Not sure why it took this long for someone to come up with an idea of using wine grapes as juice instead of wine. I want to try the Chardonnay. Anyway, the packaging and product photography are great. I’m sure at the right price point and distribution these guys would do really well. (Reminds me of POM for some reason). More here. 

Fire safety products have never looked so good. Home Hero makes only 2 things: slick fire extinguisher and slick 2-in-1 smoke and carbon monoxide alarm. There’s no pricing on these babies yet as the products are still in test market but you can sign up to be notified when products become available. Read more about these as well as general home safety guides on their neat web site.  

It’s winter again and this snowboard junkie is heading east to the land of onsen, ramen, and fluffy snow once more. See you in 2008.

 Muji recently launched its US based site in preparation for the US store debut in NYC (yay). My obsession with Muji lies beyond the products they make. It is their design philosophy that I truly admire.

“Because there is complexity in purity.
Elegance in plainness.
Intricacy in streamlining.
Richness in reduction.
Depth in minimalism.
Surprise in uniformity.
Innovation in re-use.
Cool in the avoidance of cool.
And there is true
sophistication in simplicity.”

This quote reminds me of a site I saw the other day: Checkland Kindleysides (an interactive agency in the UK). Such a lovely execution of simplicity. Then I went back to look at my day job and died a little inside. *sigh.

Psst… Design*Sponge posted really awesome stuff on top design bloggers’ favorite sites. It’s like the list that trumps all lists for online shopping. Part 1 and Part 2.

Back in January my mother had called to wish me the best of luck in the year of the pig. She also explained that for those born in the year of the snake (me), many difficulties lie ahead in the year of the pig. Something about pig versus snake balance followed. At that point I had tuned out. I’m not a believer of any sort of superstition, but I do find it fun to derive logic out of them when and if any logic exist at all.

The pig and the snake are on the opposite side in the zodiac. May be this is the basis of the presumed enemy status. Logically if you were born a snake, by the time you turn 6 you will have faced your first pig catastrophe (why can’t I have ice cream everyday?!). Add 12 year cycle to that and you get 18 (age of rebellion), 30 (the hill is here), 42 (mid life crisis?), ..etc. Let’s pick 30 to mull over.

30, according to my friends, is the age where you set yourself apart from the rest. Career-wise, it is the first point you can use to evaluate how far you’ve truly achieved and whether you are on the path to where you want to be. It is when you either get promoted or go elsewhere. In NY area, it is also the age where everyone seems to migrate from all-night clubbing to dinner parties and wine-cheese events. Elsewhere, you’re probably attending 2 or more weddings a year in addition to a few grandpa-grandma generation funerals and numerous baby showers. 30 is sort of where lives change - birth, death, marriage, career, etc. Of course all this also happens at 29 and 31 and all the other age, but hey, everyone focuses on 30 because it is a nice round number signifying the completion of 3 decades of your existence.

I am turning 30 this year. And for what it’s worth, it is the year of the pig. Swimming in the middle of the stream of what should be a catastophic milestone year feels surprisingly calm, tho certainly not at ease. A lot has and is happening to a lot of people around me. I am, for the most part, absorbing bits of their blow/glory/joy/sadness/excitement/tears. None of which relates to design blog, but all of which consumed my time from it. Hopefully by October, I’ll be reaching shores and resting a bit. We’ll see. Posts will be sparse. I’ll try my best.

In the meantime, pork chop’s on the menu.

 It isn’t new news that method brought the world of household products a bright new spritz of package design. What some may not know is method makes their products from non-toxic and environmentally friendly materials. As such they deserve a shout-out from me via this blog. While they have been known to lose out on performance against the big wigs like lysol and 409, I still feel a little more love for method. Perhaps that says something about me being a package-design whore. Or maybe they did a good job appealing to tree huggers. Either way, their cut grass air freshener scent is to-die-for, not to mention how great it looks everywhere in your home at totally awesome price. swoon Method products are available at Target stores near you.

For my friend’s wedding I’m planning on baking her the wedding cake. Although I have been baking cakes for over 15 years now, I’ve never done a cake at this magnitude before. I’m totally looking forward to it. Say hello to “cake 1.0 alpha”. This is a really rough sketch (first pass on illustrator) of what it might look like. The inside will be red velvet cake (cakeman raven’s recipe!)with cream cheese frosting. Then it gets a layer of marshmallow fondant in aqua with chocolate brown ribbon trim. Final touches will be little gumpaste flowers in white (you can buy them at SugarCraft), and chocolate bride-groom topper. This is a daisy version that inspired the idea. Click on the links for recipe. In the next week or so I will begin the year-long training to make this cake.

I originally wrote a butt-load on this post but stupid safari just crashed and I’m too sleepy to re-write. Interesting event happening in the meat packing district this month — MPD design week. Looks fun.

Peeledmango is a snowboarding junkie so in the winter she spends the little free time she has frolicking the snow as much as possible. Apologies for the M.I.A. around here.