bloggers and babies in brooklyn

When I was in New York for a week two years ago (my first visit), one of my favourite mornings was the one I spent having tea with Monique, the super-stylish lady behind the blog Tipa Tipa (the photos are some of the favourites I've posted on my blog too). My last day in New York I headed out to Brooklyn to meet up with her again. Since the last time I'd seen her in person, I'd been following the changes in her life on the blog, seen her gorgeous wedding and envied her impeccable vintage style, but I was reallllly excited to meet the newest addition to her life, her beautiful 7 week daughter Elisane. We went for a delicious lunch at a nearby café to catch up on all the little intervening moments in life. Elisane was the best-behaved baby I've ever met; in the three hours we spent together, she cried once for about 5 minutes and even sounded a bit apologetic about it!

We chatted about past gossip and future plans, the things you inherit from your family, travel and community, and I just hope I'll see them again before another two years have elapsed. Oh, and Monique made fun of me: "congratulations, Emily, you can push a stroller," or "you haven't dropped her yet," which makes me think I might need a bit more practice with babies...





I also envied Monique her fire-escape view and, let's face it, her whole apartment.

sunday comfort

I wear this top and skirt (especially the top) from Family Affairs all. the. time. but I usually wear them separately, and when I do wear them together it's usually with the top tucked in so the whole thing resembles a dress. On my Sunday in New York though, I liked the kind of relaxed, I-woke-up-in-my-studio-with-a-paint-fumes-headache-and-went-straight-to-brunch look of not tucking it in.

I think I definitely have a more North American approach to Sundays... I want to look nice but be comfortable and casual as well. In Barcelona, I've noticed that as Sunday is often a day when people go out for lunch with their family, they often dress really nicely (amazing jackets and scarves and such).

Anyway, long story short, casual or dressed up, I love this set (I'm coming to the conclusion that I love matching sets in general) and it was fun to be wearing locally made clothes in New York.





Photos by Kallie

foodporn and fun nyc

I'm left with my usual bunch of photos that don't make up a coherent whole from a trip... most of them of food, naturally. Like I said, I ate super-well in New York: everything from a posh macaroni and cheese with truffle oil to a ravishingly good pulled pork sandwich to dumplings with the best dough of all time...

Here's a lightening tour of my happy stomach moments, occasionally contextualized with what else I did that day (let's face it, eating was the most important part).

On Saturday Kallie and I went to walk down Park Avenue for Summer Streets, a festival in which they close the street for pedestrians, runners and cyclists, with art installations along the way. We made friends in line and went through a tunnel of light, and then wandered happily chit-chatting...



Athletic people, boo, hisss. I think I was still compulsively clutching an oversized coffee and nursing a hangover at this point. But I'm always a fan of taking the streets back from traffic.



eating an amazing shrimp salad and The Best Dumplings Ever at Moon.... (what was this place called again Kallie?)




Glamorous picnic-ers in Central Park shortly before I dozed off


We regrouped, we redressed,


We went for brussels sprout pizza


And amazing, in-house made raspberry, mascarpone and cashew (oooooh) gelato.

On Sunday morning I went with these people (Kallie's boyfriend Rich is super, super, nice)


To this place:


To indulge in sinfully magnificent American breakfast (I had a BLT benedict, Kallie and Rich both had amazing breakfast sandwiches of various types)


The day involved some other stuff (my spending yet more money), but we didn't forget the important things in life and wrapped it up with a beer and cheese pairing:


And late-night pizza consumed on the floor and washed down with rosé.


Right... who's hungry?

manhattan transfer, or how I tragically spent my inheritance on melted cheese and wedding dresses

"Wedding dresses?" my sister asked with a quizzical eyebrow when I told her this.

Ok, so I had no pressing need to buy wedding dresses. But I went to New York, and I went to a sample sale of local Brooklyn designers with Kallie, and I pretty clearly needed (not) two white cocktail dresses, which I justified by saying that some time or another I'd need a wedding dress, I needed to buy both so I could choose well. (Also, I spent my budget, not my inheritance, poetic justice, etc.)

Right, back on track. I went to New York! I discovered there was a train between Montreal and New York (although had I known at the time that the journey takes 11 hours I might have been somewhat less eager), Kallie of Happy, Honey and Lark offered me her couch, and I was set. Although it was semi-planned the final stages happened in a rush and it felt spontaneous and girly and fun.

Kallie was the best hostess, tour guide, and melted cheese enabler. On Friday she took the day off and we headed into Brooklyn to that cursed sample sale, then had gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner, went for drinks with Emily of It Girl, Rag Doll, and went to NYC Rebel Night, where we danced with gay abandon, all answered to the name Emily, and at a certain point in the evening, unanimously headed for the photo booth.


Scene of my impending economic ruin...




grilled cheese and tomato soup




I was introduced to the concept of beer flights


Emily to the power of 3



Photos by me, and Kallie, and the photobooth, and some guy at dance party

tea with tipa tipa

As I said before, I've met a lot of bloggers in the past couple of weeks. I knew that I really wanted to take advantage of being in New York to hook up with some girls I felt I knew already. Some meet ups didn't work out, sadly, as people lived further away than I thought they did, but I still managed to fit a lot of blog gossip into a couple of days. First up was the lovely Monique of Tipa Tipa. I only found Monique's blog a couple of months ago, and it became and instant favourite for her intelligence, grace, and lovely Brooklyn style and stories. So I was delighted when she agreed to meet me!

We meet in Brooklyn on a horrible day when it was absolutely pouring, and tucked ourselves into a cafe, which served delicious sandwiches (I had Brie, pear and mustard, mmmmmmm). And a couple of hours simply disappeared. It was so nice to get to know her; she's just like her blog, except louder and chattier, and we had some great conversations about traveling and New York. I just hope she'll come to Europe and hang out with me there... or I'll come back and take her up on that bike tour she was offering, and meet her fiancée and so on.... ; )

Also, these pictures are some of my favourites from the trip. How awesome is our unintentional colour blocking? I also like how we're basically dressed quite alike... clearly there are some commonalities. Also, I couldn't have asked for a better backdrop.





Photos by Albert

I wore my vintage coat, charity shop scarf, Warehouse jeans, American Apparel socks and shoes from ebay. Check out Monique's post here.

flower power

I realized, that for a person who claims to be not very fond of floral print clothing, I'm wearing no fewer than four florals in this outfit. I think it's not floral I object to so much (what kind of Scrooge could really object to flowers), but the ubiquitous nature of floral prints. It appears to be either the easiest, cheapest. or most universally appealing print manufacturers can produce, and I guess I just find it annoying that just because I'm female, it's assumed I want to be covered in flowers all the time. I'm reasonably girly, but don't like to be saccharine. So I'm subverting it with an overload of clashing florals. Or something.

Moving on, this was a great day out in Brooklyn. We walked over the Brooklyn bridge and then down to a restaurant called Junior's, which everyone seems to know about, and where I had artery-clogging eggs benedict and even more heart-attack-inducing cheesecake, while trying to eavesdrop on the next table, where two little old men straight out of a Woody Allen film were talking about relationships and their feelings! Then we walked down to one of the Beacon's Closet locations and to a few other vintage shops, wandered down some picturesque streets like these ones, and I imagined myself as a little girl living in a tenement in the early 20th century (I've been rereading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and finally went to Prospect Park and to the Brooklyn Public Library, before staggering home exhausted.





Photos by Albert. And yep, this is the new camera. We're so in love, though we're still figuring a lot of things out...

Pepe jeans blouse, ancient H&M dress and sunglasses, Camper shoes, charity shop scarf

the grass is always greener...

The weather has been incredible in London today, 22 C (or 72F) and sunny--so obviously I've been stuck inside packing all day. It's moving time again. I'm not leaving London for good yet, but I am leaving my flat, which is overpriced, has too many people in it, and is generally getting me down. Looking back at these pictures, I can't help but wish I lived in New York instead (although I'm sure real estate is equally outrageous there as here). I have a real commitment problem with places, which is shared by a lot of my family. I'd always rather be somewhere else: I was longing to come to London before I did, but now it bores me a bit. I know it's because I don't take enough advantage of what's on offer, but again; with rent and transportation so outlandishly expensive, constantly going out is unaffordable. And people are (no offense, Londoners) unfriendly. I remember walking home one day in a blue funk after being ignored by some people from my course thinking, "wtf? I'm friendly, social, intelligent, can speak English and am reasonably good looking, ... isn't that what people supposedly want in friends?" Pfff.

Anyway, grousing aside, here are some pictures from über-friendly new york. I had a nice day about fifty times over, and while I think we barely scratched the surface of that city, I really want to have the chance to scratch it some more.

Meanwhile, I'm off to a place I wouldn't trade for any metropoles on offer... my Dad's hometown in the North of England!





The cartoon is from a Will Eisner exhibit at the museum of comics.

Some Chinese elders were really involved in whatever this was about.

Man and machine. Girl and pretzel.