Shells from The Beach Bag

I’m still working on converting my Kentucky cottage into a beach house. As we drove around in beach communities this week, I took quick photos from the passenger seat of details that make a house a beach house, like this one.

It’s not always the beach, it’s the little things: like starfish, confederate jasmine on picket fences, ferns, gas lights, ceiling fans and perfect aqua green. It is such a doable-affordable theme, though easily overdone. Whatever place brings you calm, it’s good to bring that into your home.

*I’m reading The Little Bee. I am enjoying it so much that I would have finished it in one sitting, but as you might expect, vacay with a 5-year-old means lots of unfinished sentences, articles and books. The author wrote a regular column in The Guardian on parenting that you can read here as well. I haven’t read them yet, but I leave this bookmark here where I may return.

*This article from Catherine Price about her Tokyo adventure is 12 kinds of awesome. Seriously. 12. The link above is just of her photos, but the print version is so cool. She picks her destination by asking a woman in the fiction aisle of a San Francisco bookstore to name the most interesting city she had ever visited. Tokyo it is! Once on the airplane, she asks the flight attendant were to stay. When she arrives, she relies exclusively on recommendations from the people she meets about what to do next. She learns from both her adventure and research that our friends all share the same information, so it’s good to ask people outside of your circle for their perspectives to expand your life experience. She quotes from Together Alone, Personal Relationships in Public Places, a collection of studies from Calvin Morrill, PhD, who explains that conversations with strangers are more than just ways to pass the time. Rather, these meetings are, “connective tissue” that help societies function and makes the public realm a nicer-and potentially safer-place to be.

Her article reminded me of this recent post by Leo Babauta of Zen Habits on Attachment when he writes: “If you limit yourself to one or two relationships they will seem like your lifelines. Everyone needs people, and there are billions on the planet. Stay open to new connections. Accept the possibility your future involves a lot of love whether you cling to a select few people or not.” -Leo Babauta

*I just discovered 20 x 200 Artists. Their mission is this: “As we see it, there are a lot of people out there who want to sell their art and a lot of people who’d like to buy it. They just have a hard time finding each other…. almost any art lover can be an art collector.” I already found a fave in Jorge Colombo which I stumbled upon via Lil Bee blog when looking for a link to the above-mentioned novel. Don’t you love little gifts like that from the interwebs?

*Jack Johnson’s new album To The Sea will be in stores June 1, 2010. I love his quote in O Magazine, “No matter how down you get about the world, you have to jump in and joyfully participate”-Jack Johnson.
I may have to put this on my letterhead.