a summer night and a full moon

Went for a little walk in the neighborhood to get some ingredients.







Came back and sat in the garden 'til sundown.



Came in and tried this chocolate souffle recipe from the inspiring Cannelle et Vanille as a little going away dessert for Jim--he went to see some friends for a few days. I wish I could have made mine look like her perfectly exquisite desserts but..well...even though I caught them here after they fell, they had such a beautiful texture inside and tasted delicious!

Outside, after dessert, was such a bright full moon, but I didn't take a picture of that. Did you see it?

last night in the garden

the flowers seemed to be really showing off.

Psst...tomorrow at midnight is the drawing for the lure necklace. I'll announce the winner Saturday morning!

Feist on Sesame Street

A little bit of excellence in children's programming via Potty Mouth Mama, such a cool mama. Brought to you by the # 4.

Little Wooden Toys

my little Rama figure (a little dusty),
star of the Ramayana story

my little Brahma, creator of the universe.

I spend a lot of time reminiscing here it seems...it's not that I like to live in the past, but I find looking back a helpful tool for seeing where I am in the present, where new ideas can spring from or the experience of memory as a tool to propel me into a new project or sometimes just the next moment. I notice that happens for a lot of people, we remind each other of things we've seen and places we've been and can inspire something entirely new for each of us.

A few days ago I read on a wonderful paper-cut artist's blog, Fog & Thistle that she's working on a shadowbox of the Ramayana, the ancient Hindu epic and love story. I love this story, my adviser in school had written books about Hanuman and was an expert on the Ramayana and the Hindu pantheon (he recommends this version here). Her post brought back such great memories of the time spent reading and discussing its twists and turns and all the little and large digressions that the story holds.

found these b&w photos here. I wish I knew who took them

And then of course also memories of India: the toymakers I sat with and worked with day after day in Benares were well versed in creating gods and goddesses from little pieces of wood, lacquered in bright colors, so that children (and later tourists!) could learn the ancient stories, sort of like what Rachel is doing with her shadowboxes. I took a few of my little figurines off their shelf and photographed them for her. They reminded me too, although I see them everyday, of my love for all things small and intimate--of the pieces I collect for my work and the little stories (les historiettes!) that I try to tell through my work.

Just want to remind you to enter my giveaway--the gift is a tiny story as well--I'll be so happy to pass it along...

Favorite Snack: the Entire Country of Thailand

beautiful photos of a Miang Kham vendor,above, from Eating Asia

The Story of Miang Kham

We spent about 4 months in Thailand one year, in and out of Bangkok, and that is where we learned how to eat. Anytime of day and everywhere you look, you can find something delicious at every turn, skies the limit of smells and flavors.

See serious food specialists set up in alleyways by day, serving one dish, maybe khao moo, a fat pork leg roasted and braised overnight in sweet soy, served over rice with pickled mustard greens, open-air food courts with different "restaurants" inside delineated only by the color of their plastic chairs in the early evenings, where whole fish are pan-fried and topped with sour green mango and chilies, markets with every imaginable mix of homemade curry paste in the morning. The top floor of shopping malls are filled with food vendors of all sorts, the 7-11 near our guesthouse was filled with Chinese buns and Thai snacks we'd never seen before. At night after the shops were closed, sometimes not until 10pm, tables and stalls would set up, with one shining lamp and the night eating would begin. We ended up spending time in the most unlikely places.

This is one of the snacks I loved to find on the street but the truth is, we probably spent longer than we had planned in Bangkok because of it...we could get it in a little box at the 7-11. We'd eat this in bed and laugh at how good it was. Ridiculously good.

photos of my little take-home treat.

It's called Miang Kham and I'm always happy when they have it in the takeout fridge at my favorite Thai restaurant in Sunnyside, Sripraphai, just like our little addiction in Bangkok: little piles of betel leaves, bits of peanuts, lime, onion, galangal or ginger, toasted coconut and glued together with a sweet sticky sauce of tamarind and nam-pla, DIY, you just wrap it up like a delicious version of paan.
Read a better account of it here on of my favorite blogs, Eating Asia...his photos capture perfectly the joys and triumphs of eating in Asia and he's right: I am a "food-addicted farang who loves miang"!

Clio at Cord Three

Maxine overseeing the checking & packing process

July 15th and more in the life of Bonbon: this is the order that's going out today. This has been one of my favorites to do--I love to see what different buyers choose for a collection and the savvy buyers for the Tokyo store Cord Three chose a really nice collection for Fall for their shop Clio and to their webshop, Cosmorama, I think.
We had to remake the riverstones necklace, the all silver one up there---no easy task but pretty exciting after it was finished!

(Don't forget to enter the first Bonbon giveaway! There are 4 more days!)

Sarah's Locket

Sometimes I get a letter from someone who has a piece of my jewelry and it makes my day. I love happy customers.

My favorite moments are when someone chooses a gift for someone they love...I remember when her husband bought this...She wrote to me today:
"...while I don't have a lot of jewelry, the pieces I have are all from my husband. Back in June he went to the Brooklyn Flea with our daughter Olive and bought this necklace in celebration of our 4th anniversary. Sorry the picture is blurry, but I wanted to show you that I actually squeeze pictures of my girls into this tiny locket. cool huh?
Thanks for your beautiful work.
-Sarah

See this piece, lumiere avec locket here.

Happy Bastille Day, a Mid-Summer's Night Special and a Giveaway

Storming back to work today my lovelies but I feel light today. Joyeux Quatorze Juillet and a sweet summer for all! I thought I'd run a little mid-summer's night Bonbon Oiseau special:

How about 25% off any of our Bonbons which relate to the sea: anything with the color blue or turquoise or sea green or maybe a piece with one of our salty-dog charms: sand-dollars, an anchor, a seahorse, a crab or a whale and there's a few more--you just have to look!

We'll run the sale from today right up until I leave for my Pacific NW adventure on July 25th so what will you pick?
(Please write "Bonbon Blog Special" in your subject line!)

And since I'm feeling so Summery and to celebrate all of the amazing people out there who have been so supportive of my work and my blog, if you leave a comment on this post by midnight, Friday, July 19th, I'll pick one lovely person to win this: the lure necklace: a beautiful piece of antique reverse-painted glass circa 1930-something with a little painting of a fishing lure set in an apple green enameled setting circa 1940-something on a hand-wrought silver chain, handmade by yours truly and our awesome little bonbon staff.
The drawing will be random and the winner will be announced Saturday morning!

psst..pass it on...

oh and...the Fall Collection goes up Friday.

Pre-Histbloggic

click and these get biggerI always made each journal its own cover

and cover pages with return address in case it got lost.

my first trip on my own, I arrived in Paris and went all around the South
finally landing in Corsica across to Rome and Florence and up, of course, to Amsterdam.

rubber stamps made from gum-erasers.

sometimes i took notes in cartoon form

quotes & drawings & cartoons & collages.
I still love old calendars and date-stamps

the end page, the most anticipated.

Last week I felt nostalgic. I think I wanted to see where I had been. I took down all of my old journals, the ones I had kept throughout school, the one that I had brought on my first trip to Europe and the ones I had with me in India.

It was a little embarrassing looking through them; the lovesick ramblings and the morose passages of a young & earnest art-girl, but it was also nice to spend a little time with all the drawings and cartoons, the quotes I thought were worthy of writing down and notes that would inspire larger works, the collages with the little odd bits I used to collect: sugar-cube wrappers, old calendar pages, matchbook covers...like arguing and then making peace with an old friend.