If you’re still looking for Mother’s Day gifts, rush over to Shelterrific where I’ve put together a gift guide. Don’t forget to rush back though.
Mother’s Day Gift Guide
Jonathan Adler at Le Parker Meridien – Palm Springs
The last day of our trip to Palm Springs was also the only day we had grotty weather. It was sunny enough for swimming in the hotel pool until lunchtime, but then we checked out and went for lunch at the Parker, with interior design by Jonathan Adler.
From the moment we walked through the enormous orange front doors it was obvious we were in the presence of decorating GENIUS.
Even the Minx thought so.
To be fair Adler is definitely a decorator, not a designer and he does make it easy for himself. The building is not especially exciting and he hasn’t done anything particularly original with the space. Pretty much everything is painted white with dark wood floors, and the whole would be incredibly boring if it were empty.
But he has created the perfect backdrop for his superb vignettes of furniture and quirky accessories all topped off with his incredible sense of colour.
Everywhere you turned there were little Adler-esque touches.
The restaurant – Norma’s – was quite blandly decorated but the food was good and it’s obviously worth it to come here and have a bit of nose around the hotel.
The outside spaces looked like they might be interesting, but by this time the weather was really closing in and it was time to get the hell out of Palm Springs.
Just a quick word here in praise of Virgin America. We flew down the West Coast with them and it was such a pleasure to travel with an airline that was on time, had superbly pleasant customer service, fabulous seatback entertainment for everyone, and, to the Minx’s utter delight PINK and PURPLE interior lighting. Truly the key to a little girl’s heart.
In other tales from our trip to Palm Springs, check out
The Ace Hotel and Swim Club here.
The Colony Palms Hotel here.
Out and About in Palm Springs here
The Aerial Tramway here.
Joshua Tree National Park here
Today I Am Mostly …
…liking this colour combination
Actually I think I like this better as my ‘April’ picture.
Apropos doesn’t anyone else want to link a photo to the April photo carnival below? Firstly the lack of entries is getting highly embarrassing. And secondly, don’t you all want server-crushing blog traffic as we all come flocking over to see what you’ve done?
Yet More Tulips
Last weekend we made out annual pilgrimage to the tulip fields north of Seattle. To be honest this year was a bit of bunfight – the weather was glorious and as most of the fields had already been topped due to the early spring, it seemed like the whole of Seattle was standing round the edges of the few remaining uncut fields (note carefully cropped photos below).
But there’s still something incredibly joyous about the patchwork fields of colour and if you live in the Pacific Northwest I do highly recommend a trip out there (though not this weekend, the fields are already empty).
Photos from 2009 here
Photos from 2007 here
Is anyone working on an ‘April’ photo? I’m going to get the gallery up next week, though I still need to figure out my contribution.
Salty Knits
For the three or so readers who care about my knitting projects, I am still knitting. I’ve just been totally bogged down in a sweater project,though I can finally see light at the end of the tunnel. I’m currently sewing it up and hopefully will have pics by next week. I bet you can’t wait.
Some people have, however, been knitting up a storm in West Cape May, New Jersey.
{All images from Salty Knits Facebook page}
The mysterious people behind Salty Knits creep out at night and put up the most fabulous ‘knitted graffiti’. Calling themselves ‘mystery knitters who are sick of knittin kitten mittens’, they’ve got a very active Facebook page too.
Unfortunately, as fast as they can knit, someone has been taking all the knitting down, as they’re legally entitled to do since it’s on public property.
But c’mon, it looks GORGEOUS, doesn’t it? (Apparently the town has been getting the best press it’s ever had too). Would love it if someone did this in Seattle. Maybe next winter I’ll make some tree tubes for the small dogwood in our front garden. (Actually really intrigued to know how they get the tubes on the trees, they don’t appear to be stitched.)
Colony Palms Hotel – Palm Springs
The second hotel we stayed in was the newly refurbished Colony Palms Hotel, fabulously located close to the centre of downtown Palm Springs.
Again we’d been a little wary of booking here – a bit concerned that it would be a little too strait-laced and respectable for the Minx.
Again we needn’t have worried, the hotel was utterly different from the Ace, with a more glamorous and intimate vibe, but there were still plenty of other kids there, the Minx loved the pool and the staff could not have been friendlier or more welcoming.
The hotel was built in 1936 by a Palm Springs mobster and used to house both a speakeasy and a brothel. It has recently been extensively and expensively refurbished. The building is in a more traditional Spanish colonial style focused around a gorgeous swimming pool and restaurant area and surrounded by lovely gardens full of secluded nooks and crannies.
It’s not my favourite style of architecture – where is the reasonably priced funky modernist kid-friendly hotel in Palm Springs? – but it was certainly hugely comfortable and luxurious.
The interior is by Martyn Lawrence-Bullard. He’s used a lot of Spanish influences – coloured tiles, bright colours, spindly wrought iron – and mixed in some Turkish, Moroccan and Indian elements – with graphic embroideries, Indian statues and Moroccan tables tucked into the corners.
The hotel also has a pretty swanky poolside restaurant, the Purple Palm, attached, and the food was really good, the best we had in PS and that’s saying something.
Our room featured an incredibly comfortable bed, with padded embroidered headboard; big bottles of spirits in the mini-bar; an enormous bathroom with painted cement floor; embedded Spanish tiles (which I stupidly forgot to photograph) and a roll top bath. The cheesy photos of airbrushed models cavorting round the hotel were hilarious. I’m not sure if that was intentional.
The location was excellent, within walking distance of lots of great shops and restaurants and with the prettiest view we saw of the neighbouring San Jacinto mountains.
All in all it couldn’t be more different from the Ace and yet I’d recommend it just as much, and combining the two made for a really interesting Palm Springs overview.
See also
Ace Hotel & Swim Club, Palm Springs
Some More Photography Links
We’ll be going back to Palm Springs later this week, but I wanted to get these links out there today in case anyone wants to sign up for tomorrow’s CreativeLIVE course (see below).
I’m on a bit of a crusade at the moment to take my photography to the next level. I’m feeling very photographically frustrated as all I can see when I process my photos are the flaws, and other peoples’ work still seems so much better than mine.
I’m not even quite sure why I want to get good – I have no aspirations to be a professional photographer – but it’s going to be useful for mirrormirror photography if nothing else, and it should make the photos on the blog a bit prettier.
The first thing I’ve been doing is listening in to CreativeLIVE’s course on the Fundamentals of Digital Photography, taught by John Greengo. The course is given as as a 10 week series of weekly video lectures and the best thing about it is that it’s FREE, as long as you tune in to watch the video at the appointed time. It’s also interactive, with questions taken via the website and Twitter and there is the opportunity to buy all the videos so you can refer to them when it’s convenient.
The course so far has been a bit waffly – though it was bound to be frustrating when I’m sitting watching them at 11 am on a Wednesday surround by stacks things To Do – but every so often Greengo will come out with a really useful nugget of information that makes the investment in time worthwhile. It would probably be even more useful for someone who’s just starting with their SLR as he really does get down to basics. Week Three is tomorrow (Weds 21st), so I’m also hoping that now we’ve got all the introductory stuff out of the way, there’ll be lots of real meat going forward. Overall I do highly recommend this, especially as it’s FREE. (CreativeLIVE’s other courses also look like they could be worthwhile – might even sign up for the watercolour one).
Last Saturday I also attended a workshop on Natural Food Styling and Photography with Seattle-based photographer Lara Ferroni. The workshops cost around $100 each but with only six people attending and the opportunity to work in Lara’s amazing new downtown Seattle studio space Spare Room they are worth their weight in gold.
Lara showed us lots of good stuff about manipulating lighting, ideas on composition and clever food styling tricks and it was fun to choose our own props from her prop-laden shelves to practise styling our own shoots. The above shot is of a wonderful rhubarb crostino that Lara prepared (waiting to get hold of the recipe for that, it tasted as good as it looked). I can’t wait to start using some of the things I learned going forward (the shots for flapjack recipe were done before I’d done the course).
I’m also going to be doing her workshop in Low Light Food Photography on May 17th if anyone wants to meet up there. Lara also writes a really useful blog about food styling and photography called Still Life With…
Finally the world and his wife has been raving about the new Hipstamatic app for the iPhone. My very first camera was a little Kodak Instamatic which I loved to pieces. I haven’t played with the app much yet, but I’m loving it so far.
UPDATE: Just want to make clear that the CreativeLIVE course is based in Seattle but available to watch wherever you are in the world. Just make sure you tune in at the right time for your time zone (you can calculate that on their website).
The Food Styling workshops are located in Seattle, so mostly for local peeps (though for the last one someone had driven down from Vancouver to attend).
May The Plates Be With You
I am SO tempted to get a set of these for the Husband. Of course, they would secretly be for me, but he would never know. Just so super fab.
Buy them at Beat Up Creations Etsy shop. {via Whorange’s Twitter feed} Find me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/mirrormirrorxx
Out and About in Palm Springs
We found Palm Springs to be a surprisingly fun, lively and pedestrian-friendly place to stroll about in, especially early in the morning and in the evenings when it wasn’t too hot.
There’s quirky art to be found and palm trees (of course) and enough blue sky and bougainvilleas to make up for months of grey Seattle skies.
Foodwise we can highly recommend Cheeky’s for breakfast, Matchbox for pizza and Las Casuelas for Mexican (with ENORMOUS portions) and Palm Springs Fudge & Chocolates for great ice cream and the most superb date shake (how did live without date shakes in my life? must try and recreate them in Seattle).
I regretted not seeing more of the architecture than we managed. We bought a $5 selfdrive map of Palm Springs Modern architecture at the (gorgeous) Visitor Center and drove about the town for an hour or so one afternoon. It was all faintly frustrating though, as many of the nicest looking properties were on private roads and of course we couldn’t get to see the insides of the houses beyond the bougainvillea hedges.
Highlights included the former Wamu (now Chase) building, the Del Marcos hotel, City Hall, the Visitor Center, the Bank of America building and the Visitor Center itself, which is a converted mid-century gas station. I’ve also no idea how authentic it is, but the KFC (with the red struts below) was the coolest we’ve ever seen.
{All photos copyright Paola Thomas 2010}
When the Minx is a little older we’ll try and plan a trip for Modernism week. In the meantime there’s a fabulous review of Elvis’ honeymoon hideaway (which we didn’t get to this time round) here and a discussion of the whereabouts of the fabulous Palm Springs house shown in Mad Men (with great screen caps), which sadly doesn’t seem to be in Palm Springs at all, here.
(See my review of the Ace Hotel & Swim Club, Palm Springs here}
We Have a Winner!
Congratulations to Kevin, who was chosen by the cold hard random number generator to become the proud owner of 16 million colours via a Philips LivingColors LED Lamp. Kevin, if you’d care to share some photos when you get it, I’m sure we’d love to see them.
Thanks so much to Philips and thanks to all of you who entered. I loved reading your comments and it was lovely to see some commenters come out of the woodwork! If you weren’t the winner remember that you have a few more days to enter the draw to win one here or you can buy one here.
Look out for more giveaways soon.
