Friday, July 30, 2010

Fashion Bored: Casual Friday


It's Friday. I am still reeling from Doogs bday festivities. The lady knows how to throw a party and dance to Cher! So my outfit this week reflects my...shall we say lack of effort I am feeling today. Most noted by the shoes:



Because, you know, Lanvin shoes are oh-so-casual. And man oh man would I give my left ovary for that Fendi sweater dress. I mean, clearly that can's happen since selling body parts are illegal...for now? I would practically float into work in that dress and shoes. Marc Jacobs bag. It's great. And full disclosure on the snake bracelet: 1) my photo shop skillz on that be BANGING!! 2) It's from Gilt. Now, yes that site is obnoxious because you have such a limited time to decide on items you can never see but I mean, snake bracelet. And it's jewelry so, do you need to try it on? Though I feel that this outfit cold be missing something. Maybe it's me in it, or maybe it's a brooch...which I think Doog could easily help me out with if I ever acquire these dream outfits. Ummm, you think I could pull an Inception on this stuff???





Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Must Have!

Dear Interweb.

Please find me these shoes. I need them. Must have them. Will do anything for them. Ivory, blue soled shoes that say "I Do" on the bottom. I'm a 5.5...damn you, tiny feet.

Never Gets Old

I live in Chicago - not exactly the sticks (despite what people in New York or LA would have you believe) and yet I still get all excited when they film movies here. Even if they're horrible crap piles like Public Enemies or future crap piles like Transformers 3.

That being said:

This is in front of the office building that held my very first job in Chicago - the job that allowed me to stay here for the past four years! For me, this is one cheep thrill that never gets old:


 Image via Slashfilm

Additionally, this:

Lightning strikes three of the tallest buildings in Chicago at the same time! from Craig Shimala on Vimeo.


Even when it rains, Chicago - you're my kind of awesome.

Something old, something new...

Vintage weddings are all the rage right now, and I'm obsessed! It's amazing what you can do with people's old junk! Right now, I'm focusing on centerpieces. I've been scouring goodwill stores, flea markets, antique fairs for anything from candles and candle holders and milk glass bottles to all sorts of vintage hardcover books.

These milk glass vases are amazing! Ranging from $1 a piece to $15 a piece - I've been collecting them in all shapes and sizes.


My vision is to stack 2-3 of these milk glass vases (a couple small bud vases and one bigger statement piece) in the center of the table, using vintage books to elevate them. Throw in a big antique silver candelabra and scatter a bunch of votive and tealight candles and we're golden!

I also love the idea of using teacups and tea pots as flower pots - so cheap and adorable!


Oh the ideas are endless! Birdcages, vintage postcards, vintage suitcases, empty picture frames, vintage bikes, old-school cameras, vintage tea tins and coffee cans....my mind is spinning! Have ideas? Pictures? Post them here! With our powers combined....my wedding's going to be killer!

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

GIF of the Day

Two words to all my friends and family for all of the lovely birthday wishes:

Monday, July 26, 2010

Bubble Pop Electric

Can I just say how much I am digging Robyn's new songs right now? SO MUCH!

Robyn - Hang With Me official video from Robyn on Vimeo.

...because her music sure beats the depressing/angsty country muzak my coworker is playing right now.

And one more in honor of Doogs birthday!!!

Robyn 'Dancing On My Own' (Official Video) from Robyn on Vimeo.




It is Still My Birthday.

And how do I feel?

AWESOME!

funny animated gif

It is My Birthday.

I'm 26 on July 26th, so it's my GOLDEN Birthday. Leading up to it, I had as much enthusiasm as Dwight did for Kelly's birthday:


But now that it's here, I'm actually in a great mood about it. I want to invite the whole world over to my house on Thursday to watch Project Runway. Are you free? Do you want to come over?

Anyway, since it's "My Day", I'm going to kick it off with my favorite music video and song of all time!

Friday, July 23, 2010

Cheers to the Weekend!

Alas, Friday is upon us and it could not have come soon enough! In the spirit of celebrating the weekend, I want to share one of my favorite summer beverages, perfect for afternoons lounging by the pool (or if you're psycho like me, on the couch in front of the TV watching Lifetime flicks).

Friend, meet Peach Sangria. Peach Sangria, meet friend. I'm sure you'll get to know each other quite well this summer. [Recipe adapted from The Gourmet Foodie Blog]


Living in Texas, peaches are a summer staple. Side note - Remind me to post my favorite Peach Brownie recipe at a later date (peaches, cinnamon, cakey goodness - best. dessert. ever). We can incorporate them in almost every meal! Pancakes with peach chutney, peach jam, peach cobbler, grilled peaches with vanilla bean ice cream, pork chops with peach salsa...the list is endless and my mouth is salivating. But nothing is more refreshing than a big ole' pitcher of white sangria to ward off the Texas heat. To create this delicious concoction, you'll need the following ingredients:
  • 6 peaches skinned and sliced (canned will work if you're feeling lazy)
  • Fresh squeezed juice of 3 Lemons
  • 2 Sliced lemons
  • 2 Cups of chopped strawberries
  • 1 cup peach schnapps (rum and vodka are great substitutes - a cup of each gives it a kick)
  • ½ cup fine sugar
  • 750ml bottle of Pinot Grigio
  • 4 cups Club Soda
  • 1 cup rose champagne (again, no harm in pouring in more! No point in wasting the bottle)
Step 1: Start chopping up your fruit! The recipe calls for sliced peaches, but I prefer cut up chunks as to make it more edible and delicious. Juice 3 Lemons and slice up the other 2 in rounds. I also like to add in a couple cups of chopped up strawberries for heightened flavor.


Step 2: Dump the fruit mixture and juices into a large pitcher or drink dispenser. If you're obsessed with kitchenware like I am, check out Pottery Barn's Acrylic Drink Dispensers. They are the shiz and for your reference, it's on my wedding registry - just sayin. Now for the good stuff. Pour in the wine, club soda, sugar, and liquor - hold off on pouring the champagne! Stir it up and let it sit in your fridge for a few hours- the longer the better! Give the fruit some time to soak in the booze. However, if you're impatient to get your drink on, skip the soaking and move on to Step 3!

Step 3: Right before you're ready to imbibe the fruits of your labor, pour in the champagne - make it rain on them peaches! Stir in some ice, top off the biggest glass you can find, and sip away the week's stress.


Happy Drinking! Err...I mean, weekend.

Re-Mad Men Yourself!

Mad Men is coming back on Sunday and in honor of this most anticipated of premieres, I suggest we all re-Mad Men ourselves! New props and clothes are now available!

Before...  
After! 
Who's coming over?!

Fashion Bored

Reality check: I have a very limited budget but an incredible lust for clothing. What is a girl to do? Create ideal outfits all day via the amazing gadget that is the interwebs! Instead of composing in my head, I'm going to post my creations here. Though it's unlikely that I will every be able to afford a lot of the clothes listed (or want to spend the amount required to buy the clothes), I see this as an inspirational project. I'll occasionally post outfits or just things that I am lusting over in hopes that I can get the fine people of the internet to lust with me. Sound like a plan?

Today I present: a work outfit! I don't promise perfection, but hopefully there will be some fun.

Great. Let's begin.




Dear DVF dress, where have you been all my life? I love the zipper and would kill to have you in my closet. Look at the color! Wouldn't you look great with this McQueen Faithful tote and Michael Kors watch? The watch is the only thing I could afford if I saved...sigh. And I really really like the Giles & Brother chevron necklace. Just hoping to bring it together. And no, I don't care that I mixed gold with silver for this outfit. In the words of RZ "metallics are neutrals" and I will do whatever I want with them.

Finally the shoes. I would wear that shit out of those. Not just with this outfit but all the time. Black pants? Give me those shoes. Blazer? Give me those shoes. Pencil skirt. Hand over those damn shoes with the ruffles. Just. Give. Them. To. Me. Now. But seriously, I want that DVF dress too. So badly.






Thursday, July 22, 2010

The Client List, Starring Jennifer Love Hewitt's Boobs

Hello. My name is Annie and I am a Lifetime movie addict. I have no problem admitting this publically. Yes, it’s true that after hours of watching LMN my fear of being raped, mugged, haunted by ghosts, and cheated on by charming husbands exponentially heightens. But I just can’t resist the allure of subpar acting and drama! It literally takes less than two minutes into a Lifetime movie for me to be hooked. I have to know how it ends – who gets raped? Does her husband leave her? Will the ghost of her aborted child kill her after all? Too many questions to just turn away.

The recent release of Jennifer Love Hewitt’s “The Client List” had me all sorts of excited for weeks! The combination of JLH's poor acting and huge tatas is absolutely worthy of discussion. Let's start with the fact that my movie premiere night was almost ruined by the penis party that ensued in my home Monday evening. It's virtually impossible to convince any straight male to willingly spend two hours watching female dramas. But this was an easy sell. Alls I had to say was "Jennifer Love Hewitt. Prostitute Mom." And just like that, they were sold. Premiere movie night will go on. Spoiler Alert! Here's a recap of the best Lifetime movie ever to exist.

The basic gist of this based-on-a-true-story flick focused on prostitution taking over a middle of no-where, small Texas town. I'm talking about your typical pro-gun, pro-family, anti-abortion, god-fearing Texas town. Enter JLH - loving mother of two (or three? it's hard to remember how many kids she had when the camera man explicitly zoomed in on her boobies every time they had a "family moment"), former beauty pageant winning gal who always dreamed for more. Unfortunately for her, she got knocked up at a young age and married her quarterback high school boyfriend. A friend told her she was smart for having babies early...sigh, if only I had thought to get pregnant at 16...I'd be a rich prostitute by now.

Naturally, it turned out high school football isn't a career. Injured and uneducated, her husband leaves JLH and her brood of children broke and facing foreclosure on their home. She tried pushin the girls up and out of that blouse to woo their banker into a loan extension, but alas it wasn't enough. Perhaps getting a job would help the stay at home mom? Apparently, the ONLY job opening was in the next town over at a massage parlor called Kind Touch Med Spa. This wasn't enough to tip JLH off to what was going on in this establishment. Nor were the keypad locks on every single door. Or the red lights flashing above rooms in use. Or the unlicensed massage therapists lounging around in lingerie in the break room. Oh no...it wasn't until she got a peek into a two-way mirror that our innocent mom realized what they were asking her to do. Fast forward a couple scenes involving her freak out, go through internal moral debates, and dealing with her unemployed drunk ass husband - she accepts the job and becomes the #1 hooker that town has ever seen!

Did I mention she's border line autistic? She apparently has impeccable memory and can remember every detail from every conversation. She brings clients their favorite cookies, wears their favorite outfits, ask about their wives (super turn on when you're paying a hooker for sex, I know), the whole nine yards and the men just eat it up. It's what made her the busiest masseuse at Kind Touch! But as it turns out, prostitution is exhausting. Poor JLH - on top of getting her kids to school time time, cooking dinner, and being the perfect southern wife, she also has to blow/bang my estimate of 8-12 men a day. These guys are flying in from all over the world to tap that. I suppose her husband doesn't smell the sex on her or question why she's adorned in all this new jewelry (gifts from her best clients). All he knows is - his uneducated, sexy wife is raking in the cash.

In fact, for Christmas - she buys him a Harley (how many peens does it take to buy a Harley?) Her gift in return? Mr. Quarterback hands her a box with a name tag in it - he got a job with a pest control company and will be making minimum wage to support his family. It's a start. And props to him for taking what he can get. All you need is love, right? That and an awesome pair of knockers because some how JLH pulls them out of debt and gives her family a taste of the high life. You just can't count on a man these days, unless he's paying you for sex.

Sex, more sex, more hot scenes of JLH running around in lingerie that I can't search for and post from work, and the eventual road to coke addiction. A client gives her a baggie which she offensively declined. He slips it into her purse anyway and says - just in case. At this point in the movie, she's almost driven into a truck because she can't keep her eyes open - I'm telling ya, prostitution is EXHAUSTING. One of her kids needs her to bake a cake for their bake sale the next morning and the poor girl just doesn't have the energy. Suddenly, this baggie of coke is starting to look appealing. 10 hours later, her family awakes to a tweaked out JLH and a masterpiece castle cake complete with moat and working drawbridge.

More sex montages, including her liason with the local church pastor, politicians, her friends' husbands, etc. She's losing weight, looking haggard, getting snappy with her clients who came to her to talk/cry/get off, and dropping the ball on her mom job (and blow jobs, and rim jobs, and all the other jobs she's workin). Lucky for her, the spa gets busted before her life completely falls apart. The wayward cops who took blowies for keeping their noses out are now being told by someone higher up to blow the lid off that joint. All could have ended well, but dammit JLH you left your coke out and now they're going to charge you with prostitution AND drugs. Mr. Quarterback is drinking at a bar when his wife is shown on TV in her negligee in handcuffs and thrown into the back of a cop car. Humiliated in front of the entire town's population of 100, QB husband leaves her with the kids.

Fast forward some more, JLH turns in the names of prestigious towns people as a trade-off for shorter jail time for her and her hooker friends. I can't remember how much time she spent in jail, but it only took about 2 minutes to cover in the movie, so I assume less than a month. She gets out of prison and gets herself a nice low-paying waitressing job at a local diner. QB husband has no intention of coming back - but there's kind of a happy ending (pun absolutely intended). An angry-looking mob of women show up at JLH's door, victims of her sexcapades, wives of her clients. We think she's about to get lynched for being such a whore, but instead, they welcome her with open arms and beg her to share her secrets! How did you get our husbands to love you like that? How do you give a blow job? Is it safe to take it in the butt? A few bananas and live demos later, the movie concludes.

This might be one of the best LMN movies I've ever watched. It was jam packed with sex, betrayal, terrible acting skills, and drama. It didn't end all cheesy with her husband returning with a black diamond ring for her transgressions (I'm lookin at you, Sex and the City 2). It's heightened my curiosity every time I drive by a massage place - is this where you can get a happy ending? It's also taught be a very valuable lesson - prostitution makes damn good money.

It's a Thing Now: Brooches

I don't mean to turn all Zooey Deschanel on you, but I freaking love brooches. Not in an ironic way, it's more an "all of a sudden, I can't wear cheap jewelery because it hurts my skin" way. I can, however, cheap out on pins and as a bonus have ANOTHER PLACE to wear jewelery.


Total no brainer.

Don't buy it? Check out some of these beauties:
Reclaimed Zipper Pin from ZipPinning




Totally fine with a tee shirt!

Vintage Amber Broach from VintagePass



Fluer de Lis Locket via SparklySushi
If this was a watch, it would be JUST like Mary Poppins. Which is a good thing.

Recycled Sterling Silver Brooch via NoaSharonDesigns
A Modern Brooch! It's not just me!

Vintage Wedding Brooch via NYJoleJewlery



In honor of TokinAsian!

Red Rhinestone Vintage Brooch Ebay
 My birthstone is a Ruby and I've always loved red stones.

Movin' on Up!

We're classin' up the joint a bit so we can move right in. Our other blog is jackin' our flava and so we're going for a trail separation.

Take it like a man, and SING WITH ME, GIRLS:





Freddie thinks this shit is bananas:

funny animated gif