Happy Friday!

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Happy, happy Friday, friends! The world didn’t end today! Tis the season to be jolly, indeed.

We have our respective Christmas dinner dates with the manfriends tonight and then we’re heading home to hug our family and immediately put on stretchy pants for the glorious few days ahead.

If you’re new to our blog and have landed here as  part of a rather strange surge in traffic from the term, “Emily Maynard Coral Skirt” — welcome! Nice to meet you 🙂 We don’t talk about Ms. Maynard all that often, but we’re glad you stopped by anyway.

There’s an awful lot of people to keep in our thoughts this holiday season — lots of craziness in the world lately, and we’re definitely counting our blessings. Thanks for reading, and have a very merry Christmas. (or happy holiday, whatever you may celebrate!)

Cheers!

We are LOVING this awesome holiday playlist  that we stumbled across over at hiphipgingin!

 

Happy Friday

This weekend is our family’s annual holiday party.  After taking a brief hiatus last year, the festivities are back in swing and we couldn’t be more excited!  While Mom has a full suite of holiday foodie favorites in the line up, this year Laura and I plan to force our homemade contributions into the fray as well (I think there’s an unspoken, general prayer that Laura doesn’t revisit pumpkin cheesecake underway, but I digress).  Though outfits are yet to be determined, we can promise chicken liver pate, grapes crusted with goat cheese and pistachios and spicy hummus – look for recipes soon.

Have a great weekend

Happy Friday!

image via Kayture – favorite new blog discovery!

Just a quick note to say happy, happy Friday.

We’re are seriously excited for our reservations at RPM tonight – Lobster Caprese? Don’t mind us, just drooling on the keyboard.

Hope you had a great week and an even better weekend coming up!

Happy Friday

 

 

We made it! Happy Friday 🙂 Fall has officially arrived and we’ve decided to face the tragedy of summer’s end head-on by what else? Shopping for sweaters and boots!

Busy but fun weekends on the books for both of us and we’re looking forward to sharing a lot of great posts next week.

This week, we added new pages to the top of the blog to categorize all of our posts so they’re more easily accessible. So much fun to look back on our posts over the past year. What is it about fall that makes us want to be that much more productive?  Left over effects from our school days, most likely! Someone buy us new trapper keepers, please and thanks.

Some reads for your weekend:

 

Jessie, the Design Daredevil with David Bromstad behind the scenes on the White Room Challenge

• We are BEYOND excited for our blogging buddy, the Design Daredevil.  Jessie will be tearing up HGTV tonight on the White Room Challenge! We already knew that she was gorgeous, talented and hilarious, but this story about her incredible passion for design and the struggles she has gone through to make her dreams happen really seals the deal – we are madly in love. Set your DVRs!
• We’ll never admit how much time we spent this week watching Bad Lip Reading videos on YouTube, absolutely CRYING laughing. Whatever your political leanings are, these are hilarious. (Thanks, Shai!)
• Martha Stewart’s Autumn Apple Recipe Guide has us drooling – but how to choose? Cheddar crusted apple pie? Apple butternut squash soup? Quinoa and apple salad with curry dressing? Yes please!
• Orrrr if you’d prefer a cocktail, check out Huffington Posts’ Top 5 Autumn Apple Cocktails – cheers!
• We loved this inspirational post over at Story of My Life on following your dreams and sticking with them.
• We cannot go on without knowing at some point in our lives we can be a Chengdu Pambassador – we share this opportunity begrudgingly. Hug a panda, guys!

Have a great weekend!

Happy Friday!

> image of Randolph Street Market via Michigan Avenue Magazine

We have been bad bloggers and haven’t done our “Happy Friday” posts in a while – but it IS Friday and I AM awfully happy about that, so here we go! We’re both pretty pooped from a long work week, but we MADE it and we’re ready for a good balance of fun and relaxation starting…. now.

Some fun reads that caught our eye or made us laugh:

• In Chicago? Join us! We are so excited to FINALLY check out Randolph Street Market tomorrow with DrunkOnShoes – urban treasure hunting, here we come!
• I JUST mastered curling my hair with a curling iron and now you want me to curl it with a flat iron? Well, okay.
• We immediately added this recipe for Roqamole (Roquefort Cheese + Avocado Dip) to our “MUST MAKE” list… droooooling.
• We can’t wait to get pups so we can publicly shame them for being assholes. In the meantime, we’ll just laugh at these.
• 100 Must Buy Shoes… must… purchase… leopard… flats.

Happy Friday!

> images via thelondoner.me

Between the Olympics and our new favorite blog, The Londoner, we have major London fever. We’ve alternated spending the week stalking Rosie’s drool-worthy food posts (and shoes!) and crying over Gabby Douglas’ amazing win.

Another hot weekend coming up that we intend to spend trying new restaurants, soaking up the sun at Ali’s pool, and getting some R&R.

Enjoy yours! 🙂

• Where has THIS tutorial been all of our lives? Master the art of falsies with the ever-awesome Beauty Department girls
• Square One just opened! We cannot wait to go check out the wine dispensers
• First, read this article on why Ryan Lochte is the best Olympian on Twitter…
• Then, watch this video of him defining the many uses of “Jeah” and love him even more for making fun of himself
• Speaking of videos, Tru continues to go above and beyond – levitating food? Incredible!
• From the amazing creators of Slightly Insulting Chicago Neighborhood Posters comes…. Slightly Insulting Olympic Posters!

 

Friday

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There are all different kinds of blogs, and we intend this blog to provide a quick distraction from everyday life with pretty pictures, recipes, or stories. But it seems wrong to ignore what a heartbreaking day today is after so many people lost their lives trying to get their own little moment of escape.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families in Colorado.

If you read one thing today, A Life to Bragg About reblogged a really touching entry by a military wife and mom describing her husband’s third deployment. Especially on days like today, its impossible to imagine sending your loved ones away to protect the lives we live and the country that allows it, but so many women and men do just that.

What a crazy world. Be safe,

Happy Friday!

Beautiful photo >via

Wellllllll, another day, another dollar. Another 5 days, that is, (so $5?)  and now it’s Friday and we’re so looking forward to a relaxing weekend. We’re heading out of the city to spend the weekend with our family and we’re counting down the seconds until we can be lounging on the patio with the fam, listening to music and catching up over an oversized glass of wine.

The summer is flying and its way too easy to forget to take it all in, so we intend to make the most of this relaxing weekend – that means reading, baking some goodies for the baby bro, and lots of time in the sun.

Cheers 🙂

• Despite TOC’s fairly skeptical review, we love this idea and will be stopping by soon to support a great cause. Panera opens a pay-what-you-can cafe in Lincoln Park
• The coolest mani ever – Astrowifey’s CTA nails!
• FaceMath: the only Tumblr that has even come remotely close to our love for soyeahduh
• We’re prettyyyy pumped that Taste of Chicago is both smaller and shorter this year. While it’s still not our cup of tea, you can try Asian Carp for free if you’re headed over to Grant Park! (Major WTF on that one)
• We could listen to Lisa Eldridge talk about pretty much anything all day long with that fabulous accent, but this video tutorial for a simple bronzed look is perfectly summery and especially worth the watch – we’ll be recreating as soon as possible!

Happy Friday!

 

How beautiful is that picture? Via esraroise.com, thanks Pinterest!

Wellllll like everywhere else in the U.S. of A., it’s awfully hot. But, we’ll survive and make the most of it, twist our arms. It kind-of-sort-of feels like a holiday weekend because of the upcoming 4th of July, but we both have a supershort week next week (Mon + Tues work week!) so we’ll hold off on the real festivities until the official holiday and impending long weekend.

Some reads for your commute home – stay cool, stay hot, whatever floats your boat (or just float in a boat)… have a great weekend!

• So cool – fingers crossed for the Magnificent Mile’s first green wall
• Super cute summer dresses under $50
• The infamous Chicago blogger soyeahduh’s hilarious take on the crazy Chicago heat
•  You can bet these taco cupcakes will be making an appearance at a Fourth of July BBQ this week!
• We can’t wait to make a similar version of this awesome DIY layered necklace
  

Happy Friday!

Happy Friday!

We are big on traditions in our family, and tonight we’re partaking in one of our absolute FAVORITE traditions for Laura’s birthday next week – birthdays at home. A few years back we realized that birthday dinners at our parents’ place suit us much better than a dinner out; we can all hang out in comfy clothes and just catch up over drinks and great food together. This particular celebration promises to be even better than usual (we didn’t think that was possible) because we’re also celebrating Father’s Day a few days early!

We got our love of champagne from our mama, it’s the perfect weather for dining al fresco, and we don’t want to assume anything, but OFTEN times said celebrations involve seafood of some sort… so tonight promises to be pretty much the best kick-off to a weekend ever with the people we love the most! We hope yours gets off to an equally awesome start.

Some fun reads for your Friday afternoon:

• Can we please have every. single. item in Amanda Uprichard’s summer collection?
• We want to live here! The Australian Cloud House
• Conan’s in town – check out this hilarious clip of Jack McBreyer from 30 Rock visiting Chicago’s infamous Wiener’s Circle
• Speaking of funny in Chicago, the lineup for TBS’ Just for Laughs Festival is here for comedy fans
• Our favorite meal of the day – a great roundup from Michigan Avenue Magazine of Chicago’s Best Brunches