Event | Madewell Pop-Up

I've been holding onto this announcement for a while now, and I'm so excited to finally be able to share it with you guys! 

I will be partnering with Madewell in Short Pump Town Center to cohost a pop-up!
It's going to be held on October 17th from 2pm-5pm. So mark your calendars now!
The event will showcase some prints from my travels from this past year as well as some one-of-a-kind knitwear I've been working on inspired by those places.
You definitely don't want to miss out on being there, it's the start of a lot of really cool things that are coming up for A Girl Named Leney!

So come on by, bring some friends and maybe do a little bit of shopping (ooak knits and Madewell's new fall collection? I mean... sounds like an unbeatable combination to me ;) ) as well as partake in some yummy refreshments! 
Plus Madewell's offering 20% off any purchase of $125+

xo

The Kind of Words

you’re organic. 

you have a very european style.

you are doing everything you need to right now. everything you need to accomplish what you need to is already in you. 

lovely work. very editorial, soft and romantic, with some quirk.

are you french?

you were made for great things.

but you are really a light and a renegade in the best way.
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a collection of compliments received lately. 
kind words from strangers. 
remarks from friends. 
passing comments from acquaintances. 

we choose what we hold onto and remember in regards to the kind of words people have spoken to and over us.
these are the kind of words i want to remember. 
i'm letting go of the rest.

Engagement | Bethany + Chris

I hope you find someone who is brave enough to enter your storm, and respects you enough to love the size of your waves. I hope you find someone who will relish the calm you can have, and who is eager to set sail on the expanse of your mind. I hope you find someone that can’t escape the love they have for you, because now they have you in their very blood, always reminding them that you are the only sea worth exploring. || T.B. LaBerge

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This rainy day engagement session is one of my favorite to date I think.
My favorite weather and my favorite thing to do... Documenting two people in love.
I love people who are at a point in their story together that embodies both a certain kind of newness and yet familiarity. An almost-not-yet tension of excitement and anticipation. A story that only they truly know the telling of. Moments, conversations, experiences that are just for them and make up the history of "us".

Can't wait for your wedding day this winter Chris and Bethany, to continue the telling of this story of yours.
xo

I Love You For Your Just In Cases

i love you for your just incases. 

i love you for your maybes.

i love you for your i need spaces.

i love you for your persuade mes.

i love you for your indecision.

i love you for your doubt. 

i love you for your insecurities.

i love you for your i’m really stressed outs.

i love you for your high ups.

i love you for your low downs.

i love you for your smirks and even for your frowns.

i love you for your messes.

i love you for your vanity.

i love you for your i don’t need anybody elses.

i love you for all of your faults, for without them you wouldn’t make sense to me.

Bittersweet

there are things in life sometimes that are a mash up of a-little-bit-sad and a-little-bit-sweet but mostly-first-and-foremost very very important. 
i’ve had quite a lot of these things in my life over the past few years. something that perhaps is natural and comes most often with this whole being a twenty-something. 
but it’s most interesting to me now to look back on the sad things and see the sweetness in them. 
and vice versa with sweet things that have a little bit of sadness in them. 
but realizing the correlation between both of these kinds of moments is their importance. 
their importance in the lessons they taught me. in the becoming they allowed me. in the places they took me. in the people i met in them. they all, in their altogether mutual-sad-sweetness are important. 
and they add to the make-up of me and who i am.
i suppose the word for it is bittersweet.

Friday Favorites || 10

The above outfit. Denim dreams. Just be still my heart.

Just waiting to be asked to shoot an underwater wedding like this one

I think I'd give almost anything to stay at The Welsh House

The Moth Princess

This pattern from The Purl Bee. I hope I can make time to knit it for myself sometime before the weather starts heating up again... 

This app (because I discovered you can not only save recipes in it but knitting patterns. Is that a life hack or what??)

Going through a Real Estate phase this week

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See more Friday Favorites posts here

Ode To September

you brought with you a grid full of revelations. dawnings. awakenings. 
realizations in the way of this-is-mes and i-belong-heres. 
i often feel as though you do this to me annually. 
you bring with you the promise of a new season. in weather and in spirit. 
a chance to start over. try again. begin once more.
you are forgiving of me in that way.
regardless, i won’t complain. because the habitualness of those promises is something i flourish in. 
i can look back on all of our years together and pin point importance after importance that you ushered me into, through and out of.
i wish you would stay a little bit longer. 
but that is not your nature. 
i suppose if it was you wouldn’t be all-the-way you.
and i don’t want that.
your unchangeable ways is what i love most about you.

A New Way To Set Goals

So I want to talk about this podcast I listened to this week.  
So revolutionary for me in the way of goal setting. I think many of you know how goal oriented I am, (let's just do a re cap of goal-centric 2014 shall we?) especially in the way of list making.
But this was a take on goal setting I hadn't heard before (and I've heard a lot of them) and it really opened my eyes to a lot in the way of how to not only set goals more effectively, but how you actually might be setting the wrong goals. Or maybe not the wrong goals per say, but how you might be trying to achieve them in the wrong order. 

I'm going to go more in depth about what I'm talking about but I definitely encourage you to give the actual podcast a listen! The best part is in the latter half, so it might feel long but hang in there and hear the whole thing!

I also just want to say that this post is 100% credited and attributed to Emily Thompson and Kathleen Shannon of Being Boss and their guest for this podcast episode, Chalene Johnson. Without whom I wouldn't have this content! So thanks heaps to them for sharing these awesome ideas. If you are your own boss, or want to be, I definitely recommend checking out their podcast.

So, because having things written out for reference is really nice, I decided to write down my version of what Chalene talked about. 
So grab a piece of paper and pen and keep reading!
................................................................
Step 1 | 
Write down the following categories

1. Physical Health
2. Mental Well Being
3. Environment
4. Finances
5. Family + Friends
6. Significant Other / Love Interest
7. Career / Purpose
8. Growth / Getting Smarter
9. Pure Joy / Hobbies
10. Spirituality

Step 2 | 
Quickly go through and score your contentment in each of these areas from 1-10.
Ten being the most content.
Don't over analyze this too much, just do it as it comes to you.

Step 3 | 
Take a look at how you scored each category.
Which areas are your lowest?
Are you surprised by them?
The areas that you scored lowest in are main attributors to your unhappiness or lack of goal achievement. Pretty eye opening huh?

Step 4 |
Write your top goals in your lowest scored areas.
In other words make it a point to work first on where you're least content.
Next to each goal write, "what would it take to do this?" The answer is either accountability or money.
Keep that in mind when pursuing these various goals. 

Step 5 |
After evaluating all of the above, ask yourself "What could I do that would make most of these things happen?"
Make that answer your 11th goal.
................................................................

The areas I scored lowest in were my physical health, finances and pure joy/hobbies. I'm going to go a little more in depth with each of these areas to further give an example of how they're affecting my goal achievement.

Finances: While I am pretty savvy when it comes to spending and I don't over indulge very often, I am not as organized as I would like to be when it comes to my finances. I am always behind in my accounting and expense reports and receipt filing which makes for extra stress come tax time. Or, let's be honest, all the time. Because I spend money on my business all the time, and my lack of organization in this area is a constant reminder. Every day. And it has effects on my mental well being more than I realize. Sometimes to the point where it hinders my productivity. 
Not only that, I also want to be more consistent in the amount of income I do make every month so I can save more and be smarter and more planned with bigger purchases and investments. Something I have a hard time evaluating when I can't quickly pull up the answer to what I made on any given month, expenses and costs of business aside. 
So there's that.

Physical health: Last winter and spring I was killing it with working out and eating well. Then came the warmer months, traveling, and... well.. things just sort of fell by the wayside. It's hard to maintain a healthy lifestyle when you don't make it a priority and I definitely was not making it a priority over the summer. This has led to some not-so-great feelings towards how I feel physically and, in turn, mentally as well.
So a few weeks ago I started to take action against that again and I've already been feeling better. So, hearing the podcast and reaffirming that health is one of my lower scores, made total sense to me and just re-motivated me to tackle the whole getting-my-butt-healthy-and-fit again plan that I've already been implementing. 
Which as a result has led to me feeling better and more motivated about my other goals and other areas of my life.
See? It really is all connected.
I think that was the biggest takeaway for me while listening to this honestly. Everything in your life is interconnected and one area will inevitably effect another at some point. 

Pure Joy / Hobbies: What? That makes no sense... I have hobbies.. sure I have hobbies...
Scoring lower in this area initially confused me but then the more I thought about it, the more I realized I really didn't have a ton of stuff I could easily think of that were just pure-joy, simply-for-the-pleasure-of-it, not-in-some-way-work related things.
Of course I have to preface the following with saying that I am extremely thankful that I get to do what I do for a living. Knitting, traveling, photography? I couldn't dream up a better dream job. It is my dream job. However, all of those things were once upon a time my hobbies. Things I did just for fun. And while I definitely still enjoy them, immensely, and can often do parts of them just for me, it's really hard for me to do them apart from a this-is-work mindset. 
And ultimately anything I do in those areas attribute to my growth and success work-wise anyways. 
What were the things I did that weren't fueled by work, a need for money, were just for fun or just for me? 
Hmm.
I had to think about that one for a little bit. 
So finding hobbies, activities and things I love to do, simply just to do them, productivity inducing or not, has been something that's really eye opening for me. 

So. What's my 11th goal? 
Work smarter.
Maybe I'll expand upon what I mean by that in another blog post, but I think this one's long enough for now so I'll end here.
I would love to hear your thoughts on all of this.
Was this in any way as eye opening for you as it was for me?
What are some of your goals?
Comment below and let's talk about it. 

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More goal oriented things...
-Make sure your goals are oriented around, and pushing you towards these things.
-Paul Jarvis and Jason Zook of Invisible Office Hours, had a podcast episode this morning on Goals which is also a great listen-to on this topic.
-While dreams and goals are different, they are connected. Here are some thoughts on my dreams from the archives. 
-Elise also has a great podcast on this topic as well which you can listen to here.
(I am so about the podcast life these days... can you tell?

A Study In Color | Paris

Christening our three day Parisian life with Tracy Chapman and Billie Holiday
Out of this world night scenes
All neutrals
Au natural
Foi gras
Paris

 Via Instagram

On Building A Home

building a home. 

it’s something i imagine and wonder at sometimes.
not in the day dreaming way so much (though it is obviously a dream of mine to have one day) but in the how-is-this-such-a-common-every-day-thing-for-so-many? sort of way. a thing so many take for granted.

building a home with someone, a man, is more than just residing in a four walled structure of brick and mortar.
it’s about those windows and doors that only the two of you know about.
it’s about being able to be silent together and pouring out every thought and word and feeling in you all at once and feeling equally content in both.
it’s about daily choices. hard choices.
it’s about stopping to ask questions other than “how was your day?”
it’s about loving someone at their least lovely.
it’s about staying when you want to leave.
it’s about leaving when you want to stay. 

or so i imagine.
for i have yet to build a home with someone.
so until that eventually-at-the-right-time day comes, i’ll just wonder at it.