Today marks the advent of a new column here on Homemade Banana! I’ve been searching for a way to share my favorite random internet finds, large and small, with you and I’ve settled on High Five—a quick list of five things I’m loving this week.
You can expect to see a wide variety of interest represented here: this week I’m featuring an artisanal French pastel maker and a profile by my favorite features writer, but next week I might opt to share a new recipe I can’t stop thinking about or a podcast I just binged. Stay tuned for a little hit of fun every Sunday to help ease you into the workweek ahead.
I’ve been digging through antique shops for the past couple of years in search of the perfect oil portrait, but I’ve come up empty handed each time. I moved my search online and I’ve found a few treasures, but they’ve always been way out of my budget. Enter: Juniper Print Shop. A genius idea run by interior designer Jenny Komenda, Juniper offers downloadable scans of original artwork at super-low price points. You can choose the piece you like (the vintage portrait of my dreams!), download it, print it at Costco for a nominal fee and frame it yourself. Oh, and did I mention all the prints are already perfectly size for common frame dimensions? They really thought of everything.
This piece in The Guardian by Simon Garfield studies our current collective obsession with all things miniature. I can personally trace my love of the little to my mom. She always enjoyed a penchant for shrunken-down objets d’art, and my childhood reverence for these tiny treasures has blossomed into a full-grown love for small-scale trinkets.
3. Mrs. Hinch
Shoutout to The High Low for alerting me to this English Instagrammer whose documented obsession with cleanliness has garnered well over a million devoted followers (aka Hinchers). In Mrs. Hinch’s squeaky clean world, everything is a calming shade of grey, cleaning tools are granted best friend status and the scrubbing of an already sparkling clean toilet becomes almost beautiful. It’s a nice, clutter-free escape that almost makes me excited about scrubbing the grout in my shower.
Founded in 1720, this Parisian pastel shop still makes over 1,200 shades of the smudgy medium by hand. The photography and colors displayed on this Instagram account are so beautiful, and I dream of the day when I can take a tour of their actual shop in Le Marais. In the meantime, I’ll be saving up so I can buy this little floral set.
5. This Melissa McCarthy Story Just Might (Maybe? Possibly?) Cheer You Up
As a card-carrying member of the Taffy Brodesser-Akner fan club, I celebrate her newly published celebrity profiles with the gusto of a sneakerhead on a Supreme drop day. I loved her latest: a piece on funnywoman Melissa McCarthy, whose career I’ve been following since her turn as injury-prone chef and lovable best friend on Gilmore Girls.
