John McCrae

Game Night: The 1984 version

It seems we needed the game table to motivate us to plow through the boxes of board games we've accumulated over the years.


In addition to four versions of Monopoly - London (twice), Paris and Belgium (in two languages), we also have Catopoly. Cats as real estate, who knew? The other evening we worked our way to Trivial Pursuit Young Player Edition, an old set of qustions from the days when Trivial Pursuit was the Wii of crazes. You could tell what era it came from by the questions: Which two countries are divided by the Berlin Wall? and What type of language is Fortran? and which country by the curious fact that every other question in the pink section was about Kajagoogoo and the rest had to do with characters in The Beano and The Dandy.


Most of us had never heard of Limahl and the biggest pop sensation of 1983, while one of us (ahem) had tried to block the oeuvre from her memory. But we hit on a brilliant solution to remedy this failing. Every time a song came up that we couldn't recall we played it on the youtubes. Oh youtube, how you have enhanced game night and our daily lives.

Buckets of cuteness

Maya and Hermes catching zzzzzs on the dog cushion in my office.

Singing until the end

The incomparable and inspirational Miriam Makeba, or Mama Afrika as she was also known, singing Pata Pata on tour in Brazil, 1968. Miriam Makeba died November 10 2008, after a performance in Castel Volturno, Italy.

Sunday in the Park

After a couple of days of grey November weather the sun came out this morning so we took the dogs to Coindre Hall in Huntington for some exercise.
Beautiful isn't it? We're really lucky to have free and unlimited access to the grounds of the Gold Coast mansions that were previously owned by robber barons, but Coindre Hall is one of the best because it's also an off-leash informal dog park. That's the Coindre Hall boat house in the foreground, Huntington lighthouse in the middle of the bay and Connecticut in the background. Amazingly even this late in the year there are still a few boats out on the Sound.


Here's a short video that covers the dogs' behaviour at the park. They run around with their doggy chums for 5 minutes, graze for ten more and when Polly lies down the visit is over.

Simmering gently today

I'm absolutely exhausted from the emotional tsunami of Tuesday, and the mojito, beer and overloaded nacho party we had while waiting for the results. Anyway, I will be returning to Cool House stories soon. Till then, pop over to the delightfully welcoming Marilyn at Simmer Till Done who bribed me with chocolate-tinis to tell her (and the internets) some fascinating facts about my food philosophy. OK done with the alliteration now.

Global Celebration

YES WE DID


It's a new day for America and the rest of the world.
Change is coming.

UPDATE: It just gets better


HOT!

If you are reading this

I expect you have
a) early-voted
b) voted earlier today
c) are ineligible to vote

If not

GO VOTE

Nature's Bounty

We have visitors over from Belgium who looked at the above plate of apples and walnuts and wanted to know a) why the apples were so shiny and b) what those nuts were. The shiny apples I could understand because apples over there never shine unless you polish them on your sweater. Even though these are organic they look fake. But the walnut thing had me confused for a second, after all they have have walnuts in Belgium, we used to have a walnut tree in our garden. Then I got it. These walnuts have been washed and dried, whereas back in Europe we used to gather them when they had fallen while they are black and softish. Then we were reminded that it is mushroom gathering season in the woods and the Foret de Soignes is full of Portobello mushrooms. Sob. And it is wild game season, too. Grouse anyone?

Seasonal change

The hibiscus may still be flowering but there is a 50% off sale at the nursery so I wandered over there this morning and selected three evergreens, two Russian conifers and a dwarf blue spruce that can overwinter in the big pots outside the garage.


Of course we'd didn't just discard the hibiscus. After the lovely surprise I had when last year's plants flowered again this year I got Sadie The Guy to dig three holes in the same sheltered south-facing spot and plant them. Even if they don't make it through the winter they will probably still flower for a couple more weeks.

Saturday Morning Quote

Today's prize for the most dumb and/or insensitive remark made in this economic climate goes to ex-"Top Chef" host and cookbook author Katie Lee Joel:

“I love real estate. To me, real estate is the ultimate tchotchke. We have five houses; we like our real estate.”
New York Magazine

Most Americans just have to worry about one house, the roof over their heads, but for Katie Lee Joel houses are just collectibles. You can enable her to pick up another real estate ornament by dropping by her book signing tour (if you're quick you can catch her at the Book Revue in Huntington, NY tonight). And with 81,312 homes being repossessed by lenders in September I'm sure they will plenty for her to choose from.

You want to know what kind of tchotchke Katie owns?


Thanks to Domino Magazine you can view her Manhattan townhouse, where she arranges her smaller tchotchkes


Then changes them (and the chairs) out for something more soothing in brown.
And there's more about her Long Island houses over here.