With most of my summer garden fading into autumn, these images of gorgeous floral arrangements from A. Hana Design (found via Once Wed) are the perfect fix. If my cats weren’t so eager on eating any plant that comes in the house, I’d love to treat myself to a bouquet every now and then. For now I’ll be lusting over these images…
{images shown belong to A. Hana Design}
This morning while reading SouleMama, I started noticing a trend… In many of the photos of Amanda’s daughter Adelaide, there is usually the house cat, Banjo, either nearby or in her lap. So I went over to Amanda’s Flickr and low and behold, there’s a set called “A Girl and A Cat,” filled with photos of the two. As a fellow a cat lady, this set truly melts my heart. I love how children and animals can become fast friends, and it brings back memories of me and my cat Ernie and our special bond when I was growing up. Kitties make such good friends, and I love how close these two are and have been ever since Adelaide was a babe.
{images shown belong to SouleMama}
My husband gifted me with a very “in” feather headband last Christmas, and I must say that I’d love to own more fun hair accessories. It seems like anything from Ban.do would be fabulous. A corsage, headband, or barrette… anything would be nice! If only I could think of somewhere to wear these…
{images shown belong to ban.do}
One of my favorite letterpress designers & printers (and bloggers), Suann Song, created a witty invite for her son’s birthday party. Set up as an election ballot, her design plays on her son’s name which he shares with one of the U.S. Presidents. The color palette is fresh (I love a bold red with robin’s egg blue) and she completes the entire look with vintage stamps. My favorite part are the very cute Ike buttons! What a fun invite to receive in the mail.
{images shown belong to simplesong design}
I recently was asked by my brother to design and print an invitation for a firefighter memorial service. He made a donation on behalf of our family for a brick to be added to the Massachusetts Firefighter Memorial, in honor of our grandfather, a Boston firefighter. I’m sure that this was not just a loving gesture on his behalf, but a way for him to connect to his grandfather and fellow “brother”, as he is also a firefighter. It also meant a lot to me to be able to participate in some small way, to help with the invitations for the service. Our grandfather passed while my Dad was still a teenager, so we’ve never been able to have that face-to-face connection or know him personally. Even still, I know my grandfather is never far from the family in spirit, and it was very meaningful to me to be a part of honoring him, as a family member and as a firefighter.
{for more of my letterpress work, please check out my Flickr}
There’s something that makes me giddy when I see objects grouped by pattern or color. I don’t know if this is my “design brain” that enjoys it, or perhaps the Type A and organizational part of my brain (which maybe is the same part). So this Flickr set created by salbug00, called Grouped by Color (found via Oh Happy Day), really speaks to me. Some are from an old calendar he found, others he created. They’re all great in my book… and makes me want to go color coordinate some of my bureau drawers…
{images shown belong to salbug00}
My Labor Day weekend was filled with lots of time with family, lots of relaxing, and a tiny bit of baking. One of the delicious recipes I tried was Blueberry Cake from Simply Recipes (my favorite food blog). It was such a simple recipe: not too many ingredients, easy to follow, and in the oven in no time. I used frozen organic wild blueberries (the tiny ones) since it was a small cake (only 2-2.5 inches high) I wanted to use a smaller berry. Even though the berries weren’t fresh, I’ve noticed that you can’t really tell the difference between fresh or frozen after their baked. I served the cake at a Labor Day family cookout and it was well received. Definitely a recipe I’ll be using again!
There are plenty of monthly subscriptions out there… cheese, steak, minerals, but how about pencils? Gorgeous color pencils with fancy names like Minuet, Vermeil, and Lorenzo? Check out 500 Pencils (which I found via Hue) and their 25 Colors x 20 Months plan. Receive a splendid set every month until you complete the set of 500. You can also order special display cases for the pencils so they can be shown on the wall, in a spiral shape, or in a “flower vase”. I can think of a few creative people I know that would love to receive this as a gift!
{images shown belong to 500 Pencils}
The country of England holds a special, dear place in my heart for countless reasons, but today I’ll share with you one of them. I absolutely love the traditional architecture of many entry areas of London flats that are accented by the boldest, brightest, richly colored front doors. The contrast between the two is like eye candy to me, a “pop!” of unexpected color juxtaposed to the stately exteriors, and makes me wish we had similar color taste for front doors here in America. I’ll have some haggling to do with my husband for when we have a front door of our own (and a house, for that matter) to paint.
{images shown belong to the following owners, respectively: nicksarei - blue, nicksarebi – yellow, nicksarebi – green, maggie jones., and MisterPeter!}
I recently had the pleasure of designing custom notecards for my fantastic sister-in-law for her birthday. She chose a design that consisted of a simple line illustration of flowers with a beautiful handwritten typeface, both in a brillant emerald green ink. To add more interest without compromising the writing space, I blind letterpressed tiny rosebuds across the open white space. I really enjoyed working with such a lovely client (wink, wink) and really loved that emerald green ink. That’s definitely a color I’d like to use more of!
