Gasp-worthy photo of the bounty of the harvest.  It pleases my eye.  From Abigail over at Gus and Other Things.  PS I’m determined to can my own tomatoes this year.

Turns out the most depressing day of the week is actually Wednesday. Hang in there.

Fortune.com: Inside the secret world of Trader Joes.

New York Review of Books: Growing Up Female.

New York Times: An Anthropologist’s Take on Homemaking (Thanks, Stephanie).

Slate.com: The Genius of the Wise and Cranky Kaplan Twitter Feeds (and be sure to read Cranky Kaplan and Wise Kaplan).  I didn’t really get Twitter until Stephanie turned me on to the  Kaplans, who use the 140 characters of Twitter to tell a narrative (fictive) story over time. It’s addictive and an incredibly intelligent use of the medium. To my mind, it is a modern update on Charles Dickens writing Oliver Twist as a serialized monthly newspaper story that evolved over time.  Truly, nothing is new.

As a bonus reading:

PsyBlog: 10 Psychological Insights on Twitter. (Are you a meformer or an informer?)

I still have a high from our trip to the lake.  Two days ago at this moment I was out on the water.  Amazing.  Here are two shoots from our weekend on the lake.  Alex spent hours playing with that hose and getting soaked. Our cousins (Aunt Ruth and Aunt Carol to Alex) have three adorable pugs (Lily, Rose and Charlie Charles).  It was a riotous few days with three pugs, three cousins under 10 and four adults in one small cabin.  As I looked through our haphazard photos I realized the importance of taking an establishing shot of a trip: the house where you’re staying, the view of the lake, the rental car all loaded up, whatever.  We have all these random photos, but none of the house we stayed at or the lake itself.  Those were both so beautiful that in the moment I think we thought “oh we’ll remember that forever” but looking back over our photos you see none of those things; just close ups of dogs and Alex (which are cute, don’t get me wrong!).  I just wish I had a photo of how beautiful the lake was to remember and share with all of you.

PS Don’t you love my day-glo white jeans!!!  And, notice my son in the background, getting into the trash.

Via Aesthetic Outburst.  We spent the weekend at the lake surrounded by cousins and pugs in almost equal measures.  It was great.

Here’s a little present to get your Friday started off right: a Danish Rabbit Hopping Championship. Found by Anna over at Door 16.

found at AbbieBabble

Four of my favorite articles this week.

Slate.com: The most isolated man in the world. Really.

99%.com: Is Consumerism Killing Our Creativity?

Bitch Magazine: Eat, Pray, Spend. (Thanks, Stephanie.)

The Week.com: There’s BPA in receipts, too. (Exposures from receipts could be seven times higher than levels ingested in the diet!) I’ve started declining my receipts.

As rain comes down in NYC, I’ve been thinking about the flooding in Pakistan. Of all those children and mothers who must be terrified, hungry ( thirsty) and displaced.  I’ve also been thinking about how the blog world was so generous after the Tsunami and the earthquake in Haiti.  I know I’m guilty of not tuning into what is happening in Pakistan.  It’s the end of August, I’m distracted, overtired. My guess is that you are too.  I know that Pakistan feels farther away to us here in the United States for a variety of reasons; some cultural, some political; some to do with the way Pakistan has been portrayed in the media.  

But today, with this post, I’m trying to step away from that uncertainty and think about something that is certain, the  people of Pakistan are in need.   Hear more from Hillary Clinton here or  go to www.state.gov or send $10 through your mobile phone by texting the word FLOOD, F-L-O-O-D, to 27722.

Found via a size to small.

You might notice something’s going on around here.  Well, a few things actually.  First, I’ve migrated to a new web address – www.designscouting.com.  Thanks to the magic of the interwebs, any links to my old address should update automatically. If you came here from a RSS reader (ie Google Reader or the like) you shouldn’t have to update anything.  If you came here via bookmark you might want to update your bookmarks.  Also, I’ve made some tweaks to my design that I hope will make reading this blog more enjoyable. (So if you are reading this in a reader consider clicking through to see the pretty new design!) Let me know what you think!

The good news is this view is for rent. Found here.

Guess who thinks those Carrot Cake Whoopie Pies are pretty great: that’s right, Saveur! Abbey Goes Design Scouting merited a Saveur “Best of the Web” nod. We’re equal parts blushing and hungry around these parts!

How did I not know about Auto-Tune the News? Funny and just made my evening.

Diana asked for more information on the Eiffel Tower wall art in Alex’s room, so I thought I’d re-post our how to from July 2007 (which feels like a lifetime ago — pre Alex!).  Basically, we used jobbers and a site called Rasterbator.com. But the full how-to is here. Happy Weekend!