it's the most wonderful time of the year

With those holiday greetings and gay happy meetings when friends come to call. It's the hap-happiest season of all.

Martin Parr, have I told you lately that I love you?

so hip it hurts

Our brief northern heatwave has passed only to be replaced by the return of the August drearies. ho hum.

There is a bright spot shining through the drizzle with this morning's discovery of Unhappy Hipsters. Reminds me a little of my favourite Martin Parr series, Bored Couples.















Stare all he might, he couldn’t wrap his head around how to panel the interior of the fridge with plywood.

















Though the hike to town was back-breaking, they both agreed that installing a road would have ruined the juxtaposition of the built and natural environments.

Add this to the rotation along with Regretsy, Awkward Family Photos and Cake Wrecks.

a pram in the hall

I'm not afraid to say it. I loathe Anne Geddes. Well, her photographs anyway. This admission may have cost me a few potential life-long friends among my portrait photography classmates, 99% of whom cited her as their creative inspiration, but I'm ok with that. (Seriously, you'd have thought I copped to enticing cherubs to feast on my candy house so I could further fatten them up and eat them.)

There's an old and oft quoted expression in the art & literary worlds: "there is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall." Maybe it's true and maybe it isn't. I admit, there was a time when I lost more than a few hours sleep pondering it but that's neither here nor there for the purposes of today's favourite things posting.

Without further ado, a few of my favourites ranging from the horrifying to the hilarious to the sublime brought to us by Diane Arbus, Martin Parr, Simen Johan , Loretta Lux and Ruud van Empel.

I love you (but you're boring)

On days like today when it's dreary outside and I'm feeling the weight of many dark and dreary days to come, it helps to check in with old friends. Dear Martin, how I love you. Nobody but nobody knows how to cheer me up quite like you do. (From Bored Couples)