up on the rooftop

It's finally above 50 degrees in Chicago! Which—besides breaking out the skirts, sunglasses, and summer shandies—means picnics of epic proportions.  Last night, we had a brief one on our rooftop deck. Cut short by the incoming rain, we enjoyed paninis, Coronas, and root beer floats.

Maybe we'll get a grill and some rope lights this summer to have a proper 500 Days of Summer rooftop bash. 

And maybe Joseph Gordon-Levitt will show up.

cubs vs. cards

Earlier this week, I went to the Cardinals vs. Cubs baseball game.  And I found myself in a strange dilemma.  We all know I am not a very sporty person, but my family does love baseball.  (Hate on its' excruciatingly slow pace all you want, there is no stopping the "buy me some peanuts and crackerjacks" type of carefree attitude!)  I was born in St. Louis and know baseball well enough to realized the rivalry I was witnessing.  

So, who to root for?  Which team did I belong with?  It's typically a very obvious answer in accordance to where I am or who I'm with, but I had some sort of affiliation to both these teams.  It was not a strange sensation in not knowing who I wanted to cheer for more—I've been more than indifferent when it comes to sports situations before.  It was strange because I had a choice.  I was born in St. Louis.  I can take as much of that with me throughout my life.  Chicago is where I live now, but I tend to get very proud of the places I'm not in whenever I'm elsewhere, so something kept pulling me towards St. Louis.

I ended up wearing a green jacket and a purple scarf to the game—colors totally ambiguous to any fan associations.  

Forever indecisive,

--molly

I'm beginning my list of summer shopping must-haves! The maxi skirt (if I can find one long enough) will definitely be included.

I'm campaigning for a copy of this Denver print (by January Jones on Etsy) to go up somewhere in the apartment.

A list of the top ten DIY blogs—how I've been procrastinating this week.

january

I have been doing my best to take pictures of the things I have seen, places I have been, and food I've eaten rather than all the people I do it with.  But it's difficult to take your camera with you somewhere you're going with others and not take any photos of actual people.  However, I do not want to turn this into my Facebook so I've decided I'll share of monthly compilation of the goons I hang out with.

This is also a good opportunity to share my newest form of procrastination—Pixlr.  I swear it is the easiest and best way to make your photos look heavily hip without the Instagram help on a smart phone.  All you do is upload any picture and sort through different effects, borders, overlays, etc.

Go check Pixlr out if you, too wish to live your life through the rose-colored lens that is a nostalgic looking photograph. And it makes you and your friends' lives look infinitely cooler.

Optimist

Optimist from Brian Thomson on Vimeo.

This Tuesday has been little weird. Maybe it's because I spent the first half of my day in class imagining life if Darren Criss and I were in love...and the latter part at Starbucks pretending to study while trying to connect to the irritably sketchy wifi. It might also be that I'm missing my Rocky Mountain snow...

Whatever the reason my productivity for the day has presented itself in the form of this video and consequently adding something to my Bucket List.  This is Sri Sri Radha Temple's Festival of Colors in Spanish Fork, Utah and it's a celebration I more or less want to live in. I must take part before I die. The cello is probably the perfect instrument in any setting but the cello set to slow-mo footage of color explosions is epic—music by Zoë Keating.

I will also be accomplishing another 2012 New Year's resolution (in addition to blogging semi-consistently) by running the Color Run this June!

Training has begun....yes I am training for a three mile run.  But that color stuff looks like you could easily choke! Getting too winded could be dangerous and I must be prepared.

the golden age

Like Gil in Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris", I believe the Golden Age was none other than the 1920s:

"Imagine this town in the 20s. Paris in the 20s, in the rain. The artists and writers!"

I feel as if there are a lot of girls recently that claim they like the 20s fashion, actresses, etc. but I would like to take a perhaps overly possessive and intensely hipster statement and say that I own the 20s.  In my freshman year of high school, I purchased a gray cloche (see type of hat above) and spent years trying to find an excuse to wear it.  With my large curls and love for all things antique I thought it was the perfect fashion accessory for me—until there were mass productions of them being made at Wal-Mart.

I have since embraced the surge of popularity in swing dancing, big band music, and Marylin Monroe posters in college dorm rooms because I do not own the 20s any more than I know who will be playing in the 2012 Super Bowl.  And the type of class, beauty, art, and fashion that resulted from that era deserves to be celebrated on both large and small scales.

So DePaul's 'Old Hollywood' themed homecoming last weekend was the perfect excuse to break out my pearl headband, ruffled dress, and—yes—the cloche.

The last photograph is one featured in Once Wed as one of the best 20s-inspired weddings I've seen.  For more of this beautiful bride's photographs by Josh Goleman, click here.

the b-pig

The Bourgeois Pig Cafe of Lincoln Park, Chicago is by far one of my favorite places within this zip code.  Pronounced "boor-ZWAH" (kind of), this french cafe is filled with antiques and other nostalgic items.  From the chairs you sit on, the rugs lining the staircase, the tuba on the mantle, and the old tins of candy, there is something unique in every corner.

To go with their rustic feel, each item on the menu is named after some sort of famous piece of literature—may I recommend The Great Gatsby. Hello avocado.

On a particularly memorable trip to what my friends and I have now termed the "B-Pig", there was a banjo player who sat behind us playing some seemingly flawless set tunes for almost an hour.  Then he started to chat with us about everything under the sun—from growing local produce to how he got his shirt from the dumpster.

It's not often you find a place where you can sit and eat your cappuccino chip ice cream for that long and feel at home.

seeing orange

Our first assignment for my photo class was to go out and take five pictures of different subjects but all the same color.  I expected to find gray, black, or brown and take pictures of the various cement buildings and trash around me.  Surprisingly, orange kept turning up.  And nothing rhymes with orange.

a blog without an iphone

So here is my first blog confession...I don't really have any cool pictures to share...I have seen some really neat blogs in which people upload stuff they're doing, stuff they like, people they're with, etc all via the help of a "smart phone" with special filters to hipster-fy their images and such. It's quick and simple because they can post instantly. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining--I eat that up. But my phone is anything but smart. (I call and text with the LG Cosmos seen below).

My camera (one of your average Kodak Easyshare snap n shoots) is malfunctioning and as for my phone...well I'm too cheap to even buy the ten dollar memory card so it can save pixel-y pictures to it's one-step-above-a-flip-phone intelligence.

I'm hoping to invest in a nice (maybe SLR?...probably not) camera in the near future.  And then maybe I'll be able to rank among those bloggers that I admire with their sepia tinged photos and polaroid frames. But until my bank account grows to possess that capability, this will continue to be a blog without an iphone.

So to my friends who are still t9-ing it like me --enjoy :)