on the road: The Lake at Central Park

It's amazing that in the middle of a huge city like New York, you can find this.



We took a boat out with our friends Jamie and Amanda. (Only about 8 weeks 'til their baby arrives!)




It was the perfect afternoon activity. Happy Memorial Day everyone!

on the road: US vs. Czech Republic

On Tuesday, Kirk and I drove to Hartford with our friends Francesco and Eduardo to see the US National soccer team play a friendly match against the Czech Republic in preparation for the World Cup.

It was an exhausting, but fun day. And it was great for me to see how ecstatic the guys all were to be there. Too bad the US lost, though.

It was also amazing to see how packed this gigantic stadium (UConn) was. Soccer has really come a long way in the US since I was a kid. There were even tons of people that showed up hours ahead of time to tailgate! I've never seen that at a soccer match before. It kinda warmed my heart.
Kirk and I have been complaining a little bit that we've been here almost 3 weeks and have only had about 4 days off. Not that we normally have more time off than that, but since we are in New York, we thought we'd take more time off than usual. That's life, I guess. But we're gonna try really hard to take advantage of the city for the next week until we return to Utah. No more whining. No more excuses like "shipping", "emails", "bills", "vending at shows", etc... Okay, that's not true -- we'll still have to do those things. But I hope we'll be more efficient at them. I'll keep you posted.

on the road: The High Line

Kirk and I went for a stroll down the High Line the other day. It's such a magical place. I love that they've re-purposed the old elevated train line into a public garden. And I love that they designed the garden using native plants and a slightly wild aesthetic to mimic the abandoned overgrown rails.










From the High Line, we also came upon a film crew setting up for a scene on the street below. Like eager teenage fans, we watched as they set up lighting, cameras, told the extras where to stand, etc... After a while the lead actress showed up: Kate Hudson. The movie is called Something Borrowed and it co-stars John Krasinski and Ginnifer Goodwin. Let's hope it's a good one.

p.s. See photos from my first road trip ever (San Francisco, December 1979) over on Abby's blog.

sound + vision: Holiday

For a look at New York high society in the 1930's, Holiday does the trick. Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn are completely charming...and I found myself ooh-ing and ahh-ing over their gorgeous style.

They need to make more charming, intelligent romantic comedies (like this one) these days. Do you hear me, Hollywood?

sycamore street press: New Cards From the Lark Collection

Amy Shaffer and Kristin Mills are the writing/designing duo behind our Lark line, and they really did an awesome job this time around. (Well, they always do, in my opinion.) If you grew up watching Dirty Dancing like I did, then you'll get a kick out of the above card.







The last three images are images of the new Subliminal Baby poster series (also from the Lark collection). They're available in our online shop along with all of our other new products. Woohoo! After months of designing, collaborating, printing, etc... it's great to finally have all these new paper goodies to show!

Oops...I just realized that I don't have the photos of the two new Lark Christmas cards edited. I'll show you those soon... or maybe I'll just wait and surprise you when it gets closer to the holidays.

sycamore street press: New Cards From the Pop Collection

Stephanie Lynne Ford has been a Sycamore designer for a while, making designs like the alphabet and numbers posters for the Pop collection. But this was her first time designing a collection of cards, and she did a fantastic job!






These are the photos I took for our catalog and to use in our online shop. I snapped some in our booth as well, but these look much better.

FYI: All our new products are now up in our online shop.

A big thanks to Nole at Oh So Beautiful Paper for including us in her NSS coverage.

on the road: The West Village

So, the Month of Paper is officially over. I still have a couple more posts for you with all our new designs from the Pop and Lark lines. Steph, Kris, and Amy came up with some great stuff, so I am really excited to show you! But I thought I'd take a small break first with some photos from the little bit of exploring we've been able to do so far in New York. I snapped these in the West Village.







We also hit up the Shake Shack (the burgers and shakes live up to the hype...the fries not so much), the Frick Collection (gorgeous), and the Ok Ikumi and Forest World sets at Pulse Wave (they killed!). After over a week in the city of just work, work, work, (not to mention all the crazy prep work in the months before we left) it's been great to be able to take some time off to relax, explore, and enjoy.