Local Store Spotlight

Remember that part in "The sound of Music" when Julie Andrews starts singing about her favorite things, like brown paper packages tied up with strings, and snow on your eyelashes? that's exactly what i think of every time I am lucky enough to be in Northfield, MN visiting quite possibly my favorite store in the world.

Digs has countless yards of beautiful vintage reproduction fabrics, delicious spools of ribbons in apothecary boxes and old armoires, wonderful letterpress cards, and enough crafty supplies and notions to entertain all kinds of handmade ideas. Go there, spend a ton of money, and then return again. I want this place to be here forever.

DIGS:
310 division street south northfield mn 55057
tel 507 664 9140 fax 507 664 9109

Sickly Sweet Valentines

I love these valentines from the Martha Stewart website. I'm a big fan of using doilies in general. Last Thursday I used a bunch as stencils to to complete this art piece. the contrasting geometrical shapes they make are so pretty and antique-y, yet still modern.

I love Valentines. No other day allows you to be so whimsical, capricous, or charming. and no other holiday involves as much handmade, heartfelt crafts, notes, and letters. Perfect. It may just be my favorite holiday- apart from Halloween of course.

If you're in the mood for more lovey-dovey cute overload, hop on over to Le Love, this great blog FILLED with super romantic pictures and heart-flutteringly romantic vignettes. I've wasted a good fifteen minutes everyday scrolling through, sighing. This will melt your heart. (Like the Jenny Lewis song?)

January is for "Just get organized already"

Trying to organize my desk/paperwork/resipes/old art work/sketchbooks/journals. This is proving to be a a slow process. How much paperwork can I honestly have accumulated over the last 18 years of my young life? A lot it seems. I wish my drawers were as pretty and perfect as those above.

Speaking of getting organized, has anyone been to the ikea website recently? Their full-page bedroom view application is incredible, check it out.

First Entry

I just bought this skirt.

Russel and Hazel has the best stuff for writing memoranda. Their store in Edina makes my heart go pitter-pat.

" (She) was a perceptive, graceful, sophisticated, woman who was sensitive to everybody's weaknesses but her own and found everyone absurd except for herself. She laid great, fastidious stress on small matters of taste and style. She was always augmenting things. Approaching events were never coming, but upcoming. It was not true that she wrote memorandums praising herself and recommending that her authority be enhanced to include all operations; she wrote memoranda. And the prose in the memoranda of others was always turgid, stilted, or ambiguous... It never escaped her memory that neither black nor white was a colour, and she never used verbal when she meant oral. A virgin audience was a stimulating opportunity was grist for her mill, a stimulating opportunity to throw open her whole dazzling erudite treasure house of puns, wisecracks, slanders, homilies, anecdotes, proverbs, epigrams, apothegms, bon mots, and other pungent sayings. "
- Joseph Heller, augmented.