what to wear no. 043010

Oh how I love friends visiting from out of town weekends (who give me an excuse to go to Continental Divide...again...). Oh how I love sunny weekends spent in Charlottesville (giving me the excuse to love on this town a little more). Oh how I really, really, really love weekends where I get to chat with some new people and sell some jewelry at fabulous Craftacular shows like the one I'm participating in tomorrow - 10-5, Openspace near the ACAC downtown mall, friends. Read about it. (Giving me the excuse to get out there and show a face and a personality with these little goods of mine). Happiness all around is in store for this weekend and I can't wait.

And oh, wow, what do we have here? Another cream and gray and skinny jeans outfit? What a surprise, friends! What. A. Surprise. It's what I wear...how I roll...all that keeping it real stuff.

cream tank | toothpick jeans | turquoise shoes | spring scarf | laurel denise heart tag necklace

studio tour no. 042910

Oh what a week. The studio has been busy and crazy and full of lists and production and all sorts of stuff like that getting ready for the Spring Craftacular event on Saturday, May 1st! I'm all kinds of excited for this show and so honored to be a part of this lovely group of crafting ladies. For details, click here and you can find all of the information on the show. Hope to see you there.

(Sorry for the lack of sunshine and details in this post...I do believe my heart is a little broken due to the sad, sad, sad loss by the Washington Caps last night. I'm not sure when I became such a hockey fan that I would wake up hours and hours before my due to wake up time in the morning because I was thinking of those poor players and their disappointment! What has this Cute Husband done to me?? I think I'm officially a fan now. I also think I'll wear black for the rest of the day. Mourning and all.)

coffee mugs

It's a tired morning, friends, and my mind is focused almost entirely on coffee. Until that happens, not much else can. So I'll keep this short and sweet. This here is a post on coffee mugs. Since that's where my heart lies (is it lies or lays or rests or what? I never can remember that one from 8th grade English...just like I can't remember effect and affect), that's where this post lies.

striped mug | big white mug | graph paper mug | "coffee" mug

fanny pack love. really.

Yeah, so, this is a post about fanny packs. That's right. I feel like SJP might have made them cool again in, like, Season 6 (maybe?), but I'm going to defend myself anyway. When I do retail shows for laurel denise, my cash situation is an absolutely mess. Like, for real. It's an embarrassing jumbled, crumpled, torn edged glob of green paper. Really. Cute Husband's post at these shows is to sort that situation out. It's a job he takes seriously and does well, but I feel like maybe I could throw him a bone and at least remove the crumpled part of the equation? If I got a cute fanny pack like one of these, maybe I could keep the bills straightened and organized? Maybe? I mean, these guys do not yell neon fanny pack from the 80's that I used to rock at King's Dominion as a preteen. With crimped hair.

no. 1: by happy cow
no. 2: by hipshack
no. 3: by rock and salt

weekend no. 042410

The writing creative juices aren't quite flowing yet this morning (I blame my mind that was preoccupied all night with hockey dreams...I scored two goals. I was kind of the coolest.), but I can safely say that our Charlottesville weekend was superb. Beginning with a fun, fun, fun night with some gal friends (lots of laughing and food plus a bottle of wine or two for the group), filling in the middle with a walk through the Farmer's Market where I got some fabulous prints from By Cary and saw some friends (heart small towns), an awesome and amazing church service, a walk with Cute Husband in a neighborhood we haven't explored where we dreamed about living in the beautiful homes and wondered what on earth we'd do with those huge gardens (mom?), a run around town (and up some really steep hills...), a nap (oh, a beautiful, wondrous nap!) and finishing with a visit from an old friend for dinner, drinks, and discussion on Sunday night. Not even a quick and intimate introduction between my left pinky finger and a really, really sharp knife in our collection (ouch) could damper the festivities.

what to wear: cville weekend (no. 042310)

It's supposed to rain this weekend. Blah. I get it, I know...April showers bringing all of the flowers and all of that sunshine, but a rainy Saturday and Sunday (and, I just checked, Monday-Wednesday, too!) just doesn't make me jump up and down for joy. The fun news is that tonight, pre-rainy weekend, I've been invited to a girls' night starring Meg Runion and Erin McDermott and this makes me so happy. I'll be missing game 5 of the first caps hockey series and I'm honestly not trying to win any wife points here (and we all know this is true because I probably just butchered what they are actually playing right now - is it a series? what's happening? playoffs? are we even on game 5?), but I'm kind of sad to miss it. I hope they win (yay, go caps, babe!), but I'll be cheering them on in my heart at the girls night. Promise. The rest of the weekend will be filled with Cute Husband hanging out (happiness) and a stop over to the Farmers Market to see Cary Oliva selling her beautiful goods and maybe finishing Jane Eyre, a book that my dear friend gave me a week or so ago. It's getting to be delicious and I can't wait to see what happens next.

olive green cardigan | skinny black pants | grey tank top | blue pocket tank | yellow pin | ballet flat | laurel denise live necklace

studio tour no. 042210

If I could just show you photographs of spreadsheets this week, well, I would. I know what you're thinking: But, Lolly, you own a creative business where you make things and, well, spend your days going from one super cool crafty, creative, heavenly project to the next. Um...not quite. While some days and weeks I do get to do stuff like that (and thank God for that or I might be an insane person...or...more insane), there's usually a spreadsheet behind the creativity. There's a list, there's organization, rhymes, reasons, all of that good stuff. I'm not sure when it happened, but at some point in this business I've switched from just creating and making to really managing. My new collection ideas usually come to me while I'm doing something mundane like prepping dinner (might explain why I tend to burn most meals) or cleaning the house (might explain why most corners are left dusty) or something like that. And once the idea comes, I figure out how to make it happen, get the prototypes going and then produce. It sounds kind of cold, I guess, but I think, as far as my business goes, this sort of thing is what I've been working toward the whole time. Getting processes down, working quickly...dare I say manufacturing? As long as I still keep creativity in my life with personal projects and such, I think I can manage to stay balanced. So, anyway, what you get this week is a few pictures of spreadsheets and lists and projects and a little snippet of happiness from my desk. I worked on a b-u-n-c-h of sterling customs from the Elements collection - my bestie Erin was a leader for her church's purity night this past weekend and she was so kind to include laurel denise in the event. I'm making custom necklaces for all of the girls that participated. It was beautiful to see all of the words they chose. I also added a few new sales rep teams to my growing list and started to get things organized for all of their many sample sets and got to work on some glass silhouettes customs for Le Papier Studio.

mother's day at laurel denise

I sent this little email out yesterday to my business mailing list. I love designing these things, but always feel like something is missing from the piece once I send it out. Like I could have angled something a little different and put such-and-such in a slightly different location and then, only then, it would be perfect. Ah the constant struggle and mad dash toward perfection...what a treat we give ourselves each and every day. Right. At least I didn't send it out with last month's image right below this month's image, right? Remember that? In my book that automatically gives me a win here!

So - point of pretty email - I hope you'll consider a laurel denise good or two when you're shopping for you mom, wife, sister or general fabulous caretaker of the year in your life. I have all sorts of mama love necklaces...my faves: friend tag, mother tag, mommy glass, xoxo glass, heart cuff.

tick tock

You know how when you have to wake up at a weird hour, you spend all night checking the clock? Thinking that it's definitely the time to wake up and your stupid phone that must serve as an alarm clock didn't go off and you're pretty screwed and oh no you'll never be invited to have a table at the farmer's market ever again because you overslept...only to see that it's just an hour past the time you last checked and so not time to wake up yet? These are things that I did on repeat on Friday night before my 5am farmer's market wake up call. I'm thinking that having a cuter and better and more perfectly modern-meets-vintage design-y alarm clock will help rest my restless "15 minutes early is almost late" spirits. I mean, obviously that will help. Right?

top: led wooden alarm clock | middle: turquoise alarm clock | bottom: cube alarm clock

side note: Everyone reading this that knows me knows that I could never ever use the middle clock because it probably ticks and tocks all night and I would hear it and it would keep me up. I've been known to hide people's wall clocks in hidden rooms under towels and such when I'm sleeping over. As in, find something to stand on, get that clock down from the wall at all costs and tuck it away. Oh, and the kicker of my awesome-ness is that I then forget to put it back up in the morning to hide my neurosis. Because if it's not written down someplace for me to remember, I'll probably forget. Really and truly, these are things I do. I'm an awesome house guest, have me over.

weekend no. 041710

This weekend was filled mostly with tissues and Sudafed and Thermaflu and my guaranteed to make you feel much better phases one and phases two (brown sugar, cinnamon and buttered toast surrounded by fresh oranges, followed about three hours later with some frozen oranges) - remedies passed down from my momma - because my poor Cute Husband was feeling quite under the weather. Being sick is the worst - being sick on a most beautiful weekend when your wife makes you wake up at 5:20am because she has to set up her Farmer's Market table and she's too scared to walk there alone when it's still dark outside is the super worst. I win no wife trophies this weekend, I'm afraid. Well, except for the remedies one and two...those might have brought me back into the running. I hope.

The Farmer's Market was absolutely the best. I met the nicest and sweetest and kindest shoppers on this earth, I do believe. And the vendors near me lived up to the same descriptions. A beautiful morning filled with beautiful people. Thank you for loving my jewelry and thank you for stopping by. I can't wait to see you again at future markets!

what to wear: first farmers market

This weekend marks my first Charlottesville Farmer's Market participation and I'm oh so excited. I've been going to this thing for years...as a kid, as a teen, as a college kid coming back home for breaks. And to now participate feels really exciting...full circle-ish or something. I'm thankful for the rain anticipation that switched sometime mid-week to sunny and 70 (umm...perfect). I'll be in booth 99 and I hope you'll stop by if you're in the area! Cute Husband and I might also make our way out to King Family Vineyard for a little birthday celebration, but I'm afraid I gave him the mean cold I had last week despite all efforts not to. Sadness. Might mean less of a wine tour and more of a movie and soup tour. Which is just fine with me. Hope you all have fabulous weekends filled with fun glittery things like those amazing Toms Shoes that are above. My new friend rocks those all the time and she looks so cool in them - I'm wondering if I could pull them off, too.

jean shorts | silver glitter toms shoes | white/blue tank | striped tank | laurel denise imagine bracelet | laurel denise heart necklace

studio tour no. 041510

This week has been pleasantly out of control. I love free time, don't get me wrong...relishing in the "working" on the rooftop or spending entirely too much time "researching" a Friday fashion blog post. But, as a super duper small business owner (and I don't mean my actual stature...because at barely 5' and one have inch - thank you very much - the word small can be accurately applied), busy equals really good. And comforting. So it's been a good week. Those little "mommy" and "xoxo" recycled sterling customs were sent out to Yankee Candle in Deerfield, MA and they really are the cutest in person. I will put them online in the shop soon. That fourth little clip of an image is of some gold leafing I'm playing around with for a new glass collection. It will either be the coolest thing ever or an ultimate fail. We'll see soon.

something i made

I made this little tank on Sunday while Cute Husband watched the Caps play their last regular season game. They lost, which I'm really hoping isn't some sort of hockey sign that means they are going to do poorly in the playoffs. That would be a very sad, sad day in the Smith household, let me tell you. I'm probably breaking some sort of hockey oath by even saying the word "playoffs" in the same sentence as "caps". Oh man. I hope not. First rule of the playoffs? Don't talk about the playoffs.

ps: go caps!

young chicken

This is my happy dining room table centerpiece right now. I bought them at the farmer's market this weekend for $2 or something and I think they're beautiful. They help brighten my mood when I've just ruined something called a "young chicken" that was supposed to be a delicious and simple chicken roast and wound up eating peanut butter toast and yogurt with a bubbling burn on my hand that I got while removing said burned chicken from the oven only to realize that it was as disgusting as I thought it might be. There were tears. Don't go shopping at Whole Foods to pick something up quickly when you're on the phone. You wind up coming home with "young chickens". Who on earth knew that the age of a chicken made a difference to its roasting abilities?? Gross me out all over the place.

weekend no. 041010

I always feel like my last weekend just ended when I start to write about the next. Except for the Monday through Friday in between, sometimes. So, let's see...what did we do around this little Charlottesville town I love so much? Friday night dinner was deliciousness from Vita Nova on the mall and, friends, I know I'm going to catch a lot for this, but this pizza beat Christian's by quite a lot. Hub and I still haven't found anything to replace our Hoboken, NJ favorites (not sure we ever will), but this fresh mozz, basil and mushroom baby came close. We checked out the city Farmer's Market for the first time this weekend, too. I wanted to see what I could expect next week and, wow, this town sure does come out to support its local growers and farmers and makers! Praying for good weather next weekend so that I can experience this as well at Laurel Denise's first cville market showing (booth 99...april 17th...in case you've missed my million FB and twitter posts referring to said event). On Saturday, we went on a long walk downtown and into the corner and beyond and back with a short stop in at 12th Street Tap House where we both got a bit more sun than we'd planned. High low from the weekend? High, eating lunch on the rooftop on Saturday with my Cute Husband...and Arch's on Sunday night (always). Low? If I have to think about it for more than 10 seconds, then there is no low for me this time. That's the rule. Strict policy.

weekend fashion no. 6

I'm thinking that this weekend might be the time to check out the amazing rooftop pool that comes with my monthly gym membership. It's open and beautiful and gives a great view of the Blue Ridge Mountains while you're in the middle of downtown Charlottesville and it's supposed to be a perfect low 70-something on Saturday. Plus, how fancy do rooftop pools make you feel, right? All of these things line up to say that I must spend some time on this rooftop. Must. I also must check out the amazing Farmer's Market in town on Saturday morning. And, while I'm at it, a quick visit to Bodo's Bagels might need to be added to my must list.

bathing suit | blue tunic shirt | acorn brown leather bag | gold sandals | white skirt | laurel denise bird necklace

studio tour no. 040810

This has been one of those get odds and ends taken care of weeks in the studio. A lot of preparing for upcoming shows, getting some store re-orders out and taken care of, and organizing. Doesn't sound like much when it's here in black and white, but my to-do list each day has been pretty full and has kept me busy, despite the cold that sort of took over my head and brain functioning speed.

behind door number one

So we have exactly three doors in our apartment (since I'm not counting the pantry-made-into-hidden-business-storage door). When someone has to use the bathroom in our place, it's door number two. If they'd like to see the mammoth closet, it's door number one. And...uh...if they have to do some laundry (?!), it's door number three. We had some friends over a week or so ago and the gal of this couple friend of ours, who can definitely settle into a quick and easy home decor chat (this might be one of the reasons we're becoming fast friends), pointed out that maybe we should get some cool numbers for our doors so that people can easily locate which one we're talking about. Brilliant, yes? I think so, too, and now I'm on the hunt for some cool numbers or letters to spell out the numbers for our three little doors.

custom house numbers | wood numbers | patina bronze letters | oxidized cast bronze letters

blank canvas

Oh how I love the clean and simple and empty and scrumptious design of each and every one of these bags. Especially number one and number four. Cute Husband surprised me with that beauty last Christmas (heart).

1. grey bottom fleabag | 2. eena garden tote | 3. navy bottom tote | 4. yellow bottom canvas bag

weekend no. 040310

Couldn't have asked for a better or more beautiful or more perfectly filled with family Easter weekend! Definitely one that I wish could have lasted forever and ever. An afternoon at the park with one niece, an evening of dinner and drinks in DC with old friends, a day decorating eggs and eating delicious lunch platters with even more nieces and nephews, a night with cousins in Old Town, and a day of relaxed family hanging out equals a fantastic weekend. Fyi, Founding Farmers is the restaurant we went to on Friday night - the food was delicious (seriously, unbelievable - get the salmon) and they had this lemon pepper parmesan popcorn that kind of made my night. Or my weekend. It was brilliant. Also, I played with an iPad. I think this might be a toy I must have.

easter weekend fashion

Cute Husband and I are headed to the Washington, DC area this weekend. Nova, I guess, but I've always not liked that little shortened name of the area. Spending time with our family and relaxing and enjoying this beautiful Easter weekend weather!

grey striped dress | yellow shoes | matchstick jeans | headband | laurel denise heart necklace

studio tour no. 040110

I tried to april fool Mr. Husband this morning that they were all out of coffee at Java Java, the coffee house across the downtown mall from us. Which, by the way, has an awesome new artist on display for April. Amazing photographs. Anyway, I told him they only had fruit juice and I was super sorry about it. He didn't fall for it. Not sure if it was the silly grin slapped on my face or the fact that I really, really am the world's worst liar (probably the reason for the grin), but it was my first april fool's attempt in years and I'm feeling pretty good about it. What a silly way to ring in such a perfect month, don't you think?

Thoughts on this morning's festivities aside, here are some studio images from this week in Laurel Denise land. I made an attempt at creating a small window hanging, but as you can see in the photo above (third one down), I sort of stopped halfway through. The piece of glass is too small. I'm going to start again when I can get some larger pieces. What do you all think of window hangings? Does anyone really put them in their homes anymore? That first picture, the "nantucket" necklace, was shipped to Vis-a-Vis in Nantucket (um, duh) this week! They got a bunch of custom necklaces made just for their store. Stop by if you're in the area this Spring/Summer, I hear it's a beautiful store!