Essentials of the Week / 1

Some days call for major retail therapy, and today is one of those days. After splurging, or I mean, thoughtfully shopping, I found items that I thought our readers would like. So what am I enamored with this week?

The Batchel: From Cambridge Satchel, in Oxblood. Every other color is so perfect, but this one definitely takes the top with the rest of this outfit.

Saffron Dress: From one of my favorite online retailer, Shabby Apple. This is part of their new Moroccan-inspired collection and it's absolutely lovely. Don't mind me, I'll just be twirling over here.

Lip Balm: From EOS, of course. Nothing I'd rather be using, especially when on-to-go, which is basically all day and every day.

RIGHT NOW Sandals: From Seychelles Footwear. How appropriate is the name of the sandals? No time like now, right?

Lip Tar: In Neon Fuchsia from Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics. A dab of this and EOS, and my lips are ready for a show.

Dark Tortoise Eye Glasses: These are my new glasses from See Saw Seen. While I do wear contacts, I always prefer the look of glasses. It's just a great accessory, and these are definitely my favorite.

Essentials // Lucia Tran, Editor-in-Chief Illustrations // Katie Ryan for Zooey Magazine

Shabby Apple's off to Morocco

Like many others, we love a good fashion campaign. Shabby Apple's recent Moroccan-inspired line is just one of those great campaigns; It's thoughtfully put together and arranged with such sophistication, that they're already convincing us to hop on a plane to head overseas. And the clothes? Need we say more? We're waiting anxiously for them to hop into our closets right about now!

Corner Knick Knacks

For a long time, we wanted to spruce up the corners of our dining room with something other than a plain ol' cabinet. After having seen the new iKea corner cabinets (which are just around $100!), we knew we had to do a slight makeover. We removed the current cabinets, and built two of these corner cabinets - hiding their grey legs with the leftover wallpaper from Anthropologie we had from our latest installment. So what are our corner necessities?

Fresh flowers are always a must - they easily brighten a room and make it a lot more lively.

We found these ceramics from Rhyno Clayworks, which is all handmade by a talented artist named Ryan Lucier in Texas. His work is incredible, and the vases are a stunning match against our blue wall. We have a few more things from his collection that we have to photograph very soon, we were too much in awe to remember to photograph everything (insert blushing emoticon here).

This clock has got to be the greatest clock we've seen so far. It's handcrafted by Mariko Carandang from the iluxo Etsy shop. The little house at top indicates noon time - it's quite darling. Mariko also makes clocks in other designs like this kitty shape and also our favorite city - San Francisco!

And these bud vases are from Honeycomb Studio... Need we say anymore? The gold accent matched our gold peonies wallpaper so perfectly, and they are just so darling. We didn't put any flowers in these, since they stand out so well on their own.

And this is what the completed corner looks like. What's in the cabinet? Well, liquor of course! As you can see, instead of repainting the grey legs, we exploited the leftover wallpaper. But if we didn't cover it with wallpaper, we would definitely paint it gold!

What are your favorite knick knacks? Share us your favorite locally made home goods shops! We love to explore items made in the USA!