May 1, 2014

West Coast Modern Vernacular Home

Deep Cove mid-century vernacular image Stacy Reynaud

Built on steep slopes in wild landscapes West Coast Modern Vernacular homes - with sloped roofs and natural wood siding - are a natural fit for our Pacific Northwest rainforest.


West Coast Modern vernacular. image stacy reynaud

Not to be left just for the privilege of the cliff dwellers, the 1970s saw toned-down designs making their way into suburban neighbourhoods like West Vancouver (not to mention an awful lot where I grew up - Langley or Brookswood, more specifically.)


Mid-century West Coast Modern image stacy reynaud

West Coast Vernacular image stacy reynaud

West Vancouver mid-century vernacular image Stacy Reynaud

West Vancouver West Coast Modern home image stacy reynaud

West Vancouver home demolition stacy reynaud

Arthur Erickson 6028 Eagleridge Dr. West Vancouver West Coast Modern vernacular image stacy reynaud

Merrick House image Stacy Reynaud

The ultimate West Coast Vernacular home - Merrick House. Built 1974.
Currently in the draft stages of a conservation plan by the District of West Vancouver and Birmingham & Wood Architects.

 

The Granddaddy of West Coast Vernacular, Charles Moore's Sea Ranch - a movement referred to as Bay Area Modern.

Originally published October 19, 2012


Apr 30, 2014

My Morning Routine


The socks and clogs are mandatory.




Apr 29, 2014

Marie Antoinette Blue



or maybe Versailles blue - not so much Wedgwood blue. Ice blue?

Whatever the colour is it reminds me of Marie Antoinette so let's do a search of Marie Antoinette blue shall we.




Anyway, I'm giving away my chairs that I bought back in 2012.  I've decided to ditch the deck dining table and chairs and go for something more along the lines of this beauty from 1976:




hair image via the very cute blog Cute Colored Hair
room image via Wikipedia

Apr 25, 2014

Easy Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups - Vegan Recipe

stacy reynaud
Vegan Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups
One, two, three, four ingredients simple enough for me to make!


What you need:
  • 1/3 cup vegan chocolate chips (or regular)
  • 1 tbsp coconut oil
  • 2 tbsp nut butter - we used almond butter
  • 2 tsp good maple or agave syrup


+ one shallow cupcake tin or a shallow candy mold
* recipe made a single tray of 24 small bite size cups

What you do:
  • grease molds with coconut oil
  • melt chocolate and coconut oil together until smooth and liquid - stir briskly
  • melt almond butter and maple syrup together - stir until smooth
  • drop 2 tsp of the melted chocolate into each of the molds
  • place tray in freezer for 5 minutes - remove when chocolate is hard
  • add 1 tsp of nut butter mix on top of hardened chocolate - smooth out to cover all the chocolate
  • cover the nut butter filling with melted chocolate
  • place in freezer until hardened - about 20 minutes
  • save the recipe on Pinterest


Store in the freezer until you're ready to eat them for breakfast.



Recipe adapted from Healthy Happy Life



Apr 24, 2014

Quote of the Week - some guy in the 70s

The price is outrageous, but so is the quality.




Apr 22, 2014

100 Dollar Decor Style Steal


Rattan peacock fan chair and macrame tables from Macrame Enchantment, 1979

Wicker glass top table and four chairs $100 
Personalize and spray paint it black


Pop by Stacy Reynaud's Instagram for more style inspo


Apr 19, 2014

How to Tell if A Pineapple is Ripe

stacy reynaud
Pineapples don't ripen after they're picked. If your pineapple isn't ripe turn it upside down so the sugar flows to the top to help sweeten it.

If a pineapple is ripe its leaves will pull out easily.

Like the post? Share the love.



Apr 16, 2014

8 of The Best Decor Finds on Craigslist Vancouver April 16

 mid-century mirrored fireplace screen | Josef Hoffmann Prague dining chairs | the folding screen I've dreamt about since I was nineteen | free ficus tree
free elephant palm | Balinese wooden trunk with inlay | vintage cane chaise lounge | hammered brass pot (for the free elephant palm)

To see more of my uncovered treasures follow me on Facebook or Instagram. Thanks!

images © their respective owners




Mar 29, 2014

How to Make a Vegan Tuna Sandwich

Vegan Tuna Sandwich Image stacy reynaud

What you need:
  • 1 can chickpeas | garbanzo beans
  • 1/2 lemon
  • 2-3 tbsps hummus
  • pinch of cayenne pepper
  • 1 tsp agave syrup
  • a couple spoonfuls of regular mayo, vegan mayo, plain yogurt or soy yogurt
  • a couple of pickles

What you do:
  • drain and rinse the beans well
  • add the beans to a large bowl
  • add all the ingredients except the pickles
  • fold the ingredients - except the pickles
  • mash - I tried using a potato masher, but it was useless. Use a heavy-duty fork instead.
  • taste a little bit and add extra lemon, cayenne or agave as needed
  • fold in the pickles - I used four

Serve as a sandwich, on crackers or eat straight from the bowl.

Makes about four sandwiches

adapted from Healthy Happy Life

Stacy Reynaud




Mar 28, 2014

Quote of the Week | Clothes and the Man - Edward Spencer


Good clothes look better when they are nearly worn out than very cheap clothes look when they are new.



stacyreynaud

Mar 21, 2014

From the Archives - The Duffel Bag Mystique

The Gold Rush 1898 duffel bag evolution - Chilkoot Pass Alaska

Even the word duffel bag conjures up images of three day old stubble and mud caked motorcycles all interwoven with vetiver, tobacco, musk and dirt.

Lost treasures from both Kurt Cobain and the Rolling Stones have been found in duffel bags. The duffel bag as Ark of the Rock and Roll Covenant?

Whatever it may be, the duffel bag only gets better with age.

Mar 19, 2014

Wink and Howie's Place - A West Vancouver Mid-Century Home Demolition



You remember this home. In 
February 2012, I posted about Wink and Howie's cute little place they'd lived in for 40 years. They sold in the summer of 2011 because of declining health (I bought their teak bedroom and dining suites). Well, last weekend, we decided to do a drive-by to see if the home had been restored - as we thought it would be back in 2012. Good God - no. It's been replaced by a concrete monstrosity with Parthenon-worthy Doric columns (the most massive Greek temple columns) and Baroque balconies. First image of the series.



Mar 14, 2014

How to Make Vegan Brownies - Vegan and Raw Recipe

Vegan Brownie Recipe image Stacy Reynaud 

Raw Vegan Brownies


Super fast, super easy, super good. 

Call these vegan brownies a breakfast energy square; no guilt is involved. 


What you need:

  • 1 cup walnuts
  • 1/2 cup coarsely chopped almonds
  • 1.75 cups pitted dates
  • 1/2 cup raw cacao
  • two pinches of sea salt
  • parchment paper
  • food processor
  • medium size bowl
  • small rectangular glass container with a cover (we used one of those glass airtight food storage containers )


What you do:

  • Place walnuts in food processor and process till finely ground.
  • Add cacao and a pinch of salt and blend.
  • Add dates one at a time to the running processor (through the top feeder tube) - the ingredients should look like cake crumbs, yet stick together when squeezed (if they don't, add more dates.)
  • Add the mixture to a medium-sized bowl and fold in the almonds.
  • Transfer to a parchment paper-lined glass container.
  • Press and mold the brownie mixture into the glass container.
  • Sprinkle the other pinch of coarse sea salt on top.
  • Place in freezer for about 45 minutes.
  • Remove from freezer and slice into bite-size servings.
  • Cover and store in the fridge.


Makes about eight to ten bite-size brownies - double the recipe for more


adapted from Karla's Closet and My New Roots




Mar 13, 2014

Quote of the Week - Erich Fromm

stacy reynaud
While in our private life nobody except a mad person would remain passive in view of a threat to our total existence, those who are in charge of public affairs do practically nothing, and those who have entrusted their fate to them let them continue to do so.

Erich Fromm, To Have or To Be


Mar 12, 2014

The Longest Year in History



was 1972.

Remember the power of three? It's happening again, this time with the year 1972.


First off - Moody Blues, Nights in White Satin - a song I thought, from the very first day I heard remembering hearing it, was a cheesy 70s rambling poem song about King Arthur, so I paid no attention to it. Anyway, it popped up at me on the weekend, and I took the time to listen to the lyrics - which are everything but knights in white satin. 

New old favourite!




Then, I was looking at old Honda motorbikes online and came across this vintage ad from 1972. The truck and camper (and mini bike) equate to the elimination of the living in a van down by the river scenario created by the Vancouver rental pool.



Finally, Tuesday night I was looking at residential architecture and up pops this beauty. West Vancouver's Helmut Eppich house designed in 1972 by Arthur Erickson Architects (and sold in 2010 for $4.8 million.)



Mar 4, 2014

Vintage Chanel

1991
Christy Turlington




Feb 24, 2014

Things that confuse me





  • Efficiency committees



  • Initiatives that take the initiative out of initiatives






  • Feb 22, 2014

    Quote of the Week - Lao Tzu


    The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long.
    image © Stacy Reynaud

    Feb 21, 2014

    A Community Plan that Defeats its Purpose


    mid-century home demolition West Vancouver BC image Stacy Reynaud

    information on issues relating to McMansions and possible District actions to make new housing better fit existing neighbourhood character.

    West Vancouver Home demolition image Stacy Reynaud

    West Vancouver heritage demolition image Stacy Reynaud

    West Vancouver West Coast Modern home demolition image Stacy Reynaud

    West Vancouver mid-century home demolitions image Stacy Reynaud


    In West Vancouver, there's this mentality that renters are an unruly, degenerate, dirty bunch who will settle for anything (as interpreted by the state of the rental portfolio and letters to the editor of the North Shore News). Those of that particular mindset aren't reading this blog, so telling them to get their heads out of their (gl)ass (house) won't matter. It also shouldn't give them the right to try and rent us a termite-infested crack house off the highway for $3000 a month (such as one on Palmerston & 14th we saw recently) or this black mould mid-century we looked at in 2012.


    Just because we live in West Van doesn't mean we'll pay you more to rent your 'tear down' house you just bought until you can afford to put up your 'trophy house.' You know what we see when we're out there snooping around at architecture, kids (usually baby boomers) whose parents just died that are eager to sell off what they perceived as the tacky family home they grew up in. Don't just blame the buyers of these properties for the 'ugly' neighbourhoods transforming West Van; look at the sellers.


    Generation X is just now hitting the peaks of our careers, and we are all looking for homes that we can rent and live in for many years. We can't afford down payments for overpriced homes - remember, we moved out of our parents' house when we graduated from high school, worked three jobs and put ourselves through university instead - because that's what you did. We'd love to rent your well-loved, well-kept, clean, tacky family home and make it our home, but we need to be more innovative to pay over $3000 a month for it - the bloody thing was probably paid off forty years ago. So West Van, if you want to keep, or try to attract, a younger demographic with extra money to spend in the community (not on renting a crappy house), get it together because we're getting fed up with this - and because we rent - we can just up and leave, whenever we want. You're losing your history and your future community all at the same time. 


    Check out the Facebook group I Grew Up in West Vancouver.


    Are you interested in moving to West Van to rent but need to figure out what's happening here?


    The first of two info sessions on West Vancouver housing is Monday, February 24th, from 4 to 8 pm at the West Van Community Centre.


    See you there.


    PS coach houses shouldn't cost $1.0 million or $4500 monthly to rent.


    Images Stacy Reynaud

    Feb 11, 2014

    You Know This Pile of Dirt - Another West Vancouver Home Demolition


    The Baker Residence
    Architect Peter Faulkner Smith
    Altamont West Vancouver BC
    built 1958 - demolished 2014
    image Stacy Reynaud

    View my post and interior photos of the home from April 2013 
    image Stacy Reynaud blueprints from the estate of Faulkner Smith

    The home was listed as a significant West Vancouver support building. 
    The West Vancouver Survey of Significant Architecture 1945-1975, (West Vancouver, BC, 1994), pg 88. 
    Architect - Peter Faulkner-Smith 
    Date - June 1, 1958 
    Location - Altamont, West Vancouver, BC 

    I'll post a photo of its replacement once it's built.

    all images by Stacy Reynaud

    Feb 4, 2014

    The Internet Killed the Luxury Brand


    At the beginning of January I was having a discussion about fashion with a colleague at work -  he's Italian and his family is involved with the fashion industry in Milan, so that makes him an expert, right? We have a similar chat every season, however, this time it was different, not because I missed our previous season's discussion but because my views have changed - you've probably noticed I rarely write about fashion anymore. He asked me who and what I was watching and I said no one. I'm done with those shows and mass marketed pseudo luxury.

    You see, back in the olden days before the Internet, fashion bloggers, and phony street style street style blogs, one of the defining aspects of a luxury item was the exclusivity of the item itself. One never, well at least in Vancouver, saw an Hermes bag for example, in real life. I remember going to LA in the early 90s and being awe struck over actually seeing people - in real life - wearing the luxury pieces I'd seen only in magazines - well not so much in awe, but maybe blown away that someone actually spent that much money, after all, it was the grunge era, but you know what I mean. The price, back then, signified high quality - hence luxury. Exclusivity was one of the defining aspects of luxury brands that actually made them luxury. One rarely, if ever, saw the pieces except for on the pages of magazines.

    Now, because of the Internet, we see these luxury brands everywhere. How many times have you seen that bloody Givenchy sweatshirt with the rottweiler on it or the green Kenzo one with the tiger? Do you think a sweatshirt is luxury? I do, only if it's my thirty year old Oregon Ducks one I borrowed from my buddy in 1986 (and my husband wants to burn).

    Today's silly nouveau riche, and their sixteen year old Lamborghini driving children, have turned what were once luxury brands into nothing more than mass marketed, mass consumed, cheaply produced crap. In the music industry the term is, It's not the band it's their fans. For Gucci, the term was Victoria Beckham. For the Le Corbusier estate it was people in general.

    To quell this disaster marketers have had to coin a new term - ultra luxury.  The term luxury, like the term hang in there - has become meaningless.

    So, my colleague and I, at the end of our conversation, could not come to an agreement on how low the Prada side part should go, but we did, without debate, agree that Karl Lagerfeld should retire.

    stacy reynaud

    Jan 27, 2014

    Seriously - they're paving paradise and putting up a parking lot



    They're into destroying beautiful things in West Vancouver. If it's not homes or old-growth forests, it's something else. This ludicrous, corporate PR jargon notice from the District of West Vancouver popped up on our front door last week. The District of West Vancouver is actually chopping down a forest (see photos below) to put up a parking lot (they also closed down a tennis court and turned it into a parking lot). I'd like to mention that an arborist is actually employed full time by the district - they are an employee of the district and are paid by the district. Bets that the arborist the District consulted was actually an employee of the District?

    Can the public call in an independent arborist to assess these trees? I, for one, would like to hear another opinion.



    Say goodbye to your roost, Mr. Resident Bald Eagle - I'm sure I won't be the only one who'll miss watching you torment the crows and seagulls of the neighbourhood.

    The flags in the above photo are at half mast to honour Tim Jones of the North Shore Search and Rescue who passed away last weekend.

     

    This tree is the very tall beauty in the top right of the first photo. It's a daily stop for the bald eagles making their way down to John Lawson Park.

    I'll be very sad to see it go and replaced with a parking lot.
    It's probably at least 100 years old.

     This photo was taken from our deck.

    The trees that will be chopped down are the tall beautiful ones at the north side of the building.

    So, the next time I post a photo of the municipal hall building, all those mature, beautiful trees will be gone. 

    Shame.

    Nothing like encouraging alternative options to vehicles. Good job guys, well thought out.




    Jan 3, 2014

    Quote of the Week - Henry David Thoreau


    There is no remedy for love but to love more.







    Old Fashioned Granola Recipe