the books

I would apologize for not posting in over a week, but that would imply that I actually had readers two posts in (hello? HELLO? ARE YOU OUT THERE?). Although I do apologize to myself because I wanted to start off strong and steady. But then life gets in the way and blah blah blah. It's hard guys. So I'm sorry Lucy (that's me), for being a total procrastinating bitch.

Anyway, I'm still on a back to school kick. This time it's less about the mood, the look, and the feel of fall, and more about the physical artifacts that irrefutably proved that it was back to school time—those glorious, glorious books. Textbooks with their freshly printed pages, novels with past owners' notes scribbled in the margins, deliciously bound course packets. All amazing, and sorely missed.

Except then, as I'm want to do, I thought about it some more and realized that most of the time those textbooks actually sucked. If you thought What is Japanese Architecture? was going to be an interesting exploration of the philosophies of Japanese architecture and not a brutally detailed description of timber-frame construction techniques you'd be WRONG. And I'm sorry, but Introduction to the Practice of Statistics is a horribly misleading title for a book that really should have just been called This is Targeted at Beginners, But You're Stupid and Horrible at Math, So You'll Never, Ever Understand This Thing We Call the Practice of Statistics.

But now I'm an "adult" and I can do what I want, when I want. So here's my back to school reading list for grown-up me. As the office manager/executive assistant of a graphic design studio, these are the design (and general life) 101 books I'm itching to get. They look good, sound good, and are about to blow my real world paycheck. Student discounts be damned.

1. Graphic Design Project From Start to Finish 

2. Significant Objects

3. On Looking

4. Brand Thinking

5. Design Firms Open For Business

6. The Shape of Design

back to school

There are few things I miss more than that excited, anxious, what-am-I-going-to-wear feeling the night before the first day of school. Two summers have now come and gone since I graduated from college, and with them, my obsession with the intoxicating, inky smell of new textbooks has waned. My annual dismay that the weather in early September was never as cool as my new sweater demanded has diminished. And the feeling that this was the year I would finally bring back the skirt over pants look, has thankfully subsided.

The more I thought about it, the sadder I got. But then the more I really thought about it, it dawned on me: why can't I treat tomorrow like the first day of school? Not in a pathetic, Peter Pan, never let it go kind of way, but in the sense that the change of seasons demands a change in attitude and there's no reason to fight what our environment thrusts upon us. After all, the fall requires a new wardrobe, new kinds of food, new amounts of coffee, new ways of coping with your seasonal affective disorder. So why not a whole new mindset too?

And, in fact, as much as I loved those first autumnal breezes, there was always the inevitable sadness that came along with the realization that the back to school jitters would pass, lazy summer days were over, you were just writing papers and studying for tests again and not much had really, truly changed.

So, while joining the real world and working a full-time job has been a major blow for someone with a former case of back to school mania, it's also let the nostalgic twinge of summer passing become refreshingly meaningless. I'm not leaving somewhere or something, so there's no room for the often misguided notion that a change in scenery means a change in lifestyle, or relationships, or happiness.

In a post-school world, it's all about creating your own annual cycles. The year isn't separated into the convenient divisions of school and no-school anymore. Any time of year can become the perfect time for a fresh start. And if that time just happens to coincide with the first day below 80 degrees in months, so be it. Because fall has always really been more my kind of season anyway. A world without hats, scarves, and coats just isn't a world I want to be part of.

autumn stroll + eleonora carisi + spicy sausage, potato, and kale soup + topshop fluffy boyfriend coat + luxurious textiles + medeith wendell leather backpack + dark chocolate tart with blackberries + book corner + woodsy morning coffee + cozy sweater and leopard + a fresh start

the whole of it

Is it lame to talk about your blog name's origin story in your first post? Does anybody even care? What is "meta"?

You've probably heard the phrase "the whole kit and caboodle," but that blog name was taken and we all know alliterative names are a cheap trick anyway. Plus, I'm all about idiosyncrasy and "kit and boodle," without any of this cutesie "ca" nonsense, is actually a perfectly acceptable version of the idiom. It's a slightly later variation, but pretty much means the same thing: the whole shebang, a big ol' bundle, everything! A kit (a set of objects) + a boodle (a large quantity).

The phrase is entirely the brainchild of 19th century America, but derives from the Middle Dutch kitte meaning "wooden vessel made of hooped staves" and the Dutch boedel meaning "property" or "moveable estate". So this blog is going to be about wooden vessels, hooped staves, and moveable estates. My three great loves.

No joke. (With the exception of a hooped stave because I have no idea what that is and Google isn't telling me efficiently enough.) A wooden vessel and a piece of moveable property will both definitely make their way into a post at some point. Which is to say that I want this to be a spot for everything I love, all the objects I consider beautiful, all the places I think are inspiring and magical, all the ideas that pique my interest, and everything that is awesome and joyful and weird and just really, really cool—the whole kit and boodle if you will.

It's a totally self-indulgent place for me to "express my creativity", collect aesthetically interesting things, and share a little bit about what I find meaningful and exciting. 

And a final note in the interest of full disclosure: Back in the day boodle also meant, more slangily, "phoney money" and especially "graft money". So take that as you will.

wooden bowl + vintage airstream