When I was in college, I used to sit on the couch with one of my very best friends and we’d say very hilarious things about our bodies. We called it the Fat Kid series.  You know you’re a fat kid when…

you just finished dinner and you immediately want a snack

you need to lay on the floor after you finish your meal

you finish the bowl of homemade whipped cream after you eat the brownie with cream on top

you’ve had pizza two nights in a row and when challenged with the question: what should we eat for dinner tonight?,  you order a pizza, of course.

I’m sure this is the type of thing that was funnier when you’re there.  It was what we said to comfort ourselves after we did something we “shouldn’t” have–something that you kinda secretly loved doing and kinda secretly were embarrassed by… like spending days on the couch watching soaps and eating junk food with your best friend.  It was a way of making that thing only fun.  Only good.  Of separating the embarrassed from the ebullient.

My partner in crime was so spot on with the fat kid series. We would be in tears, making fun of ourselves, eating, laughing, having such a good time together.   It was all on the table (as it were).  Bellies out.  Our self destruction was openly masked by our comedic take on self loathing.  We did it to ourselves and we did it to each other…which seemed to make it all okay.  I don’t regret doing it and I would never take it back.  I remember those times as some of my most favorite of my college years.

you know you're a fat kid when you visit your favorite bakery in San Francisco, eat there, and leave with a $40 bag of pastries... for the road.

you know you're a fat kid when you have 50 pictures of the same favorite taco and fries from Charleston, SC.

Fast forward to present day.  I am not feeling the best about my body these days.  This time last year, I was in the best shape of my life. I was working out regularly.  I was fitting into clothing I had never fit into before.  My face…MY FACE…just looked so lean, and it glowed a little.

A few months ago, that all changed.  The new shop , Little Boxes, and jewelry design/making sort of took first place in both Will’s and my life.  We are finally finding making time to take care of ourselves.  And in making this time, I am realizing that I kind of left myself behind for the sake of everything else.

Instead of just doing something about it when I’m ready, I worry.  I open the drawer in the morning and worry about what I’m going to wear because I worry about how bad it’s going to feel when I discover it doesn’t fit anymore.  I worry that it’s just going to keep getting worse.  So…Here we have Case#2 of THE WORRY PROJECT:

Case #2:  I’ve let myself go. My body is turning blubbery.

Solution:  Go workout. (in today’s case, I will go to the gym and workout on the moonwalk machine. I’m embarrassed to say, I haven’t been to the gym in over 2 months. I will report back here tomorrow and let you know if I actually did it).

I’ve been trying to revert to my old ways.  When I start worrying about it, I try to incorporate the Fat Kid back into my life, to make some humor out of the situation (instead of actually doing something about it).  But it’s just not the same without college and it’s especially not the same without Cam.  It only worked with her.  While the Fat Kid is so fun to be around, I think she’s just a distraction from my worry, a certain kind of freedom, a disguise.

It’s time to get on with the worry project and go with it!

I will stick with my word.  I will wait to worry.  I will sweat it out.  And then I will see if the Fat Kid is waiting for me when I walk out of the gym.

You know you’re a fat kid when you can’t stop talking about being fat kid. here’s to leaving my Fat Kid behind!  xo~betsy

***Song of the Moment: To Forgive, by The Smashing Pumpkins***

THAT is what I was expecting out of this giveaway adventure–a kick.  What I was not expecting was to feel so overwhelmingly appreciated by all of you.  Your kind words about my work and betsy & iya mean more than I could ever possibly express to you.  So…thank you for being the most lovely customers in the whole wide world.  Yep, the world.

Here we go…

The lucky winner is:  Alexa Morton Nayman!!

Contact me here: betsy@betsyandiya.com  and we will start collaborating on your new opal necklace!

Again, a HUGE THANK YOU TO ALL!

make a girl’s WEEK, why don’t you!?! ~betsy

***Song of the Moment: Heart Skipped a Beat, by The XX***

(scroll past the picture to find out how.)

I am not a stone gal, but I have always been blown away by the Peruvian Opal.  I have never seen a stone look as vibrant or pure.  Several months ago, I picked out a large batch from a couple who finds them, mines them, and turns them into little pieces of art. I am on the cusp of transforming each one into a one-of-a-kind design.  To kick it off, we’re doing a GIVEAWAY. The winner gets to pick their favorite opal and I will design a special necklace just for them.  Yay!!

There are several ways TO ENTER:

—> Comment on this post letting us know your favorite betsy & iya piece.

—>> Mention the Giveaway and @betsyandiya on Twitter.

—>>> Retweet the Giveaway on Twitter.

—>>>> Share the Giveaway on Facebook.

—>>>>> Comment on the Giveaway or tag us on Facebook; tell us how you would wear your new custom necklace! (hair up, red belt, black dress, sequined boots, etc)

Here is an example of a one-of-a-kind necklace available now:

Click to see more pictures.

Enter and have fun!  You can enter up to 5 times!

Winner will be randomly chosen and announced next Monday, January 30th.

Happy Monday to you!

xo~betsy

***Song of the Moment: Cold Feet, by Lost Lander***

<<Legend says that Peruvian opals take the tension out of communication and help ideas flow freely. They soften the impact of stress from the outside world and can help one to release the trauma of old wounds. They facilitates facing the future with a tranquil healing nature. This stone is reported to be good for quieting the mind and as an aid to sleep.>>  *info found on bernardine.com/gemstones*

I worry about things.  And then I worry about worrying about them.  I worry about silly things.  I worry about important things.  If I’m not worrying, I worry why.

With all of the amazingly exciting things that became my 2011—the building of the betsy & iya shop, creating Little Boxes, planning my sweetheart’s milestone 30th birthday party, Iya’s wedding across the country, new designs, so many amazing new friends and events, life in general, the MASSIVE amount of jewelry we made, the balancing of it all, etc.–the worrying got a little out of hand.

(there is no mirror in this picture.)

At some point in the middle of it all, when I was dramatically crying on the studio floor and being consoled by Gingham (our little dogter), I knew something had to be done.  You see, there is just no time for as futile an act as worrying when there is scarcely enough time for sleeping, eating, and breathing.  At this low point, when our sweet pup was pushing my limp arm up over her head and snuggling herself into me (yes, this really happened)…that’s when I came up with this:  THE WORRY PROJECT.

The thing is, I can’t change overnight.  But I caaaaaaannn put on some old school Lauryn Hill and do a little dancy in my work seat…

Oh, MAN, that felt good.  And in a nutshell, you have THE WORRY PROJECT.  It starts with a problem and ends with a worry-eliminating solution.

CASE #1:  I’m worried that it’s taking me too long to write this blog post.

SOLUTION:  stop thinking about it and do a quick dance.

The solution helps me get out of my head.  Afterwards, I’m fresh and ready for action.  I’m also immediately aware that the worry was not helping my case whatsoever.  The solution can be anything you want it to be.  The end goal is that you actually give yourself a break and then confront your stupid worry in its ugly face.  In my case, the end goal is that I’m happy with my writing and roll with the momentum.

I hope you’ll join me towards a worry-free world!  There will be weekly worry reveals.  Just wait, it gets super juicy!

Also, check back on MONDAY when we announce a special winter GIVEAWAY and instructions on how to enter.

Happy Friday, lovelies! ~betsy

***Song of the Moment: Ex-Factor, by Lauryn Hill***

See you tonight!

xo~betsy

***Song of the Moment:  Drunk Girls, by LCD Soundsystem***

Will sorts the 8,500 maps we had printed into piles for delivery to stores.

I turned off the TV and with a silent house, my brain wheels started moving…like, kinda fast.  The commercial made me think about all those awesome shops we love so much in Portland.  Shops, like Radish Underground, Mabel & Zora and Tender Loving Empire, that have supported my efforts as a designer, from the very beginning.  Shops that help designers, like me, believe that our work is worth something.  Shops that search high and low for products that mean something to them, with you in mind.  Shops that can tell you a story about the designer behind the product.  Shops that helped build a community with character (and most likely, used their own hands to do so). I started thinking—why can’t we do something together that makes people want to shop a different way on Black Friday.

Will came home that night and I sort of hesitantly brought up my idea–I knew it was pretty much INSANE for us to take anything else on this season, much less organize a whole new event.  BUT I felt so excitedly passionate about it, that I went for it.  It was Will’s response and enthusiasm that really made this thing move forward. We geeked out in a swift 30 minute brainstorm session, and the rest is kind of history.

Little Boxes, was born.

We're a happy duo. And we LOVE working crazy hours together...really, we do. Photo Credit: Motoya Makamura, The Oregonian

I am so amazed by the community’s response to this.  In 3 weeks, the support and enthusiasm that our amazing design team, the unbelievably awesome shop owners, press, and general public has shown towards this event brings tears to my eyes.  Yep, I’m a sap (er, didn’t you already know that by now??).  But seriously, isn’t Portland awesome!??

It's the link you've all been waiting for, and the Little Boxes 2011 Logo, courtesy of Keel Creative.

Now, all you gotta do is shop the event and meet your favorite local shop owners!  Let’s let this event be the kickoff to an amazing, local, sparkly-lighted, mulled wined, ginger-snapped cookies holiday season.  Who knows, you might even win an iPad or tickets to OVO by Cirque du Soleil.  We’re all open from 10am – 8pm and we can’t wait to see you.  Click for more details about Little Boxes.

THANK YOU, PORTLAND.

(you rock my world).

-betsy

Hot Ship earrings and Native Plate necklace (click picture to shop style).

Native Plate necklace. (click pic to shop this hot style).

It’s always a major honor when someone asks to use my designs for a photo shoot.  Lately, there have been some heavy hitters… Portland Monthly Magazine’s insanely awesome Fall fashion spread, upcoming spreads for Oregon Bride magazine, and ShedRain’s newest shoot with the amazing Scott James (who we also worked with this month on our OWN shoot…cannot WAIT to share our photos with you).  It’s the second time we’ve been asked to work with ShedRain and the second time our expectations have been far outrun by awesomeness.  Here’s a peek into the hotNESS.

Morse Code necklace..."now" (click picture to shop style).

Morse Code necklace. One of my all-time favorites.

Spotty Triangle necklace + a sneak peek at brand new design...look out for listing soon.

new earring design...stay tuned for listing!! (just a few days...promise)!

simple, modern hammered brass collection. Double V earrings + Southern Lights necklace = SEX-Y! (click picture to shop style).

Southern Lights necklace. Click image to shop style.

The Generals. (click picture to shop style).

New design sneak peeks! These will be available online in a few days!

Have I said this before????:

I love my job.

***Song of the Moment: Thank You, by Led Zeppelin***

Early June: California show tour.

Oh yeah.  OOOOOh yeah. Weeeeeeeell, well, well.  I think we were playing hide and go seek with Summer.  It found a really great–amazingly clever–hiding space.  I went off looking and got so distracted by other things (like opening a shop, maintaining and gaining wholesale accounts, and driving to and from shows/events in Seattle, SF, LA, and Chicago) …I forgot to actually go and find it.

Mid June: New shop design shopping. Wow, what a task.

So…Summer got bored and left to play with Fall.  And then Fall killed Summer.

Late June: Fill the biggest order of my life.

Okay, not really.  Maybe Fall just tucked Summer in for its yearly hibernation.  But the thing is, summer is gone now and it’s time for me to be okay with that.  And come to grips with the fact that I’ve just experienced the craziest Summer of my life.

Early August: Big sis gets hitched and I wear my favorite summer jewelry.

Here we are in…OCTOBER… and I’m trying to be here. Now, with the Fall.

I find comfort in this blog and I hope to be snuggling up to in the next few weeks.  In the meantime, please know that I’ve missed you guys.

Early September: Snuggling with Gingham. (This one sort of sums it all up.)

Stories of how time flew by are most definitely waiting behind the curtain for their cues.  I shall be calling them onstage very very soon.

xo~betsy

***Song of the Moment: Chilly Winds Don’t Blow, by Nina Simone***

It was the adventurous side that drew me in, the fearlessness. He’d climb to the top of the tree if he could, jump from the highest cliff. And he did. He rode his bike barefoot, effortlessly sailed down a diamond-side mountain full speed ahead, no looking back. He would only say I love you if he meant it and felt it in that specific moment.

He lives only by truth (yes, that can get him into trouble). When he feels something, he allows himself to feel it fully and completely, digging deeper into the depths within himself and those around him. His highs are some of the highest I’ve ever seen—he’s like climbing to the top of an intricately rocky Virginia mountain and seeing the entire valley below you once you reach the top, with the cool wind patting you on the back.

when I straightened his hair...

I play harder and love harder because of him. I fight harder because of him. Naturally, I fly higher because of him. He would never accept this, but a lot of me thinks I even started this amazingly invigorating business half because I wanted him to be proud of me.

And he is.

when we saved a bird.

Now he’s with me nearly everyday, forcing himself to learn new things because he believes in something so hard. With the help of some amazing friends, he built every structure you see in the new shop. What’s more, he taught himself how to do all of it.  Smart, so darn smart.

chubby bunnies.

He’s one of the most talented piano players I’ve ever met and his voice will bring you back home.  Whether with comedy or tragedy, on stage,  he will make you cry.  He’s a funny, witty, unapologetically unencumbered personality.

19 & 20 ...in Greece.

I feel like he’s done so much already and at the same time…he’s just getting started. I mean that, I can’t wait to see what else this life holds for him, for us.

He’s one of the most determined, ambitious, hard-working people I’ve ever met in my life. His spirit is infectious, and his smile/laugh combo will make you feel, in one swift moment, like you’re the only person alive.

a dried up riverbed.

When we listen to music together, the floors fall out and we float—nothing else matters. When he tells me he’s proud of me, that I’m beautiful, intelligent, whatever…the world could end right there and everything would be okay.

I’m so excited for who he is and I’m so excited for where he’s going.

music.

We are so great apart, I know it.  But together, together, we’re like buttered toast and grandma’s strawberry jam, we’re like training wheels and a brand new baby bike, we’re like bees and honey, we’re like wildflowers and their fields, we’re like the bass and the piano, tears and a cheek, lips meeting, a lion and his mane, a perfect balance of harmony and dissonance.

true loves.

You amaze and inspire me.

Cheers to your last 30 years.  And Here’s to your next decade and the next and the next…!!

I mean, right??

Happy birthday to my favorite of all time.

your~bets

***Song of the Moment: Leather & Lace, by Stevie Nicks and Don Henley***

So yeah…11 hours to drive to San Francisco.  We ended up breaking up the trip in Redding at around midnight, sleeping in a that’ll-do-it hotel, where the very sweet woman with missing teeth and a tone that made it seem like she’d been smoking for more years than she’d been alive didn’t know how to process a priceline purchase; so we had to wait another 20 minutes before we could actually get in the room.  We woke up at 4 am (yes, that’s only 4 hours later) to get on the road for another 3.5 hours of driving straight to our 10×10 square of a pop-up street fair city where we would live for the next 2 days.

That was the start to one of the most challenging shows I’ve ever done. So while I was dealing with some major feelings of joy having just landed the new shop space, I was battling everything inside me that just wanted to quit the show and go home and sleep.

Audrey, our saving grave in SF

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that when we arrived in San Francisco, it was raining.  But not the Portland kind of misty, non-committal drizzle rain, the kind of rain that’s accompanied by these thoughts, “Not a soul should be outside right now.” These thoughts were butting up against the expectations that this show (which boasts around 100,000 attendants every year) could possibly be the most successful show we had ever done.  And at a time when we really really needed it.  So yeah…no one should be outside and yet we were standing there trying to set up a booth, with fabric for walls, in the pouring down rain.

this saves.

There was no sign of any of those 100,000 attendants, Will had put our new beautiful display boxes together backwards, we quickly discovered that those fabric walls had tiny holes all over them, and the tarp we had set up to protect us starting acting like a sail when the wind started blowing.  Oh yeah…the wind.  We had weights on our canopy, but since none of our neighbors in the street fair city had shown up that day, our booth sort of became its own wind tunnel.  When people actually did come out (and they did), we had to stand there like pillars of our own home and hold the tent down.   One more thing—it was the first weekend in Portland (in months, no less) when the sun had decided to come and play…full on, no holding back, play…the kind that brings out all the birds and the people and 85 degrees of warm happiness.  You better believe that was on my mind.

This is the Betsy who pulls it together.

Pitiful.  That’s how I felt about the situation and myself.  If it wasn’t for Lupe, I think I probably would have had a breakdown in the booth that day.  In fact, I bent down behind the tables because I felt the tears coming on.  I started tooling around on my phone to distract myself and there, waiting patiently for me, was one of the best emails I have ever received from a friend.  It actually brought the tears on, but they changed from darkness to lightness and I felt that everything was in its right place.

yeah, the door opened.

It went from challenging to character building.  JW said amazing things about how she thinks of me (things I didn’t quite feel I deserved) and it made me feel so grateful to have what I have…amazing friends and family like her…and I realized that sitting in my own pool of sorrow was trapping all of the nice things she said about me.  And I wanted to prove her right.

beautiful Carmel

So with Lupe’s amazingly generous help and all the beautiful gracious hospitality along the way, I pulled myself together…and we ended up having an amazing journey through California.  Thank you from the bottom of my heart  to everyone (you know who you are) who played a role in making our trip so sweet. The first show even blew me away, people’s willingness to come out and support an artisan-based show in the middle of compromising weather—our numbers were way higher than what I thought  and we’re pretty sure that in nice weather it really would have been beyond our expectations.

Stripe trunk show, Santa Cruz, CA

generosity

Suna's home... from Stripe, a store we sell to in Santa Cruz, CA

she made food for us in her beautiful kitchen and then we stayed the night. Amazing.

our room.

beautiful hotel in Carmel

so me.

JW was the first person to put the idea of “blooming where you’re planted,” into my head.  When we first became friends, we told stories to get to know one another.  After I finished my stories, she said that I was that kind of person. It made sense to me.  Everything in my life almost starts happening before I even know what it is or where it will go—dancing, college, theatre, grad school, music, Will, love, betsy & iya…almost all of it knocked on my door and I said…”okay!”  This is not to say that it’s been easy—in fact, I’d say that it’s been really tough.  But it’s that digging deeper and deeper that simultaneously opens the opposite side and then I look up and I’m like…WHOA!  There’s so far to go up there!  And then I jump real high and it feels really good.

last show of a 10 day character-building road trip to LA and back

In the last picture for the last show, I wore the morse code that says "here" ...it just felt right

Bloom where you’re planted.  Just try it.

so much more to share with you…p.s. we’re completely into our new shop and we’ll keep you posted on the door opening!

happy weekend to each of you!

xox~betsy

pps…next week is the premiere of the new line THE MUSIC at Radish Underground.  Details here: http://ow.ly/5uZV8

Song of the Moment: Everything in its Right Place, by Radiohead***