Family portrait

There is an art taking a great formal portrait. I've always gone for the relaxed, fun, candid moment, but I love the cool, formality of this photograph. And the yellow! Love it.

{Next Exit Photography}

{From Elizabeth Ann Designs posting about Ellen, Caro, and Pilot.}

Ananda

Beard font

Seriously, hilarious.
{via design-milk}

100% cotton wedding ideas

Cotton is fun and whimsical. I'd love to see someone go all out with a cotton themed wedding. There is so much potential ... get creative!

{Almasy Photography}

A cotton boutonniere?

A nice bouquet?

There is even a line of bridal dresses called The Cotton Bride by designer Chris Cole. The entire line is made out of earth friendly natural fabrics...and the majority of the dresses really are made out of Cotton!

This might interest the "green" bride who wants to minimize the impact her wedding has on the world or even for destination brides (unlike polyester, cotton breathes in 100% humidity).
Plus, a cotton dress can be dyed after your wedding and turned into an entirely different dress.

Ananda

*Sigh*...so pretty

I came across these "70 Amazing Business Cards" over at Fubiz.net. This is just a sampling, so if you like what you see, head over to check the other 66 out! The budgets had to be enormous on some of these, but they are fun to look at and dream about. These are great inspiration to get our Quite Like It brand (and business cards) put together!

Heather

Great season of games

Over the course of five Christmas celebrations, we had the pleasure of playing several games I had never played … This, after I was grumbling about the lack of fun new games.

If you are looking for a fun time with friends, I suggest cracking open any of these games.

1. Last word is my favorite new game. It turned a room of strangers into a crowd in stitches with a few good inside jokes.

2. Set is a game I watched from afar. All the left-minded people in the room, all different ages, really got into this matching game.

3. Farkle was a great time. The math-minded can focus on odds and the rest of us can just gamble and roll the dice whenever it feels right.

4. Mexican train dominos is a good game where you can go from being in the lead to dead last in one round. Everyone has a chance to win.

5. Scrabble is an oldie but a goodie. No cheating and looking at the dictionary between turns!

Great low impact gift wrap

I've been working on a project for the Omaha World-Herald about last-minute, do-it-yourself wrapping. Read the story here!

If it is too cold to run and buy extra wrapping paper, look around your house for cute wrapping ideas like these.

{Photos by Kent Sievers.}

Did you catch the cute photo of my niece?!

Ananda

Searching for the perfect fabric

I have always planned on reupholstering my mismatched dining room chairs to kind of match.

How about some of these fun, 100% organic cotton canvas grown, woven, and printed in the United States using non-toxic pigments print from Mod Green Pod, huh? I've got a crush on all of them.

Top: Atticus, cherry. $39.75/yd
Middle: Glimmer, water. $39.75/yd
Bottom: Bloom, persimmon. $39.75/yd

Ananda

Festive

Here we are all festive at work!

Heather

This is what I'm wearing on Monday

We are having a "festive" holiday sweater wearing party at work on Monday. Here's the tacky flyer we came up with to let everyone know!

I encourage everyone, everywhere to break out their "festive" holiday sweater and wear it too!

Heather

Amazing flourish of paper

Dear Yulia Brodskaya,
I want to be you. I love the bold colors and movement in your illustrations. You combine my two loves, typography and paper cuttings. If you ever sell a print of your work, please, please let me know.

Sincerely, Me

Ananda

Who wants a mimosa?

Let's face it, the word "recession" is a downer. And it is cold outside. And it is only Tuesday.

Fortunately, Pantone has a remedy for all that ails you. How about a little Mimosa in your life? It's bright, it's happy and heck, who doesn't smile at the thought of sweet bubbling orange juice? Mimosa is Pantone's 'Color of 2009.' So, not only is yellow the color of the moment in fashion, it could be the color of our mindset for the new year.

Ananda

What I want for Christmas

It is 3 degrees outside. And that's not even talking about the howling wind. To tear my mind away from all the hard parts of winter, I've been fantasizing about Christmas gifts. Here are a few items that I have been drooling over for a while.

Center: A big convex mirror. I want to feel like I am in a Van Eyck painting.

Clockwise from top left: 3. Nesting Doll set $16 SOLD OUT!, Algal bloom pendant $40, Mad men season 1 $28, Animal portraits by Berkley Illustration $8-15 per print, $100 per original, ABC3D (Hardcover) $14, Perfume by Marc Jacobs "Basil" $68.

Ananda

it's the MOST wonderful time of the year

One of my favorite parts of the holiday season is all of the wrapping paper! There's no other time during the year that you get to wrap as many gifts as you do at Christmastime. I like to pick out a couple of papers just to mix it up.

Here are some wonderful wrapping paper designs from Paper Source. I love the goldfish!

Heather

put this on my wish list

A friend of mine who loves to knit passed this along to me. How great and cute is this?!?! I HAVE to have one. If I could knit anything properly, I'd make one myself. Check out orchard street good's store over at etsy to purchase yours.

Heather

Rain, rain go away!

It's dreary and rainy today--but at least it's warm: sixty-five degrees in December! So to cheer myself (and you, if it's raining where you are), I've been looking at beautiful umbrellas. Here's a sampling of what I've found.

1. pare*umbrella - Mod Battic for $65.00
2. Burberry - pink signature check for $275.00
3. J Crew - printed umbrella for $19.99

Heather

I'll get this out of my system now

This is my first post on this blog! I know I was introduced awhile ago but my crazy life in combination with the holidays, vacation and the horrible flu have kept me from posting. I'm here now and intend to post more frequently. Whew! On to the post!

A friend of mine has become obsessed with letterpress recently (she's actually buying one; picking it up in January!) and took me to an event a couple of weeks ago at Gilah Press + Design (who did the design shown above) here in Baltimore. Since going to the event, I'VE become obsessed with letterpress--hard not to! Everything looks so beautiful on letterpress and it feels so authentic. For some reason it feels more personal. This makes it a perfect option for wedding invitations. Which is why my new goal in life is to buy a press and start doing our invites on it. We'll keep you updated, but I just had to get this out of my system!

Heather