Neo-Trad of the Week

Name, Age, Location

Ashlyn Lovejoy (traveling in Africa, above), 23, New York, NY

My cliff-note autobiography…

I was born swimming in the waters and skiing in the mountains of New York and Colorado with my two older brothers and two younger sisters. High school was fine, but college was amazing. There, I met the loves of my life: my girlfriends! Boys may come and go (and one may even stick around for the long haul, though I have yet to find him), but there’s no one to gossip, share every little secret, and drink margaritas with like your best girlfriends. Now, I work for the contemporary furniture and design company West Elm in Brooklyn, maintain my blog Plan The Day (www.plan-the-day.com), and freelance for designers.

Five things that make my heart flutter…

leopard print in any form, horses, Scrabble, the Adirondacks, and the perfect pair of blue jeans. And my cat Malcolm. And my four month-old nephew Stone.

My dream dinner party…

While there are so many famous people dead and alive, like the comedian Gilda Radnor or the novelist John Irving, that I could imagine sitting around my dining table, there is no one else in the world with whom I would rather spend my time than my closest friends and family. Everyone would be crammed around my small table with chairs, maybe even a stool or two, brought in from other rooms in order to seat them all. The meal would be simple, a delicious pasta bolognese perhaps, and the wine would flow. The focus of the meal would be each other; and the neighbors would have to bang on the door and ask us to keep it to a dull roar.

In ten years I will be…

living in a cozy home in my hometown outside of New York City, married to a wonderful man with a child or two running amok. By then, I will have marked off more than half of my dream destinations on my travel list and I will be planning on sharing more worldly adventures to China, Tanzania, Peru, and more with my children. I will stay at home with my munchkins in their younger years, baking cookies and creating pasta art, then freelance for designer friends and participate in charity work once they’re in school.

I am neo-traditional because…

I enjoy walking up and down each chilly aisle of the grocery store, carefully testing the ripeness of and selecting each food; because I was a Classical Studies major with a focus on Latin and a French minor; because I am passionate about proper grammar and spelling; because I keep a diary and send hand-written letters and notes; and because I spend my free time reading, imagining the interior of my future home (understated feminine elegance with masculine flairs and whimsical touches), and needle-pointing.

Thank you Ashlyn!  I hope we’ll get to meet someday soon! xx katie