Music Monday

We had a little bit of...drama here on Saturday. I figured my Music Monday could be based on that. The titles of the songs should reveal a little bit of what was going on - don't worry, it wasn't me, but something two of my friends were dealing with.

My favorite...

I talked about doing a weekly weekend series with my favorite things and then the second week I started to write about my favorite movies, and it was really hard. It's hard to pick my five favorite movies. So instead, this week, I decided to do my five favorite blogs. I will get back to movies during the summer, when I have more brainpower.  I'd like to say that while I do read a lot (a lot!) of blogs, I picked these ones as my favorites because they are the ones I have read consistently for the longest amount of time. If I'm online and bored, chances are, it's one of these I'll go to to see if there's something new.

My Favorite Blogs (In no specific order):

Project Rungay
I used to watch Project Runway as much as possible when it was on Bravo, though not so much now that it's on Lifetime and I'm in college without a tv. I don't remember how I stumbled across PR but when I did, I knew it was love. Tom and Lorenzo provide the funniest commentary on fashion and tv that I've ever come across. Like their header says, they're "Fabulous & Opinionated" and I always find myself laughing to myself while reading their posts. They're spot-on about most everything and they provide the very best Project Runway recaps you've ever read.


Teen Fashionista
I've been reading Teen Fashionista since I was in high school - I always felt I could relate to Casey, since she's a (newly graduated!) journalism student like me, with an interest in fashion and decor and she has such a cute preppy style. I think hers was the first sort of personal style blog that I ever read - I blame her for the addiction a little bit. But I'm not mad, she's a great writer, she's got great style and she's had my most coveted internship (at Teen Vogue. So jealous.). As a journalism student whose family members are all involved in endeavors that don't involve journalism, her blog also allows me a look into the future - she shows how difficult it is for journalism students right now without losing her optimism (though to be fair, most of us don't have book deals before leaving college).

The Clothes Horse
I think The Clothes Horse was the second personal style blog I ever started reading. I was drawn to Rebecca's sense of style and her look at college life in the beginning and now I stick around for the great photos, the inspiration she showcases and the supercute GIFs. I think she has the best photography out of all the personal style blogs I read, which is amazing because she takes them herself, with a tripod. I've enjoyed watching her pictures evolve from outfit shots in front of her closet to nature-filled photoshoots.

Jezebel
I've read Jezebel since my senior year in high school (I think) when my sister told me about it, linked some articles to me. I've been hooked since then. With a variety of authors writing about a variety of topics ranging from celebrity gossip to international news I can always find something interesting to read. But that's not all. Jezebel is written by women who for the most part all bring some sort of feminist discourse to their analysis of current events. And there's an active commenting community that really is a community. It's not just people commenting, it's people who comment and respond to others' comments and form friendships and share their lives.

Fashionista
Fashionista is my go-to place for fashion news. While I love WWD, I don't love the price, and Fashionista gives me the news, commentary, editorials, street-style...all the things I like. It's a great example of how fashion reporting can be done well on the web and I enjoy it as something to read every day, since magazines only come out monthly.

Dilemma

Last night, the last song. Enjoy.

Down Your Street in a Range Rover

More Dillo Day action up in here.

I may have mentioned this, but it was a gorgeous day yesterday

Once again, me and my flower crown - it might be my favorite accessory

Oh, and Nelly was pretty good

They made a statue of us...

I feel like I've been a very bad blogger over the past few days. I apologize. But I have pictures! Today was Dillo Day and we had a great time. I spent my day hanging out with my friends, listening to Regina Spektor live (which was AMAZING), eating lots of food and then hanging around while Nelly was on. I was too short to actually see that one. Here are some pictures from my afternoon, pictures from the evening will come tomorrow. At the bottom, there's also a little video I put together from clips I took with my camera during Regina Spektor's set. 10-30 second clips of pure wonderful live music.

My friends are super intense. Well, except for AJ on the right.

Dillo Day draws both students from my school and residents of the town around campus. Hence the extremely large amount of people.

As I mentioned earlier this week (maybe last week) I wore a white dress and my flower crown, which I got a lot of compliments on. Notice my water bottle - essential for staying hydrated in temperatures in the mid-70s.

My friend Jon and I enjoying the day

Regina Spektor!

Larger, but blurrier Regina Spektor. Her guitar was green and really cool. 



Clips! Watch it, enjoy the small snippets of music and my terrible videography.

And we're almost there

I went radio silent (blog silent?) for a day, but I'm back! My first paper is done, and I have all of next week to write my other two with no pesky distractions like classes. It feels unbelievable to be done with classes for the year - in a little over a week I'll be a rising junior. And I'll be home, which is even more important. I didn't take an outfit photo yesterday - forgive me, I was up until 4 a.m. and turned my paper in five hours later, so I didn't have much time to get all pose-y. But I promise lots of pictures from tomorrow's festivities.
Today, in addition to being the day when Hanna gets very little sleep and spends the day in a caffeine haze was also the debut of the Summer 2010 issue of STITCH, the campus fashion magazine for which I am a writer. The trip that I took to the Art Institute in April was for a story I was writing and I can finally share it. For now I just have a nice jpg that I made from a pdf, but soon I will be able to link to the online version of the magazine. Let me tell you, this magazine is Legit. With a capital "L." I spent an hour at the table where they're being handed out and it's great to hear from people how professional it looks. In addition to writing an article I also assisted on a photo shoot which was tiring, but really fun. I can't wait to share all of it!

Today

Today was a day for...

Billowy floral tops...

Messy Braids...

Cutoffs...

Flower barettes...

Turtle earrings...

And laundry. See my drying rack in the background?
It was an exhausting day between class/working on my paper/doing laundry/picking up boxes for storage this summer. I'm so ready to be done, but there's so much to do! My life is turning into a regular stressfest. At least the heat is supposed to break a little bit tomorrow. If you're wondering what my outfit looked like all together, it looked like the outfit below, except with my cutoffs and a v-neck tank underneath the top shirt.
[Shirt: H&M, tank top: Old Navy, shorts: Gap (cut off by me), flower barette: homemade, earrings: gift]

Summer Goal #5

Yeah. I have more goals.
Summer Goal #5: Explore

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image source

I live in an area that's full or culture and history and interesting things to see. Not in my town, specifically (the mall is interesting, but not that interesting) but the DC area is full of cool places. And this summer, I want to explore them. I'll go down to the Mall of course, but I want to go to museums I've never visited, historical sites and do some shopping in places I've never gone before. I have the whole nation's capital at my fingertips and I'll be riding the metro a lot anyway. Might as well use it to go to some stops I've never been to. I might even go out into nature. As long as I don't have to do any real hiking, I'd like to see some real natural beauty - and take some pictures.

Great Falls Park - Maryland side, taken by me two years ago

Study Break

I took my pictures in about five minutes before going to the Daily - I think they pretty much sum up my life right now

Dress: vintage, headband: Gap (gift from my sister, years ago), sunglasses: Old Navy

Hot day, so I dressed simply. I switched out the belt that goes with the dress for a shiny black belt because I felt like mixing things up. But not very much, because I'm lazy. I put my hair up due to the heat. Milkmaid braids that go to the top of my head instead of what I usually do where they meet in the back - I just didn't want that much hair on my neck. The headband is one my sister gave me when I was in high school and in a skull phase. Yes, I had a skull phase. And a black nail polish phase. I was a tad bit emo in high school. But in a preppy way. In a pink-and-green hoodie to the My Chemical Romance concert way.

24, but not the Jack Bauer kind

Have I ever mentioned how awesome my sister is? Yes? Well let me mention it again. My sister is awesome. And, today, she's 24 years old!

Happy Birthday Liz!

Growing up four years apart, my sister and I started out at odds. I was the annoying younger sister, of course. Always talking, always knocking on her door trying to get her to play with me. Luckily, Liz has more patience than should be possible and didn't kill me when I was a child. Which is good, because when we got older, we became really good friends. I don't get to see her as much as I'd like, since she's back in Virginia in grad school and I'm all the way over here in the Midwest, but when we do get to see each other we have a lot of fun watching movies, going shopping and just being lazy. We are the queens of laziness. I can't wait to go home so that I can see her and hang out (and go see Eclipse in a month). Happy 24th Birthday Big Sister!!!

hot hot heat

It was hot today.

Shirt: GapKids, Tank top: Gap, shorts: made from a pair of Gap jeans, shoes: Minnetonka, headband: H&M

I don't wear shorts a lot. Mostly because I don't like how most shorts look on me but also because I just plain prefer skirts and dresses. But I decided to wear them today since I do like these shorts that I made from cutting the legs off a pair of jeans and it was really, really hot. Or at least, hot for May in Chicago. This time last year it was probably twenty degrees cooler. The women who work in the dining hall were all surprised to see me wearing shorts - I think my friends were too. Especially shorts this short. My skirts tend to be on the just-above-the-knee type and these shorts don't even pass the fingertip test (my middle school principal would be so disappointed). Nevertheless, I enjoyed doing something a little bit different. It was fun. But tomorrow it's back to skirts and dresses. Wearing shorts two days in a row would be bad for my image - I got a rep to protect.

My Weekend in film

I only watched a few movies this weekend as opposed to the five I watched the weekend before - a girl's got to get some work done sometime, after all.

The Sword in the Stone
I was in the mood for a nostalgia-fueled viewing of a Disney animated feature, and since my friend didn't have positive feelings toward Cinderella, I chose The Sword in the Stone. I never watched this movie very much as a child, probably because we didn't own it on VHS (it probably wasn't out of the vault or something), but I've enjoyed it every time I have watched it. I like the songs, with their made-up words and I have to admit, it's hard to resist the Arthurian fairy tale.

Amelie
As someone who loves all things whimsical, it's surprising that I hadn't seen Amelie before. It's been on my list of movies to see for a long time, but it took me til I noticed it was an instant watch on Netflix to actually watch it. And of course, I enjoyed it. It was of course, visually very pretty and I really liked the storyline. These past two weekends with Audrey Tautou have increased my desire to see Coco Avant Chanel - to the queue! I also never realized how much the Travelocity gnome owes to Amelie. That may have been my favorite storyline. It also proved reminiscent of one of my favorite brilliant-but-canceled shows, Pushing Daisies, which I suppose owes a fair amount to Amelie as well. The narration, colors, and childhoods of Ned and Amelie definitely drew similarities.

Seamless
I told you that I was obsessing a little bit over fashion documentaries, so it makes sense that I should watch Seamless. I started watching it a while ago, but never finished so I started from the beginning and watched the whole thing. Seamless follows the finalists for the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund in the first year of its existence, 2004. While it looks at all 10 finalists, the film focuses on Alexandre Plokhov of the now-defunct Cloak (I believe he currently designs for Versace), Doo-Ri Chung of Doo.Ri and Jack McCullough and Lazaro Hernandez of Proenza Schouler. Seamless profiled all three designers as well as their businesses, emphasizing how hard it is for new designers to survive in the fashion world. It was amazing to see how much passion all the designers had for their work even when they had few resources and knew that they would have to work for years and years before even the possibility of making a profit. Aside from the designers, it was also great to see how much people in the industry care about bringing in new talent and nurturing it.

Music Monday

Today's Music Monday is themed based on the weather. Enjoy!

Like Seven Inches From the Midday Sun

I believe I mentioned yesterday how unhappy fire alarms make me, especially when they wake me up. Little did I know yesterday that the fire alarm incident would be repeated. At 4:30 a.m., the alarm went off again. And So, out of a deep sleep I had to get up, find keys and shoes and get out of the building. For 20 minutes, we stood outside and then it was back to bed, but waking up this morning was all the more difficult because of it. Tonight's going to be an early night for me because of that and because of the extremely busy week I have coming up. A presentation, a paper, a book to read - I'm grateful that the quarter is coming to an end, but sometimes winding down feels like revving up.
On top of that, spring has finally come and passed us by, leaving us with summer temperatures. Today's high was in the mid-80s which would have been pleasant had I been prepared, but of course I wasn't. Chicago must be getting back at all of us who complained about the cool spring weather we were having. The next three days are supposed to hover in the 80 degree range, which means I'll have to get creative because sweltering (for May) is not a good look on me. I am unprepared for summer. At least, I am unprepared for summer's heat.
I spent Friday and Saturday in boring black and white - all black on Friday and mostly black on Saturday, so I felt like finally adding some color today to wake myself up a little.

Shirt: H&M, skirt: Target

It was too hot to go anywhere so I stayed in my room for my pictures. Maybe the stairwell would have been cooler, but getting there would have exhausted the little energy I have left. When I get home I'll recapture my passion for taking pictures - right now my room is too messy and I've gotten tired of waiting until late at night to steal away to the stairs. In a couple of weeks, things will be better. Forgive me if posting is sporadic this week - next week I have two papers to write, but no class, this week I have much to do with class interspersed and work on Tuesday and Thursday and I think that on Friday afternoon I will collapse and take a very long nap.

Magical Mystery Tour

More photos, but not from me this time. I thought I'd share one of my favorite Flickr photostreams. Lissy Laricchia, aka Lissy Elle, a girl from Canada takes and makes some of the most magical photographs that I've ever seen. I'm entranced and amazed by all of the pictures and awestruck by the time she spends to create her images. I was first introduced to her Get Back in Your Book set, but I became acquainted with her other gorgeous images as well.

Check out her photostream here