"Life Changing" Products

I wanted to give you a break from skincare products and list some of the best things I've ever spent my money on, in any category. These are things I constantly talk up to everyone and would be the company spokesperson if they wanted to pay me / had any idea I exist.

1. Uniqlo leggings-pants. These are basically jeggings, but they are just thick enough and non-shiny, and they have real back pockets and fake front pockets and fly. In my opinion, they pass as pants. I wear these to work, on vacation, and I have basically forgotten to wear real jeans ever. I got my coworker hooked on them too. They are the ultimate bottom for a long plane ride in the history of travel outfits, ever. I have them in the dark green, shown above, a dark blue, and lavender (I wear these the least, they might have been a mistake but at least I got to try out the colored skinnies trend for cheap?). Next I want them in a dark wine color and my wardrobe will be complete. In the winter, I wear them over fleece leggings, and their tightness balances out big sweaters and coats. They are amazing. Being comfortable is the best.

2. Uniqlo Heattech anything, but particularly long-sleeve scoopneck shirts. I am not exaggerating when I say these are the reason I can still spend winters in Chicago and haven't moved yet. They are very thin and tight and look sexy, but they magically keep you warmer in a way a cotton long-sleeve shirt doesn't even come close. The scoopneck is low enough that your vneck sweaters don't look dorky. Looking dorky in v-neck sweaters was an issue for me pre-Uniqlo. I basically wear one of these every day all winter long. I also have socks and a tank top, and I am always on the lookout for more. They don't feel *warm* like fresh-out-the-dryer clothes, but when those get invented trust me I will be first in line to drop all the $$$. However they wick sweat and keep you insulated.

3. Expensive shoes. This encompasses everything from buying a second pair of waterproof winter boots (similar) when the first ones weren't really cutting it, to fancy Tevas, to Croc flats. Having comfortable, walkable footwear that keeps your feet dry and at an optimal temperature cannot be overhyped. I used to think that Target and Payless shoes would work fine and I suffered through years of unhappy feet. Now I have a job, so never. again.

5. Dear Kates underwear. This is about to get personal about periods, so men, feel free to look away now. I can't remember where I heard about these but I am now practically evangelical about them. They have a really amazing absorbent-yet-dry fabric layer that replaces the need for pantyliners and catches any leaks when you're on your period (or any other time). Never wash your sheets or pants again, especially never in the middle of the night while camping, not that that has happened to me. They are machine washable and do not stain, magically. They are also quite cute, they have lacy and sporty and plain versions. They also have yoga pants which are mostly good just because of the revolutionary fabric (it is revolutionary!), and they have made a new version hopefully working out some of the not-ideal fit issues (too-low rise in back). The company has great customer service. As it's a fairly new product they had some kinks to work out, namely, not the best construction on seams, and when I complained, they sent me another, for free. They did it a second time when I realized I'd ordered the wrong size. They really promote heavily on Instagram and blogs so if you watch out you can almost always get a discount of some kind. I WISH they would pay me to say this, but they aren't. Also, made in USA, company owned and started by a woman chemical engineer, and body-positive advertising and marketing.

EDIT : I had a positive review for the Seven Year Pen, however mine just ran out, easily shy of 5 years in, and after some further research I found out these are just priced-up Swiss promotional pens, like the kind they give out for free with a pharmaceutical drug name on them. They are still pretty nice pens, but no longer worth of the "life changing" title.

How I wake up early and go to the gym

Somehow, although I don't even recognize myself, I have become the kind of person who goes to an hour-long barre class before work almost every day. Before that, I wasn't a total sloth, but I didn't really ever work out for the sake of working out, except for a 6 month-1 year stint of Core Power Yoga a couple years back which hurt my knees. When I started this class in the spring, they have you fill out a little intro with how often you exercise and at that point all I was doing was the odd weekend hike, bike ride, or xc ski, and in the warmer months biking around the city a couple times a week. I have been going pretty religiously for about 9 months now. For awhile now I've been going only to the 7 am classes on weekdays. Not going to lie, it's rough getting up, especially after daylight savings as it gets darker and colder every morning. Here's how I am doing it:

1. Find a workout that is tough enough that you can brag about it a little, but not so tough that you won't go. This is the secret, I think. If it's spin classes or P90x or something called Sweat, I'm scared and disgusted and won't go, but I also want to feel like I pushed myself and got more fit. Bonus points for being able to see myself look more fit, and have other people see it too. If I don't have some trouble walking down the stairs afterwards, it's like, what was the point. Also, find a place with some kind of rewards program since getting fit is nice and everything but saving money is much more motivating. My friend said she used to go to a lunch-hour class where the instructor was particularly attractive as an added motivation.

2. Prepare everything the night before. I have the world's longest before-bed routine. I pick out my clothes and earrings and put them in my gigantic purse, along with any products I'll need the next morning to get ready. I grind my coffee beans and set my timer coffee maker with milk already in the cup and put it by my bed so I can grab it right after waking up. I prep whatever breakfast and lunch (leftovers) I'm lucky enough to be taking with me the next day. I have workout clothes already hanging up to put on. I hang them over a floor heat vent, so if I'm lucky they are warm when I put them on. I do my skincare routine at night and I don't even splash water on my face in the morning. This way, in the morning, I lie in bed, drinking coffee, looking at my phone, and cuddling my cat and husband for 30 minutes, then I throw on my workout clothes, brush teeth, put in contacts, and leave in 10 minutes.

3. Soften the blow of getting up in the cold and dark. I recently put a star-shaped lantern in the living room and put it on a light timer so as soon as I open the bedroom door to let the cat in, I can see it's nice soft glow. Hanging star lanterns were popular in Iceland in January when we visited, and I think they are big in Scandinavian winter/Christmas decor because they really help with the long dark winters. I also surround the bed with soft plush things like a faux sheepskin rug and my slippers so exiting the warm bed is slightly less painful. The next step is to get a gradual light alarm clock!

4. Minimal morning routine. After my class, I always shower. Quite frankly I am confused and disgusted by the girls who don't, which is 90% of them. Who are you, non-sweating people? Anyway I really only have 15 minutes from end of class to when I should head out to the train. So I don't wash my hair, I just leave it up, sometimes I wash my hairline/scalp around the bun which, you know, don't knock it until you try it. I've been using DIY deodorant; it's been an adventure. I used to use this spray moisturizer, or the regular lotion version which is provided by the locker room, but usually this step takes too long. If I'm in a hurry I do makeup on the train, but usually I do it there. I mix some SPF lotion with BB cream, or just do the SPF lotion if my skin is even. Sometimes I use some concealer, and/or mascara. Boom, done, out. The endorphin boost from the workout helps me to feel like I look great even if my hair is a mess or I didn't put on as much makeup as carefully as I would for a special event or night out.

5. Second cup of coffee. Eat breakfast once at work. Congratulate self.

*terrible phone picture is from my office window around 4:45 pm, to illustrate early sunsets and late sunrises.

On Cleanliness

I've come to realize that I have a "thing" about cleanliness. So I live in this new, cheap, air-conditioned apartment, which is all well and good except for my roommates, who are lovely and friendly in every other respect, are lacking in home hygiene habits such as regularly removing the trash and cleaning the bathroom. I have no idea how in the past I lived with unacceptable situations such as cat litter (sure, defecate in the dining room or next to my bathroom, little animal! spread your little pee-absorbing pellets all over the place where I walk with my bare feet!). I cannot stand it now though. I do not produce tiny hairs in the bathroom, I hang my towels rather than leaving them wetly on the floor, I do not spill sudsy water all over the floor, I wipe away my general bathroom dirty presence.

In addition, I prided myself on the character trait of assertiveness, but that seems to have almost wholly deserted me in the face of these daily assaults to my preferred state of cleanliness. I think I feel that since I moved in after the roommates, I have no right to ask them to change their preferred method of living in filth. But I am paying rent, and I suppose I do. It's become a silent battle inside my head: do I ask roommate 2 to take out the trash which is almost all his anyway and is no longer nicely inside its bag because he stuffed it too full of beer cans and frozen pizza boxes (the manufacturers should start putting those in bags if they insist on continuing to produce them) and so therefore will be particularly nasty to dispose of; or do I just do it myself again? I have gone to bed resolving to choose the first option in the morning, but I still feel anxious. And I cleaned the bathroom before taking a shower (I prefer to clean my own body in a clean space) as a way to ease this anxiety.

Which leads me to my second point, which is that I consider my relationship to cleanliness neurotic because of its connection to anxiety, as expecting clean shared spaces is really quite normal. Exhibit A: 3 am, July 31, like 3 years ago, my roommate S and I are cleaning out our old apartment and moving into a new one a few blocks away. This apartment had been continually leased to about 6 years of students, we estimate, without the barely-legal landlords ever cleaning it or really, looking at it at all. We are the end of this line of roommates and must leave it empty and clean. Despite our landlord's general tendency to not give a shit, we also know that they can be somewhat arbitrary and vindictive. A few years ago, for example, we got eviction notices because they had lost our leases. So I am annoyed at the injustice of continually moving into dirty apartments that I am required to leave clean, for a faceless corporation that I hated. But since I also feared them, rather than leave the apartment just marginally clean enough to not get in trouble, I went totally insane. S refers to this as the "oven cleaner incident" wherein against his advice, I pulled the stove away from the wall and applied oven cleaner to the side to get off years of accumulated sticky gunk, and he had to make me go sit outside when I became light-headed from the harsh fumes. I was also cleaning the walls with Windex, pleased at how much dirt was coming off. At our final apartment move-out show-down, I compromised by leaving a dirty corner of the top of the fridge and leaving random cleaning supplies and related crap in the apartment for the new tenants who we knew were a bunch of not-giving-a-shit college students. This cleaning insanity is not only related to my fear/hate of my landlords, but is also a self-reinforcing cycle. Both moving and huge and somewhat unjust cleaning tasks cause me anxiety, and cleaning soothes anxiety, and I enjoy seeing things that I never noticed before were dirty become clean, and very quickly things get all out of proportion.

This picture is only somewhat related. It is my very dirty feet from the crap sandals I wore this summer, which were approximately $5 at CVS and left little cheap-metal dark spots on my feet and also caused me quite a bit of pain. My personal hygiene habits are not nearly as neurotic as my apartment-cleaning tendencies, but I do require clean feet & face to go to sleep under normal circumstances. This was one of the habits I developed in the summer I spent on a ranch in Wyoming working as a maid/kitchen wench (the term is "cabin girl"). The other habits are making my bed and whiskey. In one of S's rare dispersions of free psychoanalysis, he pointed out that an anxiety about personal hygiene that does not meet the standards of others (my mother, most prominently) may relate to episodes such as the oven cleaner incident. He might be right.

On the Hunt Again

 I'm on the apartment hunt again! This time, I'm finally moving out of the neighborhood where I've lived for almost 7 years (!!!) I love my neighborhood but I'm ready to go. I've been looking at places on the FAR FAR other side of the city, which is a huge pain, but it's a great neighborhood and I think it's time for a change. Unfortunately, as always, apartment hunts are a huge pain, especially with roommates with differing schedules and preferences. Tension always ensues. As I remember from Egypt, it's pretty all-consuming when you're doing it by yourself, too. But on the bright side, you get a glimpse at the kinds of places that people live in all around a vast city.

 Notice how this toilet is at an angle to the wall? THIS MADE NO SENSE. Also, talk about all-white.

 World's tiniest kitchen. I LOVE IT but don't think I could find a roommate who would. But it was a great location. I'd live there, but I have low standards, apparently.

 Oh god, this place was beautiful. Old building, vintage features, lots of sun... but it's also practically in the suburbs it's so far from the center of the city. I am not a New Yorker, therefore, I do not have to live in the Arctic Circle to get reasonable rent. But oh, how I long for this apartment.

 LOOK AT IT'S CUTE SUNROOM! (look at my faithful apartment search - helping friend! the best kind of friend!)

 The kitchen is half-janky, half adorable vintage. It's got no cabinets, but a huge pantry with a window, random shelving, an ancient metal sink, a new stove (actually not yet installed...?), old linoleum but adorable back porch. I don't quite know what to make of it.

It's in a really cute building! In a really random far-away neighborhood! I don't know what to do!!!

Ok, here's another place. It's so hard to tell if a place is nice when random people's stuff is all over the place. Is this a reasonable kitchen? I do not know. BUT the doorway to the outside was taped across the bottom and super old-looking, making me think: drafty, icky, bad. I have a high tolerance for old and crappy apartments, but... life is short.

What's hilarious to me is that this was obviously a Muslim family, but what tipped me off wasn't the Arabic wall-hangings but the sectional sofas. What is it about putting seating all around every wall? The one time I went to an actual Egyptian's apartment, they had this going on too, and it worked because they had like 20 relatives over chilling out in the room. Behind the somewhat excessive seating, you may be able to see from my crappy pictures that there is a lot of windows going on here-- on THREE sides of the room. Awesome. I would lose the curtains.

Again, cute building. Also, it was on like the only hill in the city, which was kinda cool.

I enjoyed Moving Week at Natalie Dee's comic. Timely, a bit crude, funny.

I'm moving all my stuff into my new room now that I have a wardrobe to use for storage. I think I've got more stuff in the bathroom than in the bedroom itself. I'm not going to lie to you, I'm pretty proud of myself for fitting it all in there. Ikea's got nothing on me: I'm cheap, Scandinavian, and good at storage.

No Closet Problem = Solved!

After a long Craigslist search filled with many failures and missed-boats, I finally secured a solution to my no-closet woes. I bought the above Ikea wardrobe from a nice family in a not-too-far-but-still-far suburb. This is the picture they provided on Craigslist. It does it justice, somehow, as it is kindof a piece of crap BUT it is nevertheless functional.

More importantly, it fits in my bathroom! I have a giant bathroom, and there's this huge space between the toilet and the wall where this dresser fits perfectly. It's like Ikea somehow knew the dimensions of my crazy-sized bathroom. I must admit I had my doubts, as I measured the wardrobe in the Craigslist-lady's house and it was 36" and I knew from multiple measurings back home that I only have exactly 35", but then, once we got it home, it was freakishly 35". "What changed?" we asked. "Embrace the mystery," the wardrobe said.

So we also moved it in a Prius, which was epic to begin with, since Priuses are a) tiny and b) lacking a hook in the trunk latch to affix a bungee cord. But because of my vast knowledge of how to attach strange objects to cars, I knew of hooks underneath the bumper and also had the foresight to bring twine (which is quite frankly all I had that was even remotely cord-like). Another fun fact about Priuses is that they like to beep at you a lot to remind you to do things like buckle up, not stand too close, and also, to close the door. So serenaded by a steady beep beep beep, and cushioned by some old blankets, we cruised to a really good cheap Indian place, called Ghareeb Nawaz, and hovered around the car (which also couldn't LOCK, you see) and ate some fine food while standing in an alley. Finally we figured out that Jay Z beats are at the same frequency of the beeps so we managed to get it home, sanity AND wardrobe intact, up the stairs, into my room, only to discover, of course, that it doesn't fit through the bathroom door.

So we took it apart, obviously, and then put it back together inside the bathroom which was quite an undertaking and to be frank I would have given up without my wonderful friend Brandon helping me this whole time like the total champ that he is. But, tomorrow I'm gonna go buy some L-brackets at the hardware store just to make everything a little bit more sturdy and then! finally! I'll have a closet!

Total cost: $15 for wardrobe, $7 for Indian food, about $10 for the beer I'll buy the roommate whose car I borrowed.

Packing for the South!

Even though I own a lot of clothes, I travel really light. The picture above is what I brought on this two-week trip to South Carolina, plus shoes (below), the fancy dress hanging on the wall (below) and underwear. It fit in a small backpack and a small duffel bag, along with some books and toiletries and various other things that you have to tote around with you all the time.
This came out rather dark, but the heels are only for the wedding I was attending, and they go with the orange and yellow dress. The sandals, Eddie Bauer bronze pointy-toe flats, and small leather Guess purse are all from Unique thrift store on various trips, and I use them constantly.I put everything in the second drawer of this old dresser, which wasn't mine when I had this room as a kid, but is pretty nice. You can also see that my parents now use "my" room as a place to stack tons of books, although a lot of these were mine in high school. The vanity that matches the dresser is also covered in stacks of books, such that the mirrors are barely visible. I bought the dress on the wall for $5 at an antique mall with Jess and her family when they came to visit Chicago. It's vintage 1950s, with its own belt, and I had to take it in a little in the top, but once it's on it has that nice full-skirt silhouette. I realized that I tend to bring the same things on every trip. The black dress makes it a lot, even though my parents have a white dog so it always gets covered in hair. The white-and-red hippie blouse and the pastel-striped blouse have also made it on several summer trips. I remember wearing the turquoise scoopneck t-shirt when I bought the green skirt, at a thrift store in Maine, so I know it made the travel cut before too. The floral dress (worn here as a skirt) I bought at H&M one time when I stopped there with some visiting friends who had a pool in their hotel and I needed a swimsuit in order to swim with them. It was less than $5 and while I generally make a point of not shopping at H&M, it worked then as a swimsuit cover-up and now I wear it as a long skirt (folding down the empire-waist top), a short dress, and a short skirt with a top over it (here). It's kind of skimpy on top, so I've tried to find other ways to wear it when I'm not at the beach or in an insanely hot climate.

Well, I'm in one now! Today the high was 95 and the heat index in the 105-108 range. I wish I was kidding. Thank God, we have air-conditioning. I'm not quite sure how people down here lived before it. I've been tired all the time since I got here; I don't know if it's the unreasonable heat, the lack of a schedule or work, allergies, recovering from an almost-sleepless night and somewhat grueling move right before I left Chicago, or what, but I'm a total sloth.

Here is a crazy post I started to write at 3 am while I was unpacking my apartment and packing for this trip, about a week ago. I didn't post it because it was disjointed, so I've edited a bit:

I'm going home in a few hours to South Carolina to see my family and chill out. Unfortunately it is going to be insanely hot while I'm there. [how prescient of me!] I've got a wedding to attend and the beach to go to, but other than that, I'll probably be mostly hanging around my tiny boring hometown or pestering friends who live in the closest (and still smallish) city.

I try to show some class on the plane in case there's the slightest chance of getting upgraded. I've been bumped up to business class a couple times due to delays and other harrowing snafus, but let me just say that transatlantic business class on Air France is the Best Possible Thing that could ever happen to you. Anyway, I understand that it might have something to do with classy dressing, so I try to look good. This time, of course, I'm going to look insane and tired, since I've been packing and unpacking all day and then packing my bags again. It's also ideal to have something with pockets for stashing your boarding pass and ID and other gunk you might be acquiring while reading magazines standing up or buying overpriced iced coffees.

Fortunately for me, I've got a green a-line knee-length skirt that I wear to work, and some super comfy pointy-toed bronze flats (slip-off and -on footwear is crucial, bonus for avoiding bare feet on airport floors.) Add my new black Zara cardigan I got at a yard sale for $5 recently and I'm set. I'm not sure I can travel without my giant scarf, but I might have to cut the cord. Maybe I'll bring a tiny scarf. Just a little one? [my better judgment actually won out and I didn't bring any scarf at all, realizing I wouldn't use one in this kind of heat where you want as little as possible touching your skin.]

Ugh, gotta dig out earrings... now which box were they in? [I brought 2 pairs of earrings: my old Turkish coins my mom got before I was born, and some pink faceted drops I got at a yard sale after Claire's wedding a few weeks ago. I've also been borrowing from mom.]

A Nook; Moving

Well, I moved into my new apartment, which was crazy-making, and stayed up to 5:30 am unpacking and moving boxes around, and then left a few hours later for a two-week trip home to see my family in South Carolina. Procrastination, scarce car resources, and a camping trip conspired to keep me from moving early, which would have been less stressful but, what's move without a meltdown or two?

Anyway, I got just enough rearranged before I left to start to see our new dining room as a real room I can live in, rather than a staging ground for boxes. It's a big room and the dining room table is tiny, so I think we'll have a lot of bookshelves and my big comfy blue velvet chair. I got the chair from my grandma, and it definitely shows its age but it's still pretty nice and really great for sitting and reading and drinking coffee. So I'm going to position in by the window, kind of like in this picture.

Picture is from Kathryn Ireland, an interior/textile designer, via Ill Seen, Ill Said.

"My house has 100 bafrooms!"

Remember when HomeStarRunner was like, the funniest thing anyone had ever seen? My roommates and I (I'm starting to realize that I refer to "my roommate" like it's one person, but really I could mean any of about 2o people over the years) always went around saying "My house has 100 bafrooms!" "You mean your parent's house? You mean 2 bafrooms?"

But really, my own house (/apartment. /with roommates) has two bathrooms, and I, personally, have my own. It's accessible only from my room. Which means, let me just be sure I'm clear here, No One Else Can Use It (unless I let them, and I'm pretty nice, so I probably will). I've been obsessing about this a lot, but I've never had my own bathroom before and I'm pretty excited.

Check out how nicely the little dinky shelf thing I bought on the neighborhood craigslist fits in that annoying little crack between the sink and the wall! I must say I think the remodel sucks and the boys' bathroom has much nicer vintage features, but who cares? They share, I don't. This is going to spoil me, I'm never going to want to put up with the kinds of bathroom situations I've put up with in the past again.
This is how it looks in my room! Note the rolling clothes rod hanger thing that I got on craigslist to replace a closet! And the drawer that I took from a discarded dresser that I'm going to paint and expand to be a shelf (it's next to the mini radiator). I'm also going to paint my room green; I hate white walls, off-white is even worse. I feel hot and bored just looking at them. You can't really see, but the bathroom is actually kindof huge, with enough room for my smaller dresser, which takes some of the heat off the tiny-room-no-closet problem. It also has a tub, even if it's freakishly shallow and has ugly new tile.

Please ignore my painting clothes: I made the shirt from an old Norge t-shirt and it is great for "wearing as little as possible while sweating it out in your new apartment."

Cheap Food and a Less-Cheap Cocktail

This is what I ate for dinner not long ago: rice with onions, raisins, garam masala, and grated carrot. It was super easy and just stuff we had lying around. I eat pretty sad food when left to my own devices.

But I drink well! I had bought Elderberry Flower Concentrate at IKEA a long time ago (and not opened it, I'm not that gross) and found a recipe for using it on Apartment Therapy.

1 oz IKEA elderberry flower syrup
1 oz gin (I think we had Broker's at the time, but before that we had Junipero, which I heard about on a Design*Sponge article)
1/2 a lime (the recipe calls for 2 slices of lemon, but we only had lime. We're big gin & tonic drinkers round these parts)
the rest of the glass (6-8 oz) chilled soda water

Mix it up with ice, add the soda water, and enjoy! Your drink is officially way classier than your food!

Oh, and this is our back porch & cat, both of which I will miss to varying extents when we move. In the spring we took all the glass windows off the porch and put in the screens, and it makes a lovely place to sit and enjoy the backyard, and for the cat it is a giant moth trap.

Big Color Changes = Insomnia

So last night, instead of watching a movie, I painted my new room in my apartment green. I mixed together a bunch of old green paint with some really light blue-ish green and Jess helped me get it all on the walls, so yay! that's done now. I'm going to try to move some of the big stuff tomorrow when I have the assistance of a friend and a car.

While I did that, I also dyed my hair with henna. It's not dry yet, and it's supposed to darken over time, but right now I look like the chick from the Fifth Element (that Bruce Willis science fiction movie?) and I am kindof freaking out. Much like the chick from the Fifth Element was when she woke up dressed only in like masking tape in a weird glass coffin. Whew, at least I'm in my own bed.

Alls that to say, I can't sleep, either from freaking out about my hair or the coffee I drunk at 10:30 in order to force myself to go back and finish the paint job (lesson learned). Also if you were in my neighborhood around 10:30 you might have seen me walking or biking around with a plastic bag on my head and covered in paint, not a pretty sight!

Furniture-Painting Adventure

So I bought 5 wooden boxes off the local version of craigslist for $10, where they were advertised as "hideous boxes." And oh god, they were! Avert your eyes from my blurry camera phone picture! Shiny black on the outside and red on the inside, and beat up. They stuck to each other and to anything placed on them, and the previous owner had tried to repaint one with what I can only assume was faulty glow-in-the-dark paint. It was all drippy and sticky and translucent: a hot mess.
So, since they were clearly unacceptable, I did some rummaging around and found this rusted-shut can of paint. With a lot of maneuvering and at least three tools, I got the bent and rusted lid off (note the hole I busted in it with a wrench) and found a totally acceptable color. The top of the can said "Sophisticated Blu" but it really should be "Uber-Girly Lavender."
Since I'm awesome and had nothing to do on Friday night, I primed the hell out of them while getting delirious from being alone in the new apartment and forgetting to eat dinner.
Then the next day I painted them the pretty purple, and did a lot of lying on my back on the dirty floor, sweating, listening to Shakira, and reading the week-old Wall Street Journal I used to protect my shiny new floor. In the background, please note my sweet new fireplace, which unfortunately doesn't work, and my built-in pantry.

These new boxes are going to be stacked in the corner next to a rolly clothes rack, together to become my best excuse for a closet. Total cost: $16 (boxes & clothes rack, paint & supplies were free)

Today I found a bunch of old dressers in alleyways and moved them onto my new back porch. My roommate is going to kill me, but I have big plans for them. I found this cute bookshelf - from - dresser hack from Country Living via How About Orange. I can't believe I like something from Country Living, but basically I love anything that justifies my dumpster-diving habits.

Relatedly, I dug through some old papers and found a list of "Key Facts" that my roommates and I made for each other in college and hung on the kitchen cabinets in our apartments. One of my facts was: "vultures are to dead meat what Amy is to abandoned chairs in the alley." So true, so true!

Anyway, like I said, big plans. I'm going to use one or two of the bigger drawers to make a narrow shelf for my shoes that'll fit in the little hallway next to my radiator. I'll use the shallower drawers for storage under my bed, currently an inaccessible mess. And I want to use some of the bigger pieces of wood for a headboard on my IKEA bedframe. If there's anything left, I'll use them to make some kind of shelving unit like the one above. Ambitious? Perhaps. Deeply annoying to my roommates who have to put up with the mess? Definitely. Awesome? Certainly.

This Morning

• Realized only 2 more days of World Cup! What will I do now to procrastinate? Never fear, I can think of plenty of things.
• Saw that it is my mom's birthday in a week. I want to get her something, since she likes presents, but what? She likes Scandinavian design, so maybe these earrings from Madison, WI? Sadly she has very sensitive ears, and is a minimalist about most clothes and jewelry, so more things is not often a good idea.
  
• Sweated bullets as soon as I came upstairs from my blissfully cool basement bedroom.
• Spilled ground coffee all over the inside of the now-broken-in-two-ways coffee machine. Time to get a french press. (Especially since soon there will only be 2 coffee drinkers in my new apartment, instead of 5!)
• Had a PB&J made of bread from a local bakery and the jam that Claire & her very-soon-to-be-husband Mark made with me last summer. It's this kind of good homemade eating that I miss when I go back to the semi-suburbs of home.
• Ate the last of Jess's delicious pumpkin walnut cream cheese muffins!
• Worked on an etsy treasury, inspired by the blue lake picture from my Fourth of July post.
• Got my google reader down from 1000+ to 55! (this took a few days and required unsubscribing to several blogs, goodbye wedding nonsense, thanks minimalist)

The picture is just my room. I am reading: The Psychology of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman, Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Architecture for the Poor by Hassan Fathy which was recommended to me by my good friend Lila and I had to return to the library the other day, sadly. I wasn't reading it straight through, and I was basically done with the interesting parts, so it was ok.

Sneak Peak: My New Etsy Page!

Trying to downsize a bit before I move, I started an etsy page! Here it is: http://www.etsy.com/shop/amydix. My wonderful roommate J helped me take pictures tonight. They would be better had we taken them outside but it was so hard to find the time when neither of us is working. Plus, all those costume changes in the heat would be a drag anywhere but my cool basement. So, I thought I'd post a particularly blurry picture from our photo session. I have three items up already, but this dress is not up yet. J is modeling for one of them! It was fun taking the pictures but it sure is time-consuming to measure and label and upload everything! Here's hoping it pays off!

Apartment Crisis

We got the keys and checked out the new place, but contrary to everyone's memory, my room does not have a closet. NO CLOSET. Doesn't a closet make a room into a bedroom? (arguably, it's rather a bed, but still). No closet.

I have a lot of clothes.

You can imagine my panic.

There is also very little room for anything but a bed, ruling out ideas like wardrobes and so forth. I'm trying to think of creative solutions: open shelving in the bathroom (which is all mine, at least, and not terribly small), hanging a bar somewhere along the wall? I don't want my clothes all out in the open, cluttering up such a tiny space, but I don't know what else there is to do.

There's also no fan in the bedroom, which we also thought there was. On the positive side, we've got a clothes washer & dryer, and a dishwasher, and for the most part the rest of it is in pretty good, clean shape. Now I'm glad I've got awhile to move, so I can work on storage solutions.

Image from House and Garden/Style Court via This is Glamorous.

A goat?

My friends from high school and I have a running email chain, usually several emails a day from those of us with jobs where we sit at the internet all day. This picture got sent out a few days ago, with the tag "I can totally see Amy doing this." Several people agreed. Are they just trying to get my goat?

Ah, I crack myself up.

Not that they're wrong, I would do that if I could. But isn't it weird to find out what other people think of you?

Goals

Summer Goals:

1. Get my hair as long as it is in this picture
2. Wear a cowboy hat more & be braver about wearing tiny dresses
   
3. Go home to SC and eat too much seafood in Charleston and hide from rainstorms on church porches and explore old graveyards and go to the beach and chill with my friends.
   

Summer Dresses

A few nights ago I went to North Pond, a fancy restaurant I'd been wanting to experience for a long time, which has a "dressy" dress code. I had some fun debating what to wear for a hot night, a dressy place, and some walking in grass and possible bus-taking. Turns out we didn't have to take the bus, but that would have almost ruled out heels.

I have a few actually nice dresses, but mostly kinda frumpy shirt-dresses which I absolutely love, or overly-sexy yet too-casual jersey dresses. I have a bridesmaids dress which I guess I could wear, but it has short sleeves and is therefore a little too warm, and a really great vintage lime green & pink paisley dress. I bought it at the Gage Park Unique (best thrift store in Chicago) and it still had tags on it that said 100% silk, but then when I wore it my friends were convinced it was polyester, but it was remarkably cool and breathable, so I think the tags might be right. Anyway I hand washed it and tried to iron it, but I'm bad at ironing, and it still looks super wrinkly. I'm at a loss.

I've also got a pink dress with one strap that was my go-to fancy dress until I suddenly realized it's kinda stained and the sheer polyester chiffon-like layer has somehow shrunk so that when it's on, the top sheer layer is shorter than the underlayer of silk. It's extra-bizarre because when it's on the hanger, the sheer layer is a good couple inches longer than the silk, but then as soon as it gets on me, it shrinks up. I tried to stretch it out by clipping a pants hanger to the bottom and keeping it in the bathroom to relax in the humidity, which did nothing. (I now realize that this was a strange and overly-involved solution, which I continued rather than admitting to myself my unwillingness to learn to iron.) I finally realized I could iron it, which only partially worked and now the length of the sheer layer is uneven. I refuse to admit defeat. I have a picture of this dress from first year of college, but I hesitate to post it because it has two close friends in it, neither of whom have given me permission to put pictures of their 18-year-old dressed up selves on the internet.

I want something like this, by Mina Stone at Steven Alan.Or this, from Calypso St. Barth a long time ago.
Somewhat relatedly, I went to an antique market (it's like a flea market but way classier & more pricey) the other day and they had some Calypso stuff. They had a lot of incredible stuff, almost none of which I could afford. As I was telling my friend afterwards, my price range is: under $10. I did end up buying a great 50s full-skirt floral dress for $5. I have to take it in a little, and after that I'll be ready to take pictures.

Oh, and for North Pond, I ended up wearing a sleeveless navy blue velvet dress from Gap, which I bought at a yard sale in an alley a few weeks while waiting in line for Hot Doug's. I was unsure about velvet in the summer, but there ended up being a huge storm that cooled it down a lot, and it was cold in the restaurant. I also wore yellow heels (also from Unique) and a green floral silk bag (also from Unique) and a white pashmina that my boyfriend bought in Kenya and thought was a men's scarf, which I bet he could pull off but is definitely not the case. And a raincoat.