Monday, November 12, 2007

A Tintin Halloween


This entry is a little late, but then again, totally timeless. Our favorite Halloween costume this year was worn by a kid at our son’s school. What a perfect representation of our favorite boy reporter, Tintin! We especially like his version of Snowy.

Fun In Boston

For John’s birthday celebration, we headed off to Boston. For some reason, even though it’s so close, we seldom travel East. New York seems to call us more frequently, but we’re learning to appreciate the biggest city of our home state.

This time, we started our visit with a trip to the Lego store in Burlington. All of us were almost in shock from all of the choices and it was a bit overwhelming. What Star Wars set to choose?

Our favorites were the Lego Eiffel Tower and the wall of bricks. We filled two cups with all the bricks needed to make our building time more fulfilling. The in-store Eiffel Tower was built over the course of 5 hours by a staff member’s younger brother. And their Millenium Falcon required an overnight by 5 staff members, working 12 hours straight. Hmm…this gives us all sorts of ideas about what Essentials staff might agree to.

From Lego, we headed to the Boston waterfront, with Tintin in tow, for a visit to the ICA. What a great surprise! We knew the building would be interesting, and we especially liked it at night. We were glad to find that the work was as compelling as the space itself. The ICA has a relatively small, but well-curated gallery space, on the 4th floor.

Aidan’s favorite was a video piece by a German artist who spent a week eating only food he could shoot with a bow and arrow. Oh, and he did all of his shooting in the grocery store. Aidan sat on the floor mesmerized by the capture of loaves of bread, a frozen ham, and other unidentifiable German food products.




We ended the day in Chinatown at a great Korean/Japanese restaurant called Suishaya. Ever since coming back from Korea seven years ago, we have sought out good DukBokKi (sp?) wherever we can. This place is tiny (no more than 6 tables plus sushi bar), very casual, and lives up to all of the accolades it has received. We ordered way too much and our only disappointment was that we couldn’t take doggy bags for the ride home.

- Sydne

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Adventures with Tintin


This summer, we were wandering around Quebec City, after stopping in Montreal for the amazing Police show. Our favorite day in the city was when--surprise surprise - we stumbled upon a fun Tintin exhibit.Not to brag or anything, but Essentials has the largest online Tintin collection outside of Europe, so we know a thing or two about the young reporter. The exhibit itself made us highly jealous since it showcased collectibles and images loaned by Moulinsart in Brussels.

The museum used Tintin's time in Peru to showcase elements of Peru's pre-Columbian civilization. In our opinion, the most compelling part of the show were the original drawings and sketches by Herge. In addition to the excitement of being that close to Herge's original work, the exhibit showed how much he had to learn about Peru before he wrote about our favorite boy reporter's South American adventures.

The exhibit is up until January 6, 2008.

(Officially, we weren't supposed to take photos, but really, that made it all the more fun to try.)

- Sydne

We're so modern

Essentials has entered the modern world. Yes, we have a blog.
So now what do we do with it? And why do we have one anyway?

At Essentials, we're shoppers at heart. Connoisseurs of cool stuff.

On our travels, we consistently find things that spark our interest, but that don't necessarily work for our stores or website. Sometimes we get to do things that are so exciting, we want to share the news with others. (Okay, the best of these was getting to sleep over at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, literally next to the squid and the whale.) Sometimes, our kid does something so great, we have to brag about it.

Basically, we decided to start blogging because there's more to the Essentials story and family than we can convey with simple product. (Of course, that doesn't mean we won't suggest things.) Maybe we'll be the only ones who read this, and the form will probably change and take shape as we go along. As with everything about Essentials, we are always evolving, and figuring out how to follow our nose. Stay tuned...

- Sydne & John