Homage to the Stamp

This poster print (21.5" x 29") commissioned by Tiny Showcase and created by Gavin Potenza is S-A-weet. Find it here and it is only $12.

Here is what Gavin said about his stamp designs, "The stamps were each inspired by various elements surrounding the culture of the countries, including the Swiss-born color theorist Johannes Itten, old French Tarot cards, the Brazilian boardwalk Copacabana, German designer Otl Aicher, Mayan patterns, the Swiss Alps, sweater patterns, and op artist Victor Vasarely."

I am all together bummed that this letterpress edition is sold out. boo.




(via Grain Edit)

Little Brown Pen

Look how adorable Little Brown Pen (one of my sponsors) is by creating this hip video clip to showcase her gorgeous templates and gift options!

crewcuts + chalkboards

I love how crewcuts incorporated a chalkboard and were perhaps inspired a little by Jan Von Holleben photos.




By the way, have you seen the photos that kids send in to his site? You can also send your own in. Here are a few of my favorites.

Turkey leftover meals

I made this Turkey Mulligatawny soup Monday, and thought it would be an excellent recipe to make with turkey leftovers. Next time I'll add a little more rice + curry powder and use regular plain yogurt instead of soy yogurt.

This turkey chili recipe is great too.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving dear readers! I hope you have a day full of happiness, gathering with family and friends.

(photos taken at last year's Thanksgiving)

The Mandate Press

Salt Lake City based Mandate Press does extraordinary letterpress work. Seeing the details and quality of their work up-close, along with the raving reviews I've heard from friends who are also customers has me thinking about placing my own order.

If you are in the market for some business cards, you can't go wrong with these. You can pick from an array of their well-designed templates or supply your own custom design and the price is incredibly reasonable 250 letterpress cards for $95!!

Carrot Flowers

Looking for a creative twist to add to your turkey day meal? I thought these carrot flowers were pretty cool which you can find over at the Kitchn. (via Happy Mundane)

The Home Book

A copy of The Home Book : Creating a Beautiful Home of Your Own by House Beautiful was happily sent my way. This information-packed book is full of lovely interior design photographs (over 500) which explore and help you articulate a personal design style. A great book to have at your fingertips I would recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a resourceful interior design book in the 'House Beautiful' style. With its unique clear cover, (hard to tell in the above photo) it would be a beauty sitting on a coffee table.

Christopher Bettig

Christopher Bettig's work is awesome. I love the textures, patterns, and colors. (first seen here)

Thinking about Seattle

Sharing some tips with a friend who is headed to Seattle got me thinking about how much I miss the northwest. It urged me to look through some of my photos of the area and I came across shots of the downtown Seattle Public Library. It is a pretty cool place to check out, but then again I love a good library.

Kor's Hydration Vessel

I am swooning over this water bottle, which has now been added to my wishlist. It is beautifully designed, BPA free, and portions of it profits support safe water programs. The A plus R store also has an impeccable variety of other well-designed goods check it out. (via Better Living Through Design)

Have a extraordinary weekend!

"Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity.... It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow."
-Melodie Beattie

Are you all excited for Thanksgiving next week ?! Wow... it snuck up on me this year.

(images : from marta V's flickr via V 2: by Tim Walker )

Florence and The Machine

Florence Welch's voice from the band Florence and the Machine is amazing.... haunting and with her quirky and unique image, I wonder why we haven't seen more?



I don't know if they have a full album out yet (correct me) but after listening to various tracks I am hooked and want more. Her sound combines the likes of Feist + Lykke Li +the Pierces + Grace Slick + her own vibe, I love it.



Dog Days are Over is my favorite song of the bunch and the video for the track is extremely artistic in a circus/clown kind of way, if you don't like scary clowns (like my sister) watching it could be a little off-putting. Personally I am still deciding whether or not I like it -- thoughts? Check out the rest of their jams here. I believe we'll be hearing and seeing more and more of this British group around.

ps. If you are interested in getting that track you can pre-order it here.

(via Pygmeestyle)

Josh Goleman

Remember this sweet bicycle wedding photographed by Josh Goleman? Check out his extraordinary new photo shoot for a lucky couple's engagement photos. I dig the quirky and original feel of it.

Beautiful Classic Books

Sabrina over at the Hello Lucky blog reminded me how much I adore these beautifully styled books that I first saw at Design*Sponge. I am a classic book reading type of gal and would love to put these lovelies designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith on my shelf. They can be found online in the UK here. (I hope a U.S. option/retailer will join the mix) See them up close here.




I am also enamoured with the redesign (by Kelly Blair) of these Harvard Business Review classics which I saw in the Chicago Airport. I wanted to buy 5 of the beautifully design slim books, because they were so gorgeous, and you can't go wrong with classic business stuff --- right? (images found here)



Looking for something pretty and mini? I have purchased these mini gramercy classics in the past, which have been great for 'on the go' reading.



The impeccably designed Penguin "great ideas" series I once talked about here, has also expanded to include series 2 and 3. Yes...



Other beautiful books/series I've had my eye on for a while include 1: Phaidon Color Library Series 2:Wallpaper City Guide 3: Merriam-Webster Fashion Color dictionary.

What books are you enjoying the covers and content of? Do share.

Living on the edge

Would you ever get this close to the edge of a 420 foot (128 meter) waterfall -- aka one of the largest falls in the world? In September and December people can swim as close as possible to the edge of Victoria Falls without falling over, in an area called Devil's Pool. Yikes... would you do it? It would definitely be an adrenaline rush!

(from here) Thanks Melissa.

AH... PARIS

I am going through the gazillion photos we took on our trip. Here is a sampling of shots from a page out of the snapfish book I ordered, --- will share more soon.

Knit toys

Seeing these cool knit toys encourages me to want to learn how to knit. They have cute little knitting cases and people even make knitting themed cupcakes. Mmmmm...

Find and catch the story-telling moment....

I am really loving these photos from meedchen's flickr account and the statement she shares to, "find and catch the story-telling moment".