If you follow my new blog Miles to Style or my weekly posts over at Dog-Milk, then you know I’m a big fan of stylish animals. Yes, I recognize just how silly it can be, but it’s a harmless way of having fun with your pets and, personally, I derive a ton of pleasure having fun with my best friend and biz partner Miles. So, for obvious reasons, I’m completely nuts over Anthropologie’s well styled catalogue animals, particularly this lovely lady llama.

Stunning, right? I haven’t actually confirmed the she is in fact a she, but “she” can sure rock the three necklaces at once look.

Happy Friday everyone! Have a stylish weekend!

photo via Anthropologie catalogue

This past summer was challenging for me. I think if you went back and looked at some of my blog posts, you’d agree. When you’re someone who likes to create and suddenly you run out of ideas and motivation, it can be a very challenging period of time. Being the workaholic that I am, I decided to keep myself busy with anything I could think of. I started blogging daily here. I talked a lot with my friends over at Pinterest and pinned.. and pinned.. and pinned and pinned. And I started focusing on other projects writing about dogs and great dog products for no reason other than I enjoyed it. It’s funny but I thought I was just wasting time. A lot of it. I was keeping myself busy with hobbies until (hopefully) the answers came rushing back to me and I could start working again. What I’m realizing now is that I wasn’t wasting time at all! In fact, I was opening myself up to other possibilities in my life, taking on new jobs I never thought I would have, and enabling myself to regain control of what I had already created (just by taking a little break from it). What I learned from that experience was:

I think I learned a lot by giving myself the opportunity to “waste” some time and explore other passions. As a result, I am now a contributing editor over at one of my favorite online publications, Dog-Milk, where I get to write weekly about dogs and great dog products. I just got through writing my very first book review for an amazing book that I adore (check it out on Dog-Milk this Wednesday). Also, I now have over 3,000 followers on my favorite new site Pinterest. Woohoo! I’ve never had 3,000 people follow me anywhere! My love for pinterest has also led me to a weekly blogging position over there (starting soon!) And finally, today I’m launching a brand new blog incorporating both dogs and fashion. My pet project, Miles to Style, has been my favorite waste of time ever and I hope it’ll turn into one of yours! I’ll be posting a total of 3 posts today just to kick things off, and start posting once a day after that (for now at least). Be sure and check it out and let me know what you think!

Happy Monday! Go waste some precious time!

Find the great print above here.

This is my favorite time of the year! The weather is gorgeous, the air is crisp, the trees are turning orange and red, and Halloween is just around the corner. Halloween was always fun as a kid. I loved getting dressed up for the Halloween parade at school and planning the trick-or-treating evening with my friends. It was a great time. As an adult, I’m happy to say that Halloween is still a ton of fun! I still dress up. Last year, I was fashion witch and I threw a pumpkin carving party with my neighbors. We also made Dia de los Muertos sugar skulls and played Guitar Hero (check out last year’s post for fun instructions on how to make your own sugar skulls). This year I’m already having a ton of fun dressing up Miles for Halloween. Yesterday he made his Dog-Milk debut as a shark (with an underbite of course).

Miles’s shark costume was part of my Halloween Hounds roundup that I had SO much fun putting together. Of course, I had to throw some great Latin costumes into the mix. How cute are these Mariachi and Carmen Miranda costumes from Bitch New York?!

This little Taco Chihuahua didn’t make the final cut but I couldn’t resist sharing him here. My parents have three and a half Chihuahuas (one is only half) and I can’t even imagine how cute it would be to send out an entire taco Chihuahua platter!

I still haven’t decided what I’m going to be for Halloween this year (any ideas?) but at least Miles is ready to go (and he looks fierce!) How is everyone else getting ready for Halloween? Is anyone else dressing up their dog? I would LOVE to see your photos and post them here for the holiday! If you’re dressing up your dog this year, please send me a photo and I’ll send you a great discount code to use at the LAMA shop. Trust me, with all of the great new products coming in, you’re going to want this code! Send all photos to info@lamadesigns.com with the subject dog costume. I can’t wait to see you’re wonderful photos! P.S. cats are welcome too!

Today’s Friday I’m In Llama comes courtesy of the SF Gate’s “Day In Pictures.” Have you ever seen a picture and thought, “I REALLY need to have a picture of myself doing exactly that!” That was precisely my thought when I saw the photo below. I’m a little camera shy so it could very well be the best pose for my new LAMA site bio pic. Or maybe I just think it would be fun to replace my head with a llama’s.

I also had to include this next photo. Not only does it have a lovely little llama (well, he’s actually an alpaca but close enough), but how cute is that dog?! A big part of my life revolves around dogs at the moment so it was funny for me to see these worlds collide in one adorable photo. Speaking of dogs, have you check me out over at Dog-Milk? I’m there every Wednesday!

Happy Friday everyone! This will be a working weekend for me but I can’t wait to show you all what’s been going on behind the scenes. If only I could fast forward a bit. *sigh*

Sometimes, when you’ve been working on the same project for several years, it gets a little.. well.. maddening! At least, that’s what started to happen for me. I think anyone with a creative side needs to take on half a dozen projects at the same time to satisfy whatever it is that makes them nuts when they’re not being creative. At least, that’s my theory. This has been a very interesting summer for me. I have found my way and lost my way about eight times. I have thought about where to take myself and my career until I thought my head was going to explode. I have walked around aimlessly searching for answers. The funny thing was, the answer was so painfully simple: do more of what you like! Then I thought, “okay, so what are a few of my favorite things?” 1. Searching for great products. 2. Writing about them and sharing them with others. 3. Design blogs. 4. Dogs! That short list led me to my newest undertaking; a contributing editor for one of my very favorite design blogs Dog-Milk!

What’s really cool about this (besides everything!) is that I get to be a part of a design blog that I love doing work that is just fun for me. Dog-Milk is the sister site of Jaime Derringer’s very successful Design-Milk blog. Design-Milk is one of the first design blogs I started reading years back when I was fresh out of art school and looking for some inspiration. I’m so excited to be contributing posts her way at this point in my life. Speaking of posts, my first one went live yesterday! Based on the incredibly cute and hilarious Hipster Puppies blog, I decided to do a roundup of great products to help your pup get this of-the-moment look. Go check it out!

The best part about this, is now that I have something new to focus some of my energy on, it has really inspired me to get back on track and move into a cool new direction with LAMA. It is a direction that is right for me and hopefully for everyone involved. I’m looking forward to sharing what that is soon. So, to wrap up, I guess the biggest lesson I’ve learned this summer is to decide what you want to do, and then be the person who does it.