A day in the life … in Paris

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So what DO you do in Paris all day, Sarah asked me recently, when I told her I was particularly busy and didn’t have time to call the gallery before 11 p.m. Is it all work?

Oh yes, very hard work. Let’s see all the ways:

Well, first I get up, look out the window to check on the weather …

… and walk to the boulangerie and for a croissant and breakfast. I can’t resist the flowers on the rue Cler, that look like the first peonies of the season:

But oh no, at that price .. they are Rununculus, which I guess is a poor woman’s peony. I take them back to the apartment and another oh no:

I don’t have a vase to match.

I do love the way the pink picks up the pink touches in the apartment though. And speaking of which, the pink on the back of the chair looks a little haggard, and I need to get them replaced.

So my next stop is a trip to the local upholsterer, walking three blocks carrying my chairs in two hands (this is why French women don’t get fat!). The quote to put the fabric on the back, with no welting, is about twice the cost of the chair. Oh well. Do I have a choice? I don’t think so … and I know it will look beautiful.

But here’s the problem: It’s going to take him a few weeks to upholster the chairs, and meanwhile, I need at least one more chair … so I hop on the 69 Bus (my favorite!) and head to one of my three fabulous furniture stores on the Rue du Bac, where I spend a small fortune on a “temporary” chair that is going to hold me over until mine are back from the upholsterer. Hmm … is there something wrong with this picture?

Of course while I’m in the stores, I do a little snooping to see what they’re carrying and what the latest trends are in Paris(remember that this is a “work” trip!). And I find at least one product I know we will definitely carry at Huff Harrington Home: a pair of See Up glasses at the counter, enabling people of a certain age (ahem) to read the small print without getting out their reading glasses. So cute, I just love it!!

I’m actually in Paris with Monsieur and when I tell him the next step is returning the shower faucet to the hardware store across town, there’s a little bit of whining. So here’s the deal: We’ll hop back on the 69 Bus and hope that we can sit discreetly in the back, with our shower faucet. We’ll do our best to return the faucet, and, because the hardware store is right next to the Beaubourg Museum, we’ll stop in there and check out the amazing Matisse exhibit and maybe have lunch at Chez Georges, on the rooftop, non?

Tbe Matisse exhibit is fascinating, and one of the best curated shows I’ve ever attended. I also love all the children, squirming on the floor of the exhibit with their classes …

… and the spontaneous performances of dancers that are not only condoned but actually encouraged, in this exhibit:

The reward for all this hard work is lunch on the rooftop restaurant at Chez Georges which is a tremendous treat in itself. The views are fab, the inside of the restaurant is a hoot of modern fantasy, and the outside terrace is to die for.

It’s such a gorgeous day that nobody is sitting inside, but instead …

…taking in the view from the top. A sparkling glass of rose is the icing on the cake.

Since we’re in Paris and have had a late lunch, we do what any Parisian would do … we walk. And walk. And walk. It’s a gorgeous day, and we couldn’t be happier, just walking.

We cut through some of our favorite neighborhoods, including the Palais Royal …

… by some fabulous window displays where I get a whole new appreciation for the many uses of lampshades …

… and by the Louvre museum, which never ceases to amaze me although this time I am particularly drawn to the roof lines, while thinking how much I would hate to have to replace that roof!

I make a quick visit to my bank, on the Champs Elysees, and think that this is a pretty different experience from the drive- through at Wells Fargo.

And then it’s time to split up: Monsieur wants to visit the Louvre, and Madame wants to go to the Marc Jacobs/Louis Vuitton exhibit at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs. Monsieur loves the wing of the Louvre with the BIG historic paintings by Jean Louis David, Delacroix and Ingres. Madame is smitten with the Marc Jacobs exhibit and feels like a kid in a candy store surrounded by sumptuous bags. Wouldn’t a wall of Louis Vuitton handbags make such a great display at Huff Harrington Home!

A dress by Marc Jacobs particularly captures my eye, and I realize why I like it so much:

It reminds me of one of my favorite paintings, the Comtesse d’Haussonville by Ingres, which is in the Frick Collection in New York. And then the cultural irony hits me: While Monsieur is at the Louvre viewing paintings by (my favorite artist) Ingres, I’m viewing cutting edge fashion by Marc Jacobs that reminds me of Ingres, in museums a block from each other in Paris. Ahh … Paris.

We have a date to meet at 6:30 under the Arch in the Tuileries gardens.

And then it’s time to scoot over to the Orangerie museum, where we’re attending a free piano concert of Debussy music held in the gorgeous elliptically shaped room that was built to house Monet’s waterlillies.

On the way home, we stop for a quick photo by the Place de la Concorde …

… and a must eat Steak Frites at the iconic Relais de l’Entrecote on the rue Marbeuf.

We get home, exhausted, just in time to catch the last sparkling light from the Eiffel Tower show, before we turn out our own lights.

Am I dreaming or is this Paris?

Oh, and Sarah, did I mention that I was just busy busy working all day? It’s called a reconnaissance trip. Honest!

Ta ta …

We've moved!

The day has come to close the doors on the blogspot.com location of The Artful Lifestyle. Not to worry, we'll be blogging up a storm over at our new Wordpress site. We would hate for you to miss out, so please update your reader with the new blog address:

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Tata!

HH

We’re live!

Back when Huff Harrington Home was just a germ of an idea, we were jumping up and down when we found our fabulous space in the old Mercedes Benz dealership on West Paces Ferry. Finding the space, we thought, was the hardest part…and the rest would fall into place.

We knew it was pushing it to open on 11/11/11 (a date we couldn’t forget) but it never seemed too daunting. After all, we had a container of goodies that was happily sailing across the ocean, a fabulous staff ready to roll up their sleeves, a brand new and very expensive POS system that we were sure would solve the world’s problems, and some lovely, loyal gallery clients who promised to visit when we opened. So what more did we need?

On November 10^th we looked at each other and blearily blurted, after a month of hard labor and just a smattering of sleep, “Darn – we really should have a website.” It’s not that we hadn’t thought of it earlier, it’s just that we thought we could get by without it … at least for a while.

So a day or two after we caught our breath and opened our doors, we embarked on another project that was every bit as daunting as opening the store. If you’ve read our previous blog about the birthing of this baby, you’ll know that some of us approached the whole project kicking and screaming. It wasn’t that we loved our old website or didn’t think it needed to be changed. It was the fear of giving up control. Because this time, it was designed by a real professional (unlike us), who may be the most talented designer in the world (we think she is), but who lives miles away and actually isn’t at our beck and call every minute (unlike us!).

Sure enough, there was a scare sometime in early January when we happened to be on a buying trip and received an email from a client who was looking at something on our website that we knew didn’t exist. What website is she viewing, we wondered? And then a rush of panic. OMG, the website is live!! It turns out someone had accidentally pulled the trigger before we were anywhere near ready, and we spent a frightening 24 hours trying to restore our old website and get everything back to normal. These things happen, but for one of us at least, it was cause for the inevitable “I told you we shouldn’t give up control of this!”

Our website team has been working fast and furiously to get everything up to speed. We realized, much to our disappointment, that the pictures we wanted to use, like this:

looked pretty terrible when we uploaded them onto the site – and so we needed to reshoot most of our product shots.

Or products that we cropped from other photos, like this:

were really unacceptable and needed to be reshot, like this.

We also realized that our blog format, one that we’ve become very familiar with and attached to, wouldn’t work with the new site. So that meant hours of learning, training and eye straining work to get that up to speed.

And then we learned that just about every picture on the site had to be resized and recropped to fit the new format, which was a whole other eye straining exercise. Or that vertical photos, like this:

… had to be reshot to be square, like this.

It’s not perfect yet – there are dozens more pictures that need to be shot and equally as many that need a little editing. But our website is close enough for publishing and once again, we are jumping up and down – and wondering, what took us so long?

But enough about us! Let’s talk about you, and what you think of us!! Do you like our new site? Can you find everything OK? Is it easy to navigate? And does it provide what you’re looking for?

We know there’s still a lot that needs to be done but we try to remind ourselves that “Home” wasn’t built in a day – and neither was the website. So as we continue to grow and improve it, we hope you’ll come visit us often – and give us your feedback and suggestions.

Because after all the time and effort it’s taken to build, right now we’re just happy to be ‘live'!

Tata,

HH

PS A huge thank you to our incredibly talented website designer, Mara Lubell, and her amazing team of Kristi and Paul at WorksProgress Design.

Bye Bye Website

Nooooooh!!! That was the wail from our office the day we decided, after years of discussion, to develop a new website for Huff Harrington. We have a lot of history with our old website and the decision to move to a new one was not taken lightly. In fact, you could say that one of us greeted the new venture with less grace and maturity than a cranky child: kicking, screaming and boo-hooing all the way.

Maybe some of you who have been with us from the beginning will relate to our sentimental attachment. Do you remember Ann’s home based gallery, “Gal-du-Sud” (which she thought was such a sexy and clever name, until she realized her clients were pronouncing it “sud” like soap sud)? That little website ended abruptly, with a thud! But the seed was planted and the four-page website for “Gal do Thud” morphed into the new and improved Ann Huff Fine Art, which eventually blossomed into Huff Harrington Fine Art.

That’s when we both started having a blast creating the website, adding inter-connected pages upon pages with our new found knowledge, until anyone who had the patience to do so was forced to bounce from one page to another, often with no point of return. We knew we’d gone overboard when we heard, “it took me 26 clicks to get to the page with the house in Provence, and now I can’t find it.” We now admit that our new found gadget turned us into little techno monsters, a little like when we first started using word processing software and discovered all the different cool and exciting fonts (remember that?)

But still, this was our website which we built from scratch and were proud of it. In fact, it’s embarrassing to admit that the website has been -- and continues to be -- a rather significant source of pride for one of us who is so technically challenged that she can’t even operate the universal remote control for the TV (shown here with all the instructions her patient family has left for her, next to the remote).

Even our IT guy, who initially rolled his eyes when we couldn’t distinguish the modem from the router on our computer, was visibly impressed that we’d created the website from scratch. “You did this?” he asked, incredulously, “I couldn’t even do this!” and went on to anoint us the defacto techno queens of Huff Harrington Fine Art. (That is, until the younger generation came along – and the baton was quickly passed on, along with the crown jewels.)

Still, we have both enjoyed maintaining the light, fun and conversational tone of our website and having complete and instant control over its content. We know our website’s quirks, foibles and personality disorders, and are intimately familiar with how to work around them. We’ve also enjoyed the comments from our readers which have been mostly so positive and supportive. So as we struggle to give up our old website, we want to make sure that we don’t lose that wonderful dialog we’ve established along the way. In fact, giving up this control is one of the toughest things for us, as we are admittedly ever so slightly controling (no, really?).

Unfortunately, our little website has huge design limitations and we realize that especially now, with Huff Harrington Home, it can’t do justice to our growing product line or reflect the look we seek. It’s kind of like a first home: A little too small but entirely reliable, utterly familiar and completely comfortable. Giving it up is tough, but in order to accommodate the growing family, we realize it’s time to move to the new neighborhood – which is a horrible scary feeling, even if the house is bigger and prettier and on a fancy new street.

So while everyone else is jumping up and down, some of us have been whining a little, dragging our feet and rolling our eyes. We’re not quite ready for the new house yet even if we do get to pick out all the colors and finishes.

I mean really, do we want to leave the comfort of this:

For this?

Oh gosh, look at Meg. She’s already packing her bags and ready to move!

That leaves just one of us, kicking and screaming by herself, and that’s never a good thing. Maybe I need to give it one more chance. Hmmm ... an "Artists' Page" with all artists listed alphabetically. I could get used to this!

Or this – a section for the home store:

Or this? (With all the categories of merchandise cleanly labeled for the home store)

OK, I'm ready to move! What about you? Will you join us in the new 'hood? We certainly hope so. Stay tuned and we'll send you the address!

Ta ta,

HH

PS. Oh and by the way, they’re making noises about having to change our blog now too. Noooooooooo!

It’s a Tough Job but Someone’s Gotta Do It…

We always kidding that our little businesses are all work and no play. And we mean it when we say we’re kidding. How lucky are we to be doing what we love?

So, a couple weeks ago, we jumped on the 6 p.m. Air France flight (our favorite flight: pretty good food, we can usually get a good seat and Air France is generous with the bubbly) and headed to Paris for some serious spring shopping.

We went to one of the Europe’s best-known gift, furniture and design shows. Eight enormous buildings were filled to the brim with thousands of people from all over the place and hundreds and hundreds of vendors and manufacturers.

It was a feast for the eyes and we’re thrilled with what we saw, loved and decided we can’t live without at Huff Harrington Home.

Nothing says La Belle France like toile de jouy and we couldn’t resist a sampling of clever items, like these cute sling chairs that will work perfectly in the garden and in the house:

What about this adorable little hat, which the French call “le bob femme” (“le bob homme” is for the guys…)

We love the idea that toile is getting hip and cool and we’re predicting these will be a big hit.

Would Air France have upgraded us if we strolled on board carrying these super-chic carry-ons?

We picked up some fabulous linen, canvas and leather luggage from a lovely old company based in Southwest France (we’re anticipating a smack-down over these classic totes which are perfect for beach, country, mountains, carry-ons…you name it…)

(We realized we might be turning into a bag store….)

And, we’d been searching and searching for the famous Ice Bag which, in France, is always chilling bottles of wine in a perfect mixture of ice and water. It’s a totally handy, plastic tote that keeps your wine perfectly refreshing.

We picked out some fun and Frenchy patterns and also a great Stars and Stripes design that we’re picturing in good use for the Fourth of July.

We fell in love with a luxe line of cashmere and faux fur that we’re holding off on until the fall, but the colors had us drooling:

We saw lots of glass accessories with polished nickel and leather or rope accents:

We met a nice lady from whom we buy our favorite foutas. Foutas are amazing Tunisian cotton towels/throws/tablecloths/sarongs that we are simply nuts about. We went crazy over the juicy line of colors we saw. Can’t wait to have these monogrammed at HHH. They will look so sensational by the pool or on the porch this summer:

In between all the shopping, we had to have lunch, of course. And, even in a very businesslike setting, we were delighted to find this:

A real menu!

A darling waiter who kept our glasses full…

What were we saying about it being a tough job?

After lunch, we had to visit our new BFF, Tina Frey. Tina creates the most amazing pieces in resin and we are CRAZY about her stuff:

A very jet-lagged Meg and adorable Tina Frey

Among other fabulous objects, Tina creates the ultimate cool cuff. We love the crisp white one.

Tina’s designs are so sleek, elegant and clean and we’re all over this cool wine bucket: smokey gray resin with leather handles.

There was plenty of stuff you definitely won’t be seeing at Huff Harrington Home like this over-the-top riot of bad florals.

After all that shopping, talking and looking, we took a couple hours off and headed to Les Puces, the famous French flea market (where we heard we missed Rod Stewart and his wife by minutes. Darn!) We wanted to go to Paul Bert, one of many little sections that make up Les Puces – mostly because there’s a great restaurant there that Meg was dying to try and Ann had promised we could go. But before lunch, there was more exploring to do:

Oh, the glorious crunchy, crusty, beat-up and beautifully Frenchy stuff that was all around.

At the bus-stop (yes, we absolutely took the bus and it was so much fun) we made friends with a stall-owner. The stall had been in her family for decades and she was just lovely.

It turns out Ann had bought some pieces from her on the last pre-HHH opening in the summer. Friends reunited!

We look like twins but we were warm…

oh la la! How French can you get? Look at the little pet rodent the pug has sitting next to him.

And, we were drooling over these gorgeous, mossy and old looking pieces.

There was plenty of weird stuff, too, like this giant skull made from lots of small jaws, skulls and bones.

And the bowl of glass eyeballs:

After that, it was back to business and we had the excellent fortune to run into a nice group of young, smart, ambitious and very, very cute Frenchmen selling a cute line that we simply couldn’t (ahem…) resist.

We loved the concept of fun and sassy eyeglasses that sit in a handy little stand wherever you need them…but maybe it was the glass or two of bubbly they persuaded us with that sealed the deal:

And, to end the day in true French fashion, we stopped at the local outpost of Fauchon for a restorative (how could you possibly guess?) glass of champagne:

Then it was back to Ann’s adorable little jewel of an apartment to review and work on all the special things we decided to buy for Huff Harrington Home.

This is really and truly the view from Ann’s kitchen:

It was time to head home after that but we are excited and happy about the wonderful things that will be filling the floor at Huff Harrington Home.

Yes, it’s a tough job…and we’re so glad we have to do it.

Ta Ta.

P.S. we were absolutely head-over-heels with joy when we saw this in our favorite magazine, Atlanta Homes and Lifestyles: http://www.atlantahomesmag.com/frenchfinds