Favorite Time of Year

I love the holiday season for many reasons, and one of those is "It's A Wonderful Life". Frank Capra is one of my favorite filmmakers, and "It's A Wonderful Life" is one of my favorite movies. Truth be told, I watch it all year round. But now that it's the holiday season, I can watch it as much as I want without being kind of awkward!

Airplane Reading

F. Scott Fitzgerald is probably one of my favorite writers of all time. His style is amazing! For the unending flight to Nairobi, I picked up two of his books: This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and Damned. His stories are so wonderful, and even though they are kind of cliche as Jazz Age classics, the actual stories themselves are totally underrated.

I Feel A Craving Coming On . . .

How great do these look! Whimsy and Spice is one of my favorite random websites to poke around on, mainly because everything looks totally delicious and homemade. Sadly, I have no baking ability (and no ice cream maker) but maybe soon I will get brave and give it a shot!

Reading "Missed Connections" is kind of a guilty pleasure of mine. They are just so sweet, in a real life kind of way. Sophie Blackall illustrates "Missed Connections" and I'm totally in love with the whimsical pictures!

Celebratory Concert

There is nothing I love more than live music, and so to celebrate the end of the first quarter of my Senior year, I'm going to see one of my favorite bands tomorrow night! Old Crow Medicine Show has been a favorite among my friends and I for the past few years, and Wagon Wheel is something of an unofficial theme song. They are so amazing! I can't wait to see them!

A Week and a Half Away!

I can't believe I leave for Kenya in a week and a half! It's so awesome, but still hasn't sunk in. It's weird enough that this quarter is over today, let alone that I'm going to Africa next Saturday! The picture above is Mount Kenya, where we are going to be doing some work with the Green Belt Movement!

Pour Les Infantes

When I have children, I'm going to try hard to teach them any language I know from the very start. One thing I can't wait to do: read them books in different languages! I was tickled to find this site, featuring a ton of French language children's books, including Babar!

PS: Another book I can't wait to read my kids is The Bears Famous Invasion of Sicily!

Hair Cut Day!

Yup, finally getting my hair cut! I haven't gone in to get it done since last February-March-ish. You see, I'm in a constant battle with my hair, trying to coerce it to look at all like the wonderful Zooey Deschanel. So, I'm planning on getting a trim, and my bangs re-shaped (they have fallen into awful disrepair in the past few weeks.) Hopefully it works!

Holy Fabulous!

Modcloth is officially my favorite website (that I inconveniently can't afford.) Anyone will tell you, I tend to wear the same neutral colors -- I gravitate to blacks, browns, and grays. But I love this dress, with that purple skirt!

Trench Coat Kids

I spied these kids on The Sartorialist today, and happen to find them adorable in their trench coats! There's something very "Artful Dodger" about them. (And they just happen to be in London, which might be why I made that connection.)

And Now The Wait Begins Again!

Another season of Mad Men over! I can't believe how fast it went. Or how amazing that finale was last night! It was such a crazy turn around for Don, suddenly being totally humble and reaching out to the people in his life. It's so great having the old gang (minus Kinsey and Cosgrove) back together! Could Joan be any more wonderful? I think not. I can't wait to see what the next season holds -- I just hope Betty is miserable.

And I can't believe Bored to Death is over already! I really hope it gets signed for another season. It was one of the funniest things on TV!

Things Worth Loving

With the anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall, I've had the movie Good Bye Lenin! on my mind. It's about a young man who has to recreate East Germany in his mother's room after she comes out of a coma that she slipped into before the fall of the wall.

And along the same lines, the idea of recreating DDR life in hotels fascinates me! I've never been to Berlin, but the Cold War is one of my interests and I would love to visit this place! Plus, it's super cheap. . .

From the Cold War to Cold War Kids! Not only are they coming to Chicago in January, but they are also releasing an EP that month! You can check out the teaser here. I'm just crazy about these guys!

Totally unrelated: This dress is adorable!!

I have potential to become a DIY nut (once I have more space to do things myself in) and this project looks like it would be fun! These vases (which ran on design*sponge) are so simple, but super cute. And since I have a bottle of wine in my kitchen for that coq-au-vin recipe, I might have to see what I can do.

In Keeping with the Theme

Oh my goodness! How wonderful is this tote! There are a ton of other cities you can get, but I'm just in love with this Paris map!

Hopefully, This Will Be My Campus!

With the GRE out of the way, the deadline for application to AUP coming up, and only a few months until my siblings and I are heading to Paris, I can't think about anything else! The picture above is of rue de Grenelle, in the 7th, where AUP's campus is. Fingers crossed that the stars align and this is my campus this time next year!

Coq-au-Vin

This weekend, I'm excited to try cooking Coq-au-Vin! It's a traditional French recipe, and since whole chicken was on sale this weekend, I'm going to give it a whirl. French food is just amazing, primarily because it's so simple to make and always tastes fantastic!

Wonderful Weekend

Well, Halloween is over for this year! I got to go to Rockford for the weekend and party with some totally amazing people, many of whom I had heard about from Ben (I was hanging with his friends there) and was thrilled to finally meet! Despite feeling pretty sick today, it was a great time!

And now that it's time to hunker in for November (which will hopefully be better than October weather-wise) I'm ready to go into hibernation mode in my little apartment, and maybe start "sprucing up the J" as my mom would say. This shower curtain is too cute, and the picture is just amazing!