Sunday, December 9, 2012

Exploring the city: MOCA Cleveland

On Friday night, I finally made it to MOCA's new home with N, Danielle and Wes. I have to say, I'm very impressed with the space- the museum finally has a contemporary home, in keeping with its name!!


 The MOCA store; even the bathroom is cool

In general, I LURVE contemporary art museums, and most of all, I LUUURRRVVVEEEE contemporary art museum stores, and MOCA Cleveland's store is no exception. So if you're having a hard time finding a gift for that difficult-to-buy-for person in your life, I highly recommend visiting the museum store. N and I picked up and awesome set of candlesticks for our home, and I can't wait to get the right tapers for their inaugural use Christmas Day!!



Of course, we took some time to visit the art, here are pics of my two favorites!







Don't forget, a membership to MOCA is always a GREAT gift for the design enthusiast in your life too!!!

Thursday, December 6, 2012

The Holiday Spirit (or lack thereof)

If you're having a hard time getting it together to decorate this Christmas, might I suggest you visit Flower Child on Clifton Blvd? If you've never been, Flower Child is a vintage store, carrying an eclectic mix of clothing, home goods, jewelry and accessories from decades past. Tina and I stopped over this past weekend, and we had an absolute blast walking around. A word of warning- this is vintage retail, not vintage thrift, so you should expect an appropriately different price tag too!

I absolutely LLLUUUURRVVEEE how over-the-top Christmas this store is right now!!






Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Listening Now: Timeflies

Earlier this week (yesterday), I tweeted about a new group (duo, technically) I discovered, called Timeflies. Now, this duo has been around for a while, playing on the college scene, but sadly, I haven't been in the college scene, for ummm, quite some time...
Things I've learned about this duo over the past day
1. The are originally from Boston.
2. They do something called Timeflies Tuesdays, where they release a remix every Tuesday on YouTube.
3. They are really cute.
4. They have a recently released EP that is really worth downloading.

They remind me a little of LFO (of Summer Girls fame)-- totally pop, and totally enjoyable!! Here is one of my favorites from the new album- One Night. ENJOY!!!!


Visitors

This weekend, my dear friend Tina came in to town for a visit. Tina has been to Cleveland a few times before, so we didn't do the typical West Side Market tour. Instead our weekend consisted of this:

FRIDAY: T didn't get in until after 9, so we hung out, opened a bottle of wine, snacked on cheese and caught up on each others lives.

SATURDAY: After a quick walk with the dogs, we headed out to Li-Wah for dim sum. I've talked about this many times but you definitely have to try dim sum at Li-Wah one weekend.  So long as you eat pork and shrimp and have a sense of culinary adventure, you will be just fine. They also have an a la carte menu for dim sum (rather than just the carts) and the baked BBQ pork buns are soooooo good. Next we headed out for a little shopping: we started with the Bazaar at The Tower Press Builing and then headed over to Tremont for a little gallery hopping, including of course the Hot Toddy Party at Banyan Tree!! I got some Christmas shopping done and even got to keep a super cute souvenir mug!!!

Shopping was followed by a little relaxation at home, including some bubbles. Dinner was at Black Pig (the bahn mi is TDF!!) followed by a stop at Old Angle for the Big 12 football game. This is where the real fun began. We were joined by Allison and then headed over to Market Garden where we were joined by even more friends: Ahmed, Joe G, Seanski and Matt, Lisa and Suzanne!!

SUNDAY: We were moving pretty slow Sunday on account of our Christmas Ale induced hangover, but we rallied for brunch at Luxe. I LUUUUUURRRVVEEE Luxe brunch- half price Bloody's and Mimosas until 1pm, and super yummy brunch offerings, many of which currently feature pork belly. Mmm mmmm mmmm!!! T had to leave early afternoon and then it was time for my usual boring Sunday chores.

Big thanks to all my CLE friends for showing T how fun and fabulous our city truly is! I'm hoping she is considering making Cleveland a permanent home!! (Fingers crossed!!)