Idaho Weekend: Saturday

The Sun Valley Center for the Arts owns the house that Ezra Pound was born in. The downstairs contains gallery space, a kitchen, and two offices. The upstairs is reserved for the use of visiting artists (and their photographers). And thus was one of my fondest nerd wishes finally fulfilled...I got to go beyond the velvet rope and stay overnight in an historic house! There really was a velvet rope stretched across the staircase. I was in heaven.

Here is the entryway. I like that the snow shovel has been leaned against the statue's face rather than the precious Morris wallpaper. All of the light fixtures were period and I wanted to steal them all. The ceiling paper here is blue with gold flowers. Sigh.

Downstairs gallery space.

Fancy table for the visitor's book.

It was actually dark and cozy inside, but the dazzling light coming in through the windows made it hard to capture that. The weather all weekend was perfect.

The office. There's good old Ezra's face on top of the bookcase.

The upstairs bathroom. There was a framed warning letting us know that any water overflow would be ruinous to the dining room wallpaper directly underneath. I was very, very careful.

Bedroom...

with clematis wallpaper! Too bad the gold doesn't show well.

A combined bedroom/lounge with a futon, a comfy chair, and a small TV/DVD player.

It was roughly a million times better than staying at a hotel.

We slept in on Saturday morning and then went to lunch at Cristina's, a place I wrote of fondly on our last visit to Sun Valley. As before, it gave me a small case of sticker shock, but you definitely get what you pay for. It is charming and the food is delicious.

After lunch Kylee and Mark took their leave and the remaining four of us wandered the streets of Ketchum in a happy daze--kid free...nowhere to be...out with friends--it was a possibly unprecedented and slightly disorienting freedom. It was wonderful. We browsed at a book store. We went to an art gallery. We sat and drank coffee in peace.

Roaming the streets of Ketchum.

We went to the exhibition Outside In: Indian Art Abroad at the Sun Valley Center for the Arts' Ketchum gallery and all agreed that it was fantastic.

We capped our day with an epic thrift store crawl. If you can ever arrange to go thrift store shopping with Amanda, I highly recommend it. She found me a J. Crew corduroy jacket that fits like a charm. Also a silver brocade 60's-style Miu Miu miniskirt that does not fit at all. But it will. It will.

Here is one of my thrift store purchases being put to use that very evening.

We originally planned to go to a nice dinner, but after having our fine dining fix at lunch and then spending the afternoon gallivanting around, the thought of staying in with some movies and pizza sounded much more appealing. We made a stop at the grocery store and spent an eternity trying to decide on snacks. Many meats were selected. Amanda insisted on one vegetable, for which I thank her. Because she cannot help but make things beautiful, Amanda rooted around the kitchen and found all the antique platters and dishes and made our grocery store spread significantly more attractive.

It may have been the perfect Saturday.