This sustainable gift idea beats all!

My sister-in-law gives the best presents. One year she gave me a milk frother and I’ve used it practically every day since.

This year she told me about the gift she gave her husband and I’m telling you — we all need to steal this idea! 📚

Her husband, my brother-in-law, is an architect and designer. He has a great minimalist sensibility. Below is a photo of the backyard of their home that he remodeled. Notice the footrest in front of the butterfly chair. It’s a used fireplace grate with a block of wood on top. I love that upcycled detail! You can learn more about him and his projects at Big Fish Design. He doesn’t have an Instagram account unfortunately but I hear his daughters are working on him to create one. 😉

So anyway my sister-in-law knows her husband well. She knows what he likes and what he doesn’t like. Her first thought was to buy him some gorgeous design books — but he’s a minimalist kinda guy. If she got a book he didn’t love he might feel obliged to keep it. What she decided to do instead was to borrow a pile of books from the public library and give it to him as a gift!

She curated a stack of hard-to-find architecture and design books (some through Interlibrary loan), then she wrapped them up and included the due date on the card. She arranged it so he got plenty of quiet time to enjoy them before they needed to be returned.

I mean … Genius, right?! Can we all do this for Christmas 2020?!

Think about roaming the stacks of your local library with a loved one in mind. It’s such a great exercise to think of a person you love and what they might like and then create a stack of library books that you think they might appreciate. And to take it one step further and get hard to find books from a college library through interlibrary loan is genius!

The only thing this idea needs is a good hashtag. Any suggestions? How about #libraryxmas or #checkoutxmas 🎄📚

Thanks for the inspiration Emily!

20th Century Women Style

I just watched the movie 20th Century Women. So good. It’s deeply moving and well acted. I especially appreciate the care that went into the design of the movie. I love the color combinations and how scenes are composed.

Certain scenes feel inspired by the photographer Stephen Shore.

I noticed all the wall colors, lamps, and fabric choices.

I love the wardrobe choices for the character played by Greta Gerwig. The character tells us that she decided to color her hair red after seeing the movie The Man Who Fell To Earth. (BTW — we have that DVD at the library)

A few times throughout the movie they use this 3D coloring effect. It makes it feel so real to the time period. I was 11 years old in 1979. I clearly remember wearing paper 3D glasses as a child and looking at photos that looked like this. 

The librarian in me appreciates all the references made to books and movies throughout the film. The image below is from a New York magazine article where the filmmaker, Mike Mills, shares seven things that inspired 20th Century Women. Check it out.

Jimmy Carter’s Crisis of Confidence speech plays an important role in the movie. It’s worth a re-listen. I ♥ Jimmy Carter.

Jimmy Carter’s Full “Crisis of Confidence” Speech (July 15, 1979)

The movie is set in a time before the internet. People got together and talked face to face. Let’s all resolve to have more dinner parties —  but without the cigarette smoking.

xo jam

Repost – Book Trap

A friend reminded me of this old blog post. At the time I wrote it, it was the most popular blog post I had ever written. It got a lot of hits because it was shared by a popular Daddy blogger, Daddy Types.com. My boys are now teenagers. I still occasionally lay out a book trap. Recently, I laid out a library book about Steinberg on the dining room table. I didn’t catch anything. I’ll keep trying.

Do you ever lay out traps for your kids?

xo jam