Hello! The past few months have had some big changes. I’ve moved into a new and bigger studio space in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.  I now have a lot more room to spread out and I’m sharing with a painter named Jackie Meier. She does fantastic large scale abstract graphical paintings and she’s having a show at Nancy Margolis Gallery that opens on March 28th. I definitely recommend checking it out.

Additionally, we’ve adopted a new member into our family! Meet Lola, the Wirehaired Pointing Griffon. She’s about four months old (three months in this picture) and is so much fun and so much work! She’s growing so fast and has tripled in size since we got her two months ago. I’m a little obsessed and have been going kinda instagram crazy documenting her growth.

I have been working… Last month I showed at capsule, a trade show in NYC. If you have a store or know any stores that would be a good fit for carrying my bags, please email me. I’m still taking wholesale orders and will be starting production soon on my AW2013 collection.

Easter Sunday was a beautiful day in Brooklyn. We met friends for brunch at this newish restaurant, Isa, which is owned (and designed) by Taavo Somer, owner of Freemans in the LES. I immediately fell in love with the interior. Isa is so unique and beautifully designed. It feels rough, but every detail is intentional. In this NY Times piece, Somer calls it primitive modernism and it is so fitting. It has clean, yet natural lines. It is bright, airy and very cozy – like a sophisticated treehouse for adults. Brunch was quite good, but I really want to go back for dinner. Eggs are never really the best barometer for experiencing a chefs talents.

After brunch, we walked around Williamsburg. The neighborhood was so nice and quiet. We stopped by Beautiful Dreamers, a few other great boutiques and of course Mast Brothers Chocolate for Easter treats. We ended up for longer than I care to tell at Radegast Biergarten. Please note my new easter egg clogs – they make me happy!

I worked from home today and somehow I got a little distracted. We recently moved into a coop brownstone in Park Slope and the past month has been spent settling in and making it ours. My photo shoot started with lunch. I made the most simple, yet delicious and healthy dish and was so thrilled with myself that I had to photograph it. I basically threw dried French lentils and brown rice in a pot with water and vegetable bouillon, let it cook for about 30 min, then threw in some chopped broccoli and cooked it for 10 min more. After lunch, I couldn’t stop and ended up photographing a few of my favorite things. Hope you enjoy.

I saw this last night on my way home (at the Nassau Ave G-train in Greenpoint), after leaving a birthday party for Nicolette. So true…

ps. After a little digging I discovered it is by street art collective, Trustocorp. Check out their other work. Pretty awesome.

This was my second 4th of July spent on Jennifer & Steve’s rooftop in Williamsburg. Though the fireworks are set off on the west side of Manhattan and they live east of the city, the view of the city in the foreground is spectacular. It was an absolutely gorgeous evening with the most incredible and surreal sunset I’ve ever seen.

It was also a special night because Jenny & I said goodbye to our awesome intern, who is heading back to Toulouse, France today. It was sad, but hopefully she’ll come back one day! (Anaïs, thank you for all of your great work – we will miss you!)

Last picture is our jar of Pimm’s cup that Ed & I contributed to the evening’s beverages… it was delicious!

PS – We are having a really nice sale this week.

It’s hard to believe we’ve been back from our honeymoon in the Caribbean for over a week. I’ve been hard at work, trying to make up for all the work time lost while planning our wedding. Our trip was absolute heaven. I seriously cannot remember ever feeling so relaxed in my life. We went to two small islands in the southern Caribbean – not far from Venezuela.  To get there, we flew to Barbados and then had to take a tiny 15-seater plane – which made me a little nervous. Thank god the the weather was calm – it was a beautiful ride. We spent three days in Bequia and four in Mustique. The two places couldn’t have been more different and still fallen in the paradise category… I read a book cover to cover, which was a total luxury. We ate tropical fruits picked from the trees outside and drank coconut water straight from the coconut every day… came back with a very nice tan and most of all got to relax and ease into the fact that we had just made a huge life-changing decision. It was a perfect honeymoon.

For anyone who has been wondering where I’ve been or why I haven’t been very active posting here or sending out newsletters or tweeting, it’s because I have been planning my wedding… and then getting married… and finally honeymooning. I got married on June 4th to the most loving, wonderful and brilliant man I’ve ever known (aside from my father), Edward Cotton. We had truly the most perfect wedding I could have ever imagined. It was a lot of work, but there was not one detail I would have changed. Everything really fell in to place beautifully and it was so amazing to see it come together. I felt truly blessed to have such wonderful family and friends there to share this event with.

I’ve always been so in love with the fashion and style of the 1920′s. To me, it is the epitome of American glamour, it is elegant, ageless and something everyone can enjoy. Every time I put my hair in finger waves and wear my Chanel red lipstick and nail polish, I wonder how we got so fashionably lazy as a society and vow to at least paint my nails red more often.

Last summer, Ed and I attended the Jazz Age Lawn Party on Governors Island, put on by Michael Arenella and the Dreamland Orchestra. My mom loves to swing dance, so luckily she was in town and came with us. We all dressed in period. Ed wore blue and white striped seersucker, I wore a dropped waist, pastel floral sun dress, and my mom wore a blue and white seersucker dress with long pearls. The band was AMAZING and we immediately knew we had to have them for our upcoming wedding. (though at the time we were not thinking it would have any sort of theme. We just knew we wanted a band and this band made everyone, of all ages, want to dance.)

We then found a gorgeous inn on Shelter Island (near the Hamptons) that was established in 1929 and couldn’t deny how perfect it would be to have a Gatsby inspired wedding. When we made up the invitations, we added “Jazz Age attire suggested”. We had no idea how many of our guests would want to go through the effort, but to our surprise, 99% dressed in theme. My mother looked amazing, my aunts and uncles, my 9 month old niece, my “new” 12 year old niece and of course all of our friends looked gorgeous. I was just so amazed by how excited everyone was about the theme – it really created such an incredible atmosphere.

We had Nicolette Camille, my old studio neighbor when I was at Dobbin Mews do the flowers and they were truly breathtaking. She did such an amazing job on all of the details. She even made bouquets to match each of the bridesmaid’s dresses. Their dresses were all by the same designer and had similar details, yet they were each unique. They each made their own feather fascinators to match.

Ed & I attended an Outstanding in the Field dinner a few years ago in California and just loved the use of long tables at an outdoor dinner. They are the best for facilitating conversation with the most people. We also mixed our guests up in an unlikely seating arrangement, making sure guests of all ages and connections mingled. It’s so exciting to see the new friendships formed when we look through the photos.

Our photographer, Ben Fraser, brought about five cameras: a digital, a few vintage film cameras, and a really old one that takes one shot on a metal plate. We have to wait about a month before we get his photos back, but I will definitely post about those when I do. Ben also created a photo booth system which everyone loved. A polaroid camera was set up with a big red button that you would press, taking four photos, printing them on the spot and archiving them digitally to his photo site.

Special thanks to Glen, Jenny and Jennifer for all the great photos! Visit our Flickr group to see the rest.

I recently took a trip to Buffalo, NY for my Great Aunt Alice’s 100th birthday. She’s incredible, still living in her own home, making her own meals, cleaning, gardening, grocery shopping, mending, even coming up with little inventions to help her deal with the physical annoyances of aging. She’s always been like a third grandma to me and I’m convinced that it was her influence on me as I was growing up that fostered a love of design and making. My mom organized a lovely surprise birthday brunch at the Roycroft Inn, in the town of East Aurora, where Alice was born on her family farm.  I’d been there before, when I was much younger, but never fully appreciated the history or philosophy of the Roycrofters until now.

Basically, Roycroft was a handicraft community, filled with makers of hand-bound books, Mission-style furniture, lamps, metal-ware of black iron, copper and bronze, as well as glass, ceramics and leather. Formed in 1895, it was based on the Medieval Guild system adapted by William Morris & John Ruskin of the English Arts & Crafts Movement in response to the industrial revolution.  The Roycroft Campus was a self-contained community, supporting hundreds of craftspeople that became the mecca for those interested in the Arts and Crafts movement.

I love the philosophy behind it and I certainly see a connection to the handmade community of today. Mass produced items lack soul and human connection. I personally need to make things. I get depressed if I never leave the computer. In a way, reMade USA is my response to over stimulation in a digital world. I love the process of making by hand and with heart. I need the balance of being able to slow down and focus on one task.

One beautiful feature at the Roycroft Inn is the quotes you see, surrounding you, carved into doors, on rafters, on walls by founder and philosopher, Elbert Hubbard.

This weekend we took a drive out to Long Island to check out Shelter Island and Montauk as possible wedding sites. Wow, it was cold and windy… and pretty deserted… but still beautiful. I had no idea how much farmland was in LI and so many of them were selling Christmas trees directly from the land.

I never expected it would happen to me, but I think spending so much time with Jenny has started to rub of on me. For the first time ever, I want to knit things. Jenny had a few of us over her apartment last night for craft night. Four of us were knitting and Jennifer S. was doing needlepoint. With the help of Jenny’s talented intern, Lissa, I started my first project – a chunky, multi-colored, multi-textured scarf that I am super excited about. I picked it up pretty easily and I must say, I really enjoyed it. It’s so relaxing and meditative. Like a great book, I’m anxious to see the results, but don’t know that I want it to end. I’ll post the final piece whenever I finish it.