Much like J. Crew, which car­ries (and col­lab­o­rates with) older brands (Bar­bour) as well as, in their words, “leg­ends in the mak­ing” (Lulu Frost), Heath Ceram­ics can do no wrong when it comes to choos­ing associates.

Tile made in con­junc­tion with Dwell, tea tow­els designed by Skinny Lam­inx: it’s all thought­fully designed and true to the spirit of Heath. So I wasn’t too sur­prised to hear of their lat­est friend: House Indus­tries. Yes, the mak­ers of awe­some type (and the Girard nativ­ity set men­tioned earlier).

Another thing to add to my never-ending “some­day house list”: House-designed Heath tile numbers.

Buy­ing house num­bers when you don’t own your house is crazy, right?

To fur­ther tempt me, and dur­ing my self-declared birth­day week, no less, there’s a shindig Sat­ur­day (Decem­ber 11) to cel­e­brate. Heath’s newslet­ter says, “Two leg­endary design houses are geek­ing out and hav­ing a really sweet hol­i­day party.” Um, I’m so there.

While we’re on the topic of two great tastes, I was remiss in sum­ma­riz­ing last week’s recipes from Ye Olde Recipe Exchange. I sug­gest pulling on some elas­tic waist pants before con­tin­u­ing read­ing. In no par­tic­u­lar order: sweet and sour chicken from Big Moon Sky; choco­late peanut but­ter buck­eyes from Advice Gals; can­died hazel­nut brit­tle from Bull in a China Shop; hol­i­day red and white fudge from Shades of Sun­shine; and choco­late cran­berry pecan tart from Domes­tic Dish. Now I am going to go stare into the depths of my fridge and will one (or all) of these to appear.

It’s some­how Decem­ber, which means we are mere weeks from the most mag­i­cal time of the year: my birth­day. Have you been cursed blessed with some­one sim­i­larly dif­fi­cult picky for your upcom­ing hol­i­day of choice? I am sorry. Despite being a PITA on the receiv­ing end, an infor­mal sur­vey says that I am awe­some at the giv­ing. This is not because I am super­rich and give peo­ple piles of cash (which would be nice) or because I shop all year long at killer sales. My ears perk up when some­one says “I’ve always wanted that” or “I wish I could find that.” So, some ideas:

Things they can eat. I adore candy from Hammond’s. They make some­thing called a filled straw and it is quite pos­si­bly the most deli­cious thing on earth. If let near a bag, a wild ani­mal takes over my being and destroys it within min­utes. There­fore, I point you towards the world’s cutest (and most deli­cious) candy canes. The more, the merrier.…

Per­haps your beloved doesn’t like candy. They do not sound like some­one I would enjoy. How­ever, fig­ure out what they like to con­sume and then step it up. A bag of jerky from the gas sta­tion: lame. A bag of hand­crafted Korean BBQ jerky: magical.

Things that add a bit of lux­ury to exis­tence. Cash­mere socks have been a big hit with my dad in the past. My hus­band is fond of his non-disposable col­lar stays. I abhor bath mats and think a teak one might keep me from want­ing to change the mat daily.

Things they talk about. When Ryan and I first started dat­ing, he told me about this semi-obscure brass band that he loved. He had a few of their records on vinyl, but couldn’t find all of them. I saw this as a chal­lenge. For Christ­mas, I man­aged to deliver the com­plete discog­ra­phy. Some of them were a lit­tle shady-looking, burned copies with slightly wonky art, but he still men­tions it. I’m con­vinced it was one of the rea­sons he decided to marry me. I keep bring­ing up Alexan­der Girard, so I’d prob­a­bly love this print at Design Pub­lic. (Lately I also can’t stop talk­ing about Larry King, but please don’t use that as a start­ing point for a gift.)

Things they’d use every­day. A gift card to their favorite cof­fee shop. A func­tion­ing tea ket­tle. We cook a lot and drink smooth­ies. Wouldn’t a fancy blender make these tasks a lit­tle nicer?

In the Not $500 cat­e­gory, I think this nail brush is lovely. Maybe check that the per­son you’re buy­ing for would geek out on these as much as I do.

Lastly, things they’d never buy for them­selves. Admit­tedly this is a tricky cat­e­gory and one of the hard­est to pull off. It also can be expen­sive. I am embar­rassed to say how often I think about these nest­ing strain­ers by Sori Yanagi. They’re beau­ti­ful, they’re func­tional, I’d use them weekly if not daily. And yet, I can­not bring myself to pur­chase them. Sun­glasses are the same story. Even when I cal­cu­late the cost per wear, I hes­i­tate.
(These are from Oliver Peo­ples.)

I was going to wrap this up with a list of don’t-gives, but thought it might come off as neg­a­tive. So I’ll turn it over to you: what gift, in your eyes, sucks?

In no par­tic­u­lar order, those are my inter­ests. (Well, most of them.)

I went to see Maira Kalman speak last week. There were mini Snick­ers bars on every seat in the room. (Note to self: if I ever speak to a large crowd, make sure every­one gets a candy bar.) She has a show up at the Skir­ball Cen­ter that I’m pretty excited about. Here’s a piece of hers that makes me happy:

The museum has a bunch of Kalman-inspired work­shops run­ning through the dura­tion of the exhi­bi­tion. I read the descrip­tion for one called “Sit. Stay. Paint. Good Dog.” and thought, “I want to go to that!”

Pay­ing trib­ute to artist Maira Kalman, who has invented many a charm­ing dog for her beloved children’s books, paint por­traits of live pup­pies brought from the Pasadena Humane Soci­ety. Guided by artists from the pop­u­lar Santa Mon­ica art stu­dio Paint:Lab, painters of all ages will make one-of-a-kind works of art to take home or donate. Feel free to bring in snap­shots of your own pet to serve as your muse (but please leave pets at home!).

I’m in! But wait—Ages 4 and up; chil­dren must be accom­pa­nied by an adult.

Might need to find a child to borrow.

Am I vio­lat­ing Buy Noth­ing Day because I bought a loaf of chal­lah? Left­over turkey on chal­lah is one of my very favorite meals, and man, do we have left­overs. I thought we were going min­i­mal with our menu but we cooked a lot for just the two of us: Ryan’s dad’s stuff­ing, my mom’s mashed pota­toes, roasted cran­ber­ries with jalapenos, roasted brus­sels sprouts with bacon, a turkey breast and pump­kin cream pie.

Speak­ing of food, because I’m sure you haven’t thought about food in a while: I’m par­tic­i­pat­ing in another recipe exchange, this time for the hol­i­days. I’m not up for a few weeks, since I decided to save my recipe for my birth­day, but this week’s recipes looked pretty swell. Tor­rie made turkey gumbo—great for those of you who cooked a full bird. Michelle baked cran­berry bread, and I never need an excuse to buy more cran­ber­ries. Stephanie has a recipe for apple sausage dress­ing, which she sug­gests halv­ing and eat­ing on a non-holiday occa­sion. OK, if you insist. Hope you are hav­ing a lovely hol­i­day weekend.

(OK, it was actu­ally 57. No one tell my husband.)

As I was out try­ing (and fail­ing) to fin­ish my Thanks­giv­ing shop­ping, I took a turn down a new street. Out of the cor­ner of my eye I saw two Chi­nese Chip­pen­dale chairs flank­ing a door to a thrift store. They looked like these guys from Jonathan Adler, except they were kelly green.

They were not priced at thrift store rates, sadly. The entire store was full of crazy stuff—a din­ing table with a gigan­tic spi­ral base, huge gin­ger jar lamps and a wall of books. I glanced at the needle­point sec­tion briefly because I thought I saw Mary Martin’s Needle­point. Mary Mar­tin? Like Peter Pan?

Yes! Mary Mar­tin needle­pointed. This is one of those facts that will take up the space in my brain that should be occu­pied by more impor­tant mat­ters, like where I parked my car. I picked up the book and flipped through it, only to land on an index page where my eye was drawn to Girard, Alexan­der. Girard needle­point pat­terns? I got a lit­tle excited. When I flipped to the cor­rect page, what I saw instead was that Girard dec­o­rated an apart­ment for Joyce Hall (the Hall of Hall­mark) in Kansas City. Does this mean there is a (please please please) immac­u­lately main­tained Girard-designed apart­ment in my hometown?

I’m not sure. Googling “Joyce Hall Alexan­der Girard” doesn’t give me a ton of infor­ma­tion. The two were friends. There was an apart­ment. But I can’t find pho­tos. Was it like Girard’s Miller House?

“Hall­mark and Girard” led me to this post on a poster. If you ever see it, please buy it for me.

(This is par­tic­u­larly entic­ing because the Nel­son is where I spent a lot of time in sum­mer art camp, which I loved.)

“Girard and nativ­ity” took me to this House Indus­tries nativ­ity set, based on a Girard illustration.

Is it wrong for a Jew to have a nativ­ity set? Keep in mind that this Jew also has a Christ­mas tree.

Work­ing through my Google results, I landed upon this page, the archive of a newslet­ter for Tomie dePaola—his children’s books were my favorites grow­ing up.

How much of our taste is set at an early age? I know we evolve and change, but click­ing around dePaola’s site, I felt comforted—I’m pretty sure I still love his work as much as I did many years ago. At least I’m con­sis­tent. And now I have a deep desire to own a dePaola orig­i­nal. Dammit, inter­net.

Pretty sure it’s some­thing like this:

That’s the Mod­er­nica ware­house sale. Which starts tomor­row. But I am spe­cial and got to go last night. (Spe­cial means that I am on their mail­ing list.) At first I was unim­pressed with the chair selec­tion but then I noticed this cor­ner, where you pick out your shell and base, and a team of dudes assem­bles them on the spot. That’s like the Build-a-Bear work­shop, but awesome.

More than a few U-Haul trucks—and food trucks (says my sis­ter, “Who doesn’t have food trucks?”)—were in the park­ing lot, and I enjoyed pon­der­ing what I’d buy to fill a U-Haul of my own. Did any­thing come home with us? No. Prices are good but they are not giv­ing any­thing away. Our pur­chase of the night: some salted caramel ice cream from Lake Street Cream­ery. Deli­cious, but doesn’t solve our chair dilemma.

If you see some­thing three times, it’s a trend, right? (Did I make that up?)

One—Monday’s Sneak Peek on Design Sponge was a home in Shawnee, Kansas. They didn’t men­tion this in the accom­pa­ny­ing text, but that’s where Ryan and I used to live. Our house did not look like this, though.

Some­body left a pissy com­ment about all the Eames chairs that appear in Sneak Peeks. Hater.

Two—The pho­tog­ra­pher of the house has a set of Kansas City images from her trip up on her site. I’m par­tic­u­larly fond of this one.

It should be noted that our wed­ding recep­tion was in this very build­ing, where Ryan’s beloved Boule­vard Beer is brewed.

Three—While admir­ing Jen­nifer Hill’s prints, I found that there’s a new addi­tion to her Places I Have Never Been series: Flint Hills, Kansas.

Have I men­tioned that all our art is sit­ting in boxes under our bed? Yeah. But I still want the print. In its honor, Hill’s post­ing Kansas-related good­ness all month. About halfway through this post, I real­ized I’m wear­ing a Kansas pride neck­lace, a wooden disk engraved with the shape of the state. I don’t think she has any in stock, but Early Jew­elry is the place to find such things. And a lot of other awe­some, afford­able jew­elry that your friends will covet (seriously—I always get com­pli­ments when I wear pieces from Early).

I guess that makes four. Take note: all the cool kids want Kansas for the holidays.

Even Kansans who’ve relo­cated to Cal­i­for­nia. Speak­ing of my new state, Design Cri­sis let me crash their party and blab about my love of surf­ing. Not that I actu­ally surf, but you can read more about that here.

Some­times you need to feel good. Let me help:

• I love being reminded that peo­ple are kind. Friends and strangers donated funds so that Val­o­rie and Alberto (our fan­tas­tic New Orleans hosts) could mede­vac out of Canada after Alberto had a heart attack in the Cal­gary air­port. They are safe and sound in New Orleans again, but owe our neigh­bors to the North a lit­tle (OK, a lot) of money. There’s an auc­tion to help out here with a lot of good­ies. Please browse and find some­thing you can’t live with­out so that this kind cou­ple can focus on Alberto’s health and recovery.
• I love being inspired. My friend Dawn was diag­nosed with MS in 2002. She ran the New York City Marathon yes­ter­day and raised almost $8,000 for the MS Soci­ety. My best friend’s mother fought a long bat­tle with MS and I wish she could’ve seen Dawn’s smile as she ran through Brook­lyn. (OK, I wish I could’ve too, but thanks to Face­book I got a photo.)
• I love see­ing a project com­pleted. I remem­ber when Gail—my across-the-street neigh­bor, tastemaker and friend—bought a video cam­era with the idea of mak­ing a doc­u­men­tary about the Mag­netic Fields. Sev­eral years later, the film has been play­ing in fes­ti­vals and the­aters around the coun­try. It opened in LA on Fri­day night. I was thrilled to be in the audience.
• I love laugh­ing. I saw this sign while run­ning errands today and couldn’t stop crack­ing up.

Shortly after our arrival in LA, I went on a Craigslist­ing spree to get rid of some extra­ne­ous fur­ni­ture. One piece, a vin­tage metal cart that I’d bought in New York a bil­lion years ago, was pur­chased by a guy who asked if we were sell­ing any­thing else. At that point, most of the good stuff was gone, but our din­ing chairs had been bum­ming us out for a while. We’d bought them from a retired fire­fighter in Miami who told us they had been in his sta­tion until its ren­o­va­tion. They needed a lit­tle TLC but we fig­ured we could han­dle it. They looked like this:
(Want them? 1stdibs, $3,500. We paid…um, a thirty-fifth of that.) They were cute, yes, but not ter­ri­bly com­fort­able. Hav­ing din­ing chairs you don’t really want to sit in ensures that you will eat every meal on your sofa.

Any­way, I offered the chairs to my poten­tial buyer for about what we paid for them and he said yes. Yay, chairs gone! But this left us with just one chair, Ryan’s Aeron, which, while com­fort­able, isn’t mak­ing the trip into our kitchen for din­ner time. And did I men­tion there’s one? So the sit­u­a­tion in our kitchen is a lot like this:

Poor din­ing table! It’s now func­tion­ing as a super-sized land­ing strip that’s also home to my vit­a­mins, a back­pack, my hand­bag and a fan. This sad­dens me.

Chairs are clearly in order. But the ones I’ve always envi­sioned sit­ting around this table are a lit­tle spendy.

I’ll be pray­ing to the Craigslist gods to bring us any of the above for way less, then hit­ting the flea mar­ket this week­end in hopes of find­ing some­thing. (Of course, if you have four awe­some chairs to sell and you’re dri­ving dis­tance from West LA, we should talk.) What’s your dream chair—and do you own it yet?

Some­thing is wreak­ing havoc on my sys­tem right now. The cul­prit is likely the soup I exca­vated from the depths of the fridge on Mon­day and blithely ingested assum­ing that heat would kill any­thing toxic. It did not.

Yes­ter­day was our anniver­sary. Three years since we were very blurry but my dad was in focus.

Lessons I have learned from three years of mar­riage: don’t eat ancient soup. Make sure the per­son you marry will be nice to you in case you do.

Once I get my appetite back, I may ven­ture into the kitchen with one of these recipes: spaghetti squash gratins and apple cider donut holes (wait, would donut holes make me feel worse?) or two tasty com­bos of corn, leek and pota­toes. But right now, it’s chicken noo­dle soup time.

You heard it here first: it’s peanut brit­tle. Or but­ter crunch. Pie? There were at least four pie ven­dors. Maybe cot­ton candy—we tried jalapeño.

We spent a good chunk of the day (and our stom­achs’ real estate) at Arti­sanal LA and I can also share with you that I have drunk the future and it is Mex­i­can Coke with cold-brewed cof­fee cubes. Trust.

(Sorry for the lack of pho­tos. There was plenty of eye candy, excel­lent people-watching and a ton of peo­ple milling around with iPhones snap­ping away. I hate those peo­ple. Espe­cially when they are block­ing my access to sam­ples of marsh­mal­lows.)

And before I forget—my cook­ing com­rades have been kick­ing out some deli­cious jams lately. (Speak­ing of which, there is def­i­nitely a jam thing hap­pen­ing.) Moroc­can but­ter­nut squash stew—file under “Things I Will Eat When the Squash-Hater I Love Isn’t Around.” Cheese straws, spiced pecans and sug­ared bacon? Can I eat that for din­ner? Because I didn’t fill up on brittle.