Almost three months in to our new role as Creative Directors and show runners for MooShoes Los Angeles (sorry—the city’s shop talk has finally started to sink in), we’ve created a set of four prints + matching stickers that pull some of the illustration and hand-lettering work we did for the store wallpaper, all of which are now available for sale in the LA store, the NYC store, and at mooshoes.com.

The prints were printed locally in Los Angeles at an environmentally friendly, low-waste printer on partially recycled content, heavy-weight paper. We obviously wanted to make sure these were as low-impact as possible and, at the same, end up with a high-quality print on paper that would really do a good job absorbing big blocks of bold color for these.

Once we find a good match in terms of local manufacturers, we’re planning to take the designs and start applying them to some apparel—tees, pullover hoodies, tanks once it warms back up.

In the meantime, fee free to stop by either the Los Angeles or New York store to check the prints out in person or order them online. Below, all four on display individually in the LA store.

Creating a color palette for a project from scratch can be challenging without a starting point—some source of inspiration.

Rather than get that inspiration from some algorithm created by design software, we’ve found that it’s often more fun and results in a more dynamic, original product to take cues from the real world, like this salad we made one day back in 2012.

Or this kind of bizarre new-made-to-look-old 8-bit video game, Shovel Knight, in which a brave and valiant knight uses his chosen weapon—a shovel—to fight hordes of evil denizens to make it to his beloved missing partner, Shield Knight.

Our friend Justin introduced us to this game when we were in New York recently and we took a quick shot of this scene of Shovel Knight resting fireside under a setting sun. We totally loved the colors chosen for this 8-bit artistry—well done Yacht Club Games.

For the record, we’re terrible at Shovel Knight. We’ll be happy going forward to continue documenting there games more aesthetically pleasing moments from afar.

On our way down south to visit family recently we heard what has to be our new favorite Christmas song. New meaning new to us—the song, “Christmas Day” by Squeeze, was released back in 1979, and then only in the UK to a lukewarm-at-best reception.

One of our favorite curators of music, Daniel Gill of Force Field PR, seems to have been well ahead of us on this find though. He featured it amidst other holiday hits in his 2012 holiday mixtape.

The media player below starts in from the beginning of Daniel’s mixtape, all of which is well worth the listen, but the Squeeze song hits at about 37:45 if you want to skip ahead to it. You can click here to get right to it too.

Daniel’s got another great holiday mix going this year too—check it out here.

So merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, joyful Kwanzaa, and, if none of that hits home for you, jubilant Time Off Work Spent with Friends + Family to you. That’s the best one, really. Just needs a pithier name.

Happy everything, everybody.

Pretty stunning new public art via Street Art News by Australian artist Rone.

According to SAN, the artist returned to his home country after Miami’s Art Basel this year to finish this work in Geelong, an industrial city just outside of Melbourne whose two largest employers have closed down over the years, pushing the locale to re-imagine its identity, “with many huge warehouse spaces and open minded people like Power House Geelong.”

All images via Street Art News, which is a great site to follow for…you guessed it, street art. Their Instagram feed’s equally stellar if that’s your bag.

Music today from New York City’s Niia Bertino, better known by her simplified stage name, Niia.

Niia was chosen as one of ten breakout artists of 2014 by our very own Mr. Jason Bentley, czar of all things musical in Los Angeles and music director at our local public radio station, KCRW. With her smooth, soulful voice and impressive pop hooks, we’d be inclined to agree with Mr. Bentley on his choice. Case in point, her single “Body”, from her Generation Blue EP, released this past October. It’s tamely likable enough to appeal to everyone from edgy seekers of breakout pop to the moms of edgy seekers of breakout pop and its catchy chorus will likely have you humming the tune all day long.

Scrolling through Niia’s soundcloud page, she’s got quite a few songs that are available for free download, including a number of pretty great covers (anyone who knows, much less covers, Jai Paul’s BTSTU is good by me) to some impressive just-released collaborations between Niia and Providence producer, The Range (AKA James Hinton).

As if being a celebrated up-and-coming artist, coming from a long line highly talented musicians, and being a Bond girl (singer) wasn’t enough, Niia’s also given a Ted Talk on how she overcame severe stage fright and connecting with your audience. It’s actually really funny/touching—check it out below too.

Just in case anyone was hazy on the matter, our old band, Speedwell, was officially emo.

This according to the new Web site, Is This Band Emo?, created by our friend Tom Mullen over at Washed Up Emo, a site that celebrates and covers the mid-ninties + early aughts emo scene before it all fell into the popular culture and morphed into the bubblegum chaos that is mall emo.

You can actually listen to an early interview Tom did with me in 2011 on Speedwell and the indie emo scene of the time on Washed Up Emo.

The simple idea behind Tom’s new venture—type in the name of a band and find out if they’re ‘legitimately’ emo or not. Christie Front Drive? Emo. Knapsack? Emo. Panic at the Disco? Not emo.

Some results, like what you get when you ask the site if Journey is emo, even come with a little audio/video back-up to the claim.

Consider this an open love letter to Lagusta’s Luscious + sister bakery Sweet Maresa, the former of whom we just wrote up a few months back.

As we mentioned then, not only does this New Paltz, NY-based confection creation a whole array of vegan wonders for any lover of delectable sweets, they also use their culinary art as a means to talk about their collective devotion to feminism and celebration of the feline in an overtly masculine, oppressive world. I never would have tied sweets and feminism together, but I love it.

I also love the new treats from Maresa’s MooShoes NYC kindly sent over to our new west coast MooShoes—the Italian rainbow cookie (above), a 6.75″ x 3.75″ traditional marzipan meringue cake “made with natural colors, homemade organic almond paste, and filled with a peach beebalm jelly made from summer fruit and flowers, encased in fair trade dark chocolate” and these chocolate covered hot chocolate cookies filled with cinnamon marshmallows (below).

Why you gotta make us miss New York, Lagusta + Maresa? Why?

We’ll start with: We don’t think this is racist?

For the longest time, I personally pigeon-holed burning incense along with wearing patchouli. It was something dreadlocked, Baja-wearing hippies did. But, be it due to a softening to unnecessary prejudices as I get older or a more general desire to seek out ways to chillax^® as I get older…or just getting older, I am totally into incense now.

Katie got me a smaller incense burner a while back and, more recently, we picked up this adobe teepee burner from the same company, Incienso de Santa Fe. An incense company based in Santa Fe, New Mexico (thank you, Spanish class), Incienso de Santa Fe creates “incense that is unique to the Southwestern United States,” using the native area woods to formulate their fragrances found “nowhere else but in the west.”

Having lived in California “officially” for a year now, I have to back up the company’s claim. The west, like the east, does have geographically specific scents that we’ll suddenly stumble across when we’re out hiking or even just walking through our neighborhood, Beachwood Canyon. Smells of dry brush; hedges of lavender; smokey, dusty hills—all of it’s started to come to smell like home to us and Incienso’s products call up place and time with their scents in a warm, comforting way. As they put it:

“People tell us our incense makes them remember all kinds of wonderful things…the perfume of the Painted Desert, a crackling campfire on a high mountain trail, the morning mist settling in a Northern New Mexican village. If you have not tried our fragrances before, we know you will find them very special.”

We kind of just like how burning their incense snaps us into a more tranquil place at the end of a long day. As the company spells out on their site, they use only dead trees for their incense—no trees are cut down for their products. And, as you can see from their Web site, they offer a wide range of incense scents (from piñon to mesquite to hickory) + themed burners (from chimineas to steam engines to tiny southwestern churches).

So, if you’re looking for a last-minute gift, we’d suggest these guys. They’re reasonably priced, unique, and go a long way to bringing some warmth into your winter.

We call this “Christmas Tree atop Volvo”.

White Wolf, going strong after a year on NYC streets, three trips cross-country, another year in the nation’s most car-filled city, and a little Christmas tree-hauling.