Window Shopping
Shop Feverfew Banner
I just bought this birds & bees & flowers bunting for my mantel at home. I know, more bunting. More beautiful, hand-painted bunting. Some trends are worth pursuing. This is by Olivia Mew at Shop Feverfew. The bees match my tattoos!
I think I first saw Olivia Mew on tumblr but now that my best friend owns a store with a big focus on Canadian fashion I tend to want to support artists who are near-ish to me. This store is based in Montreal & so is Nea:
Yellow-plated brass earrings from Nea
I am sitting beside a huge display of Nea’s jewellery right now & I know it won’t be long before I take some of it home. It is so well-made and high impact, which is important to me. I love mixed metals & metal with neon.
Handmade stamp by Norajane
Drawn to illustrations of eyes & also full moons. Who knows why.
Herkimer diamond rings of my dreams from Lumafina
I think I go visit these rings online almost weekly. They are not actually diamonds – they’re quartz. I love their oversized edges & the texture inside the stones.
Kate Bush lyrics tote from Fieldguided
I was organizing our record collection the other day and we have THREE copies of Kate Bush’s “Hounds of Love”, including one on marbled pink vinyl that Nick bought me for my 25th birthday. Fieldguided is a Toronto brand & the person behind it is a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend, I am pretty sure. One day I want to meet her & we can nerd out about Kate Bush stuff like this amazing papercut-style animation for “Eider Falls at Lake Tahoe”:
I remember making seed bead necklaces like this in high school. Stringing beads is such a relaxing thing to do.
Green and brass necklace from Greenhouse Framing
Chartreuse and brass. I’m so down. My jewellery, nail polish, and lipstick is usually the only colour I wear so it’s gotta be bright!
Reflective bike helmet bow from OneTwoThreeSpeed
Cycling is such a bro-centric activity – I love that this shop is making practical-yet-femme bike accessories. I kinda don’t own a bike helmet (I know!) but I am going to get one and then I am going to get a bike bow.
I know I’ve said before that I don’t want to be a shopping blog.
& yet I do like creating entries like this one. When I sit down and ask myself why that is, I come to these conclusions:
1) Indie artists have bills to pay too. People who make things often need to sell them just to be able to afford supplies, so art/crafts often appear in a store setting, even online. Lots of my friends make their money this way! Buying handmade is a great thing to do if you are able.
2) I like having a record of my personal style inspiration, as well as a record of what I actually wore. Both are important to me for different reasons, you know?
HOMEBODY LIFESTYLE 2: Disinterested in capitalism, still into good times.
I wasn’t particularly planning on blogging today but that’s okay. I was anticipating having a fairly ho-hum day off but instead I feel so nice I want to record it somewhere.
Today is my day off & also the day before payday – the amount of cash I have to work with has been reduced to small change. Eep! I always think that I’d like to have a BIG FUN day off, & that the best way to do so is to spend money on something other than bills.
Instead I had one of those quintessential Homebody Lifestyle days.
I barely left the house, but I still managed to:
- Start planning for a knit project I’m excited about. This involves a lot of coffee & a bit of math!
- Do all the laundry! Laundry day is the best because it means I get to wear ANYTHING I WANT (that I already own.)
- Chat with my faraway dude for a bit.
- Cross a lot of things off my living-room to-do list. I have been feeling like I wanted to totally redecorate the whole space, because it was feeling super-stale to me. Instead, I cleaned, rearranged the furniture, and took things down, rather than buying stuff to put up. I am 90% satisfied & I spent no dollars. It is one or two craft projects away from being done.
- Cuddle with my favourite bossy dog.
- Listened to The Blow on repeat! They’re on the lineup for the festival I’m going to in August & I’ve never seen them before & I am SO PUMPED.
- Made lots of hot & cold fancy drinks using things in my fridge. 1) Use half ice, half frozen fruit, & 1 tsp of lime juice in yr ice water. 2) Add a shot of bourbon to your London Fog (kinda like a chai latte but w/ Earl Grey tea).
- Read all the blogs. Write all the emails. Text all the friends.
Many of my favourite longtime bloggers (especially style bloggers) seem to be talking quite a bit about blog burnout. I spend a lot of time thinking about what it means to start now, after so many people I’ve been reading forever are declaring the golden age of blogging over. Most of what I read is that there is a lack of individuality & a pressure to attract sponsors or free shit or otherwise commodify your blog, and therefore your life, too. I am not slowing down but I am glad to read what so many smart people are saying about it.
Last week, Chantilly from My Girl Thursday posted a bit about the difference between living your life & having a “bloggable” life:
Conversely, one does not need to live a bloggable life in order to be a blogger. A few months ago Jesse and I were tidying up our living room and he said something about it being a very bloggable space. When he said that I felt a little bit sick. I began to wonder if I was creating a life that would be Pinterest-able content. I felt sicker when I realized that it was kind of true. I remembered the many times I had thrifted an outfit simply because it would be a cute outfit post – not just an outfit. And although the outfit thing was the extent of my infractions I recognized that inauthenticity is a slippery slope.
In the interest of authenticity, then, I want to tell you that I spent most of the day in yesterday’s clothes, covered in dog hair & dust. Then I had a shower & dressed up & I was even thinking about taking photos but then my dog rolled in mud and rubbed it all over me as I chased her down. So glam!
I’m not interested in being an aspirational blog.
I’m really not interested in being a shopping blog.
But I am interested in talking to you about days like today, when small things make life better. & when you realize that you don’t need even one more thing to make your day.
It’s just great when what you have is already enough.
PS: If you want to give me stuff for free though, I’m down! I like free stuff.
