So I am in the UK!  I flew into London early this morning, and now am writing from my little hotel room in the beautiful city of Brighton.  We are right over the water, by the pier - it's a pretty epic view, and so far, I think this city is amazing.  I hope that I will be able to sneak some time for exploring the area into my busy work schedule here...
The day started with lots of annoying airport things - a too-long customs line, visa issues, problems locating our driver, etc. (general sadness depicted by my lovely roommate and stage manager, Kelly Shaffer Allen, seen above).  But obviously, our day quickly got a whole lot better -  see the epic English breakfast that we ate today, pictured below.  I just don't know how a meal gets any better than that - crisp bacon, a fried egg, sausage, potato latke, portobello slices, baked beans, and buttered toast.  With, of course, a huge cup of delicious English tea.  I have a feeling that this week is going to be pretty awesome... 

Why are my friends so wonderful???  I had a birthday party over the weekend and I was humbled to see so many wonderful, amazing people all in one place.  The party was super last minute - I literally sent out an invitation email only two days ahead of time.  I have been feeling a little depressed and confused about life lately, and so last week I just really wasn't in the mood to have a birthday party at all.  But I hung out with my friend Dana last week, and she inspired me to just have a party anyway, and so I did.  So thank you to Dana - for inspiring that party, and also for bringing me the beautiful bouquet of white roses that you see above!  All in all, this past Saturday ended up being one of my favorite birthdays that I have ever had, which was the best birthday present of all.  There was no pretension about everything being great and perfect and idyllic - it was just me, hanging out and being myself with awesome people who I love!  I know that I am a very lucky girl :)

The older I get, the more often I find myself doing things that I never thought I would actually do.  Like, oh I don't know, going grocery shopping (for food!  not booze!) late on a Friday night.  And then buying the ingredients for homemade kale chips and guacamole (because I actually - surprise! - plan to make those things tomorrow!.  And then while I was at it, decided to just go ahead and buy myself a birthday cake.  Something casual, just a little Cookies & Cream Cheesecake....  Who have I become?!?!!??? 

This is all to say: I am feeling a little bit humbled tonight, because for the first time ever, I am feeling a little freaked out about my birthday and my age.  And I guess I just never thought I was somebody who would ever feel bothered or freaked out about getting older.  I never understood the people who did - in fact, I find the whole "women always pretending to be 29 again" thing particularly obnoxious.  Which, in fairness, does make this whole "moment" I'm having tonight even funnier...

While I was grocery shopping tonight, I kept thinking back to where I was ten years ago.  Well, not to literally where I was ten years ago - ten years ago tonight, on the eve of my 19th birthday, I would have probably been drunkenly staggering from bar to sketchy bar with a very fake ID (sorry mom and dad).  

But maybe that is actually a  pretty good example of what I'm trying to say - that the more I really think back through the years, the more I realize that I wouldn't want to be 19 again today.  I was a mess then - not that I'm not a mess now, I totally still am!  But now I get to be a mature, house-cleaning, wine-sipping, positive-body-image, organic-foods-buying 29 year old mess, which I think is not necessarily a bad place to be.  I have grown up a lot these past ten years, and I wouldn't trade that experience for anything.  Sure, there are things that I wish were different about my life today - when I was 19, the image that I had in my mind of "what 29 looks like" is not what my 29 is today.  But this is my life, and this is what I have and where I am, and there is no other age or place that I can be.  So I may as well just enjoy it already!

A friend of mine emailed me this week to wish me a happy birthday, and he said: "From my personal research, 29 has proven to be one of the best years of life."  So, you know, that sounds like a good omen to me....thanks Creighton :) 

I am pleased to report that I have finally added some new merchandise to my website!  It only took me what, a month?  I have been a little bit distracted lately, between my lighting job and looking for a part time job, etc.  But it feels good to be back in the jewelry world, and I love having some pretty new things in my shop, just in time for the start of spring!  I have a dozen or so additional new pieces that I will be posting over the next couple of days, partly in preparation for a sale I'm planning to do sometime next week.  My 29th birthday is next Saturday, April 6th, so I'm thinking that might be a good excuse for an early spring sale... 

But for now, here they are: my three brand new pairs of earrings!  I only have one pair of each in stock right now, and I'm really liking the way that each pair really does have its own personality.  I'm not sure which pair I would say is my favorite...I can think of a pretty good argument for each one :)  But each pair is a pretty good combination of effortless and special - a perfect combination for the warmer weather!  Well, if there's warmer weather happening already where you live - NYC hasn't caught up to the whole spring thing just yet...  Hopefully soon!!  I got spoiled by my two weeks in Australia - it was harder than I thought to come back to the NYC cold!  So, you can wear these earrings and celebrate spring, whether it's warm where you are yet or not!  I won't tell :)  Click the pics for more info on each pair...

This past weekend, I celebrated my friend Nora's birthday with a special night of bingo at NYC venue Le Poisson Rouge!  I had no idea that they host a night of bingo there every Saturday, but I am so glad that I do now.  It is so much fun!!  The night is hosted by the lovely bingo drag queen extraordinaire Linda Chapman, who is fabulous in basically every way.  And the prizes that she gives out are hysterical - the night culminates in a $180 cash prize, but before that you can win things like dinosaur welcome mats and pink tiaras that light up.  

And, of course, you can buy your very own "Fuck you if you don't like bingo!" tank top for just $10.  That would be the birthday girl wearing one in the picture to the right....I mean, what could possibly be a more appropriate birthday shirt??

I was also happy to discover how affordable an evening of bingo can be -  each bingo card is only $2.  You just buy 2 or 3 (or 4!) at the beginning and play with them all night.  And there are lots of drink specials, which is great.  

So in conclusion, it's a pretty fun way to spend a Saturday night.  If you want to go yourself, you can check out their website for more details HERE.  So happy birthday Nora, and happy bingo-ing everyone!! :)

So I am back from Australia!!  I am (mostly?) over the jet lag - I got back last Monday, so it has already somehow been a week since my return.  I spent two weeks in South Australia at the Adelaide Festival, designing the lights for the wonderful theater play/musical Beowulf, by Banana Bag & Bodice (check em out HERE), a local company based in Brooklyn.  I'm not the original lighting designer - my wonderful friend and mentor Miranda Hardy is - but I was happy to travel with them in her stead and have a chance to adapt her design.  The trip was great, with some annoying parts - mainly, that it entailed  24 + hrs of flights/layovers/traveling in order to get there.  I hate flying, but I have to say that the 14 hour flight from LA to Sydney was not as bad as I had expected.  Once you accept that there's not much to be done other than watch movies and play solitaire, it can actually be kind of fun.  The airplane food, however, was not so fun.  But once we actually landed in Australia, the food was just amazing.

You can see the incredible lunch feast that I ate on one of the last days of the trip here - this was a special lunch served at a beautiful local vineyard, complete with locally grown olives, smoked kangaroo, spicy carrot ginger chutney, a beautiful array of stinky cheeses, citrus corn, and much more.  Yes, eating the kangaroo was a little bit weird - just the day before this meal I spent the day at a wildlife park, petting and feeding lots of adorable kangaroos by hand!  But I had to try the meat - I mean, when else am I going to have the chance to eat some kangaroo??  (Apologies to my vegan sister and mother...) 

I have a lot of great stories and pictures from my time in Australia - I won't even pretend to try to post them all today!  I'll do another "photo journal" post maybe with some of the best shots from the beach, Botanic Gardens, wildlife park, show, and festival parties.  Too many photos, too many stories!  I wish I had better shots of the hotel room that I had to myself for the duration of my stay in Adelaide.  I could not get over the fact that it was bigger than the apartment that Nick and I live in in here in New York!!  I'm used to living in a studio - our apartment is just one room.  But my hotel room had like three separate rooms, and I couldn't get used to all the doors!  I swear, if we ever move out of the city and rent a normal-sized place, we won't know what to do with ourselves :)  
But the moral of the story is that Adelaide was awesome, Australians are amazing and super friendly folks, and I can't wait to find a good excuse to go back again!  It was absolutely worth putting up with all those hours of annoying flights :)

See this picture of me on the left, holding a giant (and beautiful!) pheasant wing??  This is why I love my friends!!  This is definitely the most awesomely strange gift I have ever been given - my friend Nora gave it to me on Friday night, wrapped in a fancy Christmas box with glittery ribbon.  Before I opened it, she said that she had two things to tell me: " Be careful"
and "I swear it's dead!"  And yes, it is literally a whole pheasant wing, actually from the 1970's, that her mother had used in her art  years ago and was now about to throw away.  But Nora rescued it and decided to give it to me, thinking I could use it to make something cool.  Which I definitely can, and will!!!  Nora, how I love you :)  I think you will be receiving some feather earrings very, very soon...

The other particularly awesome thing that happend this weekend was the brunch that I had yesterday with three wonderful girlfriends at Hotel Chantelle.  I almost don't even want to write about the restaurant too much, because their brunch is so amazing.  I know that as soon as too many other New Yorkers discover this place, the restaurant will be super packed all the time and I won't be able to hang out all afternoon with friends like I did yesterday, drinking delicious .92 cent cocktails.  Yes, all the drinks cost .92 cents from 12-5 on Saturday - I was drinking Mint Juleps, but they also had Mimosas, Bloody Marys, and several other things, all of which were very good.  The food is really tasty too - you can see the burger that my friend Lauren got above, and my grilled cheese with sliced bacon and apples was so, so good.  Their two course brunch special is $20 - which also includes a free cocktail, of course!!  This is officially my new favorite place to spend a casual Saturday afternoon.  So, um, I guess you are allowed to go here for brunch too, but do me a favor and don't tell too many people you know about it, ok??!?? :)  

I spent tonight at a special cocktail party at The Tenement Museum in NYC, here on the Lower East Side.  The party was hosted by Etsy, which is of course the website where I sell my jewelry (you can take a peek at my Etsy store HERE!).  The event was lots of fun - there were more than 70 Etsy sellers in attendance, plus some wonderful Etsy staff members, including Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson.  It always feel a little bit awkward going to networking events like this by yourself, but I luckily struck up a conversation with the wonderful and talented Sky Koltun (you should check out her Etsy shop too - it's HERE) at the start of the event, and we chatted and wandered around together for most of the night.  It's so nice to talk to another jewelry designer and small business owner who I can relate to so easily - it made me feel a little bit less crazy, and like my business and I are actually doing ok!  So thank you Sky :)   

Each seller was given the opportunity to bring  a piece of their work to display, so there was a beautiful selection of products to explore.  All the jewelry designers had their pieces displayed on one side of the room - you can see my earrings and bracelet on a stand up above (those are my blue business cards!) - and other types of products were displayed on the other side of the room.  There was everything from leather boots to sequined bags, paper lanterns, wooden magnets, and baby bibs - a pretty impressive display.  The Tenement Museum also offered all of us free tours of their new exhibit, Shop Life, which I really enjoyed.  I always forget how great The Tenement Museum is, and I know most people have never been.  So if you happen to find yourself in the Lower East Side sometime, you should go check it out and maybe take a tour!  

Well, it seems that I lied yesterday about there not being any recording of our Downton Abbey night!!  Click HERE to see a most excellent video of Edgar Oliver doing a reading....very, very worth watching if I do say so myself!  We were so lucky to have him.  Also, there are many more pictures from that night that just went up online - above, you can see the dining room, complete with massive banquet table and beautiful candelabras...  So gorgeous.  And here, you can see us all getting a very quick crash course in fine dining just before the dinner!  Luckily we are all fast learners :) And below, a picture of the first course being plated!

Also - I am very excited to announce that I am going to Australia next week!  I will be traveling as the touring lighting designer for a show that is going to the Adelaide Festival.  The show is great, and I love the people I will be traveling with - they are the excellent Banana Bag & Bodice, and the show is Beowulf (click on the underlined words for more info on either!).  I leave next Wednesday, which means that any jewelry orders placed later than next Monday will not be able to ship until March 20th, when I get back.  Technically I get back on the 18th, but I'm giving myself a little jet lag buffer there - I have a feeling that I will need it!  It has been almost two years since I have worked in lighting - or, well, it was two years until this past Sunday, when we put on Beowulf for one night at Galapagos in DUMBO.  Before Sunday, I had been a little worried about feeling "rusty" on the lights, but I was amazed to discover that it felt like no time had passed at all.  So I am ready to go to Australia!  The show is excellent, and if you are in Adelaide, or will be in Adelaide this March, then you should most definitely come see it.  I am also ready for a break from all this NYC cold - apparently it will be in the 90's there, so I am ready to put on some shorts....  Anyone have any tips for making 30 hr of airport traveling fun???    

I had a blast this week dressing up as a Downton Abbey maid at a special themed dinner at New York Vintners.  Nick directed the evening, and it went beautifully--lots of delicious food and drinks were consumed, and our team of six provided the beautiful Downton Abbey ambience.  Which even including some epic opera singing--obviously not by me!  At one point, the New York Vintners sommelier did a demonstration on "champagne sabering," which is as dangerous and elegant as it sounds.  I mean, it's basically a sexy way of chopping off the top of a champagne bottle - so I tried not to cut anyone as I poured the glasses!  At the after party, there was a photo booth set up, and my fellow maid Dana and I took lots of pictures.  We are in our full maid costumes below (although my hair is down, and we actually kind of look like nuns??), and we have frilly hats (and cucumbers?!!?) above.  Couldn't resist posting these shots....  It was such a fun and memorable night.  I really wish that I had pictures and recording of Jeffrey Palmer singing and Edgar Oliver reading his beautiful poetry, because they were both rock stars and made the night really special.  It was a pretty great team of talented people....I am looking forward to to working with them again and soon!  And hopefully I will have some more chances to put on fun costumes :)