“A portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014.”

This past week has been a whirlwind! The little man got his first haircut, no more long locks! He looks so grown up, what a cutie! Marli worked hard with paper mache to create her own hot air balloon and she's so proud of her work. All in all a good week!

I love making color palettes and mood boards, I find so much inspiration in different color combinations and font types. Sometimes the best way to spark your creative side is to just lay all of your favorite things out and see how they look together and pull inspiration from different pieces along the way.
Since I've now changed this space into a creative journal I thought I would start sharing some of my favorite fonts, colors, and mood-boards that I create in a new feature called Color // Text here on the blog. Every once in awhile I'll find an illustration, painting, or poster that really speaks to me and share it as a color palette, font layout, or collage to share with you. Hopefully it will get your creative juices flowing as well.

I pinned this image awhile ago because I loved the color combination, texture, and composition. I went searching the web for the artist and found her flickr account, full of lovely abstract patterns. This is definitely one of my favorites but it's really hard to choose because there are so many great ones.

Artist // Ashley Goldberg : flickr
Find this piece here.

“A portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014.”

We've been spending a lot of time painting this past week. There are so many good ones to frame, I can't wait to go through them. Meekah decided to pop in the picture as well.
Have a lovely weekend!

 I'm really excited to announce this new little project for the shop! I will now be selling a line of hand painted IPhone cases in my Storenvy shop and a select few on Etsy. I have been working hard on the new products for spring and so far I am just so in love with everything. These phone cases will each be painted with a one of a kind design that coordinates with the new spring goodies. No two will be similar and there will be a limited quality of them so snatch them up when you can! I will be opening up some custom order slots and I will announce the sign up date for that, I will do a few first come first serve.
 I can't wait to launch everything but until then these little sneak peeks will have to do it for now. I will be putting up a few case listings soon so check for updates on my Facebook and Twitter accounts for details!

I spent the weekend updating my Society6 account so there are a ton of new goods to checkout while you wait for me to list the spring collection for the shop! Some of these designs will be making it into designs that will be listed and others will be exclusive to Society6! I really love a lot of the new products available, I want to go snatch some up myself! The featured products here are some of my favorites!

“A portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014.”

Personality is really shining through on these, I am loving this photo series already.
Hope you all have a great weekend!

A little calligraphy practice. I'm getting into the Valentine's mood, it's just around the corner!
Every year the hubby and I do handmade cards, I'm thinking this is my design for this year. Simple and sweet! We don't make a fuss for Valentine's Day but it's always nice to get a card that came from the heart and was made just for you.
Do you ever make handmade cards for your sweetheart on Valentine's Day?

Last night the family was craving fresh baked cookies, so I got out all the ingredients and then realized I was out of butter.Isn't that the worst!? Quickly I ran to my good friend Google and searched for butter-less cookie recipes. This recipe popped up and I decided to try it out with a few minor adjustments and they turned out so delicious. My husband couldn't keep himself away from the plate. These cookies are super sweet, chewy, and they bake up perfectly. Oil makes a great alternative in cookie dough! They are my new favorites! What you'll need: 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 large egg
1 teaspoon honey
1 cup semi-sweet or milk chocolate chips
1/2 cup milk chocolate Heath pieces
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. and get out all of your supplies. Stir together flour, baking soda, salt  then set aside. In the original recipe it added cocoa powder but I decided to omit this, they used it for coloring and without it they still became golden.
In a separate bowl, mix sugar, oil, egg and honey. Combine your egg mixture with your flour mixture until well combined. The oil makes it a little more difficult to get it completely mixed so make sure you are thorough. Then its time to fold in your chocolate chips and Heath pieces. I love adding the heath because it gives it a great sweet and salty balance.

With a tablespoon or spoon, scoop dough and roll it into a ball between your hands. Place an ungreased cookie sheet and bake them for 8-10 minutes. They should be golden around the edges.
When done place on a cooling rack. Then enjoy! What is your favorite cookie flavor? We are all about chocolate chip at the hive.

If you try out this recipe let me know! I hope you enjoy.

As you've probably noticed by now I've done a little re-branding. I thought I would start the new year with a fresh start and make this place more of a creative space and place to share my art and inspirations.This whole re-branding thing is for the birds. I forgot how much work it is to start from scratch! What was I thinking? After a lot of hours planning and obsessing its finally all here.
I created this little mood board to give you a little visual of everything new to the site and shops. I wanted everything to be very clean and bright, so I opted for colors that I've used in the past with this space. My two inspiration photos, the pretty paper confetti  colored envelopes, and polka dot paper really gave me the visuals I needed to start designing. I really love the look and how everything turned out. I also love the way watercolors I painted were incorporated into the design as well, adding a little texture and personality. All in all re-branding was worth it.
I know that i've changed this space a lot in the recent past, I've dissapeared, talked about walking away from blogging, and even played with the notion of starting a new blog all together but I just cant seem to walk away. I love you all to much, and over the years I have put so much of my heart and time into this place and I just cant leave it for dead. I am coming back with a vengence.
Things will be different here, I want this space to change as I do, no matter how frequently that is. I've been working so much more on my painting, pouring my heart into designing paper goods products and prints and I want to share that here but in a more organic way. I've also been focusing a lot on knitwear and even working with modern calligraphy.
This space originally started as a vintage lifestyle blog but I've moved so much away from that and while I still love vintage and mid century modern design it just doesn't make since for me to make that the focus here anymore. I need to broaden my horizons and make this more of a creative journal.
I hope that you enjoy this new place, new design, and new name just as much as I do and that the things I post here inspire you.


I've updated most of my pages, and I'm working on putting up a portfolio soon with little previews of my custom work and some prints. My Etsy, Storenvy, and Society6 are also looking so fresh and so clean so head on over and check them out. Currently I only have on print available but I will be adding more soon! I've also created a Instagram account and Facebook page, so if you would like to know the latest and greatest feel free to follow along there!

“A portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014.”

We've spent the last week snowed in so we've been keeping busy with school work and tons of play. We even re-arranged the living room to accommodate a picnic and dance party. 
I hope everyone is ready for the weekend, we are hoping for temperatures above freezing.

A little while back I was commissioned to do a wedding suite for a beautiful bride to be. I sort have hinted cryptically on the blog about this in the past but now that the project is done I wanted to unveil all of my hard work. This project was really special because it was my first big commission and it really challenged me and helped me improve a lot on my watercolor skills. For this project I was only commissioned to do the floral work since the bride had a graphic designer in mind for the text and printing, which was honestly a huge relief for me because I could just focus on the design of the florals.
The brides bouquet was full of silver brunia, light colored peonies, and lots of beautiful greenery so we wanted to stay as true to that as possible but still keep the lovely effects that watercolors provide. She wanted he layouts to be as organic as possible. I think that all in all the set turned out beautifully, if i do say so myself.
These progress shots were taken close to the end of the commission but show a great bit of the work done. It's really a joy watching all of the pieces come to life. Sometimes your vision doesn't translate on to paper but I think that this is above and beyond what I expected.
I cannot wait to see the finished set, when they arrive in the mail I will definitely share them!

 Happy 2014 everyone! I started the new year off with a sort of rough start, I caught the flu bug that's been spreading around like wild fire and I broke a finger. I'm hoping that now all that is out of the way and we can move on with fantastic things for this year! I mentioned in my last post that one of my goals for this year is to learn calligraphy so I picked up a dip pen and I have been practicing my lettering and technique everyday. I can see this becoming an addiction! This is the latest little thing I've been working on, and I have a few other little fun things in the works as well. I've been painting a calendar for this year that will be up in my shop soon, better late than never so keep your eyes out for that announcement! Until then enjoy our first link up for the year!
Welcome to THE monthly blog hop party! Every 1st Monday of the month, link up all of your social media and blogging accounts with us. If you're looking for your blogging tribe, this is it!
These guidelines are in place so that we can all have a successful experience with The Collective. Please do your best to abide by each one, there are only 2:
1. Follow the host and co-host's blogs: (first links in each list) If you leave a comment letting us know that you did and what method you are following with, we'll return the favor :) We greatly appreciate each and every one that does.
Your co-hosts this week are: Leanne from Being Jane Savanna from ...and I don't like onions Autumn from Gypsybeee Vintage
Interested in co-hosting? Send an email to peacoatsnplaid(at)gmail(dot)com