keeping the focus

I've said it time and again. I'm terrrrrible at keeping up with this blog. Sorry folks! Having a full time job and being a real person in a real city has proven to be a little hectic to start, but I'm quickly getting the hang of it. New apartment, new "roommate" (hi honey), new workplace, new clients, new habits.

We moved in at the end of July and immediately bought all the essentials. Here I am, sitting here, telling you that we purchased all this random stuff the week we moved in just to fill the voids of the space we had here. This is the only thing I tell people who are moving/just moved to avoid doing. "You'll end up with a bunch of sh*t you don't even like," I would say. But here I am.

the opposite of our house.

The place was bigger than we thought it would be and with an absence of WINDOWS on the walls (basement living to the fullest), I began to panic a little. We bought mainly kitchen essentials because cooking is like totally our thing. We bought bookshelves because someone has a lot of books, and that someone is not the girl writing this blog. We bought the cheapest coffee table we could. We swooped in and got the hand-me-down-and-free dining table and chairs from his old house. We have yet to do anything with said dining table and chairs besides put a lot of junk on it. BUT... we bought a small rug for under my lovely couch, both of which I actually love. Those can stay for awhile.

My bedding mixed with Jeff's mattress was like heaven on earth the first night we got to sleep in the apartment. Other than that, the bedroom is bare. BARE, Y'ALL. I am having a mini crisis just trying to figure out what to do with it, so I resorted to Pinterest (per usual). Just to remind myself that did have a general look/feel of this place in mind when we found it and moved in. Sometimes this process needs to happen before things get really weird and you end up with some red paper lamp.

I bought one last year at this stage. It's currently behind me.

1. cozy home with pretty things.
2. coziest bedroom with neutrals and nothing crazy
3. awesome desk for doing awesome things like this blog and a secret project I've started in the last month or so. oh, and we are totally getting a desktop just like this wood one. Talk about a *big girl desk*

Let's make a list of adjectives just like in middle school. Just so we're on the same page.

I want our home to be:
cozy, comfy, pretty, inviting, welcoming, light, textural, colorful, fun

Having only two windows in the front of the house (thankfully this is the bedroom) and zero in the main living area has proven to be a little tricky. While we have great recessed lighting, I think lamps are going to be the savior here. Let's hope.

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a post that makes no sense

Oh hey there, blog. It's been so long. I'm sorry it's taken [yet another] snowy day to bring us back together for the first time since Halloween.

This post is about getting your shit together and doing what you want to do in life. Accomplish what you want to accomplish! Don't let your day job get in the way of what you really strive to achieve. Hell, maybe even try to combine your goals into your day job, if possible. I know it's possible for me. Some people, however, those financial consultants that really dream of being golf pros, maybe this isn't as attainable.

But if you're working at a boutique small business that is already basically a design firm/store in itself, why not try to merge your graphic design talents in there as well? Shake things up a bit. Everyone will benefit from a rebranding strategy. You will get to do graphics work, and the business will look better. Win win, right?

Maybe. Let's explore.

First, a sketch. One that reminds me to keep sketching, because I can. This is one of a series of 30 from a garden at school. It was the bomb. I have vowed to sketch one page per day. Maybe this will help me determine my priorities.

Let's start with where my greatest interests lie. Interior design? Not really. Though it should be top on my list seeing as I spent about 6 years studying the science of interior design... This is not my greatest interest. I've managed to twist and turn it into more of a hobby and past time. Ironically enough it's what I spend my days doing (in peoples' homes, though, and not commercial or public spaces - which I've found to be more rewarding anyway as you develop a personal relationship with these people). I could spend hours on home styling blogs and pin boards and yadda and yadda. I spend the better half of my time on Pinterest looking through home images to get ideas for my new home in the end of the summer. Maybe it's a girl thing. We nest. We gather. We make homes.

Gotta make your loved ones cozy! Duh.

But I'm not sitting here 24/7 in Revit putting together a building with HVAC and doing all the boring stuff. And for that, I am glad. I remember in studio critiques when my professors would ask me what a particular aspect of my design would be made out of. "What material do you think this is?" they would say. Hell if I know. I just know what I want it to look like.

For that reason, maybe I wasn't the best interior design student. But I did know one thing - I had an eye for graphic quality. My other professors noticed this early on, and I probably knew that back in the day when I had a website in middle school (to this day I cannot remember what was actually on there, but I remember making it pretty). 

Unfortunately, I realized this about halfway through my degree. No backing out now. So what did I do? Turned all of my projects into a graphic project. I challenged myself to present it in a way that no one else was presenting. To turn an interior project into a graphic project. But still having enough "interior design" qualities to make it okay with my professors. It lacked some technicalities, but in the end I think they know what I was trying to do and who I was trying to be.

Let's stop rambling and start getting to the point. My top interests are:

1. graphic design

2. food/baking

3. interiors

Yes, food and baking wins out interiors. After work, I come home, window shop online, pin design pins, and most of all - read cookbooks. I typically fall asleep reading a cookbook. I think about food most of the time. I watch food network any time that I'm home. Every night before leaving work, I find a recipe to make. Must be a given talent that I have to be able to read a recipe, because apparently this hard for some people... I would like to help those people. How sad it would be to not know how to read a recipe. And for those of you wondering - yes, reading a recipe is different than reading reading.

Graphics & food... Graphics & food... Sounds like Spoon Fork Bacon to me, but also sounds like an opportunity to blog more. And that I will. Maybe I'll even start photographing some food after I cook it for my honey. That is, if he doesn't eat all of it instantly. Also if we ever make dinner before 830 PM on a weeknight when the sun is still up.

Likeliness: Zero.

blogging is hard

Between working about 30-35 hours a week in the store, and countless hours outside the store working on evolved and freelance work, blogging is hard. I love making graphics for posts and getting a good one all together and presentable. Getting home from a long day of dealing with pretty terrible strangers really takes it out of you - and on that note, I think everyone at some point in their lives should have to work retail for at least a month to see how terrible some people can be. It'll make you a better stranger to others, trust me. I am rarely rude to anybody.

What's that one quote? You can tell a lot by a person by how they treat others who can do nothing for them? I think so. That quote is my ish.

Moving on, Instagram is just about the only thing I keep up to date these days, seeing as it keeps me inspired and is easy as shit to use. You have got to be able to see things in different light or else you'll never see the beauty in the world. Trust me on this one. I may be young but that's one thing I've held close to me since 'nam.

ONE • designing a board for a fictitious couple moving from upstate NY to downtown NYC with no children; a musician and an artist - this story was screaming for a crazy fun apartment. I mean, hello? I went all out with a lotus pink sectional, mint walls, and yellow accents. Very pretty. Very me.

TWO • I bought this set of pencils a couple years ago in Norwich, VT while spending the day at Dartmouth. I picked up this one from the cup one day last week and thought the message on it resonated with my current life. My paychecks may be diddly but I'm still pretty content with where I am and most importantly, where I'm headed

THREE • the flight from Vegas got in around 8:30 pm, and I didn't get home until 10:30 or so. We had an install for a DC model at 8 am bright and early the next day - but somehow my jet lag subsided until after the install (thank gawd). These white gallery frames looked magnificent if I do say so myself.

FOUR • before working at west elm, I hardly ever wore flats, but since our dress code strictly calls for close-toed shoes, I have no choice. I finally got up the courage to trash all the ones I've been wearing since August as they're 1. disgusting and 2. disgusting. These two pairs at UO spoke to me in ways that only oxfords can speak to a mild hipster at heart. And my first loafers. WHO KNEW? I tried loafers all through fall but could never get myself to like them. But these. These are different. They were worth the money I spent on them.