I love these men’s shoes by Zuriick. Oh how I wish they came in smaller sizes!* (that’s the first time that phrase has ever exited my fingers about shoes.) I love the simple shapes and nice color palette. They’re also rather affordable for leather shoes.

(Apparently they are nothing new, but they’re new to me as I don’t keep up on men’s brands much.)

via big cartel’s twitter

*UPDATE: Apparently I am slightly blind (very blind?) and Zuriick does offer some women’s sizes, such as that 3rd shoe! Thank you kind commenter for letting me know.

Kirpputori is the perfect love child: A Japanese shop full of Scandinavian treasures.

via Elisabeth, who is also making me pine (no pun intended) for those tree-print pillows.

Erin Considine has brand new, totally amazing jewelry in her shop now. Her hand-dyed creations are perfect statement pieces for the summer. Swoon.

First Aid Kit – A Take Away Show from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.

Do you remember those awesome young Swedish sisters covering the Fleet Foxes in the woods a while back that was being passed around online? Last night I came across that video again and thought I’d check in on what the girls from First Aid Kit have done since then. Oh my, those voices just blow my mind to pieces. The La Blogotheque take away show above is so so amazing (you can skip through the beginning set up to the main part of the song around 2:45). They have an album out, but I’m not as impressed with the album songs as their live performances. Why do stripped-down sounding bands always get such overproduced sounding albums? Pull a Bon Iver and go for less is more, guys! I hope someone does these ladies some justice on their next album.

And then there’s this gem I found via 2 or 3 Things I Know – Bill Callahan’s Tiny Desk Concert. So, so good. You know what a sucker I am for strings, and these do not disappoint. His voice isn’t a sound I usually gravitate towards, but it works with the rest of the sound so well.

psst! come take a peek at where I blog from at Jane’s lovely blog, Ill Seen, Ill Said!

It’s not that I intentionally broke my goals. I just set way too many plans for myself without realizing that a person cannot schedule something to do at every hour of the day for an entire weekend and expect to do them all! But for not doing the two things I set out to do: go to a museum and a restaurant alone, and for spending so much time with wonderful friends – it was a very independent weekend. Saturday I had an epic day with my friend Lauren – I met her and the Brooklyn Flea for the outdoor opening weekend and we ate and shopped our way through it for hours. Hot damn they have AMAZING food now!! I haven’t been since they first opened. I would go just for the food now. Then we headed to the city to see, yes, Hot Tub Time Machine. Don’t laugh – it was awesome. If you can embrace your inner 16 year old boy, you’ll be good to go. Then we headed back to Brooklyn for an incredible dinner with other friends at Rye. If you go, promise me you’ll have the meatloaf sandwich.

So after such a long, exhausting day I slept in way too late on Sunday and realized I’d made a complete mess of the apartment somehow. I guess when your neat freak boyfriend is out of town you let your recovering inner-slob relapse. I spent the morning cleaning and slightly dying of allergies and realized I only had two hours before I was meeting up with Jenny in the city and I was so dang tired, going to a museum sounded like the last thing on earth I wanted to do. So I grabbed a sandwich and sat in the park on the water and made necklaces and napped a little. But! It was alone! And honestly just going to the park alone is sometimes a struggle for me. So, while I did break my goals, it wasn’t because I was scared, I just didn’t have time. I ended the weekend with Greenberg (bleh, we both agreed that Ben Stiller’s character was intolerable, but the main girl was The Best Ever and we want to see her in more movies) and dinner at Trailer Park (because I didn’t properly eat myself to death this weekend?)

I had such an amazing weekend that I don’t regret not being able to accomplish my goals. Next time! Also, while I had a good weekend and being able to blast Joanna Newsom and watch New Moon without eye rolling, I’m very glad to have Billy back:)

photo by ffîon

I do not do things alone very often. I just don’t have it in me. Besides the excuse of it just being a Libra trait, it largely has to do with my social anxiety and my fear of what other think. But I also just really love being in the company of others – I like making people laugh, and getting in deep conversations about something I’m passionate about is a serious shot of happiness. But I can’t eat in restaurants alone, I don’t really enjoy shopping alone (one of the reasons I love online shopping so much), I’ll only hang out in the park alone if it’s on the empty side, and god forbid I see a movie alone. Socially I’ve grown a lot since moving to New York, but I still have a lot to go. So it’s a goal I push myself on more and more each year. This weekend Billy is gone for three days in Phoenix, and while I most definitely did schedule hanging out with some girlfriends, I plan to take the opportunity to step out of my comfort zone do things alone. On my list, which may seem ridiculous to some of you, is going to a museum alone and eating at a restaurant alone. The museum I think I can handle, the restaurant is bit of a stretch.

Aron posed this same question this week, and I’d love to as well: what do you like to do alone? Maybe I need to understand why doing these things alone are so great to appreciate them in the moment, instead of making myself nauseated with thoughts like, “oh no, everyone here thinks I’m alone because I’ve been stood up! Because I have no friends!”  Ha. Trust me, I know they’re pointless thoughts!

Have a wonderful weekend friends, and don’t hold it against me if I don’t complete my weekend goal:)

After shooting a whole roll of film loaded wrong, I finally finished an actual roll on my Lomo LC-A. I used to have this same camera years ago and loved it, and after getting this roll back I wish I’d spent the extra money on one on lomography’s website rather than a vintage one from some random ebay seller – half the shots came out black! But I love these ones, and there are few others I put on flickr that turned out okay. They’re a little more dark and moody than I like my photos to be, but it’s fun to see something different in my photos. Plus it’s kind of dark and moody out today (a total 180 from yesterday’s weather!) so it kind of fits.

Hearblack‘s driftwood wreaths and wind chimes perfectly fit my mood this week. Aren’t they amazing? I think the first one needs to be mine.

People are on a roll this week with sending me awesomeness, which makes me happy because I’m feeling so very blog lazy:)

photo by Tsimothy James Kelly

It’s currently resting just below 90 degrees here in New York City, and I’m trying to embrace this unseasonably warm weather instead of my usual bitching and moaning about being sweaty and not having the necessary clothing pulled out of boxes yet. (Keyword here is “trying”.) Maybe it’s because being in a concrete jungle doesn’t allow for you to enjoy the heat in the same way as say, floating down a beautiful river on an air mattress would.

Hannah knows of my wanderlust lately, and I thank her for sharing this daydream-inducing photo.