10 Things We’re Doing Besides Reacquainting Ourselves With Sunshine and Driving

erica’s things

• Devouring Bullett Volume V (hey, plane-reading!). Can’t decide if the article on Bitcoin or Michael Cera’s Q&A with himself was my favorite part.

• Giving our office even more ‘tude, with the help of a pom-pom banner by Napkin.

• Obsessing over my much-needed haircut from the rad (and lowkey) Janet Waddell. Mention Of a Kind and get $50 off a cut from her new star stylist, Stacey.

• Scoring the vintage sherpa denim jacket of my dreams, over at jean rehab heaven, a.k.a. Denim Refinery.

• Getting damn excited about the prospect of a Nora Ephron HBO documentary (by her son!).

claire’s things

• Cracking up over New York Magazine’s crazily spot-on reimagination of Eloise as a Brooklyn kid living it up at the Wythe Hotel.

• Wondering why I ever bother eating anywhere besides Sugarfish when I come to L.A. No sense in it.

• Admitting that I have a serious Loeffler Randall problem. I own these, these, and these, and these guys are at the tippy-top of my wish list.

• Spending a pretty much perfect day at the magical Huntington Botanical Gardens. If you live in L.A. and you have not been...what are you doing?!

• Plotting my next dinner party thanks to Kitchensurfing, which is basically private chefs for plebs. A just plain genius business concept.

10 Things We’re Doing Other Than Talking About Spring Breakers

erica’s things

• Embracing the fact that NYC now has a country radio station. Nash 94.7—all the Blake/Taylor/Dierks/Miranda you can handle (ok, and probably a lot more).

• Wanting a ten-year sweatshirt: Flint and Tinder will do repairs on this hoodie for a full decade, guaranteeing that it lasts. How ridiculously cool is that?

• Learning that animals are probably waaay smarter than we think, by way of this Wall Street Journal article.

• Restocking my favorite mascara of the moment, Origins GinZing. This Lucky review sold me big-time, and it’s as good as Jean Godfrey-June says it is.

• Eating like a bunny. With this carrot-miso soup and carrot-avocado salad, both from Smitten Kitchen, you really can’t help yourself.

claire’s things

•  Impatiently awaiting as my favorite theatre-maker Eliza Bent prepares to bring her inimitable brand of comedy to an original production at the Bushwick Starr.

• Enjoying unlimited bubbles courtesy of the life-improving Sodastream.

• Celebrating my main squeeze’s birthday at Aska, where a (seriously delicious) 6-course tasting menu for $65 made it feel all special-occasion-y without breaking the bank.

• Dying over Thug Kitchen, a food blog that has discovered the perfect balance of nutrition advice and...curse words. (Please don’t click that link if you’re under 18—we want your parents to like us.)

• Dawdling around the adorable town of Rhinebeck, NY—dining at Market St. and ogling the wares at Spruce Design + Decor and Woodstock General Supply.

10 Things We’re Doing, Just, You Know, In General

erica’s things

• Getting sucked into Burning Love, a web series parody of The Bachelor with boatloads of familiar comic faces. Season 1 is airing on E! now, and season 2 is right here, for your internet-viewing pleasure.

• Waking up to warm croissants, courtesy of the Trader Joe’s freezer aisle. Unreasonably good, you guys!

• Wishing I could get a killer haircut for $14, like my BF does at the charmingly cheap Neighborhood Barbers in NYC’s East Village.

• Upping my note-taking game with this Muji pen clip. Genius, just like their hand-cranked paper shredder and stickie message cards, next on the wish list.

• Really vibing with a nude manicure—specifically just-pink Adore-a-Ball (the names!) from Essie and RGB’s whole line of skin-tone-matching tints.

claire’s things

•  Playing chef with this ridiculously easy spicy peanut kale salad—and doubling up on the dressing because it also makes the perfect at-home pad thai sauce.

• Getting amped to see my buddy Ben Nabors's documentary film William and the Windmill premiere at SXSW—about a boy in Malawi who builds a windmill from junk parts to generate power for his family. I MEAN.

• Wondering how long until a museum announces an exhibit of Instagram art, headlined by the likes of @dschwen and @mimiochun.

• Thinking maybe if I could just get a photon shower installed in my apartment I might finally transform into a morning person.

• Seriously feeling the selection at online vintage store Where I Was From.

10 Things We’re Doing On The Very Last Day of Our SPRINGFORCOLOR Sale

erica’s things

• Getting sucked into Burning Love, a web series parody of The Bachelor with boatloads of familiar comic faces. Season 1 is airing on E! now, and season 2 is right here, for your internet-viewing pleasure.

• Waking up to warm croissants, courtesy of the Trader Joe’s freezer aisle. Unreasonably good, you guys!

• Wishing I could get a killer haircut for $14, like my BF does at the charmingly cheap Neighborhood Barbers in NYC’s East Village.

• Upping my note-taking game with this Muji pen clip. Genius, just like their hand-cranked paper shredder and stickie message cards, next on the wish list.

• Really vibing with a nude manicure—specifically just-pink Adore-a-Ball (the names!) from Essie and RGB’s whole line of skin-tone-matching tints.

claire’s things

•  Playing chef with this ridiculously easy spicy peanut kale salad—and doubling up on the dressing because it also makes the perfect at-home pad thai sauce.

• Getting amped to see my buddy Ben Nabors's documentary film William and the Windmill premiere at SXSW—about a boy in Malawi who builds a windmill from junk parts to generate power for his family. I MEAN.

• Wondering how long until a museum announces an exhibit of Instagram art, headlined by the likes of @dschwen and @mimiochun.

• Thinking maybe if I could just get a photon shower installed in my apartment I might finally transform into a morning person.

• Seriously feeling the selection at online vintage store Where I Was From.

10 Things We’re Doing Before We Leave for Texas

erica’s things

• Getting sucked into Burning Love, a web series parody of The Bachelor with boatloads of familiar comic faces. Season 1 is airing on E! now, and season 2 is right here, for your internet-viewing pleasure.

• Waking up to warm croissants, courtesy of the Trader Joe’s freezer aisle. Unreasonably good, you guys!

• Wishing I could get a killer haircut for $14, like my BF does at the charmingly cheap Neighborhood Barbers in NYC’s East Village.

• Upping my note-taking game with this Muji pen clip. Genius, just like their hand-cranked paper shredder and stickie message cards, next on the wish list.

• Really vibing with a nude manicure—specifically just-pink Adore-a-Ball (the names!) from Essie and RGB’s whole line of skin-tone-matching tints.

claire’s things

•  Playing chef with this ridiculously easy spicy peanut kale salad—and doubling up on the dressing because it also makes the perfect at-home pad thai sauce.

• Getting amped to see my buddy Ben Nabors's documentary film William and the Windmill premiere at SXSW—about a boy in Malawi who builds a windmill from junk parts to generate power for his family. I MEAN.

• Wondering how long until a museum announces an exhibit of Instagram art, headlined by the likes of @dschwen and @mimiochun.

• Thinking maybe if I could just get a photon shower installed in my apartment I might finally transform into a morning person.

• Seriously feeling the selection at online vintage store Where I Was From.

10 Things We’re Doing In Addition to Wishing George Washington a Very Happy B-Day

erica’s things

• Finally buying myself a return-address stamp from Paperwink—feels like a grown-up move, right?

• Cracking up over my pal Kayleen Schaefer’s account of Lulu Lemon’s sample sale—a.k.a., YogaBowl—for The New Yorker.

• Discovering this really amaze, Michigan-based coffee delivery service, Regular Coffee: a month’s supply for $20 (shipping included!). Click through for the packaging alone.

• Falling even harder for celeb crushes Connie Britton and Aziz Ansari (IF THAT’S EVEN POSSIBLE), thanks to The New York Times Magazine and Into the Gloss respectively.

• Wishing that Bernadette Pascua’s happy-making flamingo drawings were hanging somewhere I could see them every day. (Sidenote: The illustrator is doing a clutch collab with our girl Lizzie Fortunato for spring!)

claire’s things

•  Tipping my hat to Karen Walker for always having the cleverest damn lookbook concepts. This time she recruited the ladies of Advanced Style to model her eyewear and naturally they murdered it.

• Keeping my sanity with the help of Boomerang for Gmail—among other things, it lets you schedule emails to be sent at a later date so you don’t annoy the crap out of everyone with your Saturday night email habit.

• Celebrating a lovely Valentine’s Day at one of my favorite NY restaurants, Blondie’s Sports Bar, where the excellent buffalo wings have been described as “canonical.”

• Planning my next vacation with the help of travel site Fathom. I mean: Tulum tips straight from the mouth of Creatures of Comfort designer (slash Of a Kind alum!) Jade Lai? I’ll take it.

• Swearing by the efficacy of Eatwhatever mints. They used to only be available at fancy-shmance drugstore Zitomer, but Erica found them sitting pretty at the checkout at Duane Reade last week. Hooray for good ideas going mass.
  

10 Things We’re Doing Other Than Trying on Morgan Carper Dresses All Day

erica’s things

• Uncluttering the bookshelves (a little), with the help of the internet: Sell with Powell's or donate with Better World Books and get free shipping labels either way!

• Falling for a product with an unfortunate name and packaging: Maybelline Baby Lips in Peach Kiss (uggggh) really is that good.

• Applauding Patagonia's online feature that lets you tour all of the factories and fabric mills they work with around the world. Makes you almost wanna buy a fleece.

• Cozying up with some mushroom bourguignon, from Smitten Kitchen. Vegetarian and easy in a way Julia Child could get behind—especially if you ditch the pearl onions.

• Getting waaay too excited about the bra-shopping experience over at True&Co. You take a quiz, get a box in the mail to try on, and pay only for what you keep. It's pretty major (and you get $15 off here).

claire’s things

•  Relying on Songza to get me out of a music rut—it's like a way-better Pandora and serves up a whole range of playlists such as the nostalgia-laden 90s Bachelor Pad and office favorite Country, Rock, and Soul.

• Drinking Blue Bottle's impossibly delicious New Orleans-style iced coffee even in freezing temps.

• Prepping for the Oscars by watching the fantastic animated short Paperman on YouTube.

• Marking my calendar to make sure to catch the last week of the Amanda Valdez show (embroidery! paint! fabric!) at the newly opened Denny Gallery.

• Saving my pennies for a Windowfarm. I'm sure I'd quickly make up for the cost of it in the amount I'd save on storebought cilantro alone.

10 Things We’re Doing Other Than Making You a Beyonce Link Round-up

erica’s things

• Getting giddy whenever Miss Moss does one of her food-plus-fashion roundups. Street style and recipes, whaaaa?!

• Really appreciating the gift of cacti/succulent greenness this time of year—I scored a flat of teeny, tiny guys (growing up!) from San Pedro Cactus on Etsy.

• Catching up on the books I missed in 2012 with the help of the Slaughterhouse 90210 reading list. Currently devouring: the really wonderful Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk.

• Stocking up on cozy-making Voluspa candles—they come in fancy little tins and are half as expensive as these things typically are.

• Wanting to know a whole lot more than I do about Hugh Hefner’s 2,500-volume, Guinness-record-holding scrapbook collection, as spotted on The Coveteur. Come on, internet, what are you good for, if not this?

claire’s things

• Feeling really grateful for my fleece-lined running pants on my sub-freezing morning runs.

• Obsessing over (Of a Kind alum!) Brook&Lyn’s latest creations: insanely gorgeous wall hangings.

• Taking my avocado toast to new heights with the addition of boquerones, a.k.a. fancy anchovies.

• Spending too much time playing with the New York Times’ awesome Red Carpet Project—and remembering a time when Nicole Kidman’s Dior dress was one of the bigger controversies in Tom Cruise’s life.

• Staring mesmerized at this time-lapse video showing the behind-the-scenes action at an Ann Street Studio shoot that went down in our office a few weeks ago. (I have a 2-second cameo. Hair flip.)

10 Things We’re Doing Other Than Complaining About the Weather

erica’s things

• Appreciating the crap out of my humidifier. My hair looks 90% less awful than it did before I got this thing.

• Developing a girl crush on the founder of the French, single-malt whisky Brenne.

• Raving about the (free!) Cue app: It syncs your calendar entries with the email exchanges and contacts associated with them and just makes running around to meetings waaay better.

• Gearing up for Puppy Bowl IX, with a little help from The New Yorker. Two words: hedgehog cheerleaders.

• Determining that this roasted cabbage wedge salad from The Yellow House is the perfect solution on cold, miz nights when ordering-in is just too tempting.

claire’s things

• Wishing I was pals with this chick.

• Mentally decorating my dream home with furniture from Organic Modernism.

• Expanding my guilty pleasure across mediums by listening to the Nashville soundtrack on repeat. (Don’t miss my favorite, “Boys and Buses,” which is inexplicably unavailable on Spotify.)

• Refining my eyebrow grooming technique with Sania’s Brow Bar’s latest release: an angled eyebrow pencil that is actually so special as to be worth writing about.

• Pretending I’m on the sunny beaches of Mexico with a Michelada in one hand and a fish taco in the other, courtesy of my favorite neighborhood spot, Gran Electrica.

10 Things We’re Doing In Addition to Running Your Favorite Internet Company

erica’s things

• Trying not to fall down the Manti Te’o rabbit hole—but getting sucked into this Chuck Klosterman/Malcolm Gladwell back-and-forth, which invokes Ali McGraw, Gary Glitter, and Icarus, anyway.

• Falling for the idea of food-world collabs—specifically this ombré Intelligentsia x Le Creuset coffee set.

• Marking my cal for the Chinese-American designers exhibit at the Museum of Chinese in America in NYC—featuring Derek Lam, Anna Sui, Phillip Lim, and Creatures of Comfort leading lady Jade Lai (who’s been featured on Of a Kind, heeeey).

• Liking Lena Dunham more for the fact that she REALLY likes Taylor Swift.

• Pulling the trigger on some way-cute, display-worthy Rifle Paper Co. cards for Galentine’s Day.

claire’s things

• Loving these classic cartoon characters rocking ready-to-wear. Daria in Marni is everything.

• Wishing one of my friends would move soon so I would have an excuse to buy one of these adorable Native Cast garden planter kits as a housewarming gift.

• Getting a good, old-fashioned kick out of the 2013 Eustace Tilley Contest entries. So zeitgeist.

• Slathering my hands in Kiehl’s Ultimate Strength Hand Salve—my longtime winter standby and the only intense hand lotion I’ve found that doesn’t leave me greasy (or smelly for that matter).

• Thinking that the Drift Relief Project is giving me a worthy reason to indulge my mounting temptation to spend hundreds of dollars on a beautifully painted stick (yes, that’s a thing now.)

10 Things We’re Doing To Avoid Falling Prey to “Blue Monday”

erica’s things

• Getting really into deep, bruise-y purples, thanks to these watercolors from ZBC House Designs.

• Trying out a wavy hair trick that actually works, ℅ The Beauty Department.

• Dying over pretty much everything that Michele Varian sells. This home store can make you feel deep affection for a potholder or sugar dish.

• Raving about how amazing Sushi Yasuda is. If you’re in NYC, go for lunch, and get the mochi.

• Dipping my toe into wedding planning. Ok, not really: More like falling hard for my friend Lisa Hedge’s Save the Dates.

claire’s things

• Awarding Kerry Washington’s Miu Miu getup the trophy-less honor of being my favorite Golden Globes look.

• Feeling inspired by Blackstone Bicycle Works, a youth program that teaches kids how to fix bikes—and then gives them one in exchange for their work. (And, yes, helmets are part of the deal.)

• Loving the playfully scientific work of Willy Chyr, a physics-student-turned-balloon-animal-maker-turned-installation-artist. Fun fact: Willy is also responsible for the very first feminie hygiene advertisement to feature blood! Three cheers for Willy!

• Rekindling a romance with my onetime-home of Chicago, courtesy of Logan Center for the Arts, Publican Quality Meats, Longman & Eagle, and unreal architecture.

• Thinking I can’t possibly be the only person stunned to learn that there is a real person named Ricky behind everyone’s favorite wigs-and-other-things shop Ricky’s.

10 Things we’re doing during this period of re-calibrating to normal life

erica’s things

• Ogling my new pillows. Alyson Fox (who has two Of a Kind editions under her belt!) did a majorly rad collab with West Elm, the two fluffiest creations are making my couch look all homey.

• Falling down the rabbit hole that is The Cut’s Look Book series. The premise: a gazillion photos of a celeb through the years. Start with Brooke Shields and Katie Holmes.

• Eating way too many Chinese five spice candied pecans—the biggest hit of my NYE meal (c/o Food52) is a total snackin’ staple right now.

• Loving the crap out of my Hanukkah present from Claire: an “E” earring by Lena Wald!

• Getting really into Well + Good. Reading that site feels almost as nice as making a New Year’s resolution you know will only last ‘til Feb.

claire’s things

• Feeling inspired by the Art21 episode on protest—3 of 4 artists featured are women who can really only be described as badasses.

• Poking around Medium, the latest project from Ev and Biz (Twitter masterminds) and getting really into it—reminds me of the early days of Tumblr in a handful of ways.

• And, via Medium, reading a great piece on a 10th grader’s insights into the latest social media platforms. Makes an excellent case for interviewing 10th graders about most anything.

• Getting psyched to see our former intern and occasional model, Sarah Ryder, getting some street style love from Teen Vogue.

• Researching local cross-country skiing trails. I’m raring to get back into it after making my debut (okay, this is what it really looked like) over the holiday break.

10 things we're doing during the holidays...besides shopping our SALE, duh

erica’s things

• Determining the best NYE nail color. Into the Gloss makes a good case for Sally Hansen Gem Crush in Big Money.

• Filling up the Kindle with books about game-changing ladies—Diana Vreeland, Katharine Graham, and Mindy Kaling included.

• Researching matcha on the internets. Is owning a bamboo whisk too much?!

• Trying to motivate the wintertime working-out. This Lululemon hat with a *genius* ponytail hole might help. Ok, caved and bought running mittens.

• Sorting out the Monday-night bubbly sitch—and using Grub Street's list of emerging sparkly brands as a guide.

claire’s things

• Learning how to knit, courtesy of my mom (the pro responsible for the sweater Erica's wearing in the above pic). Working my way up to a Wool and the Gang kit—eyeing this poncho-meets-scarf Snow Warmer.

• Wishing I was IRL friends with Suze Orman after reading her book Women & Money, which is the perfect mix of therapy, coaching, and straightforward instructions.

• Telling everyone about the wonder of RMS Living Luminizer, which Diana, our rockstar developer, gifted us for the holidays.

• Catching up on my Instapaper account. Highlights include this (about an artist working in Chicago’s South Side, where Erica and I met), this (about my favorite childhood author), and this (background reading in anticipation of Sofia Coppola’s next flick).

• Listening to Solange’s “Losing You” on repeat, bonus points for the video which features highly inspirational pattern-mixing and dance moves.