Rainbows in the Produce Aisle

A few days ago, I realized something. I am 95% certain that more people have read this fledgling blog than have read, or ever will read, the dissertation I spent over three years of my life writing. Now, I’m the type to see the humor in the unfortunate, so this initially struck me as one of those amusing ironies of life. At around 2AM that night, though, I remembered the stress that my dissertation occasioned: the constantly broken out skin (which has cleared up since I stopped teaching five classes at once), the days without any sort of human contact, and the agonizing over each and every sentence. Ah, there’s that downer feeling I should’ve had in the first place! But you’re probably here for the outfit, so let’s get on with it, shall we? I’ll get back to the ‘oh my god did I waste the bulk of my 20s?!?’ bit later (*spoiler alert:* the answer is ‘no.’)

 

Bacon Blackout

Yesterday, Jeff and I had a super exciting adventure! Like most of our adventures, this one involved food, the North Side, and public transit. But like the very best of our adventures, this one also involved BACON!

Wishlist Wednesday #2

In composing this week's Wishlist Wednesday post, I decided to group things according to price-point cutoffs that I somewhat-arbitrarily chose. Here are all the things I'm currently a little obsessed with!

$25 and Under

I really adore this laser-cut acrylic Introvert necklace. Why not let people know exactly how poor their chances of getting you out of your house once you've settled in are?!?

Adventures in Print-Mixing

So far today I've been super productive, which is why I'm dressed and posting this before 9:30 AM. Jeff teases me about how much I sleep, but life really is much better with 9+ hours a night! The best part of moving to Chicago, aside from the food, the public transit, Mariano's Market, the lake, and our apartment, is the fact that most late-night TV shows are simulcast for people in the Central Time Zone. It's quite rare these days that I make it to midnight, which is slightly embarrassing but true.

Black and White and Red All Over

Black, white, and red is a staple color combination in my life. Red is my favorite color to add to a monochromatic ensemble, and our apartment is decorated largely in those hues. I'm a confirmed creature of habit, so while I intend to work on branching out into the Wide World of Color, today's outfit of the day is standard-issue Emily. It's a freakishly warm January day here in Chicago (ok, it was 37 degrees Fahrenheit), so I was finally able to take some pictures outside!

No coat! Another benefit of a heavy wool skirt. (I hope my mother doesn't see these pics… she'd probably freak out about the lack of coat.)

Restorative Recipes: Roasted Veggie and Wheatberry Salad

Since Jeff and I moved to Chicago last September, I’ve been consciously trying to make healthy meals nearly every night. Chicago is a meat-and-beer kind of town (seriously, the beer lists here rival the wine lists in Southern California for breadth and general awesomeness!), and while we want to explore everything the city has to offer, we like our arteries reasonably un-clogged. Moderation in all things ;).

The first recipe in my Restorative Recipes series is one of my go-to healthy meals: roasted veggie and wheatberry salad. The version I make most often is vegetarian, but you can make it vegan simply by leaving out the feta. I also often make this with quinoa in place of wheatberries, particularly if I get a late start on dinner, since wheatberries take at least an hour to cook.

How NOT to curl your hair

The topic of today's post is Failure. More specifically, Miserable Hair Failure. I concluded a few months ago that my hair is simply uncurlable. I lived in LA for eight years, and always seriously envied the effortless-looking, bouncy long curls that so many girls in Southern California sport. I had tried a number of times to curl it with a curling iron, but it never quite came out right, and always fell flat almost immediately. For a long time, I blamed it on my ineptitude with a curling iron, but after a good friend (with A+ hair-curling game!) kindly spent an afternoon curling my hair, only to have it revert to form before Jeff could see her handiwork, I figured curls just weren't in the cards for me. It was ok. I'd made my peace.

Then I discovered the world of vintage style blogs, with their wet set pin curls and foam roller tutorials, and began to hope. I spent an afternoon watching hair tutorials on Youtube (a first for me!) and ordered pin curl pins on Amazon. When they arrived, I rewatched this Cherry Dollface tutorial and tried out a few experimental curls. It worked! They stayed in for the entire day. Someday, when it isn't 85 degrees INSIDE my apartment despite wintery OUTDOOR temperatures, I'll do my entire head.

I mean, they stayed curly when I took them out, even if my pinning skills were below grade level.

#JennyJanuary -- Jenny Dress in Neverland Print

It's Jenny January and my Instagram feed is jam-packed with gathered-skirt awesomeness. For those of you who haven't heard of this weeklong explosion of delight, it's a time for fans of the Pinup Girl Clothing (PUG) to go hog wild and celebrate their shared love of PUG's Jenny skirts and dresses on Instagram and Twitter. #JennyJanuary is the brainchild of the fabulous Miss Amy May, who kicked it off with this blog post in 2015. During #JennyJanuary, folks pull out those lovely skirts/dresses, doll themselves up, plan to match their friends, and post the glorious results online using the hashtag "JennyJanuary."

I've been all over the hashtag this week, but as I'm newly a PUG convert, my Jenny collection is still woefully thin on the ground. My only Jenny is also one of the first PUG dresses I bought (along with the leopard Heidi). I ordered it during the Black Friday sales, and eagerly awaited its arrival (read: refreshed the Fedex tracking page about 987293847 times per day.) When it finally came, I ripped it out of the box, stripped down in my living room, ran to shut the shades (probably should've done that first, eh?), and put it on. It didn't fit. 

Me after the dress didn't fit (artist's rendering)

Wishlist Wednesday #1

It's confession time: I have a slight addiction to shopping online. When I was teaching five classes a semester at two different Los Angeles universities, this habit lay dormant, as I simply had no free time. But in transitioning to life after political science, I've rediscovered the joys of Amazon, Etsy, and Modcloth, along with some new favorites: Unique Vintage, Pinup Girl Clothing, and Bernie Dexter among them. My wardrobe has never been better, but I'm rapidly approaching Closet Overload.

(Fact: older buildings, such as the one I now live in, tend to have less storage space than newer construction, such as my old apartment in LA. The explanation probably has something to do with the growth of consumerism in America, as reflected in the size of my wardrobe versus the average woman's wardrobe in, say, 1950. But I'll save the sociological speculation for another day.)

Anyway. The internet is full of lovely things, and here are some of the ones I'm currently obsessed with:

Coming Attractions

This is a blog about journeys. 2015 was a year of change: professional, personal, geographic, and stylistic. I began exploring non-academic career options after eight years in political science. Jeff and I got engaged after five years together. I discovered the world of style blogs and Instagram, and was inspired to finally embrace things I’d never really felt I could wear: full skirts, petticoats, and brightly printed, cheery dresses. We left our lives in LA behind and moved to Chicago in September, after Jeff was offered a fantastic position out here. And after two crazy years of working as an adjunct professor, during which my health and fitness took a backseat to preparing far too many classes and grading far too many exams and papers, I decided it was time to get serious about self-care. As I envision it, this blog is a space for me to chart and share these journeys as they unfold.

I'll unfold like this flower, just you wait.

Greetings!

Hi, and welcome to my blog! I'm Emily, a New York girl living in Chicago with my fiancé Jeff and a truckload of dresses, books, and kitchen gear. I'm full-skirt-obsessed, more-than-slightly nerdy, and a recovering academic. I have too much hair, need at least 9 hours of sleep every night, and get really, really into the things I like. 

I was born on the anniversary of the moon landing, so of course I'm obsessed with the American space program. 

The actual command module from the Apollo-Soyuz test project! And me. I trust you can tell which is which.

Other things I love include twirling in circle skirts, pizza (both NY-style and deep dish), vintage-inspired style, cooking, knitting, reading, exercising, Star Wars, Game of Thrones, Harry Potter (I hit the nerd trifecta!), and tacos. I have so many feelings all the time, and I'm excited to share all the things I love and enjoy with The Internet!!