There is an incongruence here. Prepare yourself.  On the one hand, yes I would LOVE for you to grab the 2024 Paris Planner for you and all the people on your list while you’re over at Amazon taking care of Black Friday business. Please yes! Give them the gift of Paris art all year long. The 2024 Paris Planner is especially nice for the 2024 Olympics in Paris. Just sayin’. Makes you look extra thoughtful and au courant. (Also the photos of the interior pages are over at Amazon. Interior pages are very important and were fuelled by author enthusiasm.) Now for the incongruent portion of tod ..read more

I think the best part of my job is when the new books are delivered. I get to see them in all their full glory. Behold the 2024 Paris Planner, now available on Amazon. Today is the perfect day to buy your 2024 Planner. When all the people buy on the same day, it tickles the algorithm in favour of the author more than when you buy whenever you want… but buying it later is good, too. Obvs. So no pressure, but now would be great if you plan on planning anything in 2024. Plus, it’s nice to look ahead because 2023 is turning out to be a bit of a stink-fest, globally speaking. Here’s how it came ..read more

This is the bookmark I’m using for a reread of Eat, Pray, Love. Autumnal and dreamy. Sometimes I get sad that I’ll never have the time to read all the books that I want to read. Equally, I get sad at the thought of not rereading the books I love. So when I discovered that it has been 20 years since Eat, Pray, Love came out, I thought it was time for a reread. The new books in my TBR stack can wait. Twenty years since I walked into a bookstore in Santa Monica, picked it up, read the first chapter, then the next, then next, and finally bought it. I read it when my friend Ned died, using it to pu ..read more

September changes things. We don’t think we are susceptible to the change, that we won’t fall for it this time, but resistance is futile. Suddenly it’s cinnamon.  Didn’t think twice about this cozy spice a few months ago. Now it’s everything. I’ve been plugging away at the 100 Paris Storefronts project. It’s slower going than I thought it would. I wish I could draw faster. I wish I could paint faster. I wish I could make videos faster. I feel like a fail when I see just how long it takes me to draw, what is in essence, an elaborate series of rectangles and plants. Speaking of plants, I’v ..read more

The novelty of summer has worn off. We are all back from vacation, have stopped analyzing our tan lines, stopped making big plans and haven’t seemed to make it much further than our front porch. We’re fine with it. August exists as a way to prepare us for the end of summer. It’s still warm yet mornings have a new chill in the air and we find ourselves scrounging around the back of our closets for a sweater. “I know I left it here somewhere back in May.” We are ready. August filled us with tomatoes and peaches, given us bloom after bloom, and a tree of apples to pick. We’ve had our fill. We ar ..read more

Eleven glorious days into my self-inflicted 100 Day Project and I already went from wanting to crawl under the couch and hide to full on INSPIRED. (Scroll to the bottom for a colouring page.) This original is available in the shop as are all those featured in this post. My word for the year is Finishing. Finishing projects. One of my lingering projects was to post my original paintings on Etsy. I have posted a few along the way, but the pile was immense and the enthusiasm for listing them was not. Most of them sit quietly in binders, murmuring together in my office. Evidently, I preferred to ..read more

The poppies revealed themselves in April. Self-seeded. Volunteers. I thought… well, HELLO and THANKS. A few years ago I was at the library book sale, which is so good it is dangerous. Outside was a garden where poppies were sashaying in the breeze. Oh hi! So friendly. So bright. I picked a seed head and snuck it into my pocket. Was I stealing? Maybe. It felt a little like stealing… not unlike the library book sale. So many books. So little room in my car. So little room in my day! I came home and scattered them in my garden. The seeds. Not the books. Nothing happened. It really didn’t feel li ..read more

Simon writes me a letter. It is in response to the letter I sent him in the mail from my manual typewriter. He writes back on paper, scanning it in and emailing it to me. It’s his little revolt against the inefficiency. I’m aware. I’m amused. This is how we play. In his letter, he compliments me on my prolific tendencies. How I have manage to create so many things and send them out there in the world to live their glorious little lives. Yet the thought made me want to go lay in bed with a wet washcloth on my forehead. Because lately I have been floundering. It is unpleasant. Uncomfortable. Ir ..read more

It is March and there are hints of spring in the air. The ground is still frozen, snow everywhere, but the sun is warm mid-afternoon. This week, I found myself standing out at the bus stop waiting for my kid with my face toward the sun soaking up the rays. My house is great in so many ways but it lacks one thing: a chair in a quiet corner with a view to the backyard. We don’t have a window facing the backyard at the right height so it would take a massive renovation to get a perfect perch by the window. I find myself slinking away from the incessant TV sounds and looking for a place to sit qu ..read more

This is the bookmark I’m using for a reread of Eat, Pray, Love. Autumnal and dreamy. It has been 20 years since Eat, Pray, Love came out. Twenty years since I walked into a bookstore in Santa Monica, picked it up, read the first chapter, then the next, then next, and finally bought it. I read it when my friend Ned died, using it to push against (and hide behind) harsh realities of life and death. I finished it while my niece was learning to walk. Now she’s in university. I read it again in French when I spotted the translation in a bookstore in Paris. I referred to it when writing Paris Letter ..read more