Chalk Piggy on MOT/Times TAIWAN!

This one hits close to (Jean's) home....our piggy bank nicely written up on MOT/Times  in Taipei!

L&G interview with Rena Tom

I had the pleasure to meet Rena Tom when I went to Meg Mateo Ilasco's "Crafting A Meaningful Home Book" launch party at Rare Device last fall.

Rena is the co-owner of Rare Device and a multi-talented lady with a well-rounded set of skills and knowledge especially when it comes to being a creative entrepreneur.

Her blog, focusing on ways to strategize for creative retail business, is a place where I regularly check out to get helpful tips and honest perspectives from the buyers/retail store owners point of view.

We were honored when Rena asked us to be part of her Profile column on her blog where she regularly interviews creative designers/artists!

You can read the interview here!

Thanks Rena!

Summer Drink Recpie for D*S Behind the Bar

We love Ryan & Alissa from one of our favorite online shop, Horne, who also carries our Superior Servers on their shop!

We couldn't be more thrilled, when Ryan asked me to write something for their Behind The Bar column for Design* Sponge.

I've always loved having picnics (especially an impromptu picnic that I did for this post!). And lately I've been really into using cucumbers...even just in water! So I came up with the this Summer Cucumber Lemon Vodka drink!  You can read the entire post HERE.

The best part of doing all this was that after taking the photos, Dylan & I got to enjoy the drinks with some friends for a real picnic! 

Yah....work is rough.....

Have a great weekend!!



Few Recent L&G Blog Mentions

Both our servers & piggy bank got on Azure!! We were SUPER stoked to see that!

on SVPPLY....that site is absolutely dangerous since I get totally sucked into it too easily.
Servers on Poppytalk. Thanks Jan!

Servers in the editor's pick on House Beautiful
Paper Tastebuds

Re-Nest

A random mix of things...our piggy partying it up with  some sexy lingerie and leopard printed wellies on Josie Natori.

I really hope the piggies don't turn all B.Spear or P.Hilton on me....

L&G on Desire to Inspire

We're TOTALLY stoked that L&G got a couple of mentions on Desire to Inspire's recent "Wink" (Weekend Links) Posts!
Its quite exciting to find that blogs we find inspiring are actually finding our designs to be inspring in return! That's totally exciting enough to make us raise our fists and go "hurray!"

Our first mention on their Winks (weekend links) post!

Our second Winks mention in the same month! Ok...now we're jumping up and down and running around in circles like maniacs. :)

Stalking Stockholm

My new favorite blog, Emmas Designblogg, its about design in Stockholm and everything awesome. This is where I like to go and pretend that I actually live there...this is as good as it gets for now.
Emmas mentioned this nice exciting new restaurant with a lovely space, called Restaurang Bar. I don't know much about the food from that country. But everything I've seen makes me suspect that they know what the hell they're doing...and is doing it very well.
What crisp, chic, and classy interior...all that and with a feel of a classy French bistro.The food looks amazingly simple and fresh...Here's a menu sample....it says...something something Pommes Frites...and then bunch of something else...then something really exciting at the end!


World's Smallest Fashionista

Chika recently informed me about this little delightful blogger, Tavi Gevinson....This is one of them successful blogger-stories you wished you never heard....Like everyone else, Tavi started a blog, Style Rookie, about something she's passionate about..in this case, it's fashion. Tavi shares her own thoughts, inspirations, and fashion sense. Her readership grew and grew and now have gotten a whole world following her and is now consider a fashion trend setter...the twist? She only 13 years old!!
Her success has allowed her to travel to Paris & NYC fashion week, watched numerous runway shows, gotten to meet big name designer and has even inspired them to create clothes based on her style......pretty much she's making the the whole fashion industry go crazy over her.
I'm going crazy already...feeling crazy lame that is...
But seriously though....she's pretty amazing.

Everything about her style is so uninhibited that's truly inspiring and refreshing to see. I especially love how she mixes extreme high-end fashion pieces with ripped up mix-matched tights, and shoes from the thrift stores. She layers and creates color pallets that are beyond predictable and is anything but horrific. There's really no one style that can sum up what she's all about. She's sort of like an adorable French kid wearing classy grandma's clothes...or a cute little spunky Japanese kid from Harajuku with an American twist...or an edgy androgynous modern avant-garde adult inside a 13 year old body...or a nerdy hipster who wears 80's/early 90's vintage clothes as if she lived through that period and is also nostalgic of the ghetto blast ...She's all of the above!

It's almost like....she's a trash compacter, but for all fashion styles....she's a fashion compacter!
In any case....She's got the talent..and is using it well.

Here's a great photo spread below for Pop Magazine :So...you're probably feeling like the oldest, lamest person AND the biggest failure at this point, huh? Well...you're not alone.
Just wait till little Tavi turns 14!!......We can all just kill ourselves* when that time comes...

And to top it off...she's even got her own Wikipedia page...

I googled and Wikipedia-ed myself just for the hell of it...Besides links to Lee Jeans, I also found.......

"Jean Lee - The last woman to be hanged in Australia"

Well...guess what Tavi?? You're not gonna bring me down! You're just a KID! You can't even drive and you still need your MOMMY to drop you off at all those "parties" in NY and then have to get her to pick you up before night night at 9pm so she can tuck you in...I mean...talk about embarrassing!! Plus you don't even have a high school diploma OR a college degree....so good luck getting a REAL job in the REAL WORLD! HA!
Who's the lame one now?! Don't...even respond.

* I am not responsible for any deaths hereafter for anyone who have read this post.

L&G Chalk Series on D*S!

L&G finally made an official release of our Chalk-It-To-Me figures last week! The fact that we got our act together is already pretty darn exciting. BUT, we're even MORE excited to be on Design Sponge's post! AWESOME!
We're dancing around like we're raising the roof right now. Now...that's REALLY exciting!!

American Designs are JOINing in!

OMG! I'm LOLing w/ X-citement and IDK why!! This new Core 77 article just came out highlighting the US design club movement and guess who they're featuring: JOIN Design Seattle and it's bff Brite Collective. The article basically prophesizes that design awesomeness is on its way to the USA on the wings of design clubs like JOIN sprouting up around the country. Read for yourself to find out the full scoop including profiles of Chicago's Object Design League and Brooklyn's American Design Club and efforts to get the government more involved in supporting independant design. Thanks Core 77! So great to see the momentum building! Everybody now: U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!...

Ladies and Gentlemen Home: For the love of all things vintage, clever, designed, and/or delicious

F U Animals...

I found this HILARIOUS blog called F U Penguin. Where the writer, Matthew Gasteier tells cute animals what's what.
He simply finds photos of animals of all types and makes commentary on them that are simply ingenious. This Matthew guy is so good that he's even coming out with a whole book on what he wrote on the blog....seriously f-ed up.
This is a perfect blog to read on a Friday when you feel like taking an extra long lunch break...
But just to warn you...there's no holding back in his writing styles...he shows no mercy on these poor animals...he simply curses the crap out of them.

Here are some of the posts I like...click to read the actual posts.

The Beaver is clearly up to something
Desperate otters turn to cute-based crime in the struggling economy
Moose are the biggest dorks ever
No one wants to hang out with eels
The Tibetan Fox Thinks He's Better Than You.

Ladies and Gentlemen Home: For the love of all things vintage, clever, designed, and/or delicious

JOIN on Cool Hunting!

The folks at CoolHunting did a review of the Ctrl+Alt+Design show. They even included L&G's Alphabrass lamps and bench!How exciting!

Ladies and Gentlemen Home: For the love of all things vintage, clever, designed, and/or delicious

Playing and Designing With Food

Awhile back I read about Tricia's secret supper and her eating-design projects via Chelsea's Village Mews blog....who found her via Abby Try Again. (small world...and another point for how awesome Portlanders are....)
Since I started reading about Tricia's work, I've been totally fascinated by the philosophy of eating-design and how food and design all relates...yum yum. But it's more than just talking about food and making it....Tricia approaches food the same way we connect with people by communicating through stories, memories, associations, and all of our senses. Ultimately, she sees how foods can connect to one another and how people can create meanings and memories through the common forum of food... Tricia creates dishes and eating experiences as a segue to challenge thinking on design and its greater connection to the world. Intrigued??....How can you not be?!
"The tastes and textures in your mouth, the act of chewing or feeding, the sights, sounds, smells and colors of the foods as they spread before us while we eat are all integral to what I consider and play upon in my designs. It is through these sensory experiences that I am weaving a story
or a message into what it is we are eating and how we are eating it."

She's done so many projects that its hard to keep up, especially they're all so different and captivating to read about. But some the bigger-scale projects she's done are: Uprooted, a dinner surrounding the concept of sharing in a history of uprootedness and how the feel of being home always comes back to people and food.
Pietopia, a contest to bake a pie that describes one's state of mind and mood. The 2009 contest just started if you're in Portland! I wanna go down for the actual pie tasting event!
and Secret Supper: a meal that was designed to incite conversation and create interactions between people. She used half plates with different food on each side with everyone having different things on the plate. So in order for the guests to complete their meals, they had to interact, communicate, and share to get everything that was served.

I haven't even shared half of what she's done and I'm already having a tough time keeping this post brief....at this point, I've already given up!
Tricia is finishing up her MFA thesis at the Pacific Northwest College of Art. For her thesis, she designed a beautiful book titled, "Eating Design" and it's all about the eating-design projects she has done with great visuals and layout! You can see more pages and even get a copy, here!
There's so much that Tricia shares on her blog, Eating is Art, and her eating-design studio, Taste Matters. It totally keeps me glued to the screen wanting read and see more beautiful photos of the food and thoughtful meal arrangements and designs she creates! Definitely allow some time to read all the work she's done, the food she made, her thought process, even the designs she made and the way she's connecting people through the universal forum of food.
I love food and the the type of rituals one can have with food. It's so interesting to look at food from an intellectual and design perspective. Especially because it's so easy to take food for granted and eat something with little awareness. It's fun to think about why something is made the way they are or taste the way they do...or analyze the types of associations people have with a particular food whether they're from social, cultural or environmental influences....super fascinating.

I'm hoping to get Tricia to come up to Seattle at some point and do some fun eating-design project!!

Ladies and Gentlemen Home: For the love of all things vintage, clever, designed, and/or delicious

Abby Done It Again

Photographer and blogger, Abby, from Abby try again last year opened her online shop selling her beautiful photographs taken with film cameras. And since beginning of the year she started a collaborating with Chelsea from Arugala Press...Their new project, Print + Press, is where each month one photograph (by Abby) and one art print (by Chelsea) will be produced and sold as a set in limited edition.
Each month they focus on a theme that correlates with the season, the mood, or things that they did that month. Each Print+Press pack is only $20. Visit their shop, here! Make sure to read about their process! You'll appreciate the thoughtfulness and the care they put 100 times more. I've been looking at them repeatedly and still, I can't decided on which to go with...since I want them all! (My natural tendencies is that I want everything!)
Seeing such talented people creating such wonderful work together makes me very envious of life in Portland! Having to have grown up in Eugene, OR, I appreciate the even more laid back lifestyle. I think it's really what makes Portland so unique as a city. They're a small city with big ideas. Their openness to new ideas allow lots of great things to happen. I think it's the fact that most people there seem to be more uninhibited, and there's a general honesty and distinctive charm in their work whether it be art, fashion, food, design, or lifestyle. Perhaps one day collaborating between Portlanders and Seattleites can happen...until then, I just gotta decide which Print+Press pack to get!

Ladies and Gentlemen Home: For the love of all things vintage, clever, designed, and/or delicious

Interview with La Casita De Wendy

I am super excited to share a little story behind the magic of La Casita De Wendy. Thanks to the invention of blogs, I had the pleasure to "meet" Inés & Iván on my blog through L&G blog!

I decided on a whim to contact Inés & Iván to share my love for their clothes. I wanted to find out how I can get my hands on their adorable dresses! (especially the top right, and the dress with the mug prints...actually all of it!!) I also asked them if I could do a blog post about them, and to my delight, Inés & Iván replied kindly and agreed!! I was thrilled that they took the time out of their busy and exciting life to do this. Thanks guys for all your awesomeness!
So, I'm excited to share everything about them and what they do! They make work seem so effortless and life more fun than the Wii! There's too much to talk about and I wouldn't do justice if I didn't share all this goodness with everyone! So be prepared to read a long post!
Inés & Iván are two super talented fashion & textile designers based in Madrid,Spain. (cool!) They often use colors and patterns that are nature inspired and motifs that reference Iberian fairytales. The result is carefree, passionate, romantic,and expressive. In essence, their designs capture the spirit of a fairytale girl living in a modern world...
Their designs are in tons stores around the world including Barneys in New York, Matsuya, Lamp, Koh Samui and Fenwick in London, Surface to Air in Paris, Suite in Barcelona, Deli Room in Madrid, and more. (even cooler!)
The two of them started La Casita De Wendy in 02' and they both actually first got their degrees in architecture. Clothing design started off simply as a hobby, but it's a total meant to be, because it seems that everything just fell into place for them....one word.....Bjork.
Yes, no joke.....Bjork wore their designs for one of her photoshoots for a magazine spread at one point!! (WHAT?!? that's just freaking ridiculously insane cool!) I can't even imagine how I would react if Bjork ever came to me and wore clothes I designed....if that ever happened to me in a million years...I think I would be happy to just dig a grave and bury myself alive...Yeah...since I'm pretty sure that I would probably just freeze and fall into a OH-MY-GOD-BJORK-WORE-MY-CLOTHES-coma for the rest of my life anyways....
Change subject. So here's my first little interview with La Casita De Wendy!
What's the main vision behind La Casita De Wendy?
We want to design beautiful stuff for creative people and we want to be inspired by the greatest beauty of nature.

Both of you hold an architecture degree, so what inspired you both to get into fashion design?

we started to make clothes just like a hobby and because it was difficult to find beautiful designs in Madrid, so we started to sell our collections to friends... and after a few years we realized that we liked designing soooo much that we decided to continue. It was a great help that we had a big success the first time we went to an international trade show and many shops like Barneys in New York wanted our stuff... and Bjork wanted to wear some of our designs...

How did you two meet and how did the teaming up happen?

We met dancing Pulp!! and we start to go out together and that's all... we connected!

What are your main roles in the Company?

Now we have a lot of work so we have to organize ourselves, Inés takes care of the collection, the samples, the sales... and Iván takes care of the production and special events, collaborations, consulting etc...
Where do you get your most inspirations from?

We are inspired by Fairy tales, imagination, painting and of course nature.

Besides your love for fashion, what are some other loves you have?

we love cooking, staying at home, reading, painting and living.
What would your dream studio look like and where would it be?

we love our studio as it is, but we would love to be more in the country, we are doing a vegetables garden in our backyard and we dream about having a big garden in the mountains and being able to work from there...

So, I found out after the interview that besides all the amazing things they do designing clothes and textile...it ALSO turns out that Inés & Iván have started teaching fashion workshop called El Estudio!! They teach fashion workshops right from their atelier with students from all over Spain, Britain and beyond! They teach them everything from creating their own sketch/inspiration book, to creating their own line, to branding, to ways to start their business! So by the end of the 16 week course, the students themselves can achieve their dream of designing their own line! You can see lots of great process photos from their El Estudio blog, too. I love seeing all the rich watercolor drawings and inspirations.
God! I so want to take off and live in Madrid for 4 months and take that workshop! (I'm talking to you God....can you make this happen?? it can count as my birthday present!)

Hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing about them!
Okay, gotta go and figure out a plan to live/work/study in Madrid now since God isn't responding to me....I can never count on that guy!

You can also read their blog to read more about their inspiring lifestyle! If you can't read Spanish like me, use the handy google translate to read their site!....I don't know what I'd do if google didn't exist. Cheers!

Ladies and Gentlemen Home: For the love of all things vintage, clever, designed, and/or delicious

Apartament-O-WHY-OH-WHY!

Via Reference Library
I would really REALLY like to get my hands on one of these Apartamento Magazines....they're about to release their 3rd issue on April 20th...all the way in Milan. Also they're putting together an Everyday Life Objects Shop.....UGH! it all sounds sooo cool!!! WHY do I live in Seattle and not Italy!?
Just look at the photos of the past issues (which are sold out! grrr)....what rich images, thick quality paper, great content and layout?....

Okay, can someone quit hogging it and pass that over to me please...., like NOW.
Dude, seriously.

Ladies and Gentlemen Home: For the love of all things vintage, clever, designed, and/or delicious