I just realized that I didn’t post one single time this week. So, here is a beautiful photo of Cheryl in Joshua Tree that I just picked up at my film place this afternoon. I’ll share more on Monday since I have so very many to dig through.

Also, thank you all so much for your amazing comments and emails about my post last week. I will brain dump on you more often because I miss that we can all just reach out and say to each other, “I get it, I’m right there with you.”

Have a lovely weekend, dear friends. Are any of you Angelenos going to The Cream Event? I’ll be one of Ali’s braid models (get your hair braided!), say hi.

Photo by Kate Miss, taken with a Mamiya 645AF with Kodak Portra 160 film

The debut Rhye album, Woman, is streaming on Pitchfork and I can’t recommend it enough. It’s full of sweet jams that make me want to have a dinner party where we drink lots of wine and sort of slow motion dance in my living room. Thanks Roxanne for bringing this to my attention, and for your astute observation of this being very 21st century Sade. Side note/fact I just learned: leader singer is a guy. Hat tip, silky smooth-voiced gentlemen. What a pleasant surprise.

I would like to brain dump, if you don’t mind. Have you ever been away from a friend of family member for so long without talking that you don’t even know where to begin to catch up, so you just drift away even more? That’s how I feel about this blog. Just popping in and saying something personal feels disjointed as it’s been so long. So I’ll just dive. Dump. Whatever.

- LA is amazing. California is amazing. I love living here and when people ask me if we’ll stay, my heart says yes. Looking at the weather forecast for majority of the rest of the country is a key factor. I. Need. Sunshine. And warmth. Ask me again in August.

- We’re planning our wedding, finally. Save the dates are going out soon. Things are rolling. We’re getting married at a summer camp in the San Bernardino Mountains on September 28th. The plan looped and looped and looped until we ended up back where we originally started. It’s going to be a labor of love involving the talents of so many of our dear friends, which is what keeps me from losing my mind as I hate a lot of planning this. I have no plans to share many details here, but I will just say that it’s exactly what we want and a lot of our family doesn’t quite get it, but we don’t really care. Ask me again in August.

- Freelancing has been testing me lately. One thing that keeps me afloat is a retainer client I do a specific amount of design work for a month, and they recently decided to hire someone fulltime, which I had no interest in, so I’m losing that client soon. There was a week of a cycle that went like this: panic, sadness, job searching, realizing that all the jobs suck, realizing I will be ok, realizing I will be better than ok, realizing I am a rockstar, realizing I can cut my budget in half, realizing how much money I waste, realizing maybe I don’t know what the f I’m doing, job searching, sadness, panic, etc. But then something switched in me and I now have a fire lit under my ass – turning my attention to my entrepreneurial spirit and the ways that I can make not just the best of this situation, but make it a better situation. So far it’s going awesome. Ask me again next week.

- I went on a very impromptu 30 hour trip to Joshua Tree this weekend, packed in a car with four other ladies – dear friends and new friends. It was healing, re-energizing, and so beautiful (my Instagram pictured above). I took many rolls of film and hope to share them in the coming weeks. For now, Laure shared some of the magic. Again, California, damn.

- I will end this with a shout out to things that are really awesome online right now that you should check out:

• A short and simple, beautiful post from Vic. It gave me goosebumps.
• My friend Erin of Cotton & Flax (one of my portrait ladies) has a beautiful limited edition tea towel at Pennyweight Goods.
• One of my favorite Hairpin posts ever, a fascinating interview with a virgin who mostly identifies as asexual. I stayed up forever last night reading all the comments. Hairpin comments are my favorite.
• You can listen to the Empire Records soundtrack on Spotify. My day was made yesterday upon discovering that. So many memories it almost makes me nauseated to listen to it.
• I can’t get into the new David Bowie songs on a musical level, but the new music video with Tilda Swinton is really something else. A dream?

I hope your week is full of sunshine, be it metaphorical or real.

My goal made ages ago of taking more portraits is slow going. In a serious photo rut lately, I’m actively pushing myself out of my comfort zone to talk my friends into letting me take their photo in a more formal way. I’m even thinking of branching out into strangers. I really enjoy portraits, I find them so fascinating to shoot, and the funny thing about photographing women is their commentary about how they view themselves. I’ve discovered that a lot of us ladies have hang ups about certain features that seem to all stem from something our mothers told us at one point. Our moms had to stare at us so often and many of them took endless photos of us, so I suppose they became familiar with our flaws and strengths. And for the most part the comments were meant to be helpful, but we can’t escape that voice in our heads! Anyway, I always have a good laugh at the comments like, “I need to be photographed slightly from the side because of my linebacker shoulders” or, “I have a fat nose so don’t let me look down too much.”

Kicking this all off, last week some ladies came over so we could help each other take new head shots so we could be more professional bizness ladies. Katie, Erin, and Laura, thanks for letting me take your photo, and thank you Laura for manning the camera for my photos. My only regret is not taking more film photos because my Mamiya is a dream for portraits.

These are a mix of film and digital photos. If you’re interested in hiring me to take your portrait, get in touch! katemiss at gmail.com. PS. The necklaces are all mine, one is a SPOILER ALERT from the new collection.

I know I already posted about the last chance on some of the jewelry in the shop, but I decided to put everything from the Winter Collection on sale – $10 off! This does not include the cast bronze pieces, which are here to stay.

I have a guest post up on Unruly Things while Alyson is off having a magical adventure in the Philippines. It’s a music mix of some sweet ass jams that I think you should listen to.

I hope you are all having a lovely week and maybe someday I will write a blog post that isn’t just about music. MAYBE.

Happy Valentine’s day, my blog readers whom I love dearly! Here are some pretty tunes for your Thursday.

First off, the amazing new James Blake song you may have heard about 1 million times this week. I love Pitchfork’s comparison of his “wordless falsetto curlicues” to D’Angelo’s “Brown Sugar” – so spot on. I also love the youtube commenter (a sentence I rarely type) that said his body starts tingling at the synch chord explosion in the middle of the song. Truth.

And then we have two songs my dad sent me yesterday, being the cool dad that he is.

Chelsea Wolfe “Flatlands”. I shared the beautiful acoustic version of this last fall, and this is the new-ish video for the album version. I love what a witchy goth babe she is. Listen to the entire beautiful album here.

Sam Duckworth “The Farmer”. I’d never heard of Sam before, this song is pretty great.

There’s a new print in town, available in 8×10 and a big sexy 16×20. Shot at the magical Huntington Gardens, you can bring a little California into your digs even if you are buried in snow right now.

The big size has to be mailed in a tube, so I’m sorry that isn’t the cheapest thing ever, especially for those of you overseas. Shipping fun times!

If you follow me on Instagram you may have seen the peeks of the new collection I’m working on. I still have some kinks to work out, but I’m taking things in a new direction and have decided to say goodbye to this particular style of clay necklaces and a few of the other pieces. I’m not 100% on the exact date yet, but you have roughly one month to purchase the beaded clay necklaces, the bronze amulets, and the beaded bracelets in the shop before they’re discontinued. I wanted to give you a good heads up as I didn’t do that last time and found out some of you just hadn’t pulled the trigger yet on purchasing something you had your eye on! The cast pieces will stay and hopefully a new shape will be coming soon along with the other new pieces.

Right now there are a few beaded clay necklaces, one amulet, and many of the cast bronze necklaces in stock and ready to ship.

In other jewelry news, some of my pieces can now be found in the lovely country of Sweden at Double Standard in Malmö and in Australia at a.nouk in Adelaide. Also worth mentioning to those who were wondering if I’d ever make the clay amulets again (sorry, no) there are still some available at Myrtle, on sale, – here in LA and online. Totally one of a kind necklaces.

Have a lovely weekend, friends.

The lovely folks at Etsy have asked me back to share a little gift guide for Valentines’s Day, which you can check out here on their blog. It was fun to step outside of the usual velvet heart chocolate box to hunt for these ideas! Props to Laure for inspiring my “love everyone day” sentiment one morning over coffee. Let’s spread that next Thursday, eh?

(click here for shop links for the products above)