Our Last Wedding of 2013......

 Why do I love these photos so much?  Well, first off the flowers are gorgeous!  It was an impromptu little wedding, the bride sort of bought the flowers off the rack if you will, coming in and picking what we had in the cooler just a few days before her December wedding.

 Taylor did a massively beautiful job with the bouquet using a big white kale, bright red roses and ranunculus, red amaranth, eucalyptus, fringey white tulips and some other lovelies.

 Plus they just look so darn happy!

But what really makes these photos special to me is that I know they were taken at the top of Spencer's Butte.  And if you live in Eugene, you know that it's no walk in the park up Spencer's Butte.  It's not too far, but it's pretty steep and always involves a little cardio.  Thankfully guests only had to walk partway up and then after the ceremony, the photographer and the couple walked to the the top.  My guess is, by the time they got there, endorphins were kicking in, adding to a little of that wedded bliss.  Notice the big mud spot at the bottom of her dress?  And  those aren't three inch heels peaking out from under her dress either.

Congratulations you two, those are some beautiful photos you have and  I know you worked hard to get them.

I predict a long and happy marriage.

all photos courtesy Jay Eads Photography
and click here to see more really special photos from this fabulous wedding....

Indie Wedding Show in Eugene

 

Lots of great wedding inspiration crossing our feed this morning....we're having a really fun, indie, alternative bridal show with all our other downtown neighbors on Saturday afternoon the 22nd of February.

We're going to do a little demo on hair flowers and there will be  lots of different styles to try on.  These shots from uber romantic Finnish designer  Minna got us thinking about all kinds of flowers and crowns. 

 

And we've got something extra special planned for our front window.  We're thinking Downton Abbey goes to Burning Man!  Stay tuned.

All photos courtesy Minna

Visiting Nest in San Francisco

 Last post about the San Francisco Trip (can you tell I was inspired?) . I always like to do a little research and development which is code for shopping and I wanted to show Jamie some of my favorite little spots and so we went to Nest.  

It's a little jewel box of a store that mixes vintage and antiques with paper goods and books and a lovely little children's section - oh and I spy a rack of clothes and some jewelry too.

 Just the most lovely mix of old and new.  Some of my faves were the gilded  Moroccan leather goods they had, and their chandeliers, and some velvet clothing and vintage earrings from Oaxaca.

It's  in the Filmore shopping district of San Francisco - a really fun neighborhood to shop.

Old Fashioned Sign Painter's Work Popping Up in San Francisco

Do you know how it is when something catches your eye and then you start to see it everywhere?  I started to notice these beautiful handpainted signs in various spots in San Francisco .......and they're something  you don't see too often, because they really are paint to the brush, brush to the board, kind of signs. I still see this in Mexico but not so much in the States.  Plus double love the typography and colorways too.

 

Apparently, "He's a sign painter in the Mission" - which narrows it down ever so slightly. 

I am intrigued.

More Posts from the Golden Gate

 

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, bells going off in my head, in love with the Marketplace at the Ferry Street Bldg in San Francisco.  It's one long walkway of food fantasticness- one great big homage to the small, local, (even slightly obsessed) artisan vendors who lines its halls. 

 

 Honeys, cheese, wines, lavenders,truffles, salami, fish, oils, syrups, and oyster shooters, each booth  a singular vision joined up in a larger whole.  If I wax poetic, it's because, it's pretty wonderful to see a place thrive that supports lots of  people doing one thing and doing it really well.

It's also a huge commuter hub where people go to catch ferries that go all over the San Francisco Bay.  So it's beautiful in that way too because it's by the water.  And they have a farmer's market outside the building three times a week.  I bet that's something.  But I was happy to be able to kind of have it all to myself at a not very busy time of day.  It was so fun to explore.  The mushroom booth was my favorite.

Johnny Was Clothing at Passionflower

Jamie & I were just down in San Francisco .  Did we just find you the most beautiful shirts for, say wearing with a pair of jeans?  Indigo or denim? I'm dreaming about these.  Asian peonies, pussywillow, and hellebore prints -   coming Soon to your favorite Passionflower store!

Field Trip to San Francisco and the Fancy Food Show

 I went to the Fancy Food Show in San Francisco to find you some sweet little things - some honeys for your tea and fizzies for your drinks and salts and caramels and  bonbons to tie on packages and pretty little tins and cartons of sweets.

It was so much fun even if it was mobbed.  Busy in a good kind of way.  Everyone was having fun and  sampling and talking food.  (I consider myself a pretty hard core uber buyer, but if I were, say , a cheese buyer, I am not sure how I would have navigated through that show.  There were probably thousands of  cheeses of every shape, size, color, and origin you might imagine...and that was just the cheese world part.)

It was pretty sweet!

New Linen Pillow Line at Passionflower

 

The ever talented Christy Bishop has started a pillow line  called

Opal at Home....('oh' for short).....

  Beautiful, witty, and locally made (!!!!) with linen and down, they're just what we needed to inspire our natural history corner....

Do you have a perfect place in your home for one of these creatures?

Staying Warm on a Cold Winter Day

Bestus, cutest, warmest socks ever.  New, over the knee cashmere socks, in three lovely shades chez Passionflower.

Plus made in the USA! 

 And who wouldn't love a pair for Valentine's Day?

 

 

Middle of Nowhere Treasure Trove

 

If you're like me, when you travel, you will stop in the most forlorn, tacky, junk shop around, just because, well, you never know what you might find. Unless, of course, you are travelling somewhere that has amazing wonderful antique stores everywhere, in which case you stop there. Sadly, this is not the case on the Oregon Coast.  Which is how I found myself in a very wierd "antique" mall in Newport, Oregon and the shopkeep told me that in Toledo, a mere 8 miles from where we stood, there was a main street lined with antique stores.  "There is?" , I said. (slight uptick in heart rate)

 

 

And so off I found myself on the road to Toledo, which is a whole ethnographic wonderland unto itself.    It's an old lumber town and, surprisingly, still is .  Plus it used to be the county seat so it has a little bit of that beat up backcountry charm with an old hotel and some charming storefronts mixed in with lumbertown grunge. 

 

 

I found a quilt shop and a couple of oddball art galleries, a thrift store that might pass for something old and then, down at the very end of the street, I spied a little something that made my heart go pitter patter.

 

 

Hello best junk shop I've been in in a long, long while and it's out in the middle of nowhere. 

It is the perfect mix of hoarder meets obsessive compulsive disorder. (Notice how the pool balls are all lined up in numerical order!)  Oh and I forgot to mention that half the store is like a steampunk jewelry/art gallery.

 

 

And yes, Becky Tonkin, he does have an entire printer's tray full of various glass, doll eyeballs.

And not to worry, I left them there for you.  :)

 

My little working vacation

 

Best kept secret - January at the Oregon Coast is warm and sunny!  At least the four days I have been here.  Fog rolling in right now. Time to go home!  And tomorrow night I'll be in San Francisco.  Ah, the modern world we live in. 

 

 It's pretty amazing here and I'm not sure why I haven't made coming to the coast a regular part of my routine since it's really right out my back door.  Guess it's just about finding the right spot.

 

Terrariums Rock our World at Passionflower

Just  a little sneak peek of our winter reset, which is deep underway at Passionflower.  I'm doing some "art walls" in the store and Becky put this little lovely of John Derian trays and a few other goodies together in our terrarium cupboard. People have just been cray, cray for terrarium stuff these days so we are pumping it up - getting some different mosses and rocks and some new shapes and styles.  It's so fun to see how everyone puts it together.

One for Each Month of the Year

 

Wow, it's been crazy busy around here.  Getting all stocked and ready for Valentine's Day and, truthfully, the store does look a little picked over post holiday, and it is the start of a New Year and we need to make it look all pretty again.  And all that takes a ton of time.  So I'm trying something new this year.  Instead of going to the gift show in New York this winter (which takes well over a week), I'm going to check out the Fancy Food Show in SF and go to the Design Show in Las Vegas (a little experiment)....but I still need to buy all the basics, so instead of NY , I booked a little room at the Coast with a view of the ocean and the sound of the waves and hooked up my laptop and here I am.  And curiously, I find myself making drawings of the twelve flicker feathers instead of

perusing online catalogs.  Which, I suppose, is just fine for me to give my workaholic tendencies a little rest and do a little dreaming.  Plus some crazy old timer I met on the beach yesterday gave me a little class on how to read the coastline for signs of gold and showed me how to pan.  Do you think that means I ought throw a few touches of gold into the store here and there during the coming year?  And perhaps black sand as a little motif too?   This is my brain on vacation.

(PS - wonderful little secret, the coast is warm and sunny in January)

To See Heaven in a Wildflower

So often, we sell things, bid them a fond farewell, and off they go.  It's  always gratifying to us when we see what our customers are doing with their Passionflower finds.  We love it when you send us photos of your house, your party, your outfit, whatever it is you do once those goodies leave the store.  So it was particularly fun when our customer brought in this photos of the peach colored Juliet garden rose that she bought from us and then painted.  I might even like the painting better than the flower itself!  Come to think of it, we have a whole subset of customers (you know who you are) that like to buy flowers for painting still lifes.  Spirit of the old Dutch Masters lives on at Passionflower

The Year of the Teatowel

Lovely little teatowel holiday gift  from our friends at Cavallini.  

Winter and citrus just go together so perfectly!

I've been eating grapefruit morning, noon, and night lately.

First it was the satsumas in December and now it's grapefruit - Ruby Red is my fave. 

This is it's time and it tastes so good.

May you be showered with all the sweetness and juiciness of the grapefruit in the coming year.

Up, Up, & Away

 

Feel like I need to put on my running shoes. Holidays are over and then came inventory.  Now we need to restock our shelves and make it all look good.  But that's the fun part.  And Becky's going to come help for a couple of days so that's even more fun.  2014, here we come!

 

And in the meantime,  while I take a moment to pause and breathe, and look back for a moment before leaping ahead,  I want to say a big old thank you to all our amazing, thoughtful, smart, funny & beautiful customers for making 2013 our best holiday season and our best year ever too!

We love all of you!

Life wouldn't be nearly as interesting without you. 

 

Look What I Found

Little walk in the filbert orchard on a chilly afternoon..

Revisiting an Old Friend

 

Uh, oh.....got a call yesterday from a friend who is opening a cider house.  "Would I like to come over and check out his awesome new space and kick around some design ideas?"......"Umm...yes I would." (just as soon as I finish with inventory :))  I find myself excited by this call.

And so this impending visit  has me kicking up my heels and spending entirely too much time persusing one of my favorite all time 'If I were going to design a restaurant websites'  Bobo's Intriguing Objects.  The name Bobo came from combining the first two letters of bourgeois and bohemian!

All Images courtesy Bobo's Intriguing Objects  

New Years Floral Inspiration

 

If you are getting married, or having an event, or a party and looking for something lovely and whimsical (or wild and dramatic), we could make one of these, what Garden Design calls "a fresh, linear floral", just for you.  Also happy to do this on the floor (instead of a mantel) and create a passageway/path in the field kind of look.  Just sayin.  We can do that for you.

Photo courtesy the talented LA floral design studio Dandelion Ranch.

Happy to see this spread about them in Garden Design

Love all their work and have been following them for years at Passionflower.

Looking Forwards/And Backwards too

 

I 

I love this time of year. The world is full of hope and the future holds all possibilities.  And I like to contemplate what just happened and where things are going.  Guess I'm a goal setter too.  Or a dreamer, depending on your point of view.  And one thing I'm really excited for the coming year is working on our website.  It's been a long time coming and has gone through more than one iteration.  And it surely would not be as fun a project as it has been were it not  for the photographic brilliance of the lovely Melissa Jane Ferrell, our sometimes Passionflower shop girl, and the creative proprietress of Jane in the Woods Photographie who took some wonderful photos for me of our product like the one below.  The Passionflower shopping site would not be nearly as beautiful were it not for her work. I really feel lucky to have her cross my path.

Have fun browsing through her work by clicking here.

I think she's a brilliant photographer - really able to capture tenderness and subtle emotions.   And so I leave you with, what I think is, so far, my favorite photo of hers which she call Baby Timmy.

Just perfect for the New Year.

(Plus I have a think for images of women with their eyes closed = another reason this image speaks to me.)

Middle photo Jane in the Woods for Passionflower

Bottom photo courtesy Jane in the Woods Photographie

Ring Out the False, Ring in the True

Lovely little New Years Brunch with my artist  pal and compadre Jill Cardinal.  The meal was completely inspired by the purple anemone. We drank homemade grape juice, put up on  a sunnier day in the fall, dined on french toast and sausage, looked at a book about Surrealist women artists, dreamed about our art tour to Mexico, set a few intentions or two and then had a short walk through the filbert orchard.  Most excellent way to start the New Year. 

There are so many rich  New Years  traditions around the world,  from the  German people "reading" the signs in molten lead to the Japanese climbing a mountain to see the first sunrise,

all people want to mark the turning of a new leaf.

 

And should the New Year be leaving you feeling inspired and creative, you might perhaps want to check out some art classes Jill is teaching at Oregon Art Supply by clicking here.

 

And may the New Year shower you with untold blessings that you cannot yet even imagine.