• A great post on not giving up.

• And speaking of not giving up, Domino is coming back! But wait… it may just be the equivalent of a clip show.

• For the fellas: How to dress for a date like you know what you’re doing.

• Saucy little minx. (Perhaps this one is also for the fellas.)

• Max Wanger’s year in review is very pretty to look at.

• Sports! SPOOOORTS!

• There may be snow falling in bag, fat flakes outside as I type this, but hush! It’s beginning to look a lot like summer. (Let me have my fantasy.)

• A chic little sweater, with a very affordable price tag.

• Love, for dinosaur fans.

• I think I like these so much because I was never a girl scout. Badge envy.

• How is OK Go so awesome?

© 2012, published by Making it Lovely as Honor Roll | 3 comments

I’ll be taking a photo of August sitting in the Eames rocker and wearing his pin each month until he’s two years old. I also took monthly photos of his older sister, Eleanor, until she turned two.

Previous Photos
One Month Old • Two Months Old • Three Months Old • Four Months Old • Five Months Old • Six Months Old • Seven Months Old • Eight Months Old • Nine Months Old • Ten Months Old • Eleven Months Old • View All

© 2012, published by Making it Lovely as Twelve Months Old (August’s Monthly Photo) | 19 comments

(more…)

© 2012, published by Making it Lovely as August’s First Birthday Party | 68 comments

Channel your inner Linda Evangelista with this pillow, and then hope luck is on your side with a gold wishbone keychain. Or if not, go incognito with some oversized sunnies.

© 2012, published by Making it Lovely as An Attitude… | 8 comments

The coverage of Kathryn’s bedroom starts on page 120.

Thanks, Adore Home.

© 2012, published by Making it Lovely as Kathryn’s Bedroom in Adore Home Magazine | 34 comments

• There are some excellent resolution backgrounds at the To Resolve Project. I love that one to the right: “Work like you don’t need the money (but then, you know, get the money).”
  [via ManMade]

• This video perfectly captures the mood at Alt. And it was fun to see my panel shown, about 30 seconds in!

• Eeeek! How’d you like to sleep in this every night?

• These Model-morphosis sliders let you go between bare-faced and totally made up for the runway. The transformations are fascinating.
  [via BUST]

• Food meets fashion.

• I know this has been making the rounds and you’ve probably seen it by now, but come on. How cute is Kristen Bell?

• I am flipping over the Florence Broadhurst collection for Kate Spade. One of my favorite florals ever, mixed with liberal doses of pink and on cute, ladylike clothes? Dying.

• You need these oven mitts. (Yes, need.)

• Your fridge could be sporting some ice, and I’m not talking about the kind in the freezer.

• I’m not really a ‘tote’ person (I prefer more structured bags), but I’m loving these. The reversible heart one? Yes, please.

• The prettiest terrariums.

• Stumped for a Valentine’s Day gift? How about this?

• Kids’ furniture that costs as much as (or more than!) their adult counterparts. So pretty, but would you splurge?

© 2012, published by Making it Lovely as Honor Roll | 12 comments

August gets in on the action sometimes too.

They’re good.

© 2012, published by Making it Lovely as Jam Band | 14 comments

Our copy arrived today, and I showed it to Eleanor. “Does this look like your room?” I asked her. She looked at it, then started pointing at toys and asking to play with them upstairs. The girl really wants her mercury glass mushrooms and toy calliope, please.

Here’s Eleanor’s room, for reference.

Quite the resemblance, right? (Although, now that I think about it… they’re based in Chicago. I’m in Chicago. Dudes, why didn’t you just shoot here?)

Anyway, thanks team Nod! It was neat to see the Bizarro World version in the catalog.

© 2012, published by Making it Lovely as Eleanor’s Bizarro World Room | 67 comments

Well, that’s not entirely true. There are a million and one little tweaks and additions that I’d still like to make, but the changes are ones that don’t impact the overall look and function, so I can add them in over the next few days/weeks.

I do all of my own designing and coding (I used to offer web design as Smart & Lovely), and this time around I built these themes off of Standard Theme for WordPress. It’s been been great to work with. I made a lot of changes visually, and a few changes to the core PHP files, but for the most part it gave me the structure I needed. And as for the pretty? I have Moglea to thank for the custom floral illustrations in the header, and I used a couple of elements from Pugly Pixel as well (the glitter and the honeycomb). The background floral pattern is a licensed image, and the logo and all the rest were done by yours truly.

Hold up, did I say themes in that previous paragraph? Plural? Yep. Remember the whole minimal vs. maximal debate I’d been having in regard to the new design? Jessica left a comment suggesting both with a theme switcher, and that was a genius idea. I’d forgotten that was even a possibility! So the default is the “Lovely” theme, full of pattern, but if it’s a bit much (and it may be), you could choose the “Minimal” theme instead. You can switch between the two themes at the top right, next to the social media links. Everyone wins! *

* Well, everyone will win. Eventually. It’s a bit buggy right now (I’m working on it), but you should be able to switch between the two themes with a hard refresh.

So what’s still to come? More organization of categories on the backend, making the design responsive (resizing to fit smaller screens for the 7% of you that need to scroll left to right a little on the site as it is now), more post layouts for different types of content, fine tuning the sidebar, perhaps adding to the footer, some changes to the social sharing options, and on and on. Good stuff, but not essential to launching. And I’ve been dying to launch, so it feels good to push on ahead, right on schedule.

And now, onward! Onward with bigger pictures, interesting new layouts, and different post formats. Onward with a select few new contributors (soon)! Onward with more content, and more awesomeness. And thank you for your patience as I’ve devoted myself to all of this design work lately. Hopefully you’ll love the new look and everything to come as much as I do.

© 2012, published by Making it Lovely as The New Site Design | 77 comments

I’m squeaking in at the end here with this month’s style post! I had put together two fashion posts earlier in the month, but a few people have been asking for the official January outfit, so here it is. It’s one of my favorites ever, I think.

p.s. Is it helpful to have the prices listed, or is it distracting? I try to pick from a good range, and I don’t include anything I wouldn’t consider spending my own pennies on.

© 2012, published by Making it Lovely as Style: January ’12 | 48 comments