by Lizzie

You know when you have one of those moments of nostalgia when you hear some simple common expression that the people throughout your life have used? Like yesterday when I was at the market buying basil for our dinner and I heard a lady say, “six one way, half a dozen the other…” and I instantly was called to a memory with my sweet grandmother. It’s part of what I love about language. The way it can call up the other moments in your life when you heard those same sweet words strung together. I love expressions. I can’t say that I use them too much myself in my speech. One saying that my former mother in law used to use a lot: ”Haste makes waste.” is a great reminder. Good gravy, I should have given this lesson more attention!

a lizzie mara doodle

Or how about this one in our daughter’s American Girl book about the Great Depression: “Waste not, want not.”? Talk about making you stop and think! I adore this concept. It’s a fantastic reminder to me of living responsibly. And of course this little gem: “A stitch in time saves nine.” Perhaps you knew what these meant when you were little. I can’t say that I did. But now, there is something so familiar and sweet about these thoughtful words, strung together like little poems + lessons that I just truly adore.

A Stitch in Time - made modern + fun by Letters and Forms, via Etsy...

It would be fun to do a collection of illustrations for different idioms like this fun one brought to us by Plato: “Necessity is the mother of invention.” Below is a small illustrative piece I did a few years ago about one of my all time favorite sayings: “She didn’t just fall off the turnip truck.” It’s just a much sweeter way of saying that someone ins’t as unsophisticated as one might assume – such a good refocus for those prone to judgment! And for me, it’s all the better an idiom because I love the symbol of the turnip. It pops up in my work often + can be found in several of our Treat Design Co. goods!

illustrations from Lizzie's studio - spring 2009

Here’s to sweet nostalgic idioms, life lessons, and of course; beautiful English - one of the many amazing things that attracts me to my dear love, Jay.

Happy Sunday from Treat land.

Hi.

We’d really like to make it to 200 likes by this March 31. We think it’s super realistic. Do you?

Tell your friends about our FB page. Tell us what you’d like to see more of + hear more about. We’re listening.

Thanks.

Jay + Lizzie

"full summer", 8" x 10" mixed media on wood panel by Lizzie Mara

Image Credit: We <3 IT.

We started writing this on the last full moon night, and we should have been getting some sleepy sleep, but instead, with the energy of the big beautiful moon, we geeked out with our laptops, read blog posts, surfed the news online, + half payed attention to The Wire which Jay had recently become obsessed with. That’s a whole other blog post.

We are music lovers. Art lovers. Design lovers. And this makes us Coachella lovers.

Here’s the deal with our little design company heading to a music + art festival. We’ve been selected by one of Coachella’s artists to go help with his “installation.” It’s somewhat top secret, otherwise we’d spill the beans all about it now. However, it’s super cool + we are honored to rejoin the Artist Camp for one amazing weekend of live music, art, amidst the beautiful polo grounds of Coachella.

photo credit: Aurore Leblanc for Glamour Paris

Last year in our Art Camp we had the pleasure of  hanging with our friend Aurore Leblanc, aka Miss Selector. She’s a photographer from Paris who visited LA + Coachella last year; shooting for Glamour Magazine and Vogue Paris. It was fantastic to watch her shoot. Just to see the details she observed and then even more AMAZING was that Glamour Paris online chose one of her photos of us to feature. C’est magnifique!

Jay describes his response to the music line up upon first seeing it: “My eyes jumped first to the English band Madness and the nostalgia kicked in. The song “Our House”, you see, brings us back to our own salad days when we were just kids running around the neighborhoods in the days of 1970′s parenting – where you walk to school without supervision, come back from school with friends, ran around for hours and played without any parents to be seen. Until, finally you caught a voice on the wind and strained your neck to hear your mom yell, “Dinner!”  The freedom we enjoyed was never given a second thought – it represented the social norms of the times.

Being a step-dad, having parachuted in when our kids were 9, 7, and 4 – I found myself shocked at what I initially viewed as borderline paranoia; parents hovering over their children. Children were virtually never alone. See, I was simply ignorant of modern parenting. I understand the social norms have changed radically. But, I retain a great deal of faith in the intelligence, thoughtfulness, and maturity of children. It’s hard for me to believe that people have actually changed that much. Yet, despite my faith and trust in our children, I now hang out in the street to watch them pedal up and down the block and yell, “Car!” for them with the other parents in the traveling pub that is our block after 5 o’clock.

Thus, bands and songs that bring us back to sweet memories and more innocent times; when our largest concern was listening for mom to call for dinner became part of the Coachella experience. Last year, it was Duran Duran. One of my friends, who was 26, had never even heard of Duran Duran. I feel old. But, Lizzie just might have to pack her roller skates for this moment:”

Then there’s the list of bands that grows longer every time we look at the schedule that we’ve enjoyed in our adulthood (if you can really call it that).

Black Keys

Swedish House Mafia

Miike Snow (How do you say “Holla!” in Swedish?)

Radio Head

M. Ward

Mazzy Star

Neon Indian

Bon Iver

Florence + the Machine

Dear Hunter

tUnE-yArDs

Santigold

Kaskade

The Shins

Those are the bands we know and love – and that doesn’t include the little gems we’ll find as we start researching. It’s a music lover’s paradise.

So, this post’s a bit of a retrospective – commemorating our first foray into the great wide world of merchandising America where the big fish swim. At the beginning of the year we attended America’sMart in Atlanta – one of the largest trade shows in America – and it was a smashing success. Why smashing?

Well, first of all, we were placed in a juried collection – selected from the pool of fish because they thought we were pretty – into the “Paper Boutique” section, a collection of design led, high end paper products. That was a nice little pick me up that picked us up. Second, the feedback we received proved overwhelming and we signed a number of solid accounts from Florida to Washington – New York to LA. When I say solid accounts, I’m talking retailers who liked what they saw so much that they bought a whole ream full of it + wanted it yesterday. We were quite pleasantly surprised by the interest we had from other companies for licensing Lizzie’s images and collaboration projects. It was quite a debut. So, thank you, Atlanta!

The pretty tissue paper flower party (which is a huge trend this spring) courtesy of Sherree, great fuel + good rest courtesy of Karen, + Treat hydration courtesy of Annie Abbruzzese of Wonder Boston

A dedicated friend - making things pretty.

Speaking of thank yous, our first blog post was all about our gratitude for our southern friends, but it got destroyed in our creation of the new little gem of a temporary website. But, if youhad read it, you would have have seen our attempt at gratitude for our dear friends Karen and Sherree. Their love, support and winning smiles made our entire trip possible. Really, without them – we would have found ourselves stuck in a flea bag motel deep in the heart of Atlanta – and not the good part. Karen welcomed us into her home after our discovery that we basically rented a room from hotels.com that was a by-the-hour motel. (The pictures of the outside were so nice!) But, wait, there’s more! She took us in and fed us fine Southern food, included a pretty bouquet in our guest room, and she and Sheree worked their tails off for us during the 5 day show. Did we mention the fresh baked biscuits + homemade granola for breakfast? Talk about an amazing hostess! KP makes waking up in Atlanta easy for anyone, especially Lizzie, who is still working on her “morning personness”.

The girls in Atlanta! Lizzie, Karen, + Sherree!

If you’ve spent any quality time in the city of Atlanta, you might have had the pleasure to visit the infamous Mary Mac’s Tea Room. (Thank you to our excellent hostess with the mostess for the fun recommendation!)

As luck would have it, we were enchanted by their popular Good Will Ambassador who sat down with us to chit chat, but also to give Jay a nice back rub. If you look at their site, you will find that this is a real position held by Jo Carter for decades. What luck to have met this lovely + sweet public face of this historic tea room.

So, one more time – from the bottom of our hearts – thank you Karen and Sherree – we miss you!

And before we sign off from this post, we must mention one little gem of a moment in Atlanta. We had the pleasure of showing our line to Robin Lohre from Talulah Jones of Denver, Co. If you’re not familiar, this is a fantastic (and we mean FANTASTIC) store right in our own backyard. Kismet like this should always be celebrated, because, you see, Robin has supported Lizzie’s work since 2008, when Lizzie was making one painting at a time and had yet to find Jay and make Treat Design Co. Lovely and supportive through thick and thin, Robin is beautiful inside and out. We were blessed to see her in Atlanta. It was like the stars were aligned + the Universe, in it’s amazing language was saying – “This is the path. Allow me to show you the way.”

It's serendipity when our first store to support Lizzie's work is also one of our first orders... all the way from Denver, Colorado - we were thrilled to spend time with the brilliant owner of Talulah Jones, Ms. Robin Lohre.

by Lizzie + Jay

Our website is still under construction, but so are our products! So we’re practicing patience. However, while we wait, we have a super fun little gem to share: a sneak peek at our new line: www.TreatDesignCo.com/ Thanks to a wonderful website designer and architectnamed Garrett Knoll!

Please do take a peek and enjoy some the images of what we have in store!

Go ahead, take a peek!

We are so excited about the next phase of our budding business. Lizzie met with a super hip Denver paper store last week & the owner was like, can you “Pulllllleeeeeease bring these products into my store, like, tomorrow?”! Such a nice compliment. Ahhh, the test of patience. Why is it so hard sometimes?!

We are thrilled to invite you to check out our sweet new online space to share with our wonderful friends, family + fans. Treat is gearing up for a BIG 2012 and we’re thrilled to have this blog to share our journey with YOU!