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.