birthday week!

I am traveling today after a little birthday trip extravaganza to the mountains but I wanted to pop in and say hello (my birthday was actually yesterday but I'm celebrating all week because...why not! ;). We took loads of photos which I will hopefully be posting very soon! Thanks to everyone for the birthday emails/tweets/comments/texts!


Incidentally, excuse my puffy face in the photo below - I had atrocious allergies ( to blooming cottonwoods) and as a result squinty little eyeballs! :) 

 

hope you all had a nice weekend!  x djrd

traveling fool

Apologies again for the severe lack of blogging here lately but I have been traveling like a mad woman since I left for the Sundance Film Festival over a week ago and then for Ireland & the UK immediately after that.  "The Brit" and I are acting as a band of sorts for our friend Lucette (I'm doing backing vocals and "the Brit" guitar & some vocals).  We are opening for (ehem..."supporting") the Secret Sisters on their UK tour which is completely surreal but so so so much fun!  I promise to share some photos of this whole adventure with you but first, a long awaited outfit post that I snapped before I left California...

(with little Charlie girl who I miss terribly!!! :(

outfit notes:
dress - vintage
cardigan - xxi
boots - madewell

all you need is...

"The Brit" and I just got back from a little mini-break to visit my family in Las Vegas.  As you may or may not know, I lived in Las Vegas from basically kindergarten until age 17 (ie: most of my childhood). And while it is, I suppose, a strange place to call home, my usual visits consist of normal family-time activities (catching up, eating, movie-watching, shopping, pool swimming, eating again). This trip we got a little surprise...my Mom had arranged tickets for us to go see the Beatles LOVE!   I have always been a huge Beatles fan, basically since the womb, and I was pretty excited to see what the show was all about.  So, on Friday night we put on our best Las Vegas-show-going outfits and skipped over to the Mirage hotel.

As we approached the theater the atmosphere became a bit more, ehem, multicolored!

With some time to kill before the show started, we headed for the gift shop where we had way too much fun playing around with Beatles swag and fun-house mirrors...

 

 I bought a couple of things for my fellow Beatle-loving-friends and we headed into the theater.

Sadly, there was a strict "no camera" policy inside the theater so the proper camera had to go away... 

BUT I did manage to snap a little of the theater (pre-show) with my trusty iphone camera...

And, as the show ended, I also caught some of the aftermath...

 

I wish I could have taken just a few photos during the show for you but trust me when I tell you... it was a magical experience.  My favorite parts mostly involved confetti, bubbles and, of course, the aerial performers swinging from the rafters because I secretly want to be a trapeze artist ;)

(*top image via  | the others by me and/or "the Brit")

don juan's reckless daughter takes on Austin, TX

Truthfully, I've been back home for a few days but it took a few days to figure out what to post from the Austin portion of the roadtrip aside from millions of band photos. I had a marvelous time in Austin (despite my being sick), it was just as warm and as interesting as I had hoped.  To me it's a hybrid of Seattle, San Francisco and the best things about the American South.  I spent the majority of my time in the South Congress and Downtown areas but there were cool places to see even on the eastside where our awesome rental house was located.  Still, I have to say South Congress was my favorite so... that's the focus of this post.

"The Brit's" band  had a few show's at Home Slice Pizza's music showcase and they had an amazing greenroom for the bands with lots of free pizza, comfy couches and most importantly heaters! It sort of became our home base.

I did a little bit of investigating before heading to Austin and found this very helpful site called "vintage around town guide".  

I had a few places highlighted on the map prior to my visit and it just so happened that the majority of them were on or around South Congress which helped me make the most of only a few days in the city.  I highly recommend that map if you are into vintage and plan to visit Austin in the near future!

Feather's Boutique was great but it was one of the stores I knew about long before this trip. I must say, my first visit was a success... I bought an adorable dress (which will get an outfit post soon) and met the lovely Nikki who works there, handles the blog and also did an Austin City Guide for the Urban Outfitters blog a few weeks back - I may have scared her with my half-missing voice and sniffles but she was oh-so-sweet.  She also let me know that they post pictures of items for sale on the feathers blog and they will ship! so I thought I'd pass that on to you lot. thanks, Nikki!  (interior shot of  feathers via flickr...)

We went to a few more shops along the main drag (vintage or otherwise) and they were all pretty cool but I didn't find much of any thing.  Cream vintage does do in-store alterations which is interesting but there was nothing in the store that worked for me.  Still worth a browse.  Then we ended up in a store that really deserves its very own post, Uncommon Objects...

Probably one of the most unique and coolest (for lack of a better word) store I've been to anywhere. Top five for sure. Uncommon Objects carries mainly antiques, gifts and wonderful knickknacks.  It's not so much that they have the coolest items ever (though they are all pretty darn great), but the way they have them displayed and the sheer quantity of interesting things simply boggles the mind. It's like the blog "the snail and the cyclops" come to life and that could never be a bad thing! Though they do not allow photographs normally, after a brief chat with one of the owners and an exchange of cards I was able to snap a few cheeky shots to share with my lovely readers!

(I bought those feathers and the vintage glass vase they sat in for my room...swoon!)

I could have spent hours (literally) in this store - I'll post a few more pictures on my flickr this week if you care to see more. Thanks to Uncommon Objects for being so great to me! I'll be back someday soon!

There were so many great eateries in Austin too.  Sadly, I wasn't in the biggest eating mood but it all looked and smelled delicious. We passed by the Hey Cupcake Airstream about ten times and I was really tempted, that and I have a huge thing for Airstream trailers and if I were to live in one someday I will basically have made it in my book! However, I did eat or had friends eat and enjoy the following places:  Home Slice (mentioned above), South Congress Cafe, Crepes Mille, Güero´s Taco Bar & Jovita's (Mexican). There were also lots of great coffee shops which both surprised me and made me miss living in Seattle another great coffee town.

As I mentioned, I have SO MANY band photos and I will post them on my flickr as well but not here because this is already an EPIC POST. But here is a shot of the lead singer (aka Doll) from Doll & the Kicks (UK) that I took because her outfit was stellar and she was very sweet.

and, finally, the one shot of me from pretty much the whole weekend.  I don't like being photographed when I'm sick (for obvious reasons!) but thanks to Miss Kristin for your help with this one! sorry if I was a pain!

Ok, I'm sure your bored by this point and I need a break anyhow! I highly recommend visiting Austin and I'm excited for Andrea who will be moving there soon!  Thanks to all the wonderful people we met! We'll be back...

(first pic of night skyline & store front pics from flickr the rest by me)

flickr favs: ponygraph

It's pretty clear from this blog that I love cool photos of cute girls; they inspire me fashion-wise, and also creatively, so I'm constantly on the lookout.  I came across (Norwegian?) photographer, Ponygraph on Flikr recently and was most definitely inspired by her work.

She also has a lovely blog which can be found here.

Cure - Pictures Of You

So, I am actually factually traveling today (yes, yes...this is a sneaky "scheduled" post) but I hope to do a post about today's travels later in the week. take care, everyone!