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With the passing of Sandy, temperatures have dipped into chillier digits, and the heat officially kicked on in the row house yesterday. I've been busting out the boots for the past few weeks, but at this point I'll need to add a few sweaters to my wardrobe for additional warmth. I think that the beautiful 70s October weather is certainly gone for good and we'll be looking at crisp November air from here on out. With another unexpected day off from school due to the storm, I spent the morning doing some online window shopping. Here are a few of my favorite sweaters I'd like to snuggle up in.

via ever+mi.crush

via Anthropologie

via VS

via Free People

via Free People

Any awesome sweaters that I missed while I was browsing? I'd love to see them! If you're anything like me, once it's cold it is hard for me to stay warm so sweaters are essential. Now hopefully I can convince Andrew to let me buy a few of these. ;)

Over the years there is one thing that many paper lovers will acquire, and that is overabundance of the thing we love. It would be a lie if I were to say that I don't have paper spilling out of drawers and taking over my studio. Paper can be inspiring. Sometimes I need to buy new paper in order to get my creativity going again. However, the result can be too much paper.

Last weekend, I spent part of the morning reorganizing my drawers full of paper when I suddenly thought of a fun way to both minimize my stock in paper and provide an economical set of correspondence for my customers. I paired bright colored card stock with contrasting envelopes. I cut flat note cards from light-weight 80lb card stock and printed each card with a handwritten hello. The end result? Bright, fun, and bold flat notes for the economically minded. Right now there are three limited edition sets of 8 flat notes available in the shop, and each set is only $10. And I have a few more color combos in mind. These cards would be perfect for a simple note to a friend-- nothing too fancy, but a blast of color to brighten someone's day.


I think I'll even start using these for myself to send a little cheer to my family and friends. Sometimes the simplicity of color is all that we need.

I've been trying to do better with updating this dear old blog more frequently. I was a self-proclaimed success after a post on Monday and Tuesday. Two days in a row-- success indeed! I've also been super busy with new designs and trying to get them into the shop. I spent a larger portion of last weekend printing, editing, and photographing some of my latest cards. I feel as though I've had a plethora of creative ideas, but having the time to get the final product into the shop has been a challenge. In addition, to a few new items that I wanted to share today, I have some new holiday cards and Thanksgiving cards that will soon be listed as well. But for now, I'll share with you some of my newest favorites.


My latest anniversary card may or may not be from similar personal experience.


I love the fine print on this one. Not going to lie-- I may have felt a little old this year on my birthday. Only one year away from the big 3-0 is kind of crazy!


A few people suggested that I make some fun cards with no occasion in mind. This is one of my favorites as a result of that suggestion.


I love the simplicity of this love card. Reminds me of those grade school crushes.

What creative endeavors have you been working on lately?

Maybe I don't really know what I'm talking about because I've never actually seen The Wire, but I have heard things. I've lived in Baltimore for six years, yet have never seen the show. Really. I know. Gasp. Is it a good show? I wouldn't know.

Quite frankly, I love this city, I love my house, I love my neighborhood, I love my neighbors. And quite frankly, Baltimore doesn't deserve the bad reputation that it often gets. Yes, it has it's moments-- like the time a Baltimore City police officer knocked on our door wanting to get up on our roof deck so he could skip across the roofs on the street to scope out a drug deal. Or the time when we lived at our old apartment-- Andrew took Lilah outside to go pee at 3 in the morning when she was a wee baby pup only to find a creepy man dressed in black with red contacts staring straight at our dog. Or there was the time the seventeen year old drop out threw a metal drain cover at a guy that lived down the street, barely missing my car.

Ok. You get the drift. But really, that's the city. And if you can't deal with a few of these infrequent incidents now and again, then city life is probably not for you. Almost everyone that I know that lives in Baltimore, or even a major city for that matter, has some sort of crazy story to tell.

However, recently, it's been feeling a bit more Wire-esque, or so I've been told.


This had been hung on our door by BCPD. Need I say more? (P.S. Don't you love how I Instagrammed that shit so it looks all old-timey detective-y. I love a good dose of sarcasm. And I am a nerd.) The ironic part is that this particular incident was indeed a burglary and homicide, but it was a shooting too. Apparently they felt that checking all three boxes would freak people out too much-- who knows?

The best part? This happened four houses down on the other side of our alley. Woohoo. In other news, three weeks later, as in Sunday night, there was another shooting around the corner from our house in which we discovered this morning that the victim died. Nothing like going out to get your groceries only to return to the street being blocked off with police tape and squad cars.

Now, these sorts of incidents have not happened for a veeeeeeeery long time in our neck of the woods, so the fact that there have been two back to back shootings is a bit creepy. However, I find myself not so creeped out. Maybe it is the fact that I've become desensitized to violence in the city. Maybe it is because I know that it is transient crime-- people moving through our neighborhood from rougher areas of the city. Maybe it is because I know my neighbors and I know they are fabulous and that together we make our street better and safer.

So many of my friends have reacted by saying something like, "Oh no! You better move at once! There are homes for sale in my neighborhood!" But if we were to move, doesn't that make the problem in our neighborhood worse? In the two years that we have lived in our house, our neighborhood has become exponentially better. Sure, there are bad things about this city, but the good constantly outweighs the bad. To leave would be to give up hope on those good things, and I'm not ready to give up hope yet.

I don't feel unsafe, and I don't think I'm naive to say that. I keep my guard up, and I live my life without fear because living in fear is no way to live. And I focus on the positive things that I love about my city, knowing that some times are rougher than others. I'm willing to give up a few rough days in order to be happy for the remainder of the year. And from what I've heard, this really isn't The Wire, and I'm happy to know I've got it pretty good.

I'm going to be honest with you guys today. I am an outsider. Part of that has to do with the fact that I'm a complete introvert. The other part of it has to do with the fact that I hate cliques. Growing up, I was never part of a group. I had a few very close friends and lots of acquaintances. I didn't like the social groups that developed in high school-- you know, the jocks, the nerds, the stoners, the preps, etc. I thought they were pointless. Why couldn't everyone just get along?

I was never popular, and if I was, I didn't know it. I got along with all types of people and was fine with that. What I wasn't fine with was when someone that I got along with in one class ignored me in another because the the rest of their group was present. That was middle school and high school. Me, the outsider, that tried to get along with everyone because it was what I thought was the right thing to do. I was, and still am, genuine. That is who I am. The superficial quality that some people seem to be able to pull off is just not me, nor will it ever be.

Recently, I've been a bit absent from this blog world. I liked to use the excuse that I just didn't have the time. I have been strapped for time, but not any more than I was last year during the school year. I did some thinking for a while this weekend and realized it had to do with a lot more than that. I love blogging because of the interaction with others, the community aspect. However, recently, I've grown to feel frustrated with what seems to be an ever-growing problem of cliques within the blogging world.

On blogs and on twitter, I see only certain people talking to other people within a small group. No worries, you might think, I'll just ignore your tweet even if you have something good to say because you're not in my group. Or, I'm not going to give you special treatment even though you are my blog sponsor because you're not in my group like some of my other blog sponsors. Or the good old tweet that says, "I DMed you!" as if there is some big secret that no one else can know, yet everyone MUST know that you are having this secret convo so that the others won't feel in the loop. Seriously? Just DM the person without announcing it, for goodness sake! It's all a bit like this:
Yup, I totally said it. It's all a little bit like Mean Girls.

Here's the thing-- it's perfectly acceptable to have your own group of friends. However, having your own group does not mean that you have to ignore, be rude to, or patronize those that aren't in that group. In addition, just because someone isn't in your blogging clique doesn't mean that you shouldn't give them a chance as an individual. Bottom line-- there is no need to treat people poorly just because you aren't part of their group. At least take the time to get to know the person! Give them a chance!

If someone comments on your blog, give them the benefit of the doubt and go check out their blog. They might have something fabulous to say. If someone sponsors your blog, take the time to get to know them. Don't write a post about them as if you were great friends without even taking a moment to email them and find out a few things about them. (This actually happened to me once. I paid to be a sponsor, the blogger never contacted me, and then the blogger wrote that I was such an awesome person that they would totally want to hang out with. Talk about awkward.) And when a new blogger tweets you or follows you on twitter, put yourself in their shoes. Reach out to them instead of being rude, ignoring them, and not giving them a chance.

I don't expect you to be friends with everyone that you meet, but I expect people to be civil toward each other, to be kind to one another. Otherwise, you run the risk of missing out on one of the most important aspects of blogging-- getting to know new and interesting people.