Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Chicago-bound

On Friday I am leaving for Chicago and will finally get the chance to explore a city that has been featured in 4 books on my recommended reading list.  I've been wanting to go for a few years now and am really looking forward to seeing the sites, even if I'm stuck in a conference for a few days.









Here is what I have planned:

Architecture River Cruise:















Frank Lloyd Wright's Studio and Home:









Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House:








Weird Chicago's Devil in the White City Tour:


Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Fashion Conundrum!

UPDATE 2:  M. and I are going to Gap tonight to see if we can find the below skirt to match what I have in mind.  Here is what I am thinking . . .





Bare legs or sheer pantyhose.

We're two days from Chicago and I am not giving up!

What do you think?

P.S.  I saw the long beaded chain necklace pictured way below in Target last night.  It is much cuter in person!  And locked up behind a glass case, with no one in sight to help.  Boo!

UPDATE 1: There appears to be no skirt that exists that meets what I have in mind.  Argh!

How do you dress up a cotton long-sleeved polo shirt with your company's logo on it without just blending into the crowd?  The default is obviously just a pair of slacks but that is just so boring to me!  I am having a fashion conundrum!
















The day I have to wear this shirt is actually the only day I have not yet packed for! I am running out to Target tonight to look for a skirt and I am thinking that I'll go with a tights, high waisted skirt, tucked in polo shirt, flats and long necklace look.  Something along the lines of this (based on what I find at Target):




















































1.  Fashion in Motion skirt (modcloth.com); 2.  Mossimo Odell Bronze Flats (Target.com); 3.  Brown tights (hue.com);  4.  Long Beaded Chain Necklace (Target.com)

Honestly, the Fashion in Motion skirts looks very short on the website and not very work appropriate (otherwise I would just buy it and overnight it), but it's a good style and pattern to keep in mind when I am out shopping.

What do you think about what I am thinking about?  What would you do?

Monday, September 28, 2009

A Weekend in Retrospect . . .

Ladies Night Out (ended up at the Hon Bar)-
Sorry!  No Pictures!  We did have a great time though.  It ended up being karaoke night at the bar, and although karaoke isn't necessarily our thing, we got up and sang.  It started with a dare to sing "Say My Name" by Destiny's Child and ended up "Under Pressure by Queen.


Baltimore Book Festival -
It ended up being an overcast and rainy day, but we made it there before the rain did.  M. ended up buying an old copy of Nicholas Nickelby and we found a cookbook that we're going to buy online.  I was particularly taken with the Edgar Allen Poe pumpkin picture below.
We ended up getting lunch at the Marie Louise Bistro on Charles Street.  The service was slow but the food was tasty and it was nice to be forced to sit down and relax and just chat.



























Brunch at Little Havana -
We stayed at Little Havana from 11:30 to 2:30.  Baltimore Ravens won the game and it was a great time.

See the little black dot in the sky?  It's a blimp!

Sunday, September 27, 2009

I want Scrabble!

First of all, how awesome is this living room?















.oh my deer .

More exciting to me in the print in the background.  Look to the right of the window.  A print of a Scrabble tile!  M. and I love Scrabble!  How awesome is that?  I wish I could find where to get one.  It would go so nicely in our apartment.

Friday, September 25, 2009

Skip to My Loo!

So, it seems as though pictures taken in the bathroom do not turn out very nicely.  I blame the lack of natural light and my being too lazy to edit and enhance them.

But, here is my BRIGHT ORANGE bathroom.  This is our "guest" bathroom, although we will maybe only have guests a few times a year.  It's also my make-up room.





















I just wish you could get a sense of the color.  The picture doesn't do it justice at all!

Please pardon our wrinkled towels and lack of bath mats (stupid Kmart).



This is the picture you can see hanging on the wall next to the mirror.  I bought it in Frederick, Maryland at a very cool store called The Muse.

Now my favorite part!  Check out what is hanging above the toilet.




















And when you get closer, what do you see?



I have been saving up cool gift cards over the years.  I cut them down and plugged them into the frames.  It actually worked out nicely that we had 2 cards that were drinking/living the good life cards and 2 cards with chubby frogs in them.  In the smaller frames, I put in matching cards with polka dots on them.

Here's a close-up of one of my favorite frogs!  Hello lady!





















The bathroom is easily the girly room in the apartment.  I am so happy to have lots of pink and orange and green in it, it just brightens up my morning (while casting an orange glow).

My only thought is that maybe I should put something above the wrinkled white towels (scroll up and you'll see what I am talking about) or frame the "Love Who You Are" print.  That wall just looks a touch empty.  What do you think?

And even though it's less bright and fun, here is my and M's bathroom.  I apologize for the bad quality of pictures.



Remember the pin-ups?  They look so cute on the wall!






Now I am itching to paint this bathroom too - a bright yellow or bright blue.  Too bad painting the bathroom is such a pain. 

What do you think?  Any other suggestions on how I could spice it up?

Big, Chunky and Lovely

Huge and lovely agate necklaces by Nina Nguyen on Ideeli today.  I want one (I want a lot).  I'm partial to the blue one.




I think I am drawn to these agate necklaces and most things with natural stones because when I was a child I had a little rock collection.  I think it started with a gift that my dad got for free from ordering a back massager from some kind of natural healing catalog.  I got a little velvet bag full of polished gemstones and their healing qualities.  Suddenly I found myself going into the science store at the mall to get myself new gemstones to put into my little green velvet-lined jewelry box.  I even spent a $35 gift certificate on some kind of green quartz egg.

Tigers eye and jasper were my favorites.

Also Nicole Miller is on sale.  She has some really lovely dresses.

How stunning is this?















Go here to join, if you're not a member already: www.ideeli.com/invite/katemaclikespink

Thursday, September 24, 2009

The Emperor's New Clothes

I wanted to buy myself a new outfit for tomorrow night.  I never got anything, so now I am going shopping in my own closet.  Yawn!  It's moments like these where a uniform of jeans, tee shirts and tennis shoes does not come in handy.

If I had the time and if I was going somewhere more fancy smanchy, I would get this dress from Modcloth:







I feel like I kind of need this dress.  I wish my and M's anniversary wasn't in January, otherwise I would buy it for that.

I love it, I want it, I don't need it . . . sigh!

Hang 'em!

M. works from home 2 - 3 days of the week.  I hate it because that means that when I wake up in the morning, he's still sleeping and I know he'll continue sleeping for at least an hour longer (sometimes, like this morning, I am a little loud just so he can be forced to wake up a bit).  I love it because he's able to get done around the house chores done for us.  Plastic and paper to the dump for recycling, M's got it!  Taking the trash out, M's got it!  Laundry needs to be done, M's got it!

Today he is hanging lots and lots of pictures.

Our inventory includes:
2 pin-up posters for master bathroom
1 large circular collage frame (see below) and another print for the BRIGHT ORANGE hall bathroom - Kmart sent us the wrong bathmats by the way.  Bastards!
4 frames for Charles Dickens graphics (from Bleak House)
















Once we get all that up, we'll have to hang a big map of the NY subway system that I am getting custom framed.  Custom framing is a racket by the way, $130 for the print to get framed just because it's a half an inch too awkward for regular frames.  We need to get up a big map of London - the plan is for me to cut it up in pieces, frame each piece and hang it back up in order.  Then 2 posters that are currently getting wrinkled in the back of my car.

Last night M. was talking about replacing the Lord of the Rings poster in his nerd den with a vintage movie poster.  He's in a big horror movie kick right now, he's purchased himself about 6 cheap horror DVDs, and I hope he's not going to hang up something scary.  This girl gets nightmares very easily!

Pictures of the Cantaloupe Slice bathroom, minus bath mats, tomorrow. 

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

A Hot Bath

So, we're finishing up painting our hall bathroom (Cantaloupe Slice, remember) and I am getting picture frames so we can hang up the artwork for all our male guests to look at while they relieve themselves.  In our excitement about bath mats and orange paint, I never said anything about my and M.'s bathroom.

Since we're the only people who see it and since we don't use it a ton (we favor the hall bathroom), we haven't focused a ton of energy on decorating it.  Or at least, we didn't think we are.  But, what we have done has come together to look very cute!

Our artwork (from allposter.com):





































I can't find a picture of our exact bathmat (which we got a Target), but it's kind of like these towels, but more blue and cut in half - there's 4 rows and 5 columns of dots.















And a navy blue towel set:















I am going to eventually get around to painting that bathroom too - with the white in the background of the bath mat, white floors and white cabinets, it's just too white!  I think yellow would be a nice color compliment.  What do you think?

I really like how this is turning out because it has a lot of the vintage kitsch that I like, with the pin-ups and dots.  But, it also is still masculine because of the navy blue and sexy ladies!

I'll show more pictures when we get it all finished!  I am just a promiser of lots of pictures, aren't I?

Monday, September 21, 2009

My Own Personal Book Club


I fail at book clubs.  I think because I just don't care for discussing books indepth with more than 1 other person.  M. (No longer to be called M. Shabby, M. is shorter for this slightly lazy girl) and I talk about books a lot, probably because our love for reading was a one of our first conversations ever had between us.  Actually, the conversation was more about his hatred of J.K. Rowling and my arguing that Harry Potter is fun and a decent story.  We have had similiar arguments since then, which has been about 2 and a half years later.
My friends, KW and D, and I have a more informal style of discussing books.  I recommend a list of books to them (or they recommend books to me) and whenever we're done we have a little email chat about it.  I've actually been working on a book recommendation gift for the two of them since they've been too bogged down with studying to do any good reading - D for the CPA and KW for her bachelor's degree.

Right now, I am reading Julia Child's My Life in France (the one without the movie cover, thank you very much).  I wanted to read it a few years after reading Julie and Julia but never got around to it.  The movie came out and I bought into the Julia Child hysteria.

M. gave me a $50 gift card to Barnes and Noble for my birthday and I am currently eyeing up:
















I have a passionate love for Time Traveler's Wife.  Like, so passionate that it hurts me to hear that other people don't like it.  It's such a beautiful story and really might be one of my top 5 of favorite books.  Usually if a first time writer has a huge success, I always find that their follow-up is disappointing.  Probably because I develop insanely high expectations for them to continue to write the way that they do.

I actually stay away from reading more than one book by an author, although I have broken that stance for John Steinbeck, Isabel Allende and Gabriel Garcia Marquez (I love spanish writers).

But, Her Fearful Symmetry sounds really interesting and I am going to give Audrey Niffeneger another try.  We'll see how it goes.


















M. is ashamed of the fact that I enjoy a chick-lit book from time to time.  I don't make it my regular reading, but sometimes after reading a really difficult book, a little fluff is nice to read.  Sophie Kinsella has become the only chick-lit writer that I enjoy reading and I think Twenties Girl sounds really fun.  This might be good flying to Chicago reading, although it needs to come out in soft cover before I'll buy it.

















M. and I also bonded over Wicked.  In fact, due to our love for the book, on our first real date - which involved M. driving to New York to spend the full weekend with me, although we had never spent time alone together and had never been in each other's presence for more than a few hours - we went to see Wicked on Broadway.  We've both been pretty into Gregory Maguire's Oz series (i reread Wicked and will now reread Son of a Witch before continuing with the series), and M. bought me A Lion Among Men for my birthday.  I didn't want it until it came out in soft cover and now it has!

















I tend to enjoy books that take place during the California Gold Rush or periods of American history around the Gold Rush.  Daughter of Fortune mixes the fantastical style of writing that I have seen in a lot of Spanish authors and American history.  It also introduced me to Isabel Allende, who is one of my favorite contemporary authors.  I am planning on rereading this once I get through my current stack!

What books are you reading now?

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Where the "Magic" Happens

Sorry for the cheesy title.  Do you ever remember watching "Cribs" on MTV and whenever the celebrity took the videographer into the bedroom, they would say this was where the "magic" happens.  It was always so cheesy and cliche and I swear every celebrity would say it.  I guess now I am in that category!

We're still waiting on getting curtains and a dresser in the bedroom, but I wanted to give a little peek into the heart of our bedroom, the bed.

I really really love how the room has turned out so far.  It has really met my expectations when I started purchasing items for the room - it's warm and earthy, fairly gender neutral and is really a mix of my and M. Shabby's tastes.

When I started getting ideas for the room, I started with the lamps.  Why?  Because I already had them.  The sage green color of the lampshade and the silver base were great for making the room warm and masculine.  My favorite thing about them is the gemstones around the circumference of the lampshade.  The gemstones give you a little extra color to pull from when introducing items to the room.


















My first acquiesition for the room were the end tables.  They were $25 on Craigslist, vintage and terribly chipped with red paint.  I love them so much that I actually sat and pet them as we drove home from the original owner's house.  They might be my favorite purchase in all of the house.  M. Shabby and I sanded them down and spray painted them white.  Without a doubt, I knew that they would be a great addition to the bedroom.


















I stumbled across the artwork for the bedroom on a random blog and fell in love with them!  The prints are by Amy Ruppel and she was such a pleasure to purchase from.  We purchased her Maryland, New York and New Jersey state bird prints.  These prints are pretty significant to us because M. Shabby is originally from NJ, I am originally from MD, when we first met was in MD, we started dating when I lived in NY and developed our relationship in the big city and now we are living together in MD.
And finally the bedspread . . . I wanted to go chocolate brown because of the brown in the bird prints.  We searched and searched and searched, but couldn't find anything without a print (M. Shabby's request) and wasn't too plain.  Finally, one day, M. Shabby mentioned that he really prefers large graphics over patterns, a comment that jump started a search for a brown comforter with a large graphic on it.  I ended up stumbling upon Dwell Studio.  Their comforters were too expensive for me, until I learned that they sold home items at Target.  Hello Target!  I found a tan comforter with a large white graphic online for about $70.00 and then I found the same comforter on Ebay for $50.00.  And we had our comforter . . . actually, a duvet, which my mother sewed M. Shabby's old comforter in. 


















Once we got the comforter on the bed and the room painted (Castle Path from Behr), we knew that our vision had truly come together and our room was a perfect mix of our styles and tastes.  Like I said before, I really really really love it.


















The room is warm and earthy and an altogether place to lay and feel at home.  We're still not finished though.  We still need to get a dresser for me. Blech!
We are saving up our money to buy this from Ikea:
So my side of the room can stop looking like this:














I'll share more pictures once we get to that point. 

What do you think about the room?  Is there anything you would add or do differently?