quarter century talk

25!!

It doesn't feel any different than 24, but it sure does sound different!

Today is my half birthday, I've been 25 for six months. Back in April I talked about going through the oh so silly yet oh so real and common quarter life crisis, and it's only been heightened since the slew of weddings we've recently been to.

Do you ever think about where you thought you'd be at your age now, when you were younger?

When I was 14 I was sure that I'd be having kids when I was 26, and now that just seems like the most ridiculous timeline I've ever heard. It's funny to think about the expectations and deadlines you set up for yourself when you were younger and had no real life experience. With every t.v. show and movie you see, every "milestone" year seems like it should be a big life changing moment.  Like when I was 8 and watching Clueless over and over again , Cher is supposed to be 16! It made 16 seem so old and mature, like everyone was completely independent. Then I turned 16 and I was still a kid, nothing really changed. 

And now at 25, an age that always sounded so adult, I still feel like a kid, I mean I definitely don't feel like a grown-up yet (for example I still call adults "grown-ups"). I'm not ready for weddings and babies and buying houses, I'm still trying to balance what will make me happy and what will pay my loans off. Some people get there quicker but I feel like for most of us, those deadlines are unrealistic. I'm at the age now where many of my friends are getting married, everyone is telling me, "oh, just you wait a couple years when all your friends are having children, that's the real kicker." We can't even afford the time and money it takes to own a dog, let alone do all that marriage/house buying/baby stuff!!

I feel like everyone goes through these stressful "crisis" periods because we are given so many expectations to live up to. And I know that a lot of them we put on ourselves but it's hard to let go of what 14 year old Aly thought was reasonable and right.

I want to do all those things, but dagnabbit, I'll do them when I'm good and ready!

renegade holiday market

Get Pumped! Cuz this weekend is the 7th Annual Renegade Craft Fair Holiday Market!! Woop!

I will be the first to admit that many "craft fair" events are just a lot of junky tchotchkes, and you may even find some things in that category at renegade, but you'll also find some awesome handmade gems!  It's the perfect place to find holiday presents and stocking treasures.  Last year I was in Portland for the weekend so I couldn't make it (not that I'm complaining, I had a wonderful time), but this year I'm definitely going, and if you're in Chicago you should too!!

It's this weekend only, December 1st and 2nd at the Pulaski Park Fieldhouse, so Go Go GO!

turkey day

I hope everybody had a fantabulous Thanksgiving!

We had a great time in sunny sunny California, we ate delicious food (The Man's Uncle Frank makes the best tri-tip and blue curacao margarita's in the world!), spent time with wonderful people, and even went bowling!!

Now we're back to the daily grind and it's already time to think about christmas trees and stocking stuffers.

So Happy five-days-ago Thanksgiving

wishful wednesdays {dining room}

It's been quite some time since I wrote a "wishful wednesday" post.  They were by far my most popular posts, and also the most time consuming.  I took a break from them because I had less time and less inspiration, but now that The Morning Man and I have moved into a bigger better apartment I've got inspiration comin' out the wazoo!

Now that we have the time and space to really make our house a home The Man and I just can't stop thinking, and wishing, and planning, and (for the first time) doing.  So wishful wednesdays are getting a little re-vamp.  At times they will still be about my fantasy future, but now they will also be about our real life plans for our real life home.  Of course we're renting so there won't be any big over-haul projects, but we plan on focusing on making each room great and perfectly us (and adaptable for when we inevitably move again).

First things up - The Dining Room!

I haven't talked about it too much so far, but The Morning Man is an incredible craftsman.  He designs and fabricates beautiful and unique furniture, and I am the lucky girl who gets to take it all home.  Back in the beginning of July he started working on our dining room table (yeah, we have a dining room!).  He had this crazy idea and with his woodworking skills and my powers of sudoku he created a one-of-a-kind and totally awesome dining table:

Here's a picture of it in the shop before the clear coat and glass.
The table top is comprised of  368 blocks, there are 6 different sizes and they are spaced out so that blocks of the same size never touch (sudoku power!).  The base of the table is really cool too. From this photo it looks like it's just painted black, but look a little closer . . .

and you'll see that it's actually burnt! It's a Japanese technique called Shou-sugi-ban.  It creates a beautiful texture.

Once The Man finished up the table we began our hunt for the perfect dining room chairs.

The table is so strange that it was really hard to find the right fit.  At first we tried out chairs at Ikea.

(The white chair with wooden legs and the ghost chair are not from Ikea, I just loved and wanted them)

Many of the chairs looked liked they'd do just fine in photos, but up close it was a whole different story. There are many things I am happy to buy at Ikea but furniture doesn't seem to be one of them.  When we went in we saw that all of the chairs in our price range were just too cheap, and any chairs that were decent looking just weren't worth the price.  We sat there contemplating buying the cheapest chairs (the all black with metal legs for 24.99) just for the time being, so we could sit somewhere in our house, but even that seemed like a waste when we flipped the chair around and saw how easily the "finish" a.k.a. black paper, had pealed off the particle board.

It was impossible to find and cheap and classy chair option in Chicago . . . until The Man typed "cheap furniture Chicago" into google.

Now why didn't I think of that?

Those three magic words lead him to a place called Interior Express Outlet.  It's a warehouse in a strange vacant area near the airport, and it's chock-full of decently priced, great looking knock offs of chairs that we had never even considered, due to their price everywhere else.  Like fantasy home chairs, your wildest dream chairs, wishful Wednesday chairs! EAMES CHAIRS!!!

That's right, those beautiful, goes with everything, you can't find them for less than $250.00 a piece chairs that we never thought could possibly exist in our own home were only $55.00 each! $55!! AHHHHH!! I'm in love, and his name is Eames Shell Chair.

And now everything is together and we feel like fancy grown-ups, with a fancy custom made dinning room table and six fancy shell chairs, all in our fancy dinning room. And we stare at it lovingly while we eat dinner off of $12 tv trays in the living room . . . where the tv is.

the conversation

Alright, I don't know how I missed this, but maybe you did too.

While falling down the rabbit hole that is the internet I happened upon an interview between Garance Doré and Amanda De Cadenet. Garance Doré is a wonderful fashion blogger, photographer, illustrator... who, on her blog, has a web-series called Pardon My French (which I love to watch).

Although she looked familiar, I had never heard of Amanda De Cadenet, but in this 10 minute video they talk about her new venture, The Conversation.

As it turns out The Conversation is a series that came out at the beginning of the year on Lifetime. I started watching the videos on Amanda De Cadenet's website and I just had to share.  The videos are a series of interviews with various women, from actresses, to authors, to senators, etc. but unlike the type of interview you're used to seeing on television these are  . . . comfortable.  It's like watching two friends chatting without any pretense or prodding, and what they discuss is both relatable and genuine. It's really refreshing. 

Here is a link to the first episode. Give it a try, I found the series quite wonderful, and you don't have to have an interest in these women's lives as celebrities (the first episode is with Jane Fonda, Gwyneth Paltrow, Sarah Silverman, and Zoe Saldana) to have an interest in what they have to say as women.

And if you like it:
Second Episode
Third Episode
Fourth Episode
Fifth Episode
Sixth Episode
Seventh Episode
Eighth Episode

happy halloween!

Happy Halloween Y'all!!

So The Man and I were pretty lame this year.  No costumes, no pumpkin carving, no maize maze,

and to all that I mutter a sad little "boo."

Since we went completely under-board with decoration and celebration I decided to double up on the nail art.

First set - Frankensteins and Pumpkin Faces

Second set (and my personal fav) - Skulls!

SPOOOKY!!

I hope you all had a scary and sugar-filled night!!

flocky flocky

Want to see my nails?! I know you do!
I recently purchased this nail kit from Sephora:

It's called ciaté and it's a velvet manicure.  I wanted to try it out for the wedding in September but it did not work at all.  It just looked like my nails were strangely dirty.  So last week I decided to give it another go and it turned out really cool:

In the kit they give you nail polish, a bottle of "crushed velvet powder" (so basically flocking) and a little brush.  The directions tell you to paint one coat let it dry and then, one nail at a time, paint another coat and sprinkle on the velvet.  That's what I tried the first time when I got the dirty mange look, so the second time instead of sprinkling it I poured a bunch out into the plastic tray they give you and smashed my wet-nail-polished-finger straight into the velvet so it was totally covered.  

The powder comes out of the bottle so slow that your nail dries to quickly for it to stick, and you need a little pressure so the powder really gets in the polish, so the smashing method works really well.

The flocked nail look was fun for a while but it starts to feel weird after a bit, like when you run your fingers through your hair, or when you eat french fries like a slob and get ketchup all over your finger tips (licking ketchup off velvet just feels unnatural).  So try it out for an event . . . but maybe take it off before you start cooking :)

maria's bride kit

Hello readers! That is, if there's anyone left still reading after a month and a half without any posts.  I am finally able to get pictures off my camera, and there are tons of things I can't wait to show you.  So here is a post I started writing a few months ago, before our friends' wedding.  Now their honeymoon has come and gone so I changed the tense, added the pictures and here you go! ...

I'm at that age, where everyone I know is suddenly getting engaged.  There are many weddings on the horizon, but there is one in particular The Man and I are were looking forward to (don't worry daddy, I'm not talking about ours!).  Ours friends Maria and Daily got married on September 9th and a few months ago her bridesmaids threw her a bachelorette party.

As for the party itself I'll just say, we had a good time, and leave it at that.  What I'm really here to tell you about is what I gave as a bachelorette gift.

 (bride kit from Oh Happy Day!)

I saw this DIY bride kit on Oh Happy Day! and thought it was a wonderful gift. She made a sweet box and included lotion, mints, bobby pins, nail polish, and other practical helpful bits and bobs. I loved the idea but wanted to make a tad more personal, so I kept the color scheme and added a few details:

I didn't have tattoo paper or a fancy color printer, so I used the old stand-by transfer method from grade school: I printed out the designs I wanted to use, scribbled all over the back of the paper with a pencil so that graphite was covering the paper, then placed my image on the box where I wanted it (drawing side up) and drew back over the lines of the image so when I lifted the paper my drawing was on the box in graphite. Easy-peasy-mac-and-cheesy!

Then I took a regular blue pen from work and filled in the lines on the box by hand. The box itself is from JoAnn's (the same one used in the Oh Happy Day! tutorial), and I just grabbed some cheap-o acrylic paint to paint it blue.

My favorite part of the kit was what I put inside.  I wanted it to be a little practical but also personal and funny, so I started thinking of various wedding traditions and superstitions, like "cold-feet" and shoving cake in each others faces.  I got together a few trinkets and printed little clues for each one on simple gift tags.
This is what I came up with:

 Once I got everything wrapped they barely fit in the box, but with a little smushing it closed right up!

This project was so much fun to do, I highly suggest it for a lovely bride-to-be in your life.  I recently found out my best friend in the whole wide world is engaged and I can't wait to think up some fun personal treats for her bride kit!

p.s. Fun Story: The clue for the condoms (though obvious) was my favorite.  When Maria and Daily got engaged, Andrew (aka The Man) and I were waiting with bated breath to hear the news.  We knew it was going to happen because Daily had called us the day before to ask if we could tell Maria that the party we invited her to was cancelled because it was getting in the way of his proposal plans.  The Man was pacing the whole day, one of his best friends was getting engaged, he couldn't handle it!  When the call finally came later that night one of the first things The Man said to Maria was "You're not allowed to have any babies for at least 2 years!"  This was of course after "congratulations" and "I'm so happy for you" but it was hilarious, the engagement was too much change for him and so he made Maria promise "no babies for 2 years." She's kept her promise so far . . . just one year to go :)!

checkin' out the neighborhood {scout and brimfield}

Ok, that wasn't very nice of me, but I didn't want to overwhelm you with so much house-goods awesomeness all at once, so I thought I'd spread it out a little.

Alright, back to what I was saying yesterday:

We left The White Attic (drooling in check) and headed one door down to Scout:

Scout has a lot of furniture and large pieces, like this cool row of lockers in the window.

These dining chairs were pretty sweet, you can't tell from this photo but the fabric was dark green vinyl (and if I remember correctly they  also had a bit of sparkle)


Our last stop for the day was Brimfield:

This place was really fun, and if you like plaid and tartan fabrics then this is the place for you.

They have kitchen items, lighting, home accessories, furniture, and taxidermy.  They also reupholster furniture, and many of the pieces are of course done up in more plaid.

Brimfield is pretty large compared to it's next door neighbors, there were many little rooms shooting off from the main area. I didn't even realize until I was looking up the website to get a link that there is a downstairs! So, next time there will be even more to check out.

I totally want this for when my office/studio is set up . . . when ever that might be.

And my favorite part of this store:

Blankets! Blankets! Blankets! The Man wouldn't even let me think about blankets right now since it's been so darn hot outside, but I'll be back . . . oh yes, I'll be back.

checkin' out the neighborhood {white attic}

We've been living in our new apartment for about six weeks now.  We're learning it creeks and squeaks, and loving every bit of it.  But I must say, my favorite part of our new place is it's spiffy location.

Our apartment is in Lincoln Square, close to Andersonville, and right across the street from a beautiful park with huge willow trees and baseball diamonds. There are so many shops and restaurants, cute corners and sweet spots to sit and relax, and slowly but surely we're checking out every nook and cranny.  So the other week we set out to Andersonville to check out some fun shops.

I wanted to go to Clark St. in Andersonville because I had heard of this place called Scout, and, as it turns out, Scout is perfectly sandwiched by two other great shops!

The first one we stopped in was The White Attic:

 The White Attic finds vintage furniture from the early 1900's and mid-century and refinishes it in fresh contemporary colors and stains.  Every piece in this store was gorgeous, and I wanted to take all of it home.

 This dresser/credenza was The Morning Man's fav.

 There were so many great pieces but my favorite part of the store had to be the lamp bar.

 They had 16 or more base styles to choose from and from there you "build" your lamp.  They have various glaze options for the base and fabric options for the shade, so you can put together your perfect lamp.  The prices range from $245-325, which is a bit much for me right now, but I'm saving up, because these are beautiful!!

After we were done drooling over everything at White Attic, we walked one door down to Scout:
  . . .
And I'll tell you about that tomorrow!