love & moss

15 June 2012

for the love of letterpress

I've had a fabulous love of paper goods for as long as I can remember. Stationery, greeting cards, calendars, notebooks, wrapping paper and all of their paper kin have always made me swoon. I can spend an inordinate amount of time in any store selling any of the above-named goods. Primo example: I was in Paper Source for about two hours last week. I went in to buy a thank you card.

I even had my own greeting card company in the 6th grade called Mandy's Monkey Moonshine Company (no clue how I decided on that name...I'll blame it on being 11 years old.) It existed on the floor of my bed- and living rooms and I created everything from birthday cards to mother's day cards to sorry-you-got-food-poisoning cards using my cherished Pentel marker set and way too much paper. Good thing my mom has always been Eco-conscious and either reused or recycled all of my rejected prototypes, because there were many!

Then one fabulous day, I discovered letterpress. It was love at first sight and I have no problem admitting that I've been ~~semi~~ obsessed ever since. I have a massive card collection for every occasion known to man for which a card exists. I just can't help myself. They're so pretty. And I really do end up using them......eventually.

Over the years, I've come across countless companies churning out gorgeous letterpress stationery, so I thought I'd share some of my very favorites....

links to the above: dee & lala; sugar paper; elum; old school stationers; flora & fauna

♥ amanda

13 June 2012

mid-week inspiration

May everyone find their bits of magic today....
♥ amanda

11 June 2012

love

Or, as Woody Allen famously coined it in Annie Hall......lurve.

It may not always be pretty and it may not always be easy, but we keep coming back to it like crack addicts. We can't shut it out, we can't ignore it and we can't avoid it -- despite how hard we may have tried at one time or another. Because no matter how much pain, grief or frustration love has brought to our lives, it also brings moments like this.

And these are the moments that make it all worthwhile....

the ~~drunk~~ delightedly intoxicated carry-home

this is how it works...

you peer inside yourself.

you take the things you like and try to love the things you took.

and then you take that love you made,

and stick it into someone else's heart, pumping someone else's blood.

and walking arm-in-arm, you hope it won't get harmed.

but even if it does, you'll just do it all again.

-regina spektor

♥ amanda

07 June 2012

adventure time

I've found myself reading more and more of my favorite travel sites lately and gazing longingly at pictures of faraway places for much longer than normal. Maybe it's the mid-year lull, or maybe it's just the sun calling to me from the other side of my office window, but I've got a serious case of wanderlust and all I know is that I want to be out exploring!

I like all kinds of vacations...pure relaxation, kick-your-butt-active, Eco-tourism, camping, luxury hotels (but honestly, who doesn't love this one?), beach, mountains and everything in between. For me, it's just about getting away from my daily routine to explore new places and experience different cultures.

The images below may seem like a crazy smorgasbord of whereabouts, but all of them appeal to me on different levels and I wouldn't turn down the opportunity to visit any of them! Which place would you choose to visit if you could pick just one?

Oh, the places I'd like to go....

Wow...the earth is one seriously beautiful place!
♥ amanda

(Top image from society6.)

01 June 2012

kitchen envy

I love cooking. I love baking. I love food. And while my trusty mustard-yellow-and-blue-tiled 1930s kitchen does the job nicely and is actually pretty roomy (gotta give props where props are due), I still get major kitchen envy every time I see pictures of other peoples' non-Brady-Bunch culinary havens.

I swoon over subway tile, drool over dishwashers, go bananas over wooden beams, and have a mild coronary over Carrara marble. And don't even get me started on Sub-Zero refrigerators and Viking ranges.

I've done a lot to tone down the original decor and make my kitchen a more inviting place, but there's only so much one can do, especially to a rental. That mustard-yellow tile I mentioned above actually has gold-ish flecks throughout it. And not in a good, retro, that's-actually-kinda-cool way. It's more like a did-someone-just-projectile-vomit-bran-cereal-all-over-the-tiles? way. Not pretty.

So I dream....