Couples Casual Chic Bicycle Style

Really casual cycle chic couple, I tell you. We just had some thirsty Thursday beers at the Pine Tree Lodge.


It was pretty fun riding home together.

He wondered if he should ride behind me - Gentlemen's bicycle etiquette.

We have very different style bicycles - his is light & fast and mine is slow & heavy. Mine is pretty and comfy and upright & civilized and has fenders and a rack, etc. Both are single-speeds.

I carried his downstairs to the bicycle storage room in our building and it's a dream to carry such a light one. Half of my white-trash leg bruises are the result of carrying my bike into the storage room and being strong enough to hang it up.

I'm wearing an old American Apparel dress. (Poplin cross front dress) My first summer in NYC, every 4th girl on the street had some color-way of this dress on. These are my $5 walmart keds that I'm very much in love with. They are so easy and comfortable. And versatile. And real keds don't come in this salmon-y pink color (to my knowledge, and def. not for $5.)

I scored Matt's t-shirt from an abandoned bag of clothes at our building.

A+ Fabulous Baby Shower Getting Props

My homegirl, Meredith, sent me this link to this cute blog giving our baby shower props

When I joined Delta Zeta sorority in fall 98' it was a really special time in my life. Tamara was my chapter president and it has been an honor to know such a kind-hearted, good person all these years. I didn't let anything keep me from going to Mena, Arkansas (AKA - Middle of nowhere near border of Arkansas/Oklahoma) for her wedding and I really wanted to help celebrate her baby shower. By the time I got with Meredith, the hostess with the mostess. She had an action plan and a theme all picked out. Thank goodness! I really only did paper goods for this ultra cute shower.

I love old fashioned mail, so I did the invitations.


I also tore it up at the Lilly Pulitzer store. I think I bought pretty much every item that was offered in Desert Tort from the Madison Ave. boutique here in New York City.

I can't wait to print out some photos from the festivity and share with them!

Also a paper good; I made the baby name banner and the Martha Stewart tissue paper poms.
My husband actually helped me trim the edges on the tissue paper poms because he saw that stronger hands could cut the layers more smoothly. That man of mine sometimes really swoops in on a craft and offers some sweet advice.

To make this banner...


...I found a font that I really liked, then printed the letters out at the same height - almost filling a sheet of 8.5" x 11" paper. I placed/held the printed out letter pages over Watercolor Paper because it's rigid. Yes, MUCH more rigid than card stock.  Here are our letters cut-out of heavy watercolor paper.

Yes, essentially I free-handed these while holding down letters on top. If you're not strong in your exacto knife skills- You better glue that shit together or trace.

After I had the letters cut out and loved them, I decided to spray-mount them to the Desert Tort wrapping paper/gift wrap. I laid the gift wrap down on the biggest spot in my tiny apartment's floor and sprayed spray-mount while my husband was sleeping, so he would not act-out in protest.

The little "tick" marks are to help me lay & spray-mount the letters on at random angles, so the pattern was totally random when I flipped them back over. I wanted it to look like the turtles are running all over the place and it does!

After the spray-mount "set,"  they got trimmed out again and made neat and had the paper bleeding all the way to the edge like this.

I put them in the biggest book I had on hand - Gore Vidal's "Lincoln" I let them "Cure" Overnight. And I wanted to decide how to proceed.


I liked the letters so much plain that I just cut slits NEAR THE TOPS of the letters and threaded cute ribbon through. I left a ton of "overage" ribbon on each end so Tamara could tie them up easily and cut the tibbon ends off at home to her liking.


Rounding out the paper goods competition - I scanned-in the packaging from the Desert Tort merchandise and photoshopped it into the placards. This is graphic design and craftiness at it's best right here. Thank you, Henderson State University. The font is MA Sexy from dafonts.com - Love that site!

Meredith requested these, and so lovingly attached to a much-raved about pink & white houndstooth paper.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="461" caption="Meredith does not mess around, ya heard?"][/caption]

Testament to our Badness: We coordinated all of this with her living in Central Arkansas and me living in NYC. We set Gmail & G-Chat on FIRE working all this out and piecing together ideas. We were cutting it really close to Tamara's due date for MY travel schedule. The baby loves us and did us the biggest favor by STAYING INSIDE TAMARA'S BODY until a few days after the shower.

I'm also proud of us because Meredith has 3 little boys! All 6 & under and I do not own a real table.

I knew I'd seen a lot of buzz on Linkedin (lame, I know) about this Lilly Pulitzer Delta Zeta print and luckily, Meredith keeps an eye on LP business. I really enjoyed going to the Lilly P. store and while I'm not sure if I'm ready to wear Lilly Pulitzer on my body- I'm definitely ready to rock her prints on accessories and other goods.

I really wish they would "sponsor" my NYC Cycle Chic front by giving me one of the new Lilly Bicycles, but maybe I'm dreaming. WISH ME LUCK!