Map Ink Blog

Being from Boston I appreciate local venacular. Here, Naomi Watts to Hugh Jackman tell us how to speak official Australian slang. 

How to make a Vegemite Sandwich - with Crocodile Dundee.

My sister-in-law’s boyfriend is a photographer / videographer who used to work for Burton, (check out his great skiing movie A New Dawn), so whenever I have a camera question I go to him. They were sweet enough to give us an amazing little video camera for our wedding last year and the first thing I thought of (of course) was “what kind of bag am I going to get for it?!” (any excuse for a new bag is thrilling for me). He set me up with this tech / camera backpack from Burton and I love it, it’s called the Burton Zoom 28L. It has a sleeve that fits our laptop, a small pocket at the top of the bag where we put all the chargers, then the back of the bag unzips to reveal this large area that you split up with padded velcro pieces anyway you like. This is were we put our little point-and-shoot, the video camera, and a digital slr. It’s a lot and it all fits. We use this to store everything while we travel, but when we are walking around we really only bring one or 2 cameras, so those pop into my hand bag and the backpack stays home.  Burton’s site has the Zoom 26, maybe that is the new one. Of course, we have the black and orange one. (For someone who designs in color, all I own is black – go figure).

My Gramma lived in an old house full of treasures, one being Great Aunt Beatrice’s vanity that I thought was the bee’s knees. Gramma always said, “when I die you can have this and you will remember me by it”. She gave it to me when I was in high school and I still have it (and Gramma is still alive and well at 95). It was covered in redish-brown thick varnish and had a vanity mirror. A while back I had to move it into storage where it warped, molded and the mirror broke. We were going to throw it out but I just couldn’t. When we found out I was pregnant we planned to refinish and paint it, turning it into the baby’s dresser / changing table. Dave spent a very, very hot weekend stripping the old varnish off, finishin just in time to realize that it wouldn’t fit in the baby’s room (cribs. are. gigantic). So I got to move it into MY bedroom. Dave’s refinishing job was SO PRETTY that I was quite excited to keep it for myself! The knobs are from a store on the Design*Sponge hardware round up list (a post that came at the perfect time). The mural in the background is painted on a small wall area that juts out, (enclosed in it is an abandoned fire place) on one side of our bedroom. In November 2009 we went to Marrakech for our honeymoon and stayed at Peacock Pavilions. Our bedroom had the most beautiful mural (above) I have ever seen done by Melaine Royal from Modello Design. I wanted to recreate this (in a more simple form) so I purchased this stencil from Royal Design Studio. It couldn’t have been easier to do. The rug in front of the dresser is...

I think my food-writing San Franciscan sister-in-law would agree with Alyson Thomas’s San Francisco is for Carnivores poster.