I am beyond excited to share that today at 10 A.M., my dear friend Inslee Fariss and I are launching Love Prints, a limited edition collection of hand-numbered, hand-signed poetry prints authored by yours truly and featuring Inslee’s art. You can purchase them here at 10 a.m. (Prints available: “10 I Love Yous,” “Marriage Is,” and “Green Flags.”)
For years, you have been generously inviting my words into your mornings; I have long dreamed of finding a way to share my musings in a more tangible way – something similar to a note left on a desktop, a reminder on a bedside table, a gift to a loved one. I approached my talented artist friend Inslee with the idea of printing some of my words and having her elevate them with her signature evocative, playful artwork. The result is this charming set of 6×8 prints, which make a perfect gift for a mother, bride, sister, or friend, or a stirring desktop reminder to “make love the point.”
I am so proud that this undertaking – the first time I have made my writing available for purchase – was born of creative sisterhood. I have known Inslee for decades; we have been cheering one another on in our respective lanes for years: her at the easel, me at the keyboard. Meanwhile, the Magpie community has become, over the years, a special kind of sororal space where women meet in the comments to let one another know “you’re not alone!” and “have you tried…?” It is fitting, then, that these limited-edition treasures were designed by two women for other women – whether you are keeping the note on your desk, framing for your best friend, or giving to your daughter on her wedding day.
Onward!!
Post Scripts.
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+We recommend framing using these 6×8 lucite blocks if you’re styling on your desk, bedside table, dresser, console, etc. For a slightly more dramatic presentation, you could also center the print in an 8×10 lucite block. (Bonus: affordable and arrive overnight!). Just think of how beautiful this would look placed in a box filled with crinkle paper as a gift for your sister’s wedding day, Galentine’s, etc.
+If you want to frame and mount, I just placed an order for Framebridge’s Irvine frame with the “float mount” option to hang all three on the wall of my studio. I feel like the float mount option made the paper feel more tactile, and the words more visible.
+The prints are based on my musings 10 I Love Yous, Marriage Is, and Green Flags, which have been some of my most popular pieces to date. I hope you enjoy!
By: Jen Shoop
This post may contain affiliate links. If you make a purchase through the links below, I may receive compensation. Images via.
I know several of you approach your wardrobes from more of a “capsule” standpoint — something I admire. I was inspired to share a few gorgeous basics that could make up a solid capsule and share how to style — inspired by these gorgeous street style looks!
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Quick little note that Veronica Beard is offering 40% off its NFL-emblazoned blazers! So if you’re a big fan of the Chiefs or the Eagles, this is what you need for the Super Bowl. I learned about this sale from a mom at my children’s school — apparently a friend of hers had bought one for the Commanders before they lost last weekend. A chic twist on “go team!” dressing.
Anyhoo — Net-A-Porter is offering an extra 15% off an already incredible sale. I find I use their sales primarily to buy statement dresses for the season ahead, but this go around, I found a lot of wardrobe basics that caught my eye. Anyhow, a few epic finds:
01. Alix of Bohemia dress. I own this in a different pattern (seen above) — it is truly spectacular; the photo doesn’t even do it justice. I love the romantic covered buttons and easy breezy silhouette. I loved it so much I wore it to the Kacey Musgraves concert!
02. I’ve been surprisingly in the market for pleated trousers. I say surprisingly because I don’t work in an office and feel like it’s not really my vibe to wear trousers casually, but I want to try?? These, these, or these would be a great score for this kind of style — so polished and sophisticated! Imagine pairing these trousers with a simple cashmere sweater!
This post may contain affiliate links. If you make a purchase through the links below, I may receive compensation. Above, wearing Madewell jeans, Veronica Beard blazer, and 3.1 Phillip Lim bag.
My most-worn jeans, week-in and week-out, are my Rag and Bone Sofies (about which I’ve written extensively — TTS, stretchy/comfortable, very slimming), my Agolde Riley crops, and my Citizens Charlottes. All three are comfortable, broken-in, and tried-and-true — I know exactly how to style, with what shoes and shirt length, etc. But I’ve been wanting to try some newer styles recently. This past fall, I picked up and loved wearing these baggy Citizens jeans (run big – I took my true size but probably could have gone down a size), these Veronica Beard Wide legs (true to size), and these Madewell darted jeans (seen above — go down one full size). All three are fabulous, but require some specific styling. The Citizens, for example, really only work on me if I’m wearing a very trim, tucked-in, slim fit top, or I’m completely swallowed up. The VBs are so elongating and I’m obsessed with the wash, but made of a hyper-rigid denim and I find not particularly comfortable if I’m sitting at my desk or sitting anywhere for a long period of time — definitely not good for a car trip / movie theater / etc. And the Madewell darted jeans IMO only work with a ballet flat. I’ve seen them styled with boots but they just don’t feel right to me.
A few new jeans I’m eyeing:
01. I mentioned these jeans (more sizes here) from new-to-me label B-Sides and so many of you wrote to rave about this denim line. I love the dark wash but this everyday wash is also calling my attention. Look for less options: one of you wrote in all exclamation points about this pair from Gap (appealing thanks to the petite inseam options!) and these Everlanes.
04. Agolde Rens in white. A lot of you LOVE these jeans and I’m obsessed with them in the optical white. Look for less with these J. Crews — several of you who own or have tried both these and the Rens have said they’re pretty similar.
05. Citizens Miro jeans. Another great, different wash with a slightly bowed leg — these remind me a lot of my Madwell darted pair. I feel like the Miro jeans would look cool in a tonal look, paired with a shirt like this.
06. Speaking of: I might go back for a second pair of the Madwell darteds with the new white wash! The fit and quality are incredible. Great with a slightly cropped sweater that hits just at the hip so you really get the full silhouette.
07. Similar to the B-Sides I mentioned at top, also loving Agolde’s take as well as Veronica Beard’s. The VBs feel maybe a touch more tapered / approachable than Agolde and B-Sides if you want to dip your toe into the trend without as much flair / width.
This morning, republishing a modestly edited version of an essay from last year. The moment I capture below has had a profound impact on me as a mother. It led me to make a point of being more physically affectionate with my seven year old. It’s not that we didn’t hug and snuggle before, but that I’d somehow forgotten that she still needed the random squeezes and swings and tickles that I unthinkingly felt she’d somehow outgrown. She is so mature (!) for her age, but she still needs it. And I think this emphasis on physical affection has had a profound (good) impact on us, drawing us closer than ever.
****
A few nights ago, I was dancing in the kitchen with my son in my arms — his head tilted back in joy, a smile stretching across his face. My daughter found us:
“Now my turn, mama – now my turn!”
I told her she was too big to be carried, but she persisted:
“My turn, can I have a turn?”
My daughter is a newly-minted seven-going-on-seventeen-year-old, and knows how to huff and eye roll and stamp her feet with the best of them, often responding to my husband and I with a sarcastic “…really?”,
and the other day I poked my head out the front door to call her for dinner,
and didn’t recognize her shape in the neighbor’s yard.
She was wearing her new flared leggings (a specific, passionate request) with a braid down her back, and it was the first time I’d misplaced her figure.
In the hospital, bleary the day after she was born, I had panicked to Mr. Magpie after the nurses had taken her out of the room to the nursery so that I could try to close my eyes: “What if I don’t recognize her?” He assured me that all the bassinets were marked, and added:
“Are you kidding? You’d know that cry anywhere, already.”
He was right, of course. I could pick her sound out of a million near-identicals. Her smell, too. The way she runs. Her rippling laugh. The shape of her toes.
But I’d looked across the yard, and not recognized her for a split-second, and I think this mis-sighting blurred my vision for a spell,
Because that night we were dancing in the kitchen, after she pawed at my shirt for a turn, I sat down on the couch and pulled her into my arms and bounced her on my knees and tickled her arms and swung her back and forth in my lap,
and she laughed and laughed,
and I saw her at 1, and 3, and 5,
and as a newborn in a hospital bassinet —
all the versions of her, returned to me, as though a matryoshka doll unlidded —
and I realized that she is still my baby girl, still needing to be tickled and held and swung around in my arms. She is seven. She believes in Santa, and wonders whether her dolls get up to mischief when her back is turned, and lays her head on my shoulder while I read to her at night. Only seven. I can’t let her posturing as an older girl, modeled on the teens who baby sit her, and the fact that my husband and I are often mired in conversations about rule-setting and reinforcements, obscure this truth:
She is little, and she needs love in the big ways, but in the little ways, too.
She needs not only boundaries and homework reminders and “what do you think?” conversations but impromptu back rubs and hand squeezes and fingers-running-through-hair. We say “I love you” ad infinitum in our house — several times a day, at least — but I had forgotten that she can still fit on my lap, and be swayed back and forth, and that she craves these tendernesses, too.
There is a possibly apocryphal haiku attributed to the Japanese poet Basho that runs:
To quiet down
the unsettled heart
of the daughter
A beautiful portrait of motherhood, isn’t? A piece of it, at least — one glinting prism of the stained glass composite: the centricity, the purposefulness, of a mother’s quieting presence. Today I sit here and think:
How many nights did I rock my girl to sleep? How many mornings did I carry her, plastered to my chest, in her carrier? How lucky I am to have her still seeking umbrage in my arms, and how snugly she fits.
+But if you only buy one item from the Doen launch, let it be this top! I promise you’ll get a ton of wear out of it. Ultra-soft (like t-shirt soft), easy to tuck with no bunching. It is just as easy to throw on as a t-shirt but more interesting/polished.
+Pretty new wedding guest dresses for the season ahead: this Shoshanna, this HHH (I own it in a different print – super flattering and pretty), this House of Dagmar, and this Cara Cara.
+I love my Ossa phone strap. I’d sort of lost it / forgotten about it but just pulled it out again — lots of cute new options here! This one is spendy but reminds me of Simone Rocha!
+Pretty eyelet shorts, on sale, for the spring ahead. More early spring finds here.
By: Jen Shoop
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One long freeze has settled in along the East Coast this month. Even in the sunshine subtropical city of Raleigh, North Carolina, where I spent 36 hours this week, it was sixteen degrees above nothing, and birds and critters hiding in the oaks had to learn to shrug the rime off in the morning. I watched the robins on the frozen grass in the front yard of my friend’s home, pecking at the earth for worms, and I wondered if they were confused by the frost, by the sudden seeming dullness of their beaks. They could not possibly understand the new verglas separating themselves from their morning meals, or that it was a temporary condition.
These cold weather ministrations are of course as essential as breathing in the tundralands up north — life continues apace in sub-zero conditions in my former hometown of Chicago — but not in the South, and not even in the Mid-Atlantic. In Montgomery County, we have had three snow days and multiple late starts since the dawn of the year, and I can’t tell you how many activities have been postponed, canceled, delayed besides. This month has felt a like calendar whack-a-mole: this and that rescheduled for then and there. My mind has become a porous fog of fungible deadlines and dates. Weird how that happens: the city comes to a slow stop, as though freezing itself, liquid turnt solid, and then here are the parents, swimming frantically in vast volumes of thaw on the other side, our flailings met with cold disinterest.
But as I anthropomorphized those Raleigh robins, and I know I shouldn’t have — could in fact remember the birding guide in Aspen chastising my sister-in-law for making a joke about the rituals of the male kingfisher relative to the female one — I thought to myself: “but this is a temporary condition for me, too.” This short freeze in which I am, like the robin, pecking frantically at the hoarfrost, will eventually thaw.
I wish I were as easy as the birds, just taking things as they come, trusting.
******
I was in Raleigh this week in order to hand-sign, hand-number, and package a limited-edition collection of prints that my friend, the talented artist Inslee Fariss, and I collaborated on. I absolutely cannot wait to share these, and the full backstory, with you when they launch this Wednesday, January 29th, on Inslee’s site. This is the first time I have ever made my words available in a tangible format that you can put on your desk, or hang in a special nook of your favorite creative corner, and I couldn’t be prouder that I brought this to life in collaboration with a woman I deeply admire as an artist and treasure as a friend. A creative sisterhood! Just like the community here at Magpie. This project has been a dream come true for me.
My latest Veronica Beard blazer acquisition. I treasure my collection and they are honestly wardrobe workhorses. They are the foundation of my “hero dressing” formula when I don’t know what to wear — jeans I feel good in, a high-quality tee, and a great blazer. // New bronzing product from Isle of Paradise — not a tanner (I have bad luck with those) but a bronzer / illuminator you can apply all over. Can’t wait to try. // Crown Affair just released a new shampoo and conditioner that people are freaking out over. I’m obsessed with their dry shampoo so MUST try this next. // Really love Tory Burch’s latest bag shape, the Romy. Polished but slouchy-casual. Like the Lee Radziwill bag’s downtown cousin. // Isabel Marant’s Beth sneakers are a perennial favorite. // Always love Lizzie Fortunato jewels — this pair of drops are fun. // $25 scallop edge throw pillows! // Saw these jeans on someone and thought the fit was perfection. Look for less with these!
By: Jen Shoop
The following content may contain affiliate links. If you make a purchase through the links below, I may receive compensation. Image via.
+ON CLUTTER: In support of my oddball resolution to spend less time tidying in 2025, I loved this quote from Anne Lamott: “Clutter and mess show us that life is being lived…Tidiness makes me think of held breath, of suspended animation… Perfectionism is a mean, frozen form of idealism, while messes are the artist’s true friend. What people somehow forgot to mention when we were children was that we need to make messes in order to find out who we are and why we are here.” I don’t know if I have fully befriended the mess, but after reading this quote, I realized that it has been a constant companion in my creative undertakings–and that I mind it a lot less in that venue. How can I apply a writerly mindset — the understanding that all good things start with half-formed ingredients? — to my home space? Creating, and life, are full of middles, and middles are messy.
+THE INTRINSIC VALUE OF DOING THINGS JUST BECAUSE: In the introduction to Fox and I, Catherine Raven writes: “I realized that a fox, like a rainbow and every other gift from Nature, had an intrinsic value that was quite independent of its longevity.” I thought for some reason not of the foxes in our yard that have become something of a personal cipher, or the the now-fat redbirds in the trees outside my window that charm me, or even the roses on the far side of our home that remind me of Elizabeth, but of how sometimes I “waste” time drafting fiction that I know, even as I write it, I will never publish. How this creative wandering can seem like time poorly, or foolishly, spent. And yet. The act of writing, the communion with the blank page for no purpose other than imaginative expression — it, too, has an “intrinsic value,” independent of its landing place, or reception, or even its accidental deletion at some point down the road.
+V. GOOD SALES: (1) Ann Mashburn has further reduced its sale prices. Don’t miss this wool shirtdress (their shirtdresses are impeccably cut) or these joyful flats. The flats!! They’d make a simple pair of jeans and a button-down sing! (On the button-down front: my girlfriend Inslee was wearing one of these boxy, cropped button-down shirts from TWP when I visited her in Raleigh and I was obsessed! The afore-linked Julia Amory shirt is a good look for less.) (2) Veronica Beard’s sale section is almost entirely 70% off. One of my most-worn blazers is now $209. I love an ivory blazer! It goes so well with dark wash denim, light wash denim, cords!
+WHAT I ORDERED THIS WEEK: Two new beauties from Veronica Beard: this blazer and this denim vest, plus the Julia Amory top I just mentioned. While visiting Inslee, I brought her this gorgeous poetic book on the Greek gods — such a source of inspiration for me — and these beautiful trinket plates from potterist Laetitia Rouget. For home: some new folders to organize paperwork and this water bottle storage solution. New-to-me intimates label LDMA is sending me some of their gorgeous underthings, too!
+LANDON’S BIRTHDAY: At this point in our lives, Landon cooks 100% of the time. I enjoy cooking but he is far more talented, motivated, and passionate in the kitchen, and I am the happy beneficiary of his culinary enthusiasm. I was reminded this week when I offered to cook him a birthday feast of just how complex and time-consuming it is to meal plan and prep around the normal business of our lives…! Feeling doubly grateful for his commitment! I spent more or less two days running errands, prepping, cooking in order to make him a Spanish feast inspired by our trip to San Sebastian about a decade ago. We enjoyed two tapas: a bacon-shrimp skewer dressed in a sweet pepper and garlic vinaigrette and served over a slice of baguette, and croquettes with ham in them. The latter was quite an undertaking (frying!), but Landon helped me out with having some homemade bechamel in our freezer that I used as the base. For the entree, we had a clam and rice dish and a cauliflower-marcona-almond-arugula salad in a parsley-garlic vinaigrette. I got all the recipes except for the cauliflower dish from this Basque cookbook. For dessert, I made a classic yellow cake with chocolate frosting from this baking cookbook Landon got me for Christmas. Everything went well and it was fun to make the tapas, enjoy those with a glass of cava, and then return to the stove to make the entrees. (I’d parcooked multiple elements from the entree course to make this happen. It required so much careful planning!) Very leisurely pace to really celebrate the man of the house. How do you celebrate birthdays in your home? For us, the birthday dinner is the big event.
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We’re not taking the kids to Disney until later this spring, but this hasn’t stopped me from assembling a hefty wishlist of warm weather finds, organized in a few mood boards below. (In fact, we have several brief trips planned before then, but all to cold climates.) You’ll notice a lot of that powder blue…!
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I had never been a big athleisure lady — until this past month or two. With my new approach to working out (I strive to move my body for a minimum of 20 minutes each day, usually doing a Physique57 or Heather Robertson video, with a goal of two longer cardio workouts per week, where I run or cycle and then do a core workout video), I find myself wearing athleisure to school drop off and morning errands more often than not, as I do not have the time to shower and dress. Something’s gotta give; tradeoffs. I am going to write more about this soon, but I’ve been thinking a lot about something I read recently: everything is a tradeoff; you just need to figure out which emotional consequence you are more willing to accept. As in: you can either move your body and show up looking a little less polished (resulting, for me, in a feeling of not presenting my best self), or you can skip moving your body and show up fully dressed / appointed (resulting, for me, in a feeling of inertia / blah-ness that lingers throughout the day). When I compare the two emotional outcomes I anticipate, the decision is much easier for me to make. I want to be clear here and say that some (most?) women probably don’t even think about this as a tradeoff, and that’s of course correct, too, and even admirable to me. I grew up in a fairly formal household (my mom has worn jeans…twice? in her life and gives me a hard time if I’m wearing distressed denim; I distinctly remember her laying into my brother and his friends for wearing baseball hats at the dining room table — major rule), and I also dedicate a lot of my professional time to fashion, and so the inputs may be different for me.
Anyhow, even in athleisure, I like to feel as polished as possible. My secret to feeling pulled together is wearing mainly monochromatic sets and layering with non-athletic accessories and outerwear. Above, a typical morning look of Beyond Yoga leggings, a Beyond Yoga top, Varley fleece, and tall socks. The sneakers are actual gym shoes (the best ones I’ve found for doing lateral and forward movements — good ankle support, and I’ve needed them while doing side lunges!) but if I were running to school, I’d probably swap out for my Inuikiis, Adidas, or Veronica Beard sneaks. It’s been so cold out, I have been throwing on my white wool coat over the top!
I’ve been doing a little hunting to make some updates to my children’s rooms and — at least for me, I don’t want to make huge investments in accents and particularly upholstery that will likely be destroyed in a few years time. Below, some very chic finds at reasonable price points for the coastal look I’m after:
01. Woven swivel chair in a gorgeous sky blue. Great for a little reading corner in a child’s room.
