Collecting Colour : January is Yellow

The holiday slideshow will continue shortly, but I had to sneak this post in as there's only a bit over 6 hours left of January... So, without further ado, introducing Collecting Colour!  Each month I'm going to pick a colour, curate a collection of things lying about the house and photograph it.  Hurrah!  

Are you excited?  I am!  And if you are excited you're welcome to join in too - you can follow along with my monthly colour picks, or you can pick your own, either way is ACE!  And I promise for the next eleven months I'll do the post a bit earlier (the idea only came to me at four yesterday morning - thank you jet lag!). 

If you join in please let me know - tweet me (@ejorpin) or leave a link in a comment below.  Oh, and do grab the button over on the side bar if you like!

January is yellow because yellow is bright and sunny and happy, and I am a little bit (okay, a lot) over the cold, dry Seoul winter.  What can you spy in January's collection?

UPDATE! I've added a link up tool, so if you do participate (on Flickr or your blog or Instagram or anywhere really!) add your link for January below.  Hurrah!

Holiday Slideshow : Mammoth to Death Valley

I'm back in Seoul and loving sorting out our US holiday photos - it was a seriously great trip, with lots and lots of good things packed in.  So, let the holiday slide show begin!

After our ice skating skiing in Mammoth we picked up our hire car (a giant leather-lined boat of a thing that the hire car guy called a 'pimp-mobile'!) and had a most amazing drive through to Death Valley (during which we were listening to our US road trip playlist, of course!).  

For most of the drive we had the misty Sierra Nevada on one side, and the arid White/Inyo Mountains on the other, with unbelievably vast lengths of straight road stretching out in front of us.  It was some of the most spectacular, wondrous scenery that I've ever had the pleasure of seeing - other worldly and oh so majestic.

Death by Doxie : Elfi's the Queen of Our Castle*

As a little xmas present to ourselves I finally bought some of the Castle pillow cases that I've been lusting after ever since my sister first put them on one of her wish lists some years ago.  Of course, now that I have my hands on some, I just want more.  The quality and design is just too good. Anyway, here's Elfi giving our new pillow cases a test run.

*bad pun intended.  Sorry.

Hello!  How are you?  We are all jet lagged but well and happy and full to the brim with mac 'n' cheese and Reese's peanut butter cups.  At the moment we are in the stunningly beautiful Mammoth Lakes, California.  It's been lovely - blue skies, gorgeous views, the scent of pine in the air. 

I've realised that it's a bit tricky to ski with a DSLR hanging off your shoulder, so I'm afraid all I've got are a handful of iPhone Instagram-ed pics that in no way do justice to the sweeping majesty of it all. Especially as most of them are snapped in a haphazard, super fast manner so I can get my ski gloves back on before losing a finger to frost bite...

I've also realised there's an upside to jet lag.  Because it means all the non sleeping people get to sit up in the wee hours, and talk and laugh and watch TV - namely Animal Planet (I can highly recommend Gator Boys for late night viewing) and ridiculous tele-marketing ads (I think all of us now secretly want a RoboStir).

Anyway, Mammoth is amazing.  Fantastic food, fabulous facilities, friendly folk (too many effs, maybe?). This winter has been a bit mild, so there's not a great deal of snow.  We've spent a lot of time skating over rock hard ice instead of skiing (and panicking about snapping a leg in half due to the hard and fast snow conditions, though I have a feeling I'm the only one panicking...).  They're predicting one of the first big snow storms of the season to hit in the next day or so - just in time for our drive to Death Valley!  Oh weather, you fickle thing you!

US road trip playlist : Suggestions wanted!

[Nostalgic by f2images]

Our 2012 travel is about to begin, and it's beginning with a bang!  On Sunday we are flying out to San Francisco (and somehow landing before we take off, which never ceases to amuse me), meeting up with the step-sons and then embarking on a bit of a US adventure!  There'll be skiing in Mammoth, followed by a drive through Death Valley.  Then it's on to the bright lights of Vegas, an aerial view of the Grand Canyon, and finishing off with a few days in the lovely San Francisco.  

I can not possibly explain how excited I am about this trip!  Not only are we re-visitng two of my favourite cities, but I'm also going to see some iconic parts of the US that I've never seen before.  And more than that it's the boys first trip to the US - it's going to be so much fun to show them around!

They don't watch a lot of American TV (although the oldest' new favourite thing to watch is The Daily Show, that boy has damn fine taste!) but they have soaked up their fair share of American cultural references (see the celebration of junk food in Over the Hedge, the New Yorkers in Madagascar, and pretty much everything in the Toy Story trilogy).  So, as well as all the big fun stuff we have planned, I'm ridiculously excited about all the little fun things - like visiting a supermarket to gawk at the cereal aisle. Oh, and the food!  Tex mex, steak houses, buffalo wings and sliders served bar-side, a tower of hotcakes for breakfast and Reese's peanut butter cups!  Oh my!

We have a car for a few days, where we'll be driving from Mammoth to Las Vegas, and I'm putting together a road trip playlist.  I want all American artists, and I'm going for a kind of folksy country dreamy driving feel.  Here's what I've got so far:

Then there'll be some Neil Young, Simon and Garfunkle, maybe some Bruce Springsteen?  I'd really like to have Beth Orton on there, but she's Bristish...

So, over to you - if you've got any suggestions sing them out please!