photo by ashloaf

This weather could not have come at a better time. 74 tomorrow?! Despite having more necklaces to make than my brain can even comprehend, I absolutely have to give myself this weekend off or I will implode! Brunch with lovely blog ladies tomorrow, and Sunday Billy and I have our first entire nice day together on in ages. The pressure of picking the very best and most awesomest use of our time is hard. Honestly all I can dream up is sleeeeeeeping in! Not a bad plan…

Have a great weekend, friends!

I have to admit that lately my daily blog reading has been a little less than exciting. I think I blame over-saturating my brain with WAY too many blogs in my google reader instead of curating my selections a bit better, so I find myself scrolling through through like a drone some days. But in the past week I’ve come across three blogs that have restored my faith in inspiration. I hope you love them as much as I do.

Forever Is Today – Hilda is a young student in Sweden that has impeccable taste way beyond her 22 years. Her photos knock my socks off every day.
found via seesaw

This Is Naive – Tommy lives in London and likes beautiful things. Need I say more?
found via Erica

bigBANG Studio – Lily is an artist who lives in Joshua Tree, California and due to the fact that I dream about living in the rural desert every 10 minutes lately, I have been living vicariously through her for the past two days. I love what she has to say even more than her visuals, which is rare for me and blogs. I would like to quote Liz Lemon for the second time in a week: “I want to go to there.”
found via saipua

My little Spring trick for giving my very well-loved keds new life: leather laces. Instant prep.

Apparently I’m very foot-focused this week. So, in other news, my Warby Parker glasses arrived yesterday and the verdict is in: they are awesome. I highly recommend them. It took a little while for them to ship, but I know they were rather swamped from all the press they got, and once they did ship they were in my hands the very next day! They’re so affordable I might buy another pair. I would love for them to offer prescription sunglasses too.

One of the questions I get most often from readers is where I got my Smokey The Bear poster that I have hanging in my living room. It’s one of my favorite things I own! I got mine on ebay (thanks to an awesome reader who tipped me off after I pined for it), and someone told me you can email the Nat’l Association of State Foresters (nasfedu@embarqmail.com) to request one. But even easier – one of my favorite vintage shops on etsy, Hindsvik, has a few fantastic vintage ones in stock – here, here and here. Snatch those beauties up!

I love the new clogs from No. 6 that Totokaelo recently added. And don’t even get me started on the new Rachel Comeys they added as well – I’ve swooned myself into exhaustion and bank account configuring over her this spring. No one wants this blog to become “Rachel Comey and other things I love!” Or do you…?

ps. I’m totally aware that the blog isn’t working for some people, and that maybe you can read it in google reader but not access the site to comment. working on it, but it’s a bit of a mystery. hopefully this will be figured out soon!

I recently bought socks at muji that are so amazing they deserve their own post. They’re made from recycled fabric and come in sets of 5 really interesting colors – each set was slightly different in color in the store! So naturally it took me 20 minutes to decide which one I wanted. When I looked on their website later I realized they came in different sizes, and by some miracle I’d purchased my correct size.

The colors are so amazing I had to wear a pair of ankle pants today and my (crappy but cute) h&m jazz shoes to show them off. I ended up switching to the teal pair last minute. I like the punch of color they add to my super gray outfit (grey nails, grey shirt, grey shoes.) Thank you to my friend Emily for tipping me off about these guys!

If you want to order them online you can, but they’ll send you random colors (some are not as nice as others) and the sizing isn’t listed the same as it was on the pair I bought in the store. In the store it was listed by what size shoe you wear, online it’s just small, medium, and large. So I can’t advise you on sizing unfortunately! Use your best guess, I suppose.

Some random music for your Monday.

I hope the overuse of this song in bad movies hasn’t ruined it for you.
via birch & sycamore

Broken Bells (Danger Mouse + James Mercer, formerly of The Shins) on repeat this weekend

Just thought I’d throw this in because of all the love Zach Galifianakis has been getting lately (please tell me you watched this) because maybe you new fans didn’t know about this video. Plus, when is a little Fiona not ok?

Watch this if only for the first few minutes of Nancy wailing on the guitar, because it gives me goosebumps. Oh and when beard dude comes busting in behind her I totally cracked up.

I didn’t mean for this to be the hand and food edition of Bits Of My Weekend, but I warned you that I’d be a bit empty handed (er…wait…) today. But I promise next weekend will extend beyond this ridiculousness. I didn’t even touch my camera Saturday. I got home from my jewelry class and took a nap. That deserves italics because I do. not. take. naps. ever. Naps have a weird opposite effect on me: I get completely disoriented, groggy, and they throw my delicate sense of time off. But I really, really needed it. Which brings me to my next gripe: daylight saving time. I know, I’m a huge baby, but I have a really weird sense of time that’s completely screwed up by traveling to other time zones, naps, and daylight saving time. My mother does not call me her “delicate flower” for nothing. But, I will say, that extra hour of daylight is rather marvelous. Anyway, I finished my class, concluding that I am terrible at making rings that involve setting stones (I was the only person in the class who didn’t finished because I was totally incapable of doing so) and that making rings is fun, but probably not for me. My hands are cut to pieces and my eyes are sore from squinting. I have such greater respect for metal workers now! I finished one for my mom’s birthday (the one I’m wearing on my middle finger above) and a itty bitty guy for myself as I’m not much of a fan of wearing silver. So, just a slice. I had fun, but I’m glad the class is over and I can have my weekends back. I take that back, this big necklace project gets my weekends for the next month. Oh well, weekends are overrated…right?

photo by iroas929

I’m signing off early today to be more productive, but I also wanted to take the opportunity in this Friday post to address a little bit of news/info on the next shop update. After the Daily Candy article I was swamped with requests for custom orders by people who could not get a necklace in time, and people wondering when the next update would be. I was telling many people that it would be in April, but recent events are going to have to postpone that date. I’m currently working on an exciting collaboration with someone, making an exclusive necklace that will be available in May. I can’t tell you any more of the details on this, but the release date was just pushed up a month, so naturally I’m having a mild heart attack and need to postpone everything else in my life until I’m done. So, wait until May for this special update, and then down the road I’ll resume normal shop updates with all the different styles of necklaces.

Which brings me to my next point: slowing down. After this update in May, things are going to have to be a little less frequent with shop updates so that I can maintain my sanity. I know that all of you guys reading this understand that – the people I wish I could make understand it are the ones who don’t read my blog and don’t know who I am and what I do, but contact me with a slight tone of anger in their emails that they can’t just place a custom order anytime. But I just thought I’d put it out there. Think of my jewelry as more exclusive that way. ha. I have a full-time job that I love and was recently given more opportunity at, and I had to step back and evaluate my priorities this week. I want my jewelry making to be fun, and lately it hasn’t been, so I’m going to slow down and learn to love it again.

I’m so excited to tell you more about what’s happening in May, so stay tuned. And as always, thanks for being so damn supportive. Have a wonderful weekend! I have two more jewelry classes at the Y, and I hope I have something fun I’ve made to share on Monday. I’m afraid Bits Of My Weekend is going to be incredibly boring with how busy I am right now!

Yesterday was baby Audrey’s* first birthday (I promptly requested she stop growing this instant, but I don’t know if she’ll grant my request…) and if I was (much) richer I’d spoil her rotten with a ridiculously adorable outfit from Parisian clothing company Bonpoint. Of course these clothes are French. Of course.

*for you new readers, Audrey is my best friend Andrea’s bébé, and Andrea used to be my co-pilot here at For Me, For You.

via Minor Details