There is something about Central Park in the summer that really is magic. New Yorkers bumping past tourists, picnics on the Great Lawn, entertainers buzzing through Bethesda Fountain… I love it all.
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I love that Central Park has remained virtually unchanged for the past 150 years. Meaning a century’s worth of New Yorker’s have similar summer memories. I’ll always remember Summer in Central Park like it was this past Sunday – a perfect 80 degrees, filled with the sounds of happy voices, wandering about in the most perfect floral midi dress and then pitching a blanket on the hill beside the lake (mainly so that Adam and I could laugh about the people rowing their boats backwards and bumping into one another). Speaking of this dress – I love it too and filmed ‘how to wear it 3 ways’ for IGTV. Thinking this could be a fun way to show things easily that I otherwise don’t have time to photograph quite as grandly as when the Plaza Hotel is looming in the background.
This weekend, Adam and I took a road trip to the End of the World (aka Montauk – the Eastern most tip of Long Island). Jewelry brand Kendra Scott was hosting a pop-up shop party at luxury resort Gurney’s Montauk all weekend and had graciously extended an invite – so we decided to make a day of it. And what a day.
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Gurney’s is one of those places that looks like an actual postcard.. or you know, Instagram gold. Especially when the skies are as perfectly blue as they were on Saturday. With private cabanas, hammocks, an on the beach bar and DJ – it felt like all of New York’s Lower East Side had been transported to Montauk. Which, to be honest, was a little bit more of a scene than I’m usually in to – but when in Montauk right?
I wore this postcard print dress for the occasion and Kendra Scott jewels (naturally), Adam wore a nearly matching Hawaiian shirt (we inadvertently do this more often than I’d like to admit) and we both went straight for the Montauk Summer Ale.
Back in the Spring I kicked off #SteeleMaidenBookClub and not only has it encouraged me to devote way more time to reading this year (the way I used to before endlessly scrolling Instagram became a thing), but it’s also become on of my favorite posts to write here on the blog. So without further ado – my third installment (you can see the last post’s here and here) and if you want to see/hear me talk about this month’s book club picks I’m going to be posting a short video to IGTV here.
Cruel Beautiful World by Caroline Leavitt: This was the story of a young girl in the 1970’s who runs away with her high school teacher. It flips between her story (which takes some twists and turns) and the story of the sister she left behind and the woman who raised them. I think I ended up liking the flashback stories more than the ones that followed the main character.. but in general it was a good, easy read. This could make it into your beach bag this summer for sure.
Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney: I love, love, loveddd this book – but I think that’s largely because I really related to it. The story follows Lillian’s life – flipping between when she was a copywriter/ad executive in New York in the 30s/40s and now, in the 1980s when she’s a much older woman, still living in the city. So much of her feelings towards her career and this city felt so much like my own which I rarely find in characters. But even if you’re not a Manhattan or nothing diehard, this book was very well-written and fun look at one woman’s life at two very different time periods.
The Lesser Bohemians by Eimear McBride: Ahh… where do I start? I guess on the first 5 pages because honestly that’s all I could bear to read of this book. It is very rare for me to start a book and not give it at least 100 pages, but honestly the dialect is so difficult that I just couldn’t muster through it. Maybe in the winter when I’m cooped up with nothing but time I’ll come back to this, but in Summer I wanted a book that sparked my imagination or sucked me in page by page. Not something I had to read slowly in a silent room. Let’s put this one on the shelf, shall we?
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After feeling like I picked only ‘new fiction’ this past month, I wanted to really switch it up for the month ahead – and I’m particularly excited about these three picks (full disclosure: I snuck ahead and have already started/finished some of these and they’re gooood). The Woman in the Window is an edge-of-your-seat thriller (perfect for the beach or tearing through on a rainy day), Motherhood is writer Sheila Heti’s honest account of her inner struggle to decide if being a mother is for her or not and Kitchen Confidential was Anthony Bourdain’s first book and after being such a fan of his, I wanted to go back and hear more about where he started. This book is a tell-all memoir about his early days in the kitchen’s of New York City… the good, the bad and the ugly. So far I know I’ll never be eating fish at a restaurant on a Monday night again.
Okay, okay… so technically these pictures were taken beside the East River and not the ‘Sea’ but it leads into the Atlantic Ocean so let’s count it? Also – you guys, two blog posts in two consecutive days! I told you I was going to be back! Ha.
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Now back to this ‘summer sweater‘ which is basically my new favorite thing. How cute for the 4th of July fireworks at the beach? Or just any chilly evening or cool morning this season. I’m also that person that practically shivers when I even hear A/C being turned on.. so it’s good for a freezing office too. This denim miniskirt meanwhile goes with absolutely everything (evidenced by the fact that if you’ve seen me IRL in the past couple of months I’ve likely been wearing it). Plus my favorite flat leather sandals andstraw bag (from this post) that I’m still getting tons of wear out of. That’s the thing about getting just a few quality items at the beginning of the season – they don’t fall to shreds by Labor Day.
Welcome to the apartment entryway! There’s been quite a bit of radio silence on the blog between this spring and early summer but this entryway project felt like it really got the creative juices flowing again and I’m so excited to get back to sharing regular content with you all. Starting with this little space. It’s the first in the apartment to be “done” and even though it’s not a large area, I do think the changes made a big impact. Keep scrolling to see the ‘before’ and full ‘after’!
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The entryway leads into the living area and so I wanted it to feel a part of that space (and the things I have planned for it), while still feeling like it served distinctly as an entry space. This meant I wanted a last minute place to check my lipstick and somewhere we could hang our keys and jackets on the way in and out.
The first thing to go was the ‘rental white’ paint color. I can’t stand it and so my Mom (an absolute master painter) generously lent her skills to repainting the living room and entryway in Benjamin Moore’s ‘Shoreline’. The facing wall I painted this deep navy teal (I had literally been dreaming of painting a wall this color for years) and love how it turned out as a nice rich accent.
The mirror in the entry is actually a window from the barn at my grandparent’s old house (where my Dad grew up). My parent’s salvaged a few of them before my grandparents moved and my Mom had mercury glass mirror put behind it. I love that it feels like a little piece of my Pennsylvania home here in New York. Above it hangs a sign saying ‘Entreé‘ which means entrance in French and was a sweet housewarming gift from a dear friend.
Another thing we replaced were the light fixture (reference the ‘before again… eek) and the door pull on the coat closet. Small changes that make a really big difference. I added matching knobs to the wall as makeshift hooks beneath the mirror.
The bar cart is filled with lots of personal touches that I love – the photo hanging above it is from a perfect night spent wandering the canals in Amsterdam while the Buffalo Bill image framed below is actually a playing card from a deck picked up on our trip to Wyoming. It’s the Ace of Hearts which we decided was a good omen – to leave the house with luck and enter with love. The illustration framed in the lower part of the bar cart is a map of the Cotswolds from the cutest country Inn we stayed at there last Fall. And the bar cart itself is a $15 flea market find from when we lived in Los Angeles (it’s a vintage typewriter cart).
I wanted the downstairs living area space of the apartment to feel like New York in the Fall (crisp, rich colors and textures yet an overall warm and inviting feeling) and I think that the entryway is a good start to that. More to come!
