god's favorite beefcake - - - isabella

pickle time love

I went to Pickle Time (my fav weird little burger joint in my tiny town) with Emily today. I ate a tasty burger, of course, and we giggled at all the funny pickle drawings. I particularly liked a "GodzDILLa" drawing of a pickle godzilla (puns never get old), but I think my favorite was this sweet little drawing of pickle love.

signs of spokane

Last weekend when I was in Spokane, I took a lot of pictures of signs. I always think signs are kind of cool and Spokane seems to have so particularly good ones. Anyone notice a literary theme? I think Spokane might be obsessed with a certain book. (hint: the sign with the cool robot atop it says "Boo Radley's") I also scattered in a few interior shots of bar decor. Taxidermy always catches my interest.

Lilac Garden

I think I mentioned in my last post that I going to Spokane with some of my friends. While we were there, we went to these great lilac gardens, which apparently lilacs are a Spokane thing? It was actually the Lilac Festival or Lilac Days or some such thing while we were there and we watched part of the parade, but mainly we just enjoyed wandering around the fragrant plants after visiting a rather delightful bakery.

roadtrip/sandwich

denim jacket - thrifted, sweatshirt - craft fair

I'm in Spokane right now, and this has essentially been my uniform the past couple days. The sweatshirt I got at a craft fair in Seattle, and it's made locally. The Levi's jacket is one of my favorite items of clothing ever. I found it at Value Village, already beat up, faded, and full of holes. It fits perfectly. 

Breakfast Sandwich

Toast 2 slices of whole wheat sourdough. Cook 2-3 slices of bacon, reserving the rendered fat in pan. Cook  a bunch of spinach in bacon fat, and then fry two eggs. Spread toasted bread with mayonnaise and a grainy, sweet mustard, and pile the cooked spinach, bacon slices, and fried eggs on one slice of bread. Top with salt, pepper, and grated parmesan cheese, and a big pile of fresh sprouts.

artificial light

Anderson Park in Redmond has been the site of a rather wonderful art installation by fiber artist Suzanne Tidwell. It's been up for a few months and is coming down in a couple weeks, but I only just made it over there to take photos today. I drive by it nearly every day and it is delightful, but getting out of the car and wandering through the colored forest felt a bit like a fairytale. As I took pictures, I started thinking that each of the yarnbombed trees had a bit of an individual personality. I especially liked the slightly damaged ones, the ones you could see the effects of weather on. Holes and blobs of sap caught my attention and really brought home the contrast between nature and human creation.

I think I was dressed rather appropriately, don't you think? I've been housesitting and ran out of clean clothes but I didn't want to drive home, so I just went shopping. The stripey tank and yellow shrug got me in such a summery mood, I also picked a new nail color--Essie's Meet Me At Sunset. Also, I finally picked up a bottle of Seche Vite, and I love it. It works so well! My nails have never looked this good.

While I was taking pictures, a group of ladies where knitting at a picnic table. As I walked by, we did the nod and mumble hi thing you do with strangers in parks, and just as I was passing by, I realized I knew the woman sitting at the far side of the table. She owned this fabulous diner in town when I was a baby and is a long time family friend. So I ran around the table and hugged her, and luckily she recognized me too! That could have been awkward. Then, when I was walking back to my car, this guy playing ball with his kids asked me if I was a photographer and we ended up talking about art and photography and cameras for quite some time. He had studied in New York and was a big fan of Scott Schuman of The Sartorialist. He was kind of surprised that I knew his work as well, and got really excited. Connections with people like that, when they're so unexpected, whether seeing someone you used to know or discovering a shared passion with a stranger, are so cool.

shirt & shrug - target, jeans - gap, moccasins - minnetonka

meet me at sunset - essie

RIP MCA

I woke up this morning and checked twitter and immediately saw a million tweets about Adam Yauch's passing. Actually the first one I saw was from Edgar Wright. I texted Justina and Alex. In middle school, I was Mike D, Justina was Adrock, and Alex was MCA. Alex had heard already, Justina had not. Our Beastie Boys namesakes are actually a big part of how Justina and I became friends. They've been a favorite for years, my first real concert was seeing the Beastie Boys with my dad and running into Justina and Alex, there with Justina's sister. The past few hours have been spent listening to their songs and watching their videos, reading articles about Adam Yauch, and crying, intermittently. He was such a talented individual. Music, film (he directed a lot of the Beastie Boys' videos, as Nathanial Hörnblowér), charity work, he did it all. This is a great loss. Read this and this and watch all your favorite videos, listen to all your favorite songs, watch live performances and look at pictures, and cry. That's what I'm doing today.

blog redesign

I was getting a little sick of the harsh black background and overall dark look of the ol' blog, so I switched it up! What do you think? I went with a light, vintage, crafty vibe. I'm so not tech savy, so I actually made me header by hand, on paper, and then scanned it. I used a faux bois stamp with a pretty light turquoise-y ink, washi tape from Uwajimaya, and my blog's name is handwritten. I also scanned a vintage dress for the background. I'm really excited to have a fresh new look, but because I also changed the layout I'm going to have to go back through all my old posts and fix the overlarge photos. So far I've dealt with the first couple pages, but if you happen to see some funky looking older posts, I'm so sorry and I'm working on getting those fixed.

pink glamour

tshirt - old navy, velvet trousers - asos, purse - thrifted dooney & burke, clogs - jeffrey campbell, lips - revlon really red, glasses - joseph marc, nails - smoke screen from ulta

I am trying to become the kind of woman who can wear pink velvet trousers with complete confidence. I am not there yet, but I think confidence in clothing is one of those fake-it-'til-you-make-it sort of deals. Just wear that impossibly glamorous thing you love, and act like it's totally ordinary. You may totally self-conscious, but pretend you're not for long enough and that'll just fade away.

My first outing with these amazing velvet pants (found through the lovely Sal's awesome Insomniac Sale Pick  feature on Already Pretty) was a bit of a trial by fire. I finally got the correct size and decided I wanted to wearing them right away, damn it. I got dressed with nothing planned for the day, thinking maybe I would just hang out and read a book, and be quietly glamorous until I got used to the crazy things and would brave other people seeing them. That may sound a little wussy but pink velvet, wide legged, high waisted trousers are quite a thing to rock. But at the last minute, J and I decided to go see a comedy show in Seattle, which is how I found myself walking down the street on Capitol Hill, by myself (we were late so I let J out while I looked for parking), in pink velvet, pretending my damn heart out that this was not weird.

And you know what? I still felt weird by the time I got to Neumos. And that's ok. I was less aware of myself while Jon Benjamin made us laugh, and by the time J and I were eating burritos outside our favorite burrito place, I was feeling pretty good. Now, whether that confidence will stick around, I'm not sure, but I'm proud of myself for rocking these crazy pants.

I also got new glasses! I love how thick and square they are and the color is great. So happy to not be taping my old ones together every day. Red lipstick was a must with such glamorous pants, but I kept the rest of my outfit simple. A fitted tshirt balanced the voluminous pants and heeled clogs gave me some height. 

Justina also looked super cute of course! My cousin Riley recently cut her hair and put some temporary pink in it which was super cute and she needs to do permanently. Hint hint. Soft pink with blonde is one of my absolute favorite hair things. Too bad the color doesn't show up in this picture. Also, I must remember to get a picture of her bag next time. It's the same soft pink I can't seem to get enough of, with skulls. It's perfect.