You guys, being sick really knocked me off my butt. I could barely work last week and now my cold has morphed into a sinus infection so I’m just focusing on all the work and emails I’ve neglected while trying not to whine too much, so the blog takes a back seat this week.

But! I’ve been loving Dabitos beautiful music mixes lately and discovered this gorgeous, gorgeous Emily King song, “Georgia” and had to share. I want to crawl inside of this song.

You guys are always so helpful, any sinus infection remedies? It’s been ages since I had one. I’ve heard eating raw garlic (ugh) and drinking apple cider vinegar can help, but I haven’t tried that yet. I’m using a neti pot twice a day (sorry, TMI) and that helps but isn’t long lasting relief. Thank you in advance! See you next week.

photo of Courtney and Zach’s wedding by Henry Busby

I don’t want to talk wedding too often, but mine is about 3 months away and lately I’ve started having wedding nightmares, so needless to say it’s at the forefront of my brain right now so FORGIVE ME. If wedding talk gives you a case of the eye-rolls, close your browser window and I’ll have no hard feelings. It’s a polarizing subject – a friend of mine who shall remain nameless joked (and I agreed/laughed) that the worst thing that can happen to a blog is when the blogger either gets married or has a baby as all their posts shift focus onto that subject when they never had in the past. But then other people beg me for updates. Weddings are such a low priority importance in the world, especially when it saddens me that not everyone can legally marry the person they love everywhere. So now that I’ve gotten my guilt out of the way, can we walk about wedding dresses, if you’re still with me?

So, I bought a new dress. I was warned that buying a dress too early was a bad idea, particularly if nothing else about the wedding was planned and you are a person prone to changing your mind a lot. Check and check. But I’m stubborn and bad at taking advice as I often have moments where I’m sure that I’m different from everyone else. I know. Now, not to point fingers, but the moment when I realized I wanted a new dress was looking through Courtney and Zach’s wedding. THAT DRESS. I’d had no intention of having a long dress and wanted to keep it casual, but something about that dress, and that entire wedding actually, made something click inside my brain. It was void of a theme besides a beautiful and effortless gathering in the woods. And I got all…wanty (in the words of my bff). I know you’re supposed to stay offline once you’re far long in the planning stages, but I can’t help it, my life is online. So I started to hunt. And hunt. And hunt. And suddenly my life was consumed and my old dress would not do and I wouldn’t be happy until I found the dress that spoke to me. And you know what? That was ridiculously unhealthy and distracting, but only lasted a couple weeks and I FOUND IT. But along the way I found a lot of other dress. Like, a lot. It took a lot of digging because I was looking for something that wasn’t necessarily a wedding dress, but could pass as one in a modern, casual wedding like mine. I am so not a girly girl when it comes to wedding dresses and I figure a lot of other ladies out there feel the same!

So I compiled all the dresses I found, along with some that weren’t what I was looking for, but I loved. I made a Svpply collection for modern brides with everything that you can peep here, along with some shoes and random things I added too. Everything is under $1,000 (my criteria). The dress I picked is hidden in there, but I’m going to keep it a surprise as I like surprises and Will doesn’t want to see my dress until the big day (adorable.) Take a look if you’re in the market for something.

Now, what to do with the old dress? I’m selling it (photo below)! I still love it so much and think it would make the best Summer wedding dress, bridesmaids dress, or just a pretty dress to wear to a party. You can read more details on instagram about it, and email me at katemiss at gmail.com if you’re interested or want more details.
SOLD!

Hi friends. I’m back from the most amazing time at Unique Camp, which I’m saving for another post once photos are all posted, so I’ll tell you more later. But, I want to share some music I caught up on last night before the illness I caught at camp took over me that I am now only half-alive from this morning. Oof. First up, reader Kristin sent me some beautiful new music from Lily & Madeleine, two talented sisters from Indiana who write the loveliest songs.

Next is a new song from the upcoming David Lynch album, featuring Lykke Li. The video is as mesmerizing as the song, reminiscent of his film Lost Highway.

If you wrote me an email last week you’re waiting for a reply from, it may take me a bit longer, apologies!

I love the new album (new to the US, at least) from Melbourne band Alpine, A Is For Alpine. Lots of dreamy harmonizing vocals and casual dance party jams. They’re touring right now (coincidentally playing tonight in LA!) if you want to check them out, I imagine they put on a great show.

ps. bonus song: I’m really into this cover of one of my favorite 90s songs, “No Diggity” by Chet Faker, which is old but for some reason keeps popping up in random places lately (I guess it was in a Super Bowl commercial, so maybe that’s why?):

I had so much fun with this week’s flowers. The assignment – the last assignment of the class – was a bridal bouquet and a boutonniere and I decided straight away I wanted to pick flowers that were colorful, wild, and less common than the usual bridal look. I was really inspired to use more unusual blooms after buying the amazing Flower Recipe book from Studio Choo, where they made me fall in love with Protea (the big orange crazy looking flower). Once I saw some kale at the flower market I knew they’d make a good match. Anyway, I’m really happy with how this turned out – I’m not sure if I want to go this colorful for my own wedding (still not sure if I’m even going to make a bouquet or not) but I really love all the flowers I bought, learned about a good vendor at the flower market with lots of wild looking stuff (thanks, Bianca! I can’t share who it was because I literally only know it by sight – ha!), and only spend $35 on everything with tons leftover. I made a little arrangement with leftovers which I may like even better for a bouquet if it just had maybe one big white garden rose in it.

I absolutely loved taking this class with Chelsea and would recommend it to anyone. I’m kind of thinking of keeping this up once a month for practice (as I still need lots of it!) It’s funny how quickly I went from frustration to excitement!

ps. Boutonnieres are really hard to photograph and I really need a better place in the studio to take photos!

See week

West Elm asked me to make a summer Spotify playlist for their blog and I happily obliged. Lots of songs I’m really into lately that will help usher in warm weather and good summer vibes. Have a listen over on their blog.

This week’s assignment was a flower crown, and I took it very seriously because this was the biggest technique I wanted to learn for my wedding. I followed Chelsea’s example exactly (though with much more dramatic results) and then, knowing that wasn’t what I was going to want, tried some modified versions of ways to wear flowers in my hair. Because I cut so much of my hair off and I have really slippery hair, I have a tricky time pinning things into my hair, so just making a cute little bunch of flowers that gets pinned into my hair is not the best idea. So I experimented with ways to make a headband-like attachment as my hair is thick enough to keep one of those in, no problem.

I did the first full crown last week with leftovers from my last arrangement, and while it looks really awesome, it’s way too wild and bohemian for my taste. This week I bought smaller flowers, thinking it would lead to a more tame looking crown, but realized the sweet william is in bunches that you can’t really cut apart, so I think for the real thing I may use something that can be cut down a bit more, like wax flower or gypsy. The understated headband I made is really nice and was super easy to make, the black headband hides fairly easily. But it may be too subtle and a little too cute/flower girl for my taste (such a good idea if you have a flower girl!). So then I tried the exact same technique used on the first crown, but only went 1/3 of the way around. Had I had more time I would have wrapped the remaining wire all in black ribbon, but I was running out of light for photos, so I just did the part where it showed at the top of my head. I put it on my head and decided I liked it on one side best, and then pulled hair out from under it and tucked it under. I put my hair in an ugly little stumpy pony tail, but I’m hoping by September my hair is long enough to pin it a little more, uh, elegantly. I think this technique was the winner! I just may make it monochromatic and slightly more understated. One drawback is you have to do this the morning of, so here’s hoping that isn’t too stressful. I may buy a pretty beaded headband to have as a backup in case I have a flower melt down.

We’ll see, I already bought a potential new wedding dress* and have changed my mind on everything in the past month so WHO KNOWS.

(*um, yeah, more on that later…)

fyi, my lipstick in the second set of photos is MAC So Chaud. It’s showing up a little more pink in this lighting than real life.

See Week 1 here and Week 2 here

Eva Black asked me to share my studio space on her blog, and it took me a while to get it to a place where I felt comfortable sharing photos. I just see all of these beautiful photos of spaces people work in (usually in their homes) and feel my usual reaction of comparing myself and feeling inadequate. We’ve been in the studio for almost a year now, and I was feeling a little down there lately, uninspired and trying to figure out how to love being there. So I did a huge overhaul, painting things and replacing furniture, making it more reflective of my style at home and less dirty basement dungeon office. Another helpful new development in the studio is that my dear friend Katie now has a desk that she inhabits twice a week for both of our freelancer life sanity. It’s been immensely helpful for me to be around another human being besides my boyfriend on a regular basis, and we work well in the same space. And sometimes Peggy Day comes too, so, win win.

You can see all of the photos and a little interview on Eva’s blog here.

A grab bag of songs I’ve loved lately.

Katie and Allison Crutchfield cover Grimes’s “Oblivion” for Rookie

Ducktails “Letter of Intent” (and the entire Flower Lane album, for that matter, it’s so great.)

Iron and Wine “Low Light Buddy of Mine”. I’m still learning to love the new Iron and Wine album, Ghost On Ghost. I think the first quarter of the album is a struggle for me to truly enjoy because it’s a bit too sweet, but the rest is great and a few songs are really wonderful.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. “Dark Water”

This week was certainly a serious learning lesson. I have to admit I thought I’d be a natural at arranging flowers, that it would be really effortless and no big deal, but it doesn’t come that natural to me, and this week I re-did my arrangement three times over two days. I learned that practice makes perfect, and making an “effortless wild arrangement” (this week’s assignment) is more effort than more formulaic bouquets. I learned a lot about how certain flowers and greens act and don’t play well together, which I think is huge – you have to get to know different plants to know how they’ll work for you. Here’s my second arrangement (the first didn’t even get to a stopping point), which looks like a sad wig or something awful? I didn’t have the best container to start in, and even with a flower frog and flower tape everything kept flopping over. So by the third try I downsized to a big mug and it worked beautifully. I got giddy finishing this one, even though I lost a lot of flowers along the way and there are things I wish I could have changed had I not. But in the end I was really happy with this.

See week one here.