This weekend

This weekend, I believe Marc and I singlehandedly--I guess that would be doublehandedly, technically--pulled the U.S. economy out of this nasty recession. What started out low key enough with a BYOB Indian dinner on Friday ended in an ORGY OF RETAIL CONSUMPTION (albeit a very tame one).

It was a good weekend (Except for the fight we got in Sunday night at Target about leggings. What have you done to the fabric of America, Lindsay Lohan?)


I got these adorable clogs on sale at Anthropologie, which means they were still expensive, just not as high as my portion of the mortgage. They're so very comfortable and I think it's true love. If you're a size 7 or 9, they can be yours too. We can be shoe twins.

No pictures yet, but I also stopped by the Jayson Home and Garden warehouse sale and picked up an old schoolhouse light to install above our kitchen sink. Right now, we have one of those Ikea Fado deals up there. It's not bad, but it's super hard to change the lightbulb and it's kind of blah and filthy.

Jayson Home and Garden is kind of like the Anthropologie of home stores. Stratospherically out of my budget, but it was kind of fun and worth it to go to the warehouse sale for this one item. Plus, there were ladies with dogs in their purses there, which makes any shopping experience extra fancy. Was the light as cheap as a Fado? No way man, but it was a steal at $99 vs. its original $550 (say what!) price tag.


It's not unlike something you'd find at Schoolhouse Electric, but it's the prettiest pale jade green.

Not to be outdone, Marc went and bought himself a bike.


It's so pretty. I usually don't like new bikes (I had my grandma's 1960s Schwinn until it got stolen a few years ago, and I replaced it with the exact same bike in red), but it's a really simple and lovely thing. No joke, people were nudging each other and pointing at the bike and stopping him to ask about it when he was walking down the street yesterday. It was like he was strolling around with a super hot lady. My clogs and I were a little jealous.

So all of our consumption may mean we're going to be eating lots of canned goods and spending quality time with ye olde Netflix queue, which is more than fine by me. It's getting to be about that time of year in Chicago when everyone hibernates anyway. Ugh. Sick of it.

P.S. Posting may be light this week (not that it hasn't been this whole year...but hey, blogging is something free I can do, right?). I'll be in New York until Sunday for work. Have a great week, everybody!

P.P.S. I almost forgot--I dyed some chunks of my hair pink! It's so fun. Circa 2000, Gwen Stefani, look out! I'm coming for you!

Cabin fever: A breakdown

Winter makes me want everything to be about 37% percent more charming and rustic than it really is.

Dirty snow and salt-encrusted shoes all over my hardwood floors make real life about 12% less marvelous. Runny noses and chapped lips further tip the scale 25% in the direction of blah.

Today, I'm taking a photo vacation to even things out.










P.S. I came into the office this weekend to clean out my giant drawer of shoes. Things* just got real.

*I am a lady and therefore am not using a swear word two posts in a row. Watchy me as I curtsy and drink my can of Red Bull with my pinky finger extended!

Dear Diary,

Today my feet, as always, looked fabulous.

I can't believe/absolutely love that Elle magazine has a diary of staffers' shoes.


Look at me being all sensible and wholesome favoring these H&M peep toes.

(via A Cup of Jo)

Rushing the season

Pardon the interruption, but I have to get a quick note out to my cat.

Dear Harvey,

You know I love you. But dude, you need to slow your roll. It's not even Thanksgiving yet.

It was sweet of you to leave three jawbreakers (Two red and one green, natch. You always have had fabulous color sense.) and one rock from the fireplace in my shoe. But St. Nicholas Day is, like, two weeks away.

Let's live in the now and enjoy the present like the gift it is, little guy. If you're really good and chill out a whole lot, maybe Santa Claws* will bring you a pillow with that very saying needlepointed on it.

And you can scratch it all to hell.

Love,
Me

* Why is my love of puns developing much faster than my overall maturity level?

At the bank today

My teller decided to regale me with stories of her five cats: Panthro, Puma, Reebok, Adidas and Lion-O.

Yes, it's true. There is a woman out there who has many, many cats and will only name them after shoes or Thundercats characters.

Tiptoe through the tulips

What does it say about me...

That I want nothing more than these toddler shoes to be made in grown-up lady sizes?

OMG. Shoes.

A sweet girl I work with totally made my day by sending me a filled out Akira smart card (each time you spend $60, you get a sticker. Five stickers get you a $30-dollar credit, so this was quite the investment). A former Chicagoan, she lives in New York and is now moving to India, so she has no use for it. Using the card, I got these cuties:
Ah, love them! And, shockingly enough, I don’t think I have any brown sandals. So these fit the rare shoe void in my life.
In other related shoe news, Love Maegan has this Christian Louboutin petal sandal diy:
Impressive, no? Does anyone want to get together a try to whip these up?

Humanizing the vacuum

So, let's see. What happened last week? Here are some pictures of questionable quality to show you:

1. Got the new table set up in the dining room on Monday. Poor, sad table with no chairs.


2. On Tuesday, I got a haircut. Here is the back:


Just to spice it up, here is the front view on another day. Sorry about the self portraiture. I get all akward when someone else takes my picture for no reason. It's also just emo enough for my Myspace.


3. On Wednesday, my pretty shoes arrived:


4. I have no recollection of Thursday.

Oh, that's right, I accidentally sent a picture of a deep v-neck t-shirt clad Jake Gyllenhaall astride horse to my boyfriend's aunt, whom I've never met. I wish I were kidding.

Also: I went to the Violet Hour and spent a bajillion dollars on delicious drinks. Sorry, no photos of that.

5. On Friday, Marc and I showed our love for 'merica by posing in front of a giant flag...and then getting yelled at for parking (for, like, one minute!) in a private lot. USA! USA!


You can tell how excited he is about being number one and putting a boot in y'alls asses (cause that's the American way....actually the American way is probably better represented by my consumerrific Thursday night activities):


6. Saturday. Bought more stuff! Oh, dining room table, you will be lonely no more. For I went all the way out to Hinsdale for these lovely fiberglass chairs.

Oh. They're to short for you? I see. No, no...I understand.

Right now, the spurned chairs live in the kitchen nook. Will they stay? Who knows! It's wild over here!

More Saturday stuff: the pool, Salvation Army, making jorts (PLEASE click on that link. It's a wonder.) for Marc (which he did wear out to the Hideout that night. What a champ.), the Map Room, where Marc and I met Renee to drink beers poured in glasses that physically resemble the two of us:

Just imagine little cutoffs on the tall, skinny one.

I also had my first taste of a Tom Collins. Gin at its best!

7. On the seventh day, the Lord rested, but I sanded and spray painted a chair frame (and my foot...and my hand):

(please, please ignore the dusty floor...)

This, incidentally, is the frame for the chair i reupholstered. Since I'm a dummy, I didn't take a before picture, but I will tell you the chair's old vinyl indoor/outdoor blue flowered fabric looked like something that old lady in Mama's Family would wear. And I like things granny, so that's saying a lot. Here it is with the bottom attached:

(again with the dust! we're MOVING, ok? well, in two months. but still)

The whole chair (the back will actually sit higher so there's a gap between the top and bottom, but I haven't screwed that in yet. I'm thinking about ripping the whole thing apart and adding piping):

More happy things: The "Come on shake your body, baby, do that Conga!" edition

1. The ever-more AMAZING flower spikes on my aloe and sanseveieria (mother-in-law’s tongue) plants:


I can’t wait for the blooms.

2. This book: All Families are Psychotic. I decided to read it (affectionately) in honor of my trip home last weekend and loved it. I recommend! Someone brilliant should make it into a movie. It would be a fun one to watch.

3. Sunday dinner at Smoke Daddy with 312 (It’s 4U). I love you, cornbread.

4. Poetic Licence shoes. I just ordered two pairs. Oh my god. Shoes. See also: Let me borrow that top.

5. Ripping a bunch of free jazz from my dad’s CD collection. Too bad my computer’s battery died before I could grab all the jams from his Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine albums.

6. A coworker giving me free cat food “just because I showed up at work on a Friday.”

7. Plans to pick up a great little teak dining table (with leaves!) that I got for a song on Craigslist.

8. Finding out why Damen Avenue used to be Robey Avenue.

9. This text I got first thing this morning (sent last night): “Overheard at Empty Bottle just now: ‘We’re kinda looking to leak a sex tape. You into that?’ Made me laugh.”

10. Not being born into the Baekeland family.

This still counts

This is so totally typical of me: writing an Earth Day post three days after the fact and making it 100% percent about buying crap. But, wait! This crap is really cool.

So last Saturday, I was walking down the street and saw this girl wearing really cute, elfin rubber shoes. I turned to Marc and before I could comment, he pretended to be me: “I want those shoes, Marc. Get me those shoes!” (He says this in a bratty southern woman accent, the kind of voice that comes out of the obese mom in “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape” or Brett Butler or something. And it’s not always shoes. Sometimes it’s, “I want to see that movie. Take me to see that movie!” The second line is sped up and kind of manic. It’s so nice to think of how sweet and pretty I must seem in his mind.)


ANYWAY. Shoes spotted. Later that day, I saw a similar pair in the back pages of ReadyMade magazine and kind of thrust-and-pointed at the pictures. I think Marc was busy explaining to someone the appeal of small-paned plaid patterns versus larger, Western-style plaids (seriously, maybe he should do an independent study and write a thesis: The Art of Tartan: How one boy’s Catholic school upbringing drove him mad for plaid), so he naturally ignored me. But it was a sure sign for me that these shoes and I were destined for something great. Of course, I promptly wandered away from the magazine and failed to write down the website.

The following Monday, not even thinking about the shoes, I took a walk at lunch and found myself crossing the threshold of Akira on State Street. There, at a front table, were about 12 different variations of the elf shoes. Naturally, I had to try each pair on.

It turns out they’re Brazilian shoes called Melissas, and they’re super comfortable and incredibly soft. Not to mention eco friendly since they’re made out of recycled plastic. Two different salespeople tried to tell me they even have some special smell going on (blueberries, I think), but I remain unconvinced. They smell like plastic to me.

I know they’re not for everyone, and some of you are probably sitting there thinking these are the ugliest shoes you’ve ever laid eyes on (Ahem, Posh Spice). But I love them and think they’re cooler than regular ol’ flip flops.

So there.

Happy Earth Day.