My New Obsession

So I recently stumbled upon this Portland blog by following both of the contributors (photographer Lisa Warninger and blogger/stylist Chelsea Fuss) on Twitter. I had yet to find a style-savvy blog that really captured the unique street-style going on here in Portland. These ladies have a real eye for it and I am so excited to see the blog grow and be filled up! Check them out at urbanweeds. 

Busy Weekend

This weekend was crazy with the move happening. My parents came up to help with their trailer (and take Darrin's bed back with them) so that helped a lot. All the big stuff is moved, just need to get all of the smaller stuff in carloads now.

Hoping to get the place spiffed up enough to have a few friends over for First Thursday here in Portland, but we'll see. It has a ways to go! A great surprise though was that Saturday night after a day full of moving & stress the girls came by to do a champagne toast in our new place with us! SO great and I'm glad they got to see it already :)

And yes... One of my first priorities is already underway... sun tea in the window sill!

Our new place!

Our first night in our new place was fun. We checked in, got our keys, etc. then went to dinner at our favorite Italian place that's now in our neighborhood! Then we came back home & made our tiny little makeshift bed & talked about planning it out... Another cool thing is that since we live a block away form the art school, we drove by this morning to find easels outside with free signs! SO I now have a new easel as well as a new place! :)

You can see our blanket + pillow bed over in our sleeping alcove!

Darrin enjoying one of our giant windows! They look out over the Brewery blocks towards the rivers. Great views of the bridges, city lights and even Mt. Hood!

I think I could get used to waking up to this every morning as well... with a little furniture soon of course, but that is what this weekend is for! :)

Some of the fun sites...

The sights that were my favorite in LA were the random things we passed that I hadn't seen anywhere else...

Whether a giant donut...

... or these car washes all had these great giant letters on them, but all in different colors/ typefaces. All only roughly a block or two form the next, but we passed a ton on our way out to USC.

This was by far my favorite reoccurring trend in LA. There were tons of these great old theaters that had been reclaimed and converted into second-lives for them. This particular one I was able to get a snapshot of out the car window had been converted into a place for church. Really incredible alternate uses for these beautiful old buildings, you'll see another  example of a later stop on our trip in a future post...

LA!

So I have been a little MIA lately as I had been down in LA for the past 4 days. I chaperoned 9 high school kids down there as their "reward" trip for winning in the NPCE program I volunteer with. It's the Nike Product Creation Experience and is designed to mentor and expose the kids to how the production of a shoe happens (and all of the jobs/roles within that process). Lots of fun stuff happened in LA but I am still processing photos to get them up here... 

A sneak peek though involves roller-skating, Sony pictures, art schools, Pete Carroll, and lots of shopping with teenage girls ;)

... hold tight, they're coming!

Thursday!

Thursday we officially get our keys to our new place! 

I'm so excited I can't even say. We've been talking a lot about how we are going to paint walls with giant type, find old broken neon signs, make cool work tables out of doors, etc for the new place. If living there is half as exciting as talking about living there I will be a happy little panda!

Puppies!

So Sunday was Alisa's Bridal shower... which was super fun in general. Fun to see the grove girls, and catch up on what they've been up to, and it's always fun to see her in her element. Another fun part of it was that it was at Kelsey's house (which is ADORABLE) and that they just had a litter of lab puppies about 8 weeks ago. Needless to say I was in trouble! Below are a few pictures I took that were sent directly to the boyfriend in my subtle puppy conversation we have been having, but how could you not?!

One of every flavor!

My favorite little buddy! (Who conveniently was still up for grabs!)

They were all tuckered out after the barrage of Bridal Shower attendees snuggled them to death!

The boyfriends response to my photo slideshow via email...

Em's present

So I made a "Twilight Series" Book cover for Em for her birthday. I made it to fit the last book so far snugly, just a little room in case the next one gets bigger. I found this fabric at Bolt over on Alberta. They have the best selection of printed fabrics I've found for simple projects like this. Also not having to brave the giant craftstore/warehouse helps! 

Loved the big button though, felt very Emily, and included a tiny sparrow charm inside since that's the symbol that represents all of my groups of close girls to me (as seen in my tattoo). Overall I think it turned out ok, although there are already things I'd change!

Happy Birthday Em!

A quick Happy Birthday to one of my favorite people in the whole world! Happy Birthday my dear Emily! Can't wait to see you on Saturday to celebrate! Enjoy your special day!

I felt like we would wear these if we could.... they would be fun bowling!

(Photos via PartyPerfect)

Big News!

So it's official! Today Darrin and I will sign the papers to get our loft together! It's a great little place down on the edge of the Pearl, just in enough that we can walk everywhere, but still be in a cool older/industrial building and not a high rise. 

I can't wait to move into it, but am really going to miss my girlies... :( It's been an incredible time living with two of my favorite girls so it'll be super sad to close this chapter, but also very exciting to open the next. We officially get keys on the 25th of June, so I'm starting to really get excited, and also a little nervous!

Don't you just love that brick wall?!

Exciting news!

So lots of exciting news coming up, but the first of which is that I have made the decision to move in with my lovely boyfriend! We will be looking for a place together that we can start out as our very own. I'm incredibly excited about it + the fun times ahead... :) 

More details to come in the near future!

I would love...

... to get a cute present like this! I love the big balloon! Why is it always the simplest things that are the best?!

(via Party Perfect)

Waiting Game...

Also some big news possibly on the horizon. Waiting to hear back before I share as to not jinx the chances. A lot of big things are happening right now & big changes... exciting but scary too! 

Stay Tuned...

Pixie Dogs!

Yet another funny little Pixie dog I took for a walk. If you ever get the chance in Portland it's a greta thing to volunteer with. It's called The Pixie Project and they usually have dogs down at the DogStar in the Pearl. You literally get to take these sweet little dogs for walks while getting to know them in the Pearl. These dogs always go like hot-cakes though, so if you fall in love with one, snatch it up! I learned my lesson ;)

This was the little cutie I had  last Friday. I got off work for summer hours and snuck down to walk her!

She had a mohawk!

Darrin Demands bag

So this weekend Darrin realized he had left his favorite little carry-all bag at my place & needed something to carry sunglasses, wallet, sketchbook, etc in to go up to the park. SO he turns to me & goes, "Just make me one really quick?" To which I scoffed for a brief moment, then asked for an old t-shirt. Turns out I had stumbled upon a revisit to a project I had wanted to do a long time ago & never got the chance... as well as a boy with a wealth of materials for my project. Old concert shirt bags. I am always left with all of these great shirts I can't wear/don't fit that I love, so why not re-purpose them into something that I can use all the time? 

This was an old shirt of Darrin's for the band Cursive. It actually didn't turn out that bad for being a quick little project that was a bit rushed & un-planned!

Finished Bag...

He even wanted to model it for me ever-so-sweetly when it was finished.

He wanted to work on his project too without taking it off...

One of the fun things I love about us working together are the little things like this. His shoe print & my footprint in the sawdust on the living room floor :)

Some fun shoes!

So some of my favorite shoes I worked on while in the Women's category at work were the Troupes. They are a dance shoe built for female B-girls and had a fun, dunk feel to them. The high-top was always fun to color and a few of my favorites I worked on finally hit the market! Check them out!

(Keep in mind these are the employee prices, not the actual retail prices I screenshot)

(Click on any of the images for a larger view)

A little late to post...

So I was working on this project last weekend (as in the  one with Memorial Day), but hadn't had a chance to get my photos off of my camera yet! So this was just a little project I had been wanting to do for awhile, so got crafty & attacked it. 

I have been loving some of the ruffle stuff I've seen online, but loved the idea of making it more geometric. So I took a great linen I found & chopped it up for a fun addition to a little $7 target tank top. Didn't take long at all, and was incredibly easy. I ended up doing two layers of the ruffle in the end because the original layer just didn't have enough depth for me... :)

It felt incredible to bust out my sewing machine finally! Happy Memorial Day!