Tomorrow I will get back to my usual posts of creative projects, and design...but today is dedicated to my most FAVORITE best friend EVAH!!!  :-[) My husband Jesse!!! He is turning 27 today! I can't tell you enough how much I love this man and how lucky I am to be his wife! We have been married almost 4 months and it just keeps getting better and better....

  Happy Birthday babe! I love you so much! :)

Hope everyone has an awesome Memorial Day Weekend planned!  Yesterday for work I drove up to Logan Utah with some other co-workers to quickly do some store merchandising. Check out how beautiful of a drive we had.... AND we passed some people having a Memorial Weekend Rendezvous in TEE-PEES!!! Oh I soooo want to be there!!!! And on a side note:  Tomorrow, Jesse's dad is getting married. I am very excited for this... Jesse and his siblings are as well but since their mom passed away a year and a half ago it kinda makes it a little hard at times. However, we are all so happy to see Lee [my father-in-law] find someone that he can spend the rest of his life with who makes him very happy! It is going to be a tearful day tomorrow. : /


p.s. if you are not going away for the weekend, check back tomorrow for a pretty rockin art project you just might want to try. :)


MAY 29 -  what was I thinking  with saying thee above ^ .... I had wedding stuff ALLL day yesterday. :-p  Bah!

I love The Ocean Blue.... especially THIS song of theirs... When I find a song I love I will listen to it over and over again - AT LEAST a 100+ times in that week!  I do this because it helps with remembering that exact time, season, smell and look of everything at that moment, or week etc... The Ocean Blue reminds me so much of when my old friend and I went on a month long road trip back when I was 17. We drove from Utah up to Seattle then down to Portland, San Fransisco, L.A. then back up to San Fransisco and back to Utah. That was one of the best trips I have ever taken. And every time I hear The Ocean Blue play I am instantly reminded of driving up towards Seattle in the rain and passing all the green pine trees....passing the truckers and doing the fist pull to get them to honk their horns.... fun times. :)

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If you would like, a free little print out.  It is 8.5x11 so just click on the image and it will open up to it's original size. :) This quote is one of my favorites. It's so true, and there is no arguing it.... how we view things, where our happiness lies is all up to us and no one else, no matter what the circumstances are. 

Hello hello! Today I have a fun little project for you all.  Those of you who go to the thrift store and often see beautiful silk or rayon tops that are way to big for you and dowdy looking might want to read on. :) I love to sew but some days I want my instant gratification. I want to snap my fingers and *poof* the coolest piece I've designed in my head is made. I love looking for big ill-fitting tops just as much as ones that actually fit me, because the big ones just need a 1,2,3 quick change with this little method.... and you kinda get to skip the draping part that takes quite awhile [not that it's a bad thing]. Try it for yourself, it should take about under an hour to reconstruct.

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And then while you're sewing.... how about some good work music? :) 

+ RUBIES  +

Love Zoe Taylor's fashion illustrations! So inspiring, especially on a rainy day like today.

Hey everyone. Hope you all had a great weekend. We had a pretty productive one for the most part... got a lot of projects done which was great. However, Saturday I got hit really bad again with one of my "sad" spells.  Lately I have been struggling horribly with my job. Ever dealt with this before? I know I shouldn't complain because I truly am grateful to have something that helps pay my bills...but it is extremely depressing to work for a company that doesn't utilize one's skills when they really need to.  Side note: I wouldn't be writing this if I knew people from my company read my blog...I purposely have kept this separate from bosses and work so I can vent if I need to.  It drives me mentally crazy some days that I studied fashion at Parsons and yet they won't even have me design anything. I know the reasons why [which I will refrain from writing on here] and it has nothing to do with design but with a whole lot of egos I think.  My hope is to find a company to work for here in Salt Lake that is a real design team. That knows it's employee's worth and VALUES that. I feel that since working at DownEast it has slowly brought out something incredibly horrible in me which is back-bitting. I would never consider myself to be someone who gossips. However, lately I have been...and it has been a lot. I have sooo many issues w/ DownEast and with some of the employees there and I have found [as well as my husband Jesse] that I have been complaining [gossiping] nonstop about them.  As much I would love to justify my behavior and make excuses for it.....at the end of the day it is still gossip. It is sooo toxic and has mentally worn me out. If this is something any of you have ever struggled with or do struggle with, what are some things you do to refrain?  I know this will not suddenly go away today or tomorrow... but I have to get a hold on this and control it. :(  Sorry for the not so happy post.... but this is what I am currently dealing with and I need a lot of help right now.

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On a happier more productive note: 

My father-in-law is marrying a very lovely lady this coming weekend. I am sooo sooo happy excited for this. I will be getting a wonderful mother in law who is so warm and kind. Something I have longed for for a very long time.  For their reception I am making some super easy paper lanterns that will be outside. Just in case some of you don't know how to make these...I wrote up some easy instructions. These ones I made for myself so I could show Trish [my soon to be mother-in-law] what I was talking about when I mentioned the idea.

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Then I also finally got some mats made for our kitchen.  This was sooo quick and easy to do. With some leftover black house paint that we had lying around, I painted the plaid and herringbone on the duck cloth [aka canvas] with a rugged old paint brush so to make the designs as imperfect as possible. The only thing though with using house paint is that it does take a couple hours to dry, however I feel it is way more durable than using your regular fabric paint. 

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Lastly,  what helped me [besides Jesse] get out of my mini depression this weekend was my discovery of a new favorite band: Foster the People! As usual I have played them over and over again.... I think I may have made Jesse crazy from this now. But creating and music is my therapy..... : / 

Bah! Totally forgot to post this this morning. Lucky lady Denise, your little plate will be mailed to you in the next couple days. :) Thanks for everyone's comments! I can't wait to do a post of all your favorite blogs! Also, be on the lookout for another giveaway....hoping to make this a weekly habit of mine. See you all in the morning.

Going to see Colt Bowden's new works at Brick & Mortar tonight - it is his Hobo's & Zombies show with friend Mike Murdock.   I hope to get another piece of his to add to my Bowden Collec-see-oh-nay! :-[) If you live in or near Salt Lake City.... you should really get out to this tonight and snag a piece of his! Have a great weekend everyone!!! Oh...and doors open at 6pm

Also sharing the space is Colt's friend Mike Murdock:

Last night I was creating with one of my girlfriends. We made these.... :) 

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While working on our little project, we somehow got to talking about the band James! We were both shocked that we both new about James! Most of my friends now and when I was 14 [when I started listening to them thanks to my older sister] had never heard of James. For some reason, turning 14 was a big event for me...bigger than turning 16 because I was now old enough to go to church dances back in Washington state where I grew up - they were HUGE and so much better than our high school dances! That was such an epic year for me in music as well. I had just gotten a 7 disc cd player for Christmas and was now buying cd's.  James, Cocteau Twins, The Cranberries, The Beetles,  The Cure, & The Pixies is what I listened to over and over again. :::::: One of the songs I was singing for my friend last night was "Say Something" [music video below] she had never heard that one OR any of their other songs from my favorite album of James: Laid from 1993.   Aside from Say Something being a favorite their album title song "Laid" was actually my number 1 favorite. Even though at 14 I new the song was about sex....somehow it didn't really phase me as it does today - plus at 14...come on, I thought I was SOOOO mature! hahaha lol... honestly, it was the beat though that made me so happy inside. "Skindiving" is my third favorite on that album. :)

Jame's  Live version of Laid! :)

Still on my mood board / collage kick.  These three "inspiration" pages below are from a mini collection I did in the Spring of 2009 at school, and was for girls ages 5-9.   I love mixing prints which was one of the things that drew me to children's wear.  Kid's [if their parents let them] will naturally mix prints. The outfits they come up with are so incredibly cute and it is instant.  There isn't this long thought process behind it...and when I say long I mean anything beyond ten minutes. 

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This next collection was geared towards teens [that was my focus senior year at Parsons] and this was one of the collections I worked on over the summer right before senior year.  Come fall, we had to present our teachers and classmates with 3 collections 80 designs per collection and then we all help each other decide which is the best one to make our thesis and actually create for the rest of the year.  I didn't choose this one....and sometimes I have regrets over it, but then I remind myself that I can work just as hard being outside of school as I would if I was still in school.  This collection was inspired by one of my favorite artist's Silver Horn.  Lastly, my favorite thing about designing collections would have to making all the treatments...it was soo time consuming, but when I look back through all my croquis books [sketch books] and see all the handi work that was developed I am really proud of myself.  One of the advantages of going to a design school is that afterwords one usually has an insane body of work which then... makes it a lot easier to justify the amount of debt I acquired.

Having a mood board is a must must must! Well at least for me... and it should be for you too if you don't already have one! :) This was one of the conversations my husband Jesse and I had last night.  He is such an amazing artist...and in our apt. we have created our own mini studios that are back to back. My space is covered with things that inspire me and my own work as well....Jesse's is pretty much blank.  He is finally going to get on the band wagon and make himself a mood board! I am sooooo excited to see what really inspires him!!!  These are some of the funnest and easiest art projects to do. And they should always be reoccurring.  :[) plus, they are THEE perfect rainy day activity.

Roxy Marj mood board #1 [shadow box]

Roxy Marj mood board #2 [bulletin board covered in linen]

   

Ahhh Monday --- Did you have a great weekend? I was hoping last friday that my weekend would feel long, and it actually did! I finally got started on our living room curtains. Oh to be a stay at home mom or to work from home is a huge dream of mine as I am sure it is for many of you as well..... I do so many projects with decorating/ designing/ clothes etc. that I want to share with everyone but just the amount of time it takes to document everything is a job in itself. :/  Someday! :)

So.... our curtains...to save money I bought one linen "off-price" window panel at DownEast [they sell curtains individually at their home stores] and I cut it in half. Then I made some 7" diamonds to fill the extra space below,  I also wanted to mimic our curtains in the dinning room and have that "cut-out" look.  I have only finished one window panel so far, hence my photo of just the one window....and how they look from the outside is just as pretty as inside! :)

This is a really EASY project to do...but just a little time consuming.

If I had more of the same or similar type of curtain fabric to spare, I would have added a 6" panel at the bottom, but since I don't..instead I used these cute teeny tiny hand crocheted beads from the 30's that I have had for some time now & stitched those at the bottom.

AND........

Yes, my friends! Another free item to score! 

Hand painted crow on ceramic plate - dishwasher safe and comes w/ plate holder & hook. 

I just painted this little guy over the weekend and thought this would be another fun item to giveaway.

If you want to be in the drawing for him, just leave me a link of your favorite blog [or your own] that you love to read! :)  Good luck - You have till Sunday May 22. 

:) My new favorite animal:

Happy Monday! Have you seen this film already? I have not ...and I plan on buying it here! 

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and of course the most FANTASTIC dresser on the planet is in this film. 

Iris Apfel!

Back in my Junior year at Parsons, I had the pleasure of meeting her.  One of my VERY favorite teachers : Miss June Weir, is good friends with her and did an interview with Iris for her NY Ladies Society class... She is such a fascinating person, style icon and full of inspiration!

Happy weekend! Ohhhh happy weekend. It is sunny and yesterday was sooo warm! Camping, fishing, hiking weather is getting nearer and nearer! :-[) 

I can't believe I live in a state that has mountain goats! My goal this summer is hike enough that I can capture my own pictures of these adorable animals! :)

>>> found via American Trails <<<