Happy moving weekend!

Happy moving weekend! Well I hope that everyone else is staying put for your own sake, but I will be changing zip codes (same city) on Sunday. My Internet access might be questionable for a few days, but here are some great parting links from across the Web.

Bring the outdoors inside.

Sweet little notes.

Is it cocktail hour yet?

A love story that is better than Romeo and Juliet.

You say tomato, I say...food fight!

Must have LBD.

A slot machine for home objects.

Some yummy looking jewelry.

I need this woman in my life, asap.

A 28-year-old making the most of living with his parents.

The sweetest save-the-date yet.

Move my house, please.

{Image from www.herohill.com}

Smookies

Tonight I'm making combining two of the most scrumptious desserts to ever exist- cookies + s'mores. Smookies? Co'mores?

{Image from marthastewart.com}

The oven is about to ding, so here is a link to the lovely Martha recipe! Just a side note, in place of some of the dry ingredients (namely the flour), I crushed up 1/2 cup of graham crackers to add to the batter to give it a graham cookie taste.

Cozy with a capital C

I feel like I'm on a role with my blog posts, so even though I did just take a little cat nap on the couch (at 10:30pm) and probably should just watch Oprah and go to bed, or perhaps pack since I'm moving in, oh, 3 days and have approximately 4 boxes packed, I'm feeling dedicated to my blog.

As I mentioned before, my new apartment is super cozy, so I have a couple goals to really enhance its coziness factor.

Always have a candle lit in the evening. My favorites are Voluspa and Skeem Design pillar candles. These candles smell amazing, burn for a long time, and come in gorgeous tins and jars.

Paint the inside of my bookshelves. It adds an extra pop and depth to any room. I'm thinking of using this exact color.

Have fresh, seasonal flowers in at least one room. For summer: hydrangeas. For autumn: mums.

{Image from apartmenttherapy.com}

{Image from countryliving.com}

Invest in some untypical wall art. Check out Janey Mac's vinyl embellishments on Etsy, they're precious.

{Image from Janey Mac Press}

Try to cook more in the hand-me-down Crockpot from my mom, which I have used approximately one time in the past year. Barring any major disasters, it just makes the kitchen smell wonderful.

Take Your Time.

One of my summer goals was to visit the Olafur Eliasson exhibition, "Take Your Time," at the Museum of Contemporary Art, and despite living only 2 blocks from the museum, I just got there this afternoon. The exhibition was gorgeous, and I would recommend taking advantage of the MCA's free Tuesdays to go see it.

The exhibition was truly a sensory experience; my photos do not do it justice. The essence of the exhibit, in my words, is objects creating their own beauty and the individual creating his or her own sensation. In the slightly more poetic terms of the artist and museum, the works are "devices for the experience of reality...light, air, water, moss are put to the service of artworks that are less objects than experiences." Every room engaged multiple senses, not only sight, but the smell of moss or rubber, the feel of a light mist, the sense of humidity, and more...

MCA Entrance

"Room for one colour"

"Moss wall"

"Moss wall" section

"Beauty"

"Your eye activity field"

Since I started law school, sadly, art has really fallen out of my life. In college I was surrounded by it- I was a studio art minor and my college boyfriend was an art major, so I was either working on a project, modeling for a project, or critiquing a project. One of my new life goals is to make more time art, and I'm hoping to start doing that with the new camera on my birthday wish list!

Back to school...back to school...

Today was my 20th first day of school, and thankfully my last first day of school ever. It's truly hard to fathom that I have been doing the same thing for 20 years of my life. 20 years seems like such a long time! I can be super indecisive, have commitment issues, and absolutely love change, so I'm a bit horrified that I have spent 20 years doing essentially one thing. However, anyone who knows me knows not to even get me started on the importance of education and educators (a recent argument with my boyfriend that teachers are far more important than doctors in the life of a child resulted in me sounding slightly over-zealous), so I think I'll let this 20 year commitment fear slide. In order to remain positive and enthusiastic about this final year of law school, I am creating a list of things I love about school (note: not all of these things actually still exist by the time one gets to law school).

1. Getting school supplies. I loved going to Target/Walmart/Walgreens to get the cutest Lisa Frank notebooks and matching neon folders (plus pencils, pens, trapper keeper, erasers, pencil holder, and other unnecessary crap).

2. Carefully planning my first day of school outfit. Today I wore a yellow Sweet Pea dress with a cropped jean jacket. 20 years ago I wore a pink and teal getup complete with stir-up pants, two pairs of colored slouchy socks with one pushed down carefully over the other, LA Lights, a slouchy shirt and a side pony tail.

3. The smell of fresh paper. I love Dolce and Gabbana Light Blue perfume because I think it smells like paper.

4. Cupcakes/cookies/candy on birthdays and holidays. I got in trouble with my kindergarten teacher because I was licking the frosting off my fingers while passing out my birthday cupcakes to the class.

5. The feeling you get right after you print out a thick, final copy of a paper you have just spent hours/days/weeks writing, staple it together, and just hold it, look at it, and feel its weight in your hands.

6. Decorating my locker with silly magnets, cool magazine cut-outs, pictures of my friends, and of course, a locker mirror.

7. Reading hour. It was always my favorite time of day when we curled up in a cozy corner of the room and were free to read any book.

8. Passing notes in class. Remember LYLAS, BFFL, WBS, 4 YOUR EYES ONLY, MUAH? And the ridiculous origami folds? And when your friend accidently found a note where you and another girl were talking about her?

9. Trying not to stare at the cute guy in Calculus II from across the lecture hall, gushing about "Calculus Boy" for about 2 weeks with your roommate, rejoicing and feeling such a sense of accomplishment when he talks to you and then, gasp, asks you on a date, and then realizing not long after that he is the most boring person ever. Repeat.

Happy weekend.

When I first started this blog I pictured myself blogging blissfully every evening about beautiful things. And then I realized I have a life, so my new goal is blog at least once or twice a week. This is my last weekend of summer- my final (!!!) year of law school starts on Monday. However, I hardly even have plans for the weekend- just attending a 2-year old's birthday party in Lincoln Park with my BFF and a slightly older kid birthday party at Bull and Bear tomorrow night, then getting my hair done all afternoon Sunday. Oh well, happy weekend!

Remember pop up video? How about pop up photograph?

Wish I was in LA to feel the burn.

Try a virtual time capsule.

Sweat pants exception.

Awkward turtle.

Hold on to summer with this pretty bedding.

Fun with paper (and my new favorite artist).

Sweet as a cupcake.

My college roommate came into town for the weekend, and, since her birthday is next week, we obviously needed to eat a lot of cake and/or cupcakes. Along with many similarities, we share an intense love of cake, and the two of us have quite a history of good cake eating in college (we once ate an abandoned cake in the kitchen on her dorm floor, but we knew the birthday boy so it's okay). Though I considered ordering treats from one of Chicago's delicious cupcakeries, I decided to try out my own recipe and made, wait for it, cookie dough cupcakes.

Ingredients:

Cupcakes-

1 box of cake mix (I used marble cake so that there would be some chocolate but not an overwhelming amount)

1 can of diet cream soda (If you haven't tried making diet soda cake before I would highly recommend it. Instead of oil and eggs, just blend one can of diet soda with the cake mix and you cut out tons of fat. And then you can eat more cupcakes.)

1 package of pre-made cookie dough (I'm not Martha Stewart, let's make things easy.)

Blend cake mix with can of soda and bake according to the box directions.

Let the cupcakes cool.

Once cool, use a sharp knife to cut the center out of each cupcake.

Stuff the cupcake with as much cookie dough as your heart desires.

Vanilla Buttercream Frosting (Sprinkles Cupcakes frosting recipe)-

1 cup of butter, softened

3 1/2 cups of confectioners sugar

1 teaspoon of milk

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

1/3 teaspoon of salt

Combine butter, sugar, and salt. Beat until well blended (should be fairly creamy).

Add the milk and vanilla and beat until smooth and creamy (3-5 minutes).

Frost liberally. (This recipe frosts about 12 cupcakes).

Decorate the top with a mini cookie dough cookie.

Enjoy lots.

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Air and water weekend.

Happy Friday! I hope that if you're in Chicago you can enjoy the air and water show this weekend, it's one of my favorites. On my (13.5 mile!) run this morning I got a sneak peak of the show, as there have been planes flying around all morning. I thought I should get this post in though before I take a nice long nap- long run, long nap!

My current read, which I would highly recommend.

Now on DVD, and currently in my DVD player.

Need some inspiration? Find it in a box.

An umbrella with manners.

Magic carpet ride.

There's an elephant in my yard...

A monthly wine club and, even better, a monthly art club.

Have your [rainbow] cake and eat it too.

a new home.

Wow have I been absent from the internet for a long time! My days have been super packed and flown by lately. In the past week or so I have finished up my summer job (sad), attended a wedding (pretty), helped host and tried to golf at a golf outing in memory of a good friend (a blast), vacationed in Michigan (relaxing), and found a new apartment (exciting!). There also have been quite a few days spent lounging at my pool too.

I have a feeling that this blog will soon turn into quite the design site, as I am ecstatic to decorate my new cozy apartment. I will be moving from the 45th floor of a high rise right off Michigan Avenue to a sweet Victorian walk-up in Lincoln Park. It will be a huge, much needed change of pace! My days have been spent perusing casasugar.com, my current addiction.

clothing as decor. There is a fine line between making a room look like a closet and having a gorgeous dress on display, and this is definitely the latter. My boyfriend has (sort of) given me permission to use our tiny second bedroom as my dressing area, so I think I will have to hang up some of my favorites.

various objects in the fireplace. My new place has the most adorable gray brick fireplace! A collection of candles is certainly quaint when lit on a winter night, but I love the idea of putting flowers or shells or these glass logs in the space during the summer.

area rugs. This might require more salary than I actually have, unfortunately.

something pink. But only when paired with masculine colors and objects like this design. I currently have some white porcelain fruit sculptures on a round pink placemat on my light oak kitchen table.

a sweet lamp. Well this is a bit premature, but how precious would this lamp be in a little baby girl's bedroom?