BY CAILIN BURKE
My music taste definitely changes with the seasons. While in the summer I love stuff that’s upbeat and listen to more Country than usual, in the fall it’s all about the acoustic vibes, relaxed music, and lots of indie folk. Here are a bunch of my favorite songs right now — some old and some new!
All you need to do is press play and snuggle up or go outside and breathe in that crisp fall air!
Happy Feature Friday!
Today we’re bringing to you Catherine Dawes of Caterham Design! We fell in love with her hand-lettering instantly and think it’s so cool that something as simple as a phrase can be written to look fun, stylish, or even sophisticated. Catherine really does a great job in making sure her typography communicates something. We love how her pieces all have their own feeling or vibe attached to them! She has a lot of great advice to share and we can’t wait for you to keep reading to learn more about her creative journey thus far.
: Tell us a little about who you are.
: Hi! I’m Catherine, a graphic artist from South Africa specializing in hand-lettering and calligraphy. I run my design studio, Caterham Design, from a dusty farm on the edge of the Kalahari; where I drink lots of coffee, eat my fair share of buttery pastries, and create hand-crafted designs for creative, artisan companies and individuals.
BY CAILIN BURKE
For today’s fall outfit I wore this awesome Saturday Evening Post tee that I actually got at a unique gift shop in Buffalo. I tied a crochet sweater around my waist to add an extra fall layer, and threw on my absolute favorite ripped boyfriend jeans. These jeans are perfect because if you don’t feel like wearing tight skinny jeans just yet but it’s too cold for shorts, you can wear a loose boyfriend cut.
I also love the half bun topknot trend since it’s an easy way to make it look like you put some effort into your hair even if it only took 30 seconds! What are some of your favorite fall trends? Whether they be hair, beauty or style we want to know!
BY CAILIN BURKE
We happened to be home for one day prior to our end of summer trip to the Berkshires (posts coming soon!), and were supposed to be packing for our trip. Except we suddenly remembered the Travers was happening that Saturday and that Triple Crown winner, American Pharaoh was going to be racing in it! Of course the race was sold out but we had just set our minds to going and were able to get 3 tickets the night before! We got there super early to avoid traffic and get a prime bench which let us have a spot all day to watch the races before Pharaoh came out.
BY CAILIN BURKE
If you know anything about NYC, then you know weekend brunch is a sacred tradition. Well for us, not really a tradition since it is pretty pricy, but we do love to test out new brunch spots once in a while. We had some friends from our hometown come visit and couldn’t let them leave without the typical brunch! So we headed to Cafe Orlin in the East Village at around 11 on a Saturday morning.
We had heard there would probably be a long wait since all of those other city dwellers love their brunch, and when we got there we saw a few people waiting outside. Luckily, the cards were in our favor because literally 5 seconds after I put in my name for the wait list, we were called inside and got the most perfect private table! It helped that we were a group of four since most people there were in groups of 2 or 3 tops and had to wait for smaller tables to free up.
BY CAILIN BURKE
It’s crazy that amidst all of NYC there can be beautiful beaches within the boroughs! We had already been to Brighton Beach (near Coney Island- read our post about it here!) so I wanted to try something new and had heard Rockaway Beach in Queens was beautiful! It was tricky to get there since we found out much, much too late that there was limited subway service. The good thing is that normally all you have to do is take the subway there so it’s such an affordable trip! In our instance though, we had to transfer to a bus but it ended up working out since it took us further down the beach and we ended up getting off around 100th St. This area was far less crowded than the rest of the beach so we lucked out (but shh don’t tell too many people!). Rockaway Beach was just as I had heard, beautiful, clean, and so relaxing!
BY TARA BURKE
Street art makes the perfect backdrop for some street style! For this look I wanted something edgy, that still had a summer vibe to it. I wore a graphic tee, faux leather and cotton skirt and a crochet vest. It can be hard making your black pieces work on beach weather days, but this crochet vest gives the whole look a music festival vibe which is perfect for summer. I finished the outfit with some wrap around belt booties. Booties and mules are my fave winter to summer shoes. They work so well with almost all outfits at any time of the year. Cailin also wore a graphic tee and a purple elastic cinched skirt with pocket details. Once again, I’ve had most of these pieces for a long time, but I’ve listed some look-alike items below. Happy shopping!
BY CAILIN BURKE
For us, Sundays are our total relaxing day. After church we usually like to just hang out, walk around, and get some NYC eats. This time we took the walking around a little far and found ourselves walking about an hour all the way to Soho!
We go to church at Hillsong NYC in Midtown, so it was definitely quite the walk. Since it was a beautiful day it was no big deal. Plus I love going to Soho as it’s one of my favorite areas of Manhattan! Once in Soho we decided to grab coffee and lunch at Ground Support. It’s this cute little cafe that has tons of light, wood tables, and even a bench for a window seat!
BY CAILIN BURKE
During our last day, we wanted to finish up all of the things we didn’t have time to do the previous few days. We weren’t able to complete all of Cliff Walk the first day so we went back the next morning! I really wanted to see the 40 Steps which is just 40 steps that go down towards the ocean (yup, we counted) and this area had the most epic view of the ocean. From here it looks like the water never ends! We were also lucky that no one else was there at the time so we had a mini photo shoot and just stared out for awhile before heading to our next destination… Ocean Avenue!
BY CAILIN BURKE
Before we were to head home for the holidays, we wanted to have a stereotypical Christmas day in the city. Well… actually it was Tara’s idea, so we called it Tara’s Christmas Day! Since New York has amazing window displays, lights, and shopping this time of year, we wanted to devote time to see it all. Since we had already seen the Rockefeller Tree and I had been to both the Grand Central and Bryant Park Christmas markets, we already had a few things checked off the list. We started off the day by getting up as early as we could and had brunch at St. Balmain, a cafe in Brooklyn.
After we were ready for Christmas shopping and made it to the only Christmas market I had yet to see, the one in Union Square. It was definitely the biggest market of the three and seemed to go on forever! They had a huge variety of booths, with some of my favorites being the succulent Christmas ornaments (our roomie bought one!), the different pastry stands (there were beautiful macarons and donuts), and the booths that sold a ton of knick knacks.
After the market, we headed to the Strand bookstore, which is pretty well-known in New York, for being this cool secondhand bookstore that seems to last forever! Of course I couldn’t help myself when I found a great deal on one of my favorite authors, Irving Stone. I found three of his books, Lust for Life, The President’s Lady, and The Agony and the Ecstasy all together in one huge book, for only $9!
We continued our shopping escapade all the way down Fifth Avenue, stopping at cool stores like ABC Carpet & Home and Fishs Eddy. Then we went to see some of the biggest window displays, starting with Lord & Taylor which had an amazing animal-themed display.
The best window had scenes depicted from famous novels with little mice everywhere. When you think of Christmas in New York, Macy’s in Herald Square also comes to mind and we were blown away by their window displays too. Each window was a different planet and it told the story of a boy who gets to see Christmas on each planet! We went inside Macy’s as well to write a letter to Santa and then headed home since we were so tired after going to Brooklyn, Union Square, the Flatiron District, and Midtown all in one day! Christmas in NYC is definitely a must-see!
Castle Foundations 