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The prettiest store in America, how-to organize your digital brain, my favorite muffin recipe, and more.

A grab bag of content I’ve liked, saved, and shared lately.

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Images: Kris Tamburello

• 🎨 Cape Town-based artist Michael Chandler hand painted the tiles for this stunning 1800-piece ceramic mural for the Cult Gaia store in Miami (commissioned by Sugarhouse). It feels so rare to see something like this in the US and it set me off on a tile and blue/white deep dive. Related reading: The Craft of Making Portugese Azulejo Tiles (gift link) and The Story Behind the Most Iconic Shades of Blue and White.

• 🧠 Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to get my digital life in order. I literally stumbled upon this book, Building a Second Brain, and I cannot stop telling everyone to read it. The weekend after I started it, I spent two hours clearing out the 100+ tabs that had been sitting on my phone and computer for months with nowhere to go. Now I have a system for organizing, finding and using all of the digital information I want to save and it FEELS SO GOOD! This is not a productivity book—if you’re stuck in that cycle I recommend Four Thousand Weeks, a wonderful book about getting meaningful things done.

According to the New York Times, the average person's daily consumption of information now adds up to a remarkable 34 gigabytes. A separate study cited by the Times estimates that we consume the equivalent of 174 full newspapers' worth of content each and every day, five times higher than in 1986.
— Building a Second Brain

Source: Smitten Kitchen

• 👩🏻‍🍳 My son loves the raspberry scone from a local coffee shop, but it isn't available year-round. That inspired me to make these raspberry streusel muffins from

  the smitten kitchen digest
  . The most enticing part was that the recipe calls for frozen raspberries over fresh. They’re easy, delicious, and look very impressive—I’m already seeing dollar signs imagining how much money my kids could make selling them at a lemonade stand come summer ;)

• 💸 There is so much talk about how expensive clothing/fashion has become and finally someone is giving us a look behind the curtain at why this is happening on Lauren Sherman’s new podcast, Fashion People:

On a very special second episode, Lauren chats with fashion super-buyer Elizabeth von der Goltz—the hidden hand behind everything you see in stores—to discuss how the pricing business really works: why clothes get marked up, when they get marked down, the rise of “quiet luxury” (ugh) and what makes Loro Piana and Hermès so freaking expensive.
— $5,000 Pants & Phoebe Philo Inflation

Source: Jenny Walton

• 🇫🇷 I can’t stop thinking about

  Jenny Walton
  ’s trip to the South of France. Packing one outfit for three days and exploring Provence by foot, train and bus just sounds so dreamy. I'm intimidated by the idea of packing just one outfit for a whole trip, but eliminating clothing decisions completely is tempting.

I found my next bus inside of a depot and boarded it (the 905) to Carpentras. I looked happily through my book and stared out the window. The most amazing part of this trip turned out to be that because of my packed days, I had to keep my phone only for finding buses and taking occasional photos or for navigation. This forced me to be more present, which as I’ve come to learn is the greatest gift you can give yourself!
— No Baggage? No Problem!

Source: bluey.tv

• 📺 I have two small children so, naturally, I’m obsessed with Bluey. And when I’m obsessed with something I want to know everything about it. A recent Bloomberg cover story digs into the massive popularity of the show (it was the second most streamed show in 2023 after Suits), how it became worth $2 billion, and it’s uncertain future. I’m fascinated by the fact that creator Joe Brumm writes every episode himself despite never having written a TV series before Bluey. Vulture also recently republished a feature on Bluey from 2021:

Brumm has learned how to collaborate with other directors and animators, storyboard artists, and producers. But writing the show is something he can’t figure out how to share. There’s no writers’ room on Bluey; it’s just him. The show is intimately bound up with his life. Its two main characters are based on Brumm’s daughters, and the parents are obvious extensions of Brumm and his wife, Suzy, who has worked as a story-board artist for the show.
— How Bluey Became the Best Kids’ Show of Our Time

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Thank you for reading! If you know anyone who might be interested, please pass this along to them. Next week, a new Essential List for frizz-free hair. x Laura