Lately my sense of “home” is confusing. I am not yet comfortable here nor do I feel like I totally belong, but the idea of going back to New York sounds even more unappealing, despite how much I miss it. This all leads to me being terribly homesick for Seattle, but then again that also does not feel quite right either. When I close my eyes and I try to picture where I’d feel at home right here, right now, I can’t place it. At night, when it’s just Will and I, drinking wine and humming along to music and going about our evening in perfect harmony, I think this is home, wherever we are. But then I go about my day and that feeling of being out of place again creeps up on me. Sometimes I think about the physical ping that homesickness gives me, and how sometimes I’ll feel that in moments where I’m not sure what exactly I’m missing. It all leads to very deep thoughts about just what home means to me and what it is that I require in a city to live in. I haven’t quite figured that out yet. But I suppose that’s a huge part of the adventure of life, right? It’s a scary thing to think about, but also exciting to feel like you can be in control of your happiness.

What makes you feel at home? I’m making a list for myself, to figure out what I need. I usually field questions to twitter, but 140 characters is not enough for thoughts on home!

Fleet Foxes – Grown Ocean from Fleet Foxes on Vimeo. (On repeat lately, while I think of such thoughts. The video goes well with this.)

ps. this post is random, but I recently decided that my blog is so unbelievably structured sometimes, I thought I’d break out of the box.

photos by me

It’s been gloomy and rainy pretty often lately here in LA. I’ve been thinking that I need to make a mix to listen to in a rain for a while now, but haven’t had time until now. Diana’s Ships In The Night mix has been on repeat for me lately, and it reminded me that I finally needed to make my own mellow mix:

River Man – Nick Drake
Vengeance Is Sleeping – Neko Case
Masterswarm – Andrew Bird
Godless Brother In Love – Iron & Wine
Jamais – Charlotte Gainsbourg
Help Me – Joni Mitchell
Retrato Em Branco e Preto – Stan Getz featuring João Gilberto
Heartbeats – José González

Photo taken by me

This weekend I was a jewelry making machine. I’m perfectly on schedule, so there will definitely be a shop update in two weeks! I got so much done this weekend it makes a case for barely leaving the apartment…ha. But I did manage to meet up with Andrea who was in town, and we kicked it on Abbott Kinney while I longed for her adorable haircut and outfit. Talk about girl crush. I also read good books, bossa nova’d myself out, played a lot of nerdy board games, drank a lot of wine, and made a lot of delicious meals from scratch.

As you may have noticed, I’m starting to put short little “moving photos” into Bits Of My Weekend – short videos to bring to life some of the photos. I hope you like them! I was using flickr, but it destroyed the quality, so I’m putting them on my vimeo account now.

ps. Happy Birthday, mom!

It was a short and hectic week for me, and the weekend won’t let up too much for me as I will be diving head first into JEWELRY MANIA 2011! I’m crossing my fingers for a jewelry update on April 10th if all goes as planned. Finding all the things I would buy for making jewelry and the packaging and such in NY here in LA has been a serious challenge! But I think I’m finally set. I will keep you updated on that release date and hopefully there will never be this long of a wait in between updates! 4 months?? Crimeny.

I am so terrible at keeping up with blogs the last few weeks! But a few goodies that have caught my eye:

1. Tuesday and Meg’s new blog, Studio Sweet Studio, is super duper awesome.
2. The latest collection from local brand Wren looks all kinds of amazing. Lots of watercolory goodness.
3. Rah and Rah makes beautiful jewelry, and I’m so in love with their branding.
4. Andrea’s looking smokin’ in her Black Market Baby storm cloak. Andrea sent me a Dusty Springfield song last week when I needed some entertainment. Who can deny the awesomeness of her? No one.
5. Matt from Wood & Faulk kills it yet again with another beautiful project – a camp axe sheath.
6. Project Runway winner Gretchen Jones released an amazing collection that I love every single piece of.

Have a good one, friends.

Happy anniversary, love of my life. Although I am not a traditional kind of girl, I like to daydream about what song we will dance to when we get married someday.

(It was actually yesterday, but I scheduled this post for the wrong day Tuesday night. Too lovestruck to correctly schedule?)

If you happen to be in Manhattan over the next week, there’s a really great show in the Lower East Side you should definitely check out at the NY Studio Gallery, featuring a curated group of some fine current students and alumni of the Queens College MFA program. That wonderful boyfriend of mine, Mr. William Steinman, is showing one of his videos, and we’re sad we can’t see the show in person, so stop by and tell us how it all looks! The opening reception is tomorrow evening, March 25th, and the show will run til April 2nd.

Despite a monsoon upon our leaving my apartment Sunday, and driving a few hours through it to get to Palm Springs, and then a gloomy sky and rain that danced around us off and on, the Ace is so rad it almost didn’t matter. You never have to leave! We got a room with a patio, complete with a fireplace, and it was rather…romantic? ha. We ate a ridiculously huge meal at Kings Highway (so delicious), along with equally delicious cocktails from the Amigo Room, and went back to our room to listen to the records they provide in the room and make friendship bracelets. Kind of perfect for a rainy night. We even tried a bit of thrifting in the area, but in the words of Morgan, “not thrifty“.

I highly recommend a stay there! The Commune area would be pretty, well, ace to have a wedding or party at. I definitely want to go back on a day I can lay out in the sunshine by the pool, that’s for sure.

I miss you already, Andrea!

Click on the photos for possibly more info on flickr. All photos taken with my new little gf2.

Andrea came to town and we did what we do best: shopping, and lots of it. Or perhaps window shopping is a better term, as we were good. So good. Sort of good. We also did lots of wandering around and walking on the beach, eating ourselves stupid and drinking a little more than normal – all things required of vacations. She also taught me how to make sushi and told me all about what being a mom is like these days, and I showed her all the pretty dream houses in Venice and got us stuck in some good old fashioned epic LA traffic. And then we drove to Palm Springs, but I’ll save that for the next post…

{Giveaway is now closed! Congrats to Kelly, Brooke, and Claire!}

A while back Eric Smith asked me to contribute to his fantastic Live Now project, which you may recall. A series of inspiring illustrated quotations done by artists from all over – like Will Bryant and Gemma Correll (pictured below), spreading the positive notion of “living now” – an idea Eric came to when he was diagnosed with cancer. Well, not too long ago HOW decided to publish the series as a book! I’m really excited that this wonderful project has been published, and of course pretty jazzed to have my own piece in the book as well. HOW sent me three beautiful copies to give away to you fine blog readers – something I never do, but being involved in this is something I’m excited and proud of! It’s a neat little book with perforated pages so you can pull the pieces out that you like. I think the world could use a little positive thinking right now, so even if you don’t win, I encourage you to pick up a copy for a little pick me up.

Here’s the deal: enter once by commenting here, make sure the email address you leave in the address field is one I can actually contact you with. I’ll pick three winners next Monday, the 28th. This is open to all countries!

Sorry for the less than fantastic photos, it was so dark and rainy when I had to take the photos!

This post needs no long, drawn out explanation. My heart aches for Japan, and I’m amazed by all the creative people out there right now donating their profits to the earthquake relief efforts, and proud of the blogging and creative community coming together like this. I rounded up my favorite 100% profit donation shops/items (because otherwise the list would be impossible to choose! There are countless people donating a portion of their proceeds as well), please feel free to leave in the comments others you know of doing the same.

1. Joseph O. Holmes print on 20×200
2. All sales at Yokomono Studio
3. All sales at Cake With Giants til Sunday
4. All sales in Mike Perry’s shop during the month of March.
5. W+K Help Japan Poster
6. Handmade For Japan Auction, March 24-27
7. Birds in the Bush print, by Susan Schwake at Working Proof Studio
8. Debbie Carlos raffle for any of her prints
9. All sales at Hilda Grahnat’s print shop

This is taking the place of Friday Bits because I’m taking a four-day weekend to spend quality time with my bestie who’s flying into town and I won’t have time before then to pull something together. No better time than now to spend time with those you care about that you don’t get to see very often, and thank your lucky stars that you get to. The earthquake has also made Will and I realize that we need to make an earthquake kit, stat. It’s been a long time since I made one.

Bits Of My Weekend won’t come til Tuesday, but that doesn’t mean you should stay away on Monday, because I have something very fun in store for you.

Take care, friends.