Talk about jealous! I could not be more jealous of Victoria Smith. Why you ask? Well, it all started when I found her photography series, Sunday in the City, featured on Poppytalk. I just figured she was an amazing photographer, until of course I followed the images back to her blog. Ahh, her blog. sfgirlbybay quickly became one of my daily reads. With a background in interior design, she writes inspirational posts on design, style, art, food… everything you need for a fabulous life really. Victoria, and her lovely home, {which I’m also jealous of by the way} have been featured in several design magazines. But wait, there’s more! She is a huge part of the blogging community… speaking at conferences, creating projects like blog it forward, and hosting various guest bloggers every week {including me, which I could not be more thrilled about!}. Anyway, it turns out I’m not the only one who’s jealous… Victoria is jealous of someone too:

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I’m jealous of Maira Kalman

I can never get enough of Ms. Kalman, an American illustrator, author, artist, and designer, originally born in Tel Aviv and transplanted to New York at the age of four. I get a sense that Ms. Kalman embraces her New York home whole-heartily…she walks the city streets and documents her travels consistently. She’s been known to say, “the best way to see the country, unless you are pressed for time, is to travel on foot.”  It is that which I greedily envy. Her prolific illustrations poke mild fun at the absurd people she meets along her journeys, never mean-spirited, just with a keen eye and wry observation that I thoroughly enjoy.

She’s illustrated numerous New Yorker covers, and is the author of like over a dozen children’s books, including Stay Up Late (from the song by David Byrne – another person I’m very jealous of, but we’ll save that for another day), and Swami on Rye (see, just there, you can tell she has a silly sense of humor). She’s also written and illustrated two of my very, very favorite ‘grown-up’s’ books, The Elements of Style (and her little film of the same name), and her very charming and moving book, The Principles of Uncertainty, in which she asks the deep, existential questions such as ‘What is Happiness?”. But mostly, I’m just really jealous of her pictures. ; )

Maira Kalman is currently showing her work at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, should you be out for a stroll this way.

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I’m putting on my shoes right now! Thanks for spending the weekend Victoria! Come back any time : )