Best Quarter of a Century Birthday Gift Ever!

My best friend surprised me for my birthday (in July) with tickets to see Conor Oberst & Jenny Lewis in Knoxville. So we packed up and drove 5 hours to Tennessee. The drive was scenic. The show was mind-blowing. All in all, it was a phenomenal one day trip. This is us in the hotel.

We stayed at the Hilton.My only complaint is that their bar closed at 11. What kind of hotel bar closes at 11pm?
wig shop window.
We ate at a place called Oodles (as in Noodles).
I was a little surprised when I ordered pizza and this came out. It was tasty.What happens in Knoxville... apparently happens before midnight. Maybe they all went to Arby's?I took this at a Tradin' Post. We were very specific to stop at a Tradin' Post (without the g). I bought a magnet shaped like Kentucky, and Angie bought a Superman belt buckle.

simple saturday

organic apples & open windows!

I came home the other day to find a huge bag full of apples on my porch. My dad picked them from a bunch of trees in his yard. They're kind of spotted and you can definitely tell he doesn't use pesticides. But I've just been calling them "organic". They taste pretty awesome :)The weather is perfect for open windows.

fall colors.

okay, so it's technically still summer. I was just so inspired by the cooler weather I took a bunch of autumnal-hued pictures downtown. some of them are a little gritty, but i think the colors are gorgeous.
One of these things hit my husband in the face during our huge wind storm!
A parking hut.

Fortunately, we are not one of the 300,00 without power!


I took this one a few days ago, but it was too cute not to share. My husband, and my best friend's little boy made this flying saucer together.

A little peek at what I've been up to.

I finally got around to photographing a few of my notebook lines. I managed to get them shot about half an hour before the remnants of Hurricane Ike stormed its way into Ohio. My notebooks kept flying open, but I got the shots I needed. Shortly afterword, our neighbor's chimney got blown into our side yard!

This is a collection that appears in Target's all year line-up. It has a special place in my heart because it is one of the very first lines that I got placed when I started working for Mead Westvaco.


These two planners were sold exclusively at Target for Back-to-School.


A customizable sticker I did for Five Star. It's super fun because you can put it on any kind of surface to make it all your own.


Corporate Five Star Style notebooks.


There are a handful of corporate lines that I'm waiting for samples on that I can't wait to share.

I also have so many projects in the works right now that I am so proud of! However, we work so far out in the future, that these projects won't see daylight for another year or so. I will post them as soon as they hit the shelves :)

a tasty weekend

we went to an annual food fair this weekend—Taste of the Miami Valley. We walked down to RiverScape with a couple of friends and ate ourselves silly. This is a cupcake that I bought that was so pretty, I didn't want to eat it. but I did.


My friend, Rachael has a healthy appreciation of flip-flops.


RiverScape is artfully planted with lots of exotic looking flowers.

looking back and pressing onward.

September already? It's already starting to be dark when I hop in my car to go to work in the morning. I love the shift in the atmosphere when the days get shorter and the temperature goes down, and everything just feels new. In celebration of the approach of my favorite season, here's a random recap of the summer that was.

My Beautiful Life.

I have exactly 19.3 gigabytes of photos on my computer right now. And that number is steadily growing. As are most people, I am guilty of rarely having them developed. I've decided that they're far to precious to me to let sit stagnant in the digital soup that is my hard drive.

So that's what this blog is going to be for me. Tiny snapshots from my cute little corner of existence, from my beautiful life. Thanks for stopping by and peeking in. I hope I'm interesting enough to warrant a repeat visit!

Thanks,

Val