• Eating: Blood orange sorbet.
• Listening to: Kiss Each Other Clean. I just can’t stop going back to it!
• Wearing: A T-shirt & jeans. Yes, really. If you don’t believe me, read on.

Hello cheri!

Notice anything new? That’s right –– the blog’s undergoing a bit of a renovation right now, thanks to the brilliantly talented Kate Allen: graphic designer, photographer, buddy. The design extraordinaire whipped me up a fabulous logo (I am counting the hours until my new business cards are ready!), letterhead & the lovely new masthead you see just above this post. And I simply adore it all.

The whole process got me thinking a lot about branding. From the colors to the fonts & developing an icon, I was forced to down-to-the-details determine who I am. What is it that defines me & how on earth do I fit it on a 2 x 3.5″ card?

Am I Girly? Yes, but also quite serious. Somber? By no means. Flashy? Okay, maybe a little.

All of these musings about branding & image, self-perception & laying down definitions, tucked themselves nicely inside the gaps of another idea I’ve been chewing on of late: Is my identity –– both self-imposed & as perceived by others –– what I want it to be?

You may have heard of a thing called lent. It’s a season in the church calendar between Ash Wednesday & Easter, remembering the 40-day fast of Christ & looking forward to his resurrection. It’s not a practice I was raised on, but it’s one I’ve always been a bit captivated by. This is my second year participating, & inspired by a friend’s experiment several months back (she wore the same shirt every day for something like two weeks to test her dependence on her appearance), I decided to forgo my extravagant attire & spend 40 days & 40 nights dressed down in a T-shirt & jeans. Ten days in, & already it’s been a challenge.

Certainly, there is anything inherently wrong with a healthy appreciation for fashion or the choice to dress well, rather, I simply wanted to test myself. If stepping into a pair of jeans & a plain white tee means stepping out of my comfort zone, well, that’s all the more reason to do it. A great love of the aesthetic may be a big part of who I am, & that’s just fine. But I’d like to think it’s not the biggest.

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Oh, & I’m back in Charleston for the week on a sweet spring sabbatical. Hooray! So these pictures are of home –– a snippet of the view from my front porch.

J’adore!