the summer wasting

friday i went out, as planned, with three friends it seems impossible to get in one room these days - 3 years ago, when i moved to the city, we were all relatively new to new york and hung out easily and often, all of us single or practically so and easy to gather up for a night on the town. flash forward three years and we're all living with our significant others, and i got MARRIED somehow. life's funny. so i got dressed up, drank too much, and had the best time out i have in ages.





top: american apparel
skirt: super sale anthropologie
scarf: thrifted
shoes: devotte [who sadly seem to be defunct]
bag: cambridge satchel co

i ordered this bag months ago and had it embossed with my new initials - AEL. you married ladies, how did you make the transition to your new name (if you changed it?) i'm overwhelmed by all i have to do - it's official, on our marriage certificate, but there are still drivers licenses, passports, credit cards, and email addresses to change, not to mention the fact that whenever someone asks my name my auto-response is still "audrey dettmar." when does a workin' woman get to the dmv?! /rant.

after friday's shenanigans i slept until almost noon on saturday and then spent most of the day working on invitations for a shindig my parents are throwing for some friends and coworkers at the end of the summer. yep, my dad hired me to design the invitations! nepotism at its best. i made sure to give him his money's worth, though, working from noon til almost 11 pm to hand sew, assemble, and then decorate each and every envelope. thank goodness it's a small party.







the idea was simply to try to convey summer with some graphic elements, so i made a template of a wine bottle and cut it out of each card, then formatted some type with the who, what, where, & when in illustrator to fill the wine bottle, and printed it on vellum; put the thing through my sewing machine to attach and add a bit of texture, and slipped it inside a little sleeve to hold it in place with the tag line, of sorts, of the party - "where did the summer go? come help us search for what remains." then i drew flags on each envelope, just to make 'em a bit more festive. pretty simple, but i'm happy with how they turned out.

after finishing the invites, i retreated to bed with my laptop and fell asleep watching so you think you can dance. the exciting life on a 20-something in the big city! the weekend was somewhat rescued, though, by a long bike ride to the farmer's market yesterday and a barbecue with friends to end the evening. all in all, not a bad showing.

more from me soon!

xo audrey

go green

good morning! i had a nice, restful (for the most part) weekend after the madness that was last week, which was exactly what i was hoping for. friday night i ran home, changed into jeans, and headed to the bar across the street to watch the uconn/syracuse game with sam; we made it through the first half before we decided we needed better food than our local mexican/chinese place could offer, so hurried across brooklyn during halftime to arrive at fatty cue, one of our favorite places to make complete pigs of ourselves. we planted ourselves at the bar and were probably the only people there who were actually watching the game as we gorged ourselves on two different kinds of ribs (pork and lamb,) toast with rendered fat for dipping, brisket bao, and tecate. we won our game, finished our beers, and headed home to bed.

saturday morning i woke up at a semi-reasonable hour and set about the arduous task of cleaning my room. now that i'm able to wear what i want to work every day, my floor is really suffering; the early morning try-on-and-discard is a terrible habit that i haven't been able to break in 25 years. i finally got it spiffed up, hemmed up a pair of jeans i picked up on friday (flares! for the first time since high school,) and then sam scored us a decent pair of tickets to the game that night at madison square gardens, so we grabbed a slice on the road and headed up to the insanity that is a building full of college basketball fans. i've never been super into basketball myself, but i've realized that i just like watching games of any kind, and once i start to learn about the players i'm pretty much hooked. sam graduated from uconn a few years ago, so with the knowledge he imparts about the players, i'm jumping out of my seat with the best of them within the first few minutes. they won this game too (the first team to win five games to become big east champions, if anyone's counting,) and once again we dragged ourselves home and promptly fell asleep.

yesterday we had brunch plans to meet a bunch of friends, one of whom recently moved to london; eggs benedict, about 8 cups of coffee, and 2 of rosé. sam and i headed back to brooklyn, caught a matinée, and then i finally sat down and started working on our wedding invites, which are (hallelujah) almost done!






top: lilla p
skirt: quail
tights: ?
shoes: UO with poofs by ban.do
sweater: gap
necklace: ebay

you can win this shirt! a perfect color & cut for spring. it is so comfy, so versatile - you can't tell here but it's nice and long, such a flattering cut. all you have to do is leave a comment, any comment!, AND let me know that you're following lilla p on twitter and have liked them on facebook. i'll let this contest go for a week, and announce the winner next tuesday.


today my plans include: eating nothing but salad after a completely gluttonous weekend, and [hopefully] finishing wedding invitations and starting to put them in the post.

hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!

xo audrey

save the date

so i spent my evening with a sketchbook, a pen, and calligraphy utensils and i just might have completed a save the date. there will be some tweaks here or there, but i think i like the concept; this one is quite rough (i sloppily cut it out and didn't even trim the thread) but i think i kind of like some of the roughness. i want it to come through that the wedding will be casual, intimate, homemade. critiques welcome.

ok, but just one

quick wedding-related post. when i was back in chicago i had a custom invitation side business that kept me pretty busy; i made mostly bar and bat mitzvah invitations, but dabbled in some wedding work. i love doing calligraphy and even then i could appreciate how special it is to be a part of someone's wedding. so i've been thinking i'd love to do the invitations myself, especially since i have plenty of time to do so, but then i found these, thanks to selena (she has a great blog too, check it out!)






they are from RIFLE design, whom, from the looks of things, is actually launching a wedding line on their shop any day now, so i may be in luck! what do you guys think - i'd love to design my own, but these seem pretty perfect. . .

xo audrey