Travel

I Dream My Painting

I dream my painting and I paint my dream. || Vincent van Gogh


People you can dream big with.
The big-city dreamers.
Those are the kind of people I love.
The ones I get most excited about doing life with.
This girl's one of them, for the record.

Have conversations about how important it is to visualize where you're going.
Believe it's possible to get there.
Set goals to get there.
Believe those are attainable.
But also learn to be content and happy with the present, where you're at now.
It's a fine line, something that requires balance.
But that too is possible.
You just have to dream your painting.
//
Shot at Greecologies in New York City

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

A Study In Color | Switzerland

Forever catching trains

Endless good food

A boy named Sven

Cully Classic Music Festival

Paddle boarding

A place a daughter of a sailor feels right at home

Blue

 Via Instagram

A Study In Color | Spain

Spain

With it's peaches and cream and sandy tones

"Sangriasangriamojitosangria"

Friendly strangers in the metro to help reorient our turned around selves

New Castle Boys bound for Valencia

Two hour train station waits

Waiting and waiting and waiting

Hot sticky summer nights

 Via Instagram

A Study In Color | Ireland

A girl named Siorsia

Being serendaded by Irish men singing John Denver's Take Me Home Country Road

A homeland for so many that I could see myself calling home

Oh Molly Malone

Everything's savage

Green

 Via Instagram

The Urbexing Diaries | Abandoned Airstream

During this roadtrip I came across an abandoned Airstream trailer. 
(I actually posted some iPhone snaps of this on tumblr already but I'm just now getting around to sharing the digital shots I took)
Over the past few years, off and on, I've gone through various fascinations and dreams about owning an airstream of my own. I mean with people like this and this living their dreamy airstreamed lives, how could I not?

So anyway.
Came across this beauty, snapped a few photos of her, went on my marry way but couldn't stop thinking about her. So I went back again the next day and ended up tracking down the owner, whose name was Freddy, to see if there was any way he'd be interested in selling his airstream. You know, just out of curiosity.  
Freddy was quite a character and though he was, sadly, not interested in selling her, he did have a few stories about her he didn't mind sharing.
He told me he didn't really have any plans for her other than to drag her out to the road so people could see her from it as they drove by. But he told me he'd gotten her for $500 at a junkyard and that she was from '51 or so and how he'd once let a guy gut her and start fixing her up when all of her insides (along with a half moon bed and other "goodies" as he put it) burnt up in a barn fire. Ever since then she's just been sitting, unloved, and acquiring dents from when his horses lean up against her.
He said he'd been offered money for her on several occasions but he just wasn't willing to part with her.
I understood. 

I named her Stevie. 
Because she had a gypsy soul about her.
Here's to furthering and chasing after my airstream dream.

Don't know what urbexing is? 
Check out an explanation in this post here as well as other posts in The Urbexing Diaries.


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A Parisian Morning

Shadows dissipating on white walls
Construction on the street drifting up through the window
Coffee in tiny cups
Bread
Billie Holiday
Tracy Chapman
More bread
Knitting
Fans shushing
Shades of blue
French blue
More Tracy Chapman
Postcard writing
.
A Parisian morning

Glasses: Firmoo
Shirt: Colopalo
Shorts: Urban Outfitters
Jewelry: Brittany Channel
Watch: Marc Jacobs
Journal: The Rootless Spruce

/////
This post was sponsored by Firmoo.
Firmoo has really lovely glasses that are not only unique but affordable.
I love this pair they sent me and highly recommend their frames!

You can shop through their online store as well as connect with them on Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter.

If you're interested in sponsoring a post, shoot me an email: agirlnamedleney@gmail.com


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A Boat Story | Luna

This is a story about a boat.
We drove all the way to Mattawan Michigan for her, and then we brought her back. 
I feel overly fortunate to be able to say that I consider both of my parents to be some of my very best friends. This road trip with my Dad in particular is home now to some of my favorite times with him that are going to be hard to beat to be honest.
Discovering an abandoned Airstream trailer (post with photos forthcoming) during our trip was of course a highlight and culprit to intensifying my Airstream dream, and there was a stop at a yarn shop (no surprise there). But those experiences aside, there's very little that means more to me than just simply being with the people I love and doing life with them, in whatever way it's presented to us. Whether it's having coffee on their back porch, dancing our feet off wherever there's good music (or even when there's not), sitting at a kitchen counter talking while they cook (because we all know my cooking skills leave much to be desired) or sitting shotgun in a truck for twelve hours.

On the first day of the road trip we passed a sailboat off the highway that was sitting in a yard and on her transom was the name Moon Dust. I wrote it down because I loved it so much.
I'm forever making notes and lists and scribbles of words/phrases/lyrics/sentences I like. 
But it must've stuck somehow because on the way home, as we were brainstorming the name for her, I couldn't get Luna out of my head.
And so it just sort of came out. 
And it just sort of stuck.
So Luna she was christened. 
(Not to be confused with Una of course, her sister)

The day after getting home I realized how attached I already was to her. Perhaps it was because I helped name her, and as humans we often get so attached to the things we name, or perhaps it's because of the journey and the memories along the way in retrieving her.
I'm not really questioning it though, whatever the reason.
She's going to be a great new adventure. 
Even her old name, Andiamo, which is "Go" in Italian, speaks to a spirit of adventure and seeking out and discovering new waters and places unseen that I think she already embodies.


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The Travel Journal

We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect. || Anaïs Nin 
////

I'm an avid journaler, but especially so when I travel. 
I think part of the reason is because when I travel things can often be a blur. A new place here and new place there, a new thought in this moment, meeting a different person with a cool story in that one, going going going. Documenting such things, sometimes as they happen, is a way for me to live them more fully in the moment. To examine and see them a little bit outside of their original context helps me to not take them for granted and appreciate these moments and experiences for what they are.
But of course I also do it so that I can look back and reminisce once I'm back home. 

I not only do this when I'm traveling but in my day to day life as well actually. I have several different notebooks and journals each with their own respective purpose. I'm constantly scribbling notes and sentences and thoughts and new words and clever lines I hear people say that I want to remember. 
I don't really remember a time when I wasn't doing this to some capacity to be honest. 
It's one of those things that's engrained into who I am.


The Rootless Spruce sent some their handcrafted leather goods with me on my trip to Iceland, which included  this incredibly beautiful handmade journal. It's pages have since been filled with quite a few memories which I already love looking back on. 
If you need a travel journal (or the perfect home for your passport) I highly recommend visiting their shop

I also highly recommend this Air BnB place we stayed in for our first few nights in Reykjavik
Don't know what Air BnB is? Learn more and sign up here for $25 towards your first booked trip!
It's my favorite way to travel.

/////
This post was sponsored by The Rootless Spruce.
You can find them in their shop as well as on Instagram.

If you're interested in collaborating, shoot me an email: agirlnamedleney@gmail.com 


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