A guilty splurging Rachel Comey purchase and a lovely little gift I came home to in the mail from those sweet, kind folks at Hearblack.

a note on the Comey’s: if you too want to splurge, THEY RUN A 1/2 SIZE SMALL! They don’t note this everywhere, so thank god I saw the note on Creature Comforts before ordering mine elsewhere. They are also not for wide feet. I bought mine (during a 20% off sale, mind you) online at Le Train Bleu (love this place) – the only place I’ve seen them in red. They also sell them in other colors at Totokealo and Habitat. This was quite a purchase for me, but comfortable sandals are such a quest for me, and these are heavenly. Plus, red. How awesome are red sandals?

The next shop update will be Sunday, May 2nd at 4pm EST! A preview of what will be in the update will be available by Saturday at the latest (what is sold out in the shop right now will not necessarily be sold Sunday), and and email to the email subscribers will go out Saturday.

This shop update will be a little different than usual as it will be a bit smaller, and there will be no woven friendship necklaces this time. There will be brass drops and the brass drops with braided ombré strands. Also, there will be a few of a new type of necklace that I will share a peek of tomorrow! The reason for this is that the big necklace project I’m working on that’s coming out in July is a double stand woven necklace, and there will be 100 of them sold, so I needed a break BADLY from making them, plus there will be so many available in July for you to buy, I didn’t want to compete with that release. After July I’m hoping to get back into the swing of normal shop updates every other month.

So mark your calendars and stay tuned for the preview!

I’ve been on the hunt for some mint green nail polish for a while now, but in true New York City fashion, it’s sold out everrrrywhere that sells such a color (like Essie, for instance.) So after seeing RGB polish making the rounds on many blogs (like Camp Comfort) I decided to just order it online. I bought Minty and Toast because I figured I’d get another color in case the mint was disappointing. It’s on the more expensive side, but the perks include: free pretty dang fast shipping, awesome packaging (love!), really wonderful coverage, and a rather perfect shade of mint. I like that it’s not too pale – something I was worried about, as that looks really weird on my olive-toned skin. My only complaint is that it dries rather fast and is really opaque, so you have to be pretty talented at putting polish on. Luckily I’m semi-talented as I wear polish nearly every day of my life, but I’d like to take it to a salon to have them put it on sometime. I haven’t tried the toast color yet, but if it looks as good as it does in the bottle, it will be a perfect neutral shade for days when I’m not feeling as adventurous.

ps. check out what’s on my nightstand over at sweet Kate’s blog, The Goodie Life!

You know what I bet you didn’t know that you needed in your life? Geometry post its. Maybe triangles? How about a half-circle? Personally I think the hexagons are for me.

Also, slightly related is that every time I think about post its, I think of this.

thank you Black Eiffel for the heads-up on Present & Correct‘s new goodies.

ps. please excuse my possible light blogging/tweeting this week. I’m testing out a plethora of new allergy meds and it’s quite the thrilling science experiment that often leads me to stare into space from time to time.

I have to admit that I completely forgot about Music Monday until right now, so we’ll just listen to what I’ve had on repeat all weekend: Andrew Bird. Sigh. So good.

And for good measure, some blues for your Monday: one of my favorite Aretha songs.

First of all, I recommend that pancakes bookend all weekends. Ricotta pancakes to be exact. (sans the way too much work topping in that recipe.) I had a productive weekend that involved lots of necklace making, plus some necklace experimenting with a new book on braids and knots I bought. I could not have nerded out with that book more than I did this weekend. The testing paid off – a new necklace was created that I’m excited to share with you sometime soon! The strand above is my testing strand, fyi, not the necklace. But between being productive I promised myself I would take breaks from my new-found Friday Night Lights obsession (thanks, Andrea) and visit friends. I went to Emily’s and she made me arugula pesto (have you had it?! I dare say it’s better than basil) and I made her my Gin Cuke (good friends share good things) and on Sunday, London shared one of it’s finest bloggers with me – Victoria – and I ate yummy brunch with her and her friend Pauline at Little Giant. A pretty good weekend that flew the hell by! With pancakes.

I’ve been devising a plan for a new feature here on the blog for Fridays, after wanting to share more than just a photo and a happy weekend greeting with you all for a while now. I want to expand photo and personal life sharing beyond Bits Of My Weekend, but only just small bits as getting too personal here leads to comments that make me feel strange (not even bad comments necessarily) and this sudden panicked feeling I’ve shared too much. We’ll call it “sharing light”, if you will. So, Friday Bits will bring you just a little bit of something, anything really, from my life. I can’t promise I’ll keep it up well, but I’ll indeed try. I need to get out of the habit of only taking photos on the weekends!

Today I thought I’d share two recipes I’ve recently discovered that are pretty dang amazing. A dessert and a drink.

First up is Sweet and Salty Rosemary Shortbread.
A huge fan of anything sweet and salty, I’m also kind of a shortbread fanatic. I’ll take if plain any day, but the mere mention of putting herbs in shortbread over at Food52 had me salivating all over my keyboard. It’s incredibly fast & easy to make, and the smell of rosemary was absolutely amazing while mixing it up. You can use any hearty herb, I imagine lavender would be pretty delicious as well, but couldn’t find it anywhere to save my life. I’ll fare warn you that it’s nearly impossible to just eat one piece, and if you eat five or maybe even 10 in one sitting, I will not judge you. I’ll just ask that maybe you can help me start a support group for addicts?

Here’s Food 52′s recipe:

Sweet and Salty Herbed Shortbread

Makes about 27 pieces

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• 2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh herbs (sage, rosemary, thyme, lavender, etc.)
• 1 stick unsalted butter at room temperature

I mentioned in Bits Of My Weekend that I went to a new restaurant in Williamsburg called Rye over the weekend. Besides a delicious dinner, I had one fantastic cocktail there – the Southside – that I knew sounded like I could actually replicate it without too many random ingredients I’ll never use again, and was indeed correct. While my version wasn’t exactly the same (I’d love to known their proportions!) it was still really good, and a nice treat after a long hard day of watching Glee at work while half the office is out of town designing diligently (I’m kidding job, I’m kidding!)

Southside (or, since I don’t really know their recipe, we’ll call it a Gin Cuke)
makes 1 serving
2 oz Gin (I insist that you use Hendricks)
Juice of 1/2 a lime
2 decent slides of cucumber, peeled and diced.
a couple sprigs of mint
soda water
agave nectar to taste (optional, depending on your taste, I needed it)

muddle the lime juice, mint, and cucumber in a martini shaker until the cucumber is decently mashed up. Add the gin and shake/stir slightly to mix. Strain over ice, add soda water and agave to taste. I imagine you could make a virgin version of this as well, or use water and simple syrup to make popsicles. Yum, I could put cucumber and mint in everything this summer!

Have a wonderful weekend everyone! I will be making tons of necklaces this weekend, for those who have asked, I will hopefully have a little shop update in two weeks if all goes as planned! I will keep you updated.

Jeffrey Campbell decided to take two of my favorite blog topics lately – patterns and oxfords – and make a perfect shoe. How dare he tease our wallets like that! Pine, swoon, etc. (Using my best ignoring skills because I just bought a pair of shoes I really should not have.)

via verseau vintage

ps. some of you have mentioned the pair that ModCloth has – they’re by 80%20 and are a smaller floral pattern and fabric, so I’m not into them as much as this pair, but they are cheaper and still quite cute!

Some lovely patterns I really love this fine morning.

1. Red Rice embroidered scarves made of vintage silk saris (there are more amazing patterns where that came from!) – 2. Leg/Kov Herd pattern (via designworklife) – 3. Osborn Striped Huipile Jazzie (been lusting after these for quite some time now.) – 4. Slide Sideways Market Weave Pouch (via Mint)

I couldn’t tease the ladies with just boy shoes today, now could I?

I’m not an Anthropologie girl at all. Some people focus a lot of their lusting/blogging on places like Anthro and J. Crew, and I’m not one of them. But that doesn’t mean there are no exceptions to my “meh” feelings about them, I have the most amazing cardigan (it was actually cheaper in the store and an lovely pumpkin color) I wear too often from J. Crew, and Anthropologie sometimes has interesting shoes that make me lust big time. (Remember these I totally held out too long for?) These beauties – both bright and neutral, are my current loves. If money were no object that top right pair would be on my feet right now. And while I’m dreaming, I’d be wearing them while traveling across America with Lily in this.

top left (I want marigold shoes in my life) – right
botton left – right (these are the amazing hand-painted clogs I posted about before! nice to see them in the states.)