Wednesday Breakfast

Ha may as well keep the breakfast thing going. Its been so fun! 


Today's menu: chopped scallions, zucchini, and spinach in a skillet with some olive oil & salt until soft & yummy. I put those in a bowl while I fried 2 small local farm eggs & cut up some small heirloom cherry tomatoes. Greens in the bowl, then the tomatoes, then eggs on top. 

Meanwhile I'm waiting for a big fancy paper/envelope delivery. Excited to spend this afternoon letterpressing wedding stationery for a friend in Santa Barbara, and also moving announcements for my parents. Finishing up a website design for a friend, and also for myself. Busy, busy but loving the self-employed life!! 

Time for Breakfast

I'm a morning person by nature. I'm really just not a big sleeper. Though I no longer set a morning alarm for work, I find that I'm still waking up with the sun. The joyous part though, is instead of racing to work, I am really enjoying a leisurely morning before starting my day. Yesterday I made toast with dijon mustard & a fried egg with an iced Americano. Today, a spinach/strawberry/banana smoothie with a cold raw/vegan breakfast salad consisting of heirloom baby tomatoes, thin cucumber slices, avocado, and olive oil with fresh dill. 

Looking at inspiring blogs, writing in my own blog, jotting to-do lists for the day... I'm still busy as ever, but now its my own busy, with time for a good breakfast, and I like that.

Sunday Evening

After a total insane week at work (and another one coming up - albeit my last at MSL!), I also spent all day yesterday & today working on my website, various letterpress design jobs, and trying to get all my files from my MSL computer. 


Home now from a yummy sushi dinner & Blue Marble ice-cream. Malbec in hand, feet up, the Discreet Charm of the Borgeiouse on Netflix streaming.. what more could I want?

PS - How awesome would this be for a Halloween costume?!

Willing to be Lucky

It is with a joyful heart that I announce to you, my dear readers, my big news. I have quit my job from Martha Stewart Living, from the publishing industry, and from the corporate world. I am now officially a starving artist, and nothing could make me happier. I am free.

I moved to New York City in August of 2007 with a simple dream in my heart: to be a graphic designer at Domino Magazine. With some good luck, that dream worked out for me. In my truest heart of hearts, I believe in what E.B. White is quoted to have said some years ago: 

Here is New York. It can destroy an individual, or it can fulfill him, depending a good deal on luck. No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky.

The combination of great luck and much hard work also landed me incredible jobs at New York Magazine, and most recently as an art director at Martha Stewart Living. I have been SO LUCKY! 

I have been blessed with an optimistic outlook on life. Its sometimes borderline comical and almost always cheesy & hopelessly romantic. I credit a lot of my good luck to my optimistic outlook.  I also grew up with the understanding that:

For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall, much be required. 


(Which, apparently is from the BIBLE, as I just learned from a quick google search - Luke 12:48. I always thought that came from an American President..)

In other words, I've always felt like I owed it to those less fortunate. Those who may have the same drive & vision I do, but not the opportunity to see it to fruition. I am so blessed and therefore, I owe it to myself and to the world to be the best that I can be, and chase my dreams as honestly as I can. If I may be so bold to stand on a soapbox for a second, and declare that so much of my generation strives to get by on as little work as possible meanwhile feeling entitled to countless luxuries, I find it utterly fulfilling and creatively satisfying to truly work as hard as I can creating my own work. 

It is with this in mind that I have left the corporate office to pursue my own work and my own direction. Working at these three amazing magazines has taught me so much - both design skills, professional etiquette and how to be successful under pressure. Ha I will stop now before this starts to sound like a cover letter.

Below is my first page I designed at domino, and in a few weeks my website will be up & running & displaying my favorite pieces work I've done in the past several years. 

Father's Day Cards

I made these colorful Father's Day Cards a few weeks back. They are available for sale in my Etsy shop. Show some love for dad - Father's Day is June 19. Still plenty of time to order!

Cool paper idea

Love this image from American Songwriter Magazine. Such a cool idea to use textured, colored paper to add to the silo'd photograph. 

Boycott Urban Outfitters Inc.

This spring I finally decided to see what the fuss was about and joined Twitter. Its pretty fun - its like facebook but instead of seeing status updates of high school friends sharing with the world their work/gym schedule or a million photos of babies, I read cool bits of news from designers that I admire. I saw this retweeted yesterday but someone that I follow and retweeted as well:

Here is the link: http://imakeshinythings.tumblr.com/post/5855716317/not-cool-urban-outfitters-not-cool


I was upset to see that Urban Outfitters was blatantly ripping off an independent designer. I thought of my shopping cart at anthropologie.com and decided, you know what, I'd rather source only local/vintage goods instead of anything from them. I've always challenged myself to buy used/vintage whenever possible out of the spirit of reuse/recycle and but of course, like many of us, new, shiny (and usually cheaper, made-in-China) things are always a temptation. 


This morning I looked on twitter and saw this post:

http://www.myaimistrue.com/2011/05/urban-outfitters-ripoff-trending-topic/


Pretty incredible! My first thought yesterday was "Man that's such a bummer, but what is she going to do? Sue Urban Outfitters?"How amazing that social media could stir up so much fuss and made Urban Outfitters take the item off their site!! So cool! Go crafters! 

Christopher Baker

Wow, I just want to dive into Christopher Baker's breathtaking, romantic photographs. 

Pineapple farm

Stumbled across this photo today in the January 2007 issue of MSL. Pineapple harvest day in Maui. Shot by John Kernick. Amazing.

Rake Jewelry Display

Love this jewelry display idea from the Feb/March 2011 issue of ReadyMade. What a delight to see that it was styled by my friend Diana Yen! 

Work Spaces

I was telling my friend Catharine over g-chat how messy my desk space and took a picture with my phone and emailed it to her. (Don't you love technology these days?). But then I thought, you know, there's something beautiful about the messy, current, working state - not as clean & tidy as I'd like, but just as is.

Catharine sent me pics back of her own desk. She's a copy writer at an advertising firm in LA: 

Then I had the idea to ask a few more friends to participate. 




Meredith works in Brooklyn at an Art Studio Space - she works on the administrative side and also as a painter. She kindly sent me pics of both of her work spaces:

Emily works in Tulum, Mexico as a photo producer & also as head server at a top tourist restaurant. 

Sally is in Washington, DC and works for a political strategy, consulting and fundraising firm:

Ashley owns and runs a pearl jewelry business out of Atlanta, GA:

Thanks to my pals for sharing. Possibly more to come! 

Summer Veggies

Flipping through old copies of MSL. Can't wait for summer & grilled farmers market veggies! Photo by Victoria Pearson, MSL June 2004

Day off

I've been working like a mad women these days on custom design projects - concepting, designing, making preparations to print (ordering film, plate making, etc), and then letterpressing. I love every moment of the process. My biggest challenge these days is remembering that overworking myself leads to fatigue & then bad work. I'm taking my first full day off in several weeks today. Slept in, enjoying coffee on my couch & catching up on looking at blogs, meeting a friend for brunch, going to see the Bill Cunningham documentary, then to my favorite Sunday evening yoga class. Cheers to taking personal time to stay inspired. 

Appalachian Trail

Dreaming of hiking all 2175 miles of this bad boy: 

Map from here

Happy 28th Anniversary Mom & Dad!

Weekend Eats

Enjoyed brunch with some old, dear friends Sunday morning. I'm usually an eggs-for-brunch kinda girl, but was craving something lighter on Sunday. Delicious home-made granola over greek yogurt with blueberries. 

For dinner I made a hearty end-of-winter stew consisting of the veggies I found at the farmers market: potatoes, cabbage, carrots & onion. I loosely based the recipe from a bean-cabbage stew I found on 101 Cookbooks - such a great resource! Also, there's an inspiring story about Heidi (author/photographer of 101 Cookbooks) in the May issue of Whole Living. 

Dream Baby Dream

During my dream day yesterday, I listened to a lot of NPR including LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy talking about & playing some of his favorite songs. It's always so inspiring for me to listen to other creative people talk about what they like, and how they incorporate it into their work. The first song he played was Bruce Springsteen covering a Suicide song. I personally had never heard of Suicide, but I fell in love with Bruce cover. Perhaps because I fell in love with Bruce years ago upon first hearing "Born to Run" as a young teenager, and then two years ago at Bonnaroo, one of the best shows I've seen.


Goodnight & I hope you enjoy this beautiful song:

Dream Day

today is a beautiful sneak preview of the life I aspire to:


waking up with the sun
lovely morning coffee & breakfast time
sitting at my farm table sketching with a pencil & paper 
working on various commissioned design projects
listening to NPR
countless cups of hot tea
headed to an afternoon yoga class


one day this will be everyday! 


loving the "Laura" album preview by Diego García 
it helps that he's pretty easy on the eyes :) 
ha and that my last job & current job are both for girls named Laura

Happy Saturday

As hectic as my work days are, I love taking my time on Saturday mornings to walk over to my favorite coffee shop, sip an Americano while brainstorming and list-making in my sketchbook, shop around the farmers market, and make a delicious but simple, healthy breakfast. 


I've always liked scallions in dishes and wasn't exactly scared of them, but you would never find them in my shopping basket. I recently picked some up and have started finely chopping them up and putting them in my eggs. Similar to an onion but a sweeter, more delicate flavor. 

Vintage Summer Vogue Covers

With the weather channel lately informing me that it "feels like 17º outside" (and its almost April, mind you), I am desperately longing for spring to finally arrive once & for all! Feeling inspired by these vintage summery Vogue covers, scanned from my AIGA book from the 80s.