'Cuse Graduation

I officially have a master's degree! Actually, not officially yet, I still have the next 3 weeks in Charleston, SC as my capstone. Forgive me as this blog gets shoved to the back burner for that time; I'll be busy with that and this past week I moved from Syracuse back to the Chicago burbs... you never really realize how much stuff you have until it has to be packed in boxes and loaded into the back of a truck.

 

But can we talk about the ridiculous design of my grad robes for a second? Look at that stupid, hanging, square sleeve! If anything, it should be hanging off the bottom of the whole sleeve, but it isn't, it's actually hanging from the top. Dumb. 

And the hood had a point on the but that hung right above the butt. I dubbed us the Dinosaur Crew.

 

The many ways to wear a master's hood, neither of which are correct.

 

On the drive home, we stopped at this huge gorge with 3 waterfalls in the Finger Lakes, this one was on Cayuga. And notice I'm wearing a t-shirt and sweatpants. That will never happen again in public. I had a 13 hour drive ahead of me, real clothes were not going to happen. 

Upstate NY can be pretty sometimes!

Kate Middleton + HATS

It's the eve of my grad school graduation and I find myself... cruising through a Kate Middleton lookbook from Nylon Magazine. I ignored the whole royal wedding when it was actually occurring, which is surprising, given my involvement in the bridal industry. It was on a Friday (I think?) and started like something like 5am. No, thank you.

But I finally caved and checked out her style. She dresses how I'd expect British royalty to dress: preppy, classy, and generally fabulous. But the one thing that struck me about her coords were her hats! She wears a ton of them, and they're not boring either. Maybe it's just a British thing, but I would loooooove to see people incorporating hats back into evening looks or when attending events. They just make an outfit twice as interesting. Hats in America have basically evolved into baseball caps and knitted winter berets. Pretty unfortunate, compared to what hats used to mean back in the early twentieth century.

DIY Newspaper Clutch

And a very happy rainy spring day to y'all! Yesterday I took my last final ever (EVER), and while it was not my finest academic moment, it was my last formal academic moment so yay to that. I just realized I haven't posted a DIY in a long time so let me scroll the depths of my super secret blog photos archive and see what's lurking around unpublished...

NEWSPAPER CLUTCH!

I've had this obnoxious  fuchsia clutch from UO hiding out in the back of my closet for years. I've never actually used it because it's a really awkward size and I honestly don't even like clutches that much. But I saw this awesome tutorial on I SPY DIY for modpodging a clutch. As any former Girl Scout should, I love mod podge. And this project looked very journalistic to me, so I decided to revamp the little pink box.

I conveniently made this project on daylight saving time day so the Chicago Tribune was full of pictures of famous clocks and very proper noun heavy with famous city landmarks. Perfect!

You can't go wrong with mod podge. If you think something looks dumb, just paint more glue and slap a different section of newsprint over it. I coated my clutch with the glue, stuck a chopped piece of newspaper over it, and layered with more glue. 

I left pieces of print hanging over the sides of the clutch until they dried, then trimmed them off using an exacto blade. 

Each of the two sides look a little different. For the "Chicago" side, I glued my main piece down first and then overlapped it with print. For the "Tribune" side, I glued the main piece over the others. Which side do you think looks better? I think I like the "Chicago" side better... and it has a picture of the Marshall Fields clock!

 

5 Essentials for Spring (In the South)

For my grad school capstone, I'll be going to Charleston, SC to cover the Spoleto Festival for The Post and Courier. There are many things about Charleston that I'm a bit apprehensive about...

1. It's in the South. I'm unfamiliar with that part of the country. I'm super Northern. That'll be interesting.
2. It's HOT there. I'm used to weather being in the 50s until halfway through June. Spring barely exists in Illinois. I prefer colder seasons because I like layering. You can only take so many layers off in the summer.
3. Along with the weather comes the wardrobe. I wondered outloud how many pairs of pants to bring and I was instructed by a colleague not to bring any. My summer wardrobe is very short on the bottom half... not exactly professional. Time to make that work.
4. It's near the ocean. I don't even understand. That's like a big lake, right?

SO here are my 5 items that I'd like to acquire in preparation for my Southern exposure. Hopefully I won't stick out like a sore thumb. And if I do... well, I don't like to blend in anyway!

MAXI DRESS

Ok, this is cheating a little. I bought this already. Maxi dresses have been trendy for the past few years or so but I've been avoiding them like the plague. I tried on a plain black one and I looked like a witch about to dance around a fire in the woods. Not that that's a bad thing... but I wasn't sold on the look yet. Luckily, I'm tall and can decently pull off a long dress. I bought this in the taupe color since it'd be cooler than black in the hot sun. And also, it's half sheer, giving it a more interesting detail than a plain knit. I even like the styling here which is really casual for a floor length dress. It's pretty versatile for dressed up or dressed down.

Dress from: Forever21

BLACK SANDALS

I barely have any sandals that I actually like. I'm a boot-girl. But I need comfy sandals to romp around the streets in. Most sandals are usually brown or white, black being the negetive winter color. I don't care, I want some black sandals. And a bit of platform is ok too; platforms are way less painful that heels.

Wedge sandals: Anthropologie

FLOPPY HAT

Hats are so underrated. I honestly think Britney Spears ruined any prospect of wearing a hat and looking cute in the early 2000s. But there's nothing more classy that a huge floppy hat at the beach.

Hat: ASOS

MEDIUM BAG

I need a medium sized bag, one that I can throw a notebook and a big camera in. I hate bags in general (What?! Yes, they're usually shiny and gaudy.) and I usually judge them on if I can fit school books and my laptop in them. Well, I'm about to no longer tote around school textbooks, so I need something smaller. Since I dress in neutrals frequently, I'm allowing myself to go all out on a colorful bag. I'm thinking something in an obnoxious yellow would be nice!

Bag: Chole (...I can dream, can't I?)

APPROPRIATE FOR INTERVIEWS DRESS

Yes, I struggle with buying appropriate length dresses. Usually it isn't a problem, but if I've got my professional face on, I need to have something a bit more conservative. This season sheer chiffon is everywhere, which is a good thing, because it's a breathable and flowy fabric in comparison to say, jersey material.

Dresses: yesstyle.com (BLAST. These are both soft neutral colors, aren't they? I'm hopeless.)

Grad School: NYC, Chicago, and the Future

I'm feeling rather melancholy this Sunday morning as I'm thinking about the homework I should be doing if I could be bothered to drag myself the 5 feet out of bed to where my radio book is sitting on the floor. That final is all that stands between me and graduation. Graduation. Again.

The 17^th grade is to be my last year of school. I love learning and always will, but I'm ready for Real Life now. One full year of information-packed graduate school was enough to fill my brain with things I didn't know I desperately needed to learn. Still, it's going to feel weird to have no papers to write, no tests to study for. I'm 22 years old. School has been all I've ever known.

I'm generally a quiet person who is extremely attached to my closest friends. Moving 4 states away to a place where I know nobody has been a huge test for me. In many ways it worked, in some ways it didn't. I did the whole internship in NYC like everybody else and I'm still not sure if I'd call it a success or not. Mostly, I'm disappointed in myself that I was mentally and physically unable to keep commuting the whole time, and switched to telecommuting halfway through.

I didn't see much of New York City. I've said it before, being very grounded in the landlocked Midwest made me prideful about where I come from, so I had a horrible outlook on NYC from the start. I interned there and that was it. I didn't go to Central Park, I only came within a far sight of the State of Liberty, and I never made it to the Ground Zero Memorial (which is what I'm most upset about. I wanted to see that. Every American should.). But honestly... I don't really care about the place. I wasn't happy there. NYC has the most opportunities in the magazine industry. That's where I should be working if I want to go far in my field. But it's not what I want. I want my real friends back and my family and the place I feel familiar and most comfortable with. And that's Chicago.

I've had this city-country-suburban struggle my entire life. I live in the burbs but am close enough to Chicago to go there whenever I want, and half my family lives 3 hours away in small town farmland Wisconsin, where I've spent a lot of time every school break. I'm as at home at the Metropolitan Opera House as I am drinking a beer around a bonfire while listening to a Sunday NASCAR race. And that's really confusing, but I like it that way. I'm not willing to give up my city or country side, and my suburban location makes that possible.

This is the last picture I took in NYC, out the window of my hostel on 14^th Street. It was an unusually warm day and all the trees were beginning to bud and flower. This is how I'm preferring to remember the city. Maybe I'll get back there one day, maybe not.