Houseshow recap

So, the houseshow was completely lovely.

It's always a push for me to feel like my home is adequately prepared for guests. It's my easiest stresspoint, I think, and I get irrational and testy about how hard I perceive it's going to be to clean up and make food and get myself presentable plus be welcoming when the people come. For my dad, it was getting the car packed for roadtrips. For Tim, it's memory cards with wedding pictures on them before they're backed up. We all have the easy stresspoint. Mine is my house before people come over.

But Tim and I finally created this and I sighed and snapped a picture right as Sara pulled up. I should add that, weeks later, those flowers are still in that vase on the right and they're totally dead and gross. We don't keep up appearance when we aren't having people over, which is probably why I try to have at least monthly gatherings here. Good motivation.

If I ever wondered at some point in the planning process "Why am I doing this?", I was immediately reminded as soon as we all got settled in our cozy, softly lit living room with our dear friends and Sara's sweet voice washed over me and I just melted into the experience. I love live music. And I love my home and my friends. The perfect blend of those three things was a profound gift to me. It was an I'm so lucky! moment. And those are always the best.

I was hoping for a packed house so Sara could walk away with a fat bankroll of sweet tips, but we were a sparse group of 14. It's probably just as well since we have a third floor apartment in a quiet neighborhood. Even though we invited our neighbors, none came so I was worried about bothering them. But no one complained! So either we weren't that loud or they're just very tolerant. Both work for me. The people who came were incredibly attentive, appreciative, and generous listeners. I think Sara was happy, so that's all that matters.

Sara is one of those sparkly-eyed people. Have you met one of them before? They just keep sparkling at you and they can hold a genuine smile in their eyes for hours and even talk through a real, honest, from the heart smile. It's really impressive.

Kate and Joel right up there, you guys. They're cute.

Just to convince you to come to our next Houseshow, take in the video below. Sara gave me permission to share this even though this brand new song of hers isn't finished yet and it's not going to stay the way it is in the video. She's about to move to London on a wonderful new adventure, and this song really captures that sure anticipation of leaving behind and beginning again. I love it.

25

A quarter of a century, I am. Every birthday is so special. I've somehow been blessed enough to go to sleep at the end of every March 10th feeling loved by the people around me, and this year it happened again.

On Friday night our core group of friends celebrated Gabrielle's birthday. Since mine was on Saturday she pulled me up to stand with her during the singing and blow out candles with her. 

This picture totally outs a bad habit of mine. Does anyone else pick at their fingers when they get nervous? Am I alone in this primal habit? 

Moving on.

On Saturday I woke up and opened packages my parents and sister sent to me. Packages! What a thrill. Just like that time when I was in 5th grade and Mom sent a batch of cookies to me while I was at camp.   Then I ate a donut for breakfast. Happy birthday to me. 

By then Oak Park was starting to heat up for the St. Patrick's Day Parade: streets blocked off, drunken shenanigans at Starbucks at 9am and such. I have to be honest here and admit that I really don't like St. Patrick's Day. It's probably my least favorite holiday along with Halloween. I hope we can still be friends now that you know that. I like other holidays. Probably every single other holiday. 

Tanget?

So after the donut we drove into the city for a much more peaceful ambiance. The weather was clear and beautiful and Tim's surprise lunch for me was at the Hancock Tower Signature Room. The view was breathtaking which means that I couldn't breathe for a second when we stepped off the elevator at the 95th floor of the building where OPRAH ALSO LIVES. She was probably there, somewhere on a floor below us, lounging in her vast lounging rooms with her cocker spaniels. 

The Signature Room is surprisingly affordable and family friendly, and I really liked that about it. All kinds of people were there, including families with little kids who were positively giddy about being so high up. It was a great atmosphere.

I love that Chicago is not landlocked. I feel better when I can see an end to the land and an expanse of water.

My husband. He still feels like my new boyfriend. He's the best guy and I'm so excited to be his girl.

After that we rode the elevator back down 95 floors to the ground level and wandered into the North Face. I've been wanting a new coat that's not my standard black, and I also wanted to wait till Winter was over so I could get it on the cheap. After much agonizing I picked up a white outer shell windbreaker that was on sale and realized I could take my tried and true 4 year old black insulator jacket and zip it into the inside of the white outer shell for a warm winter coat option, or wear the shell alone as for a Spring windbreaker. It was the perfect birthday present and I handed it to Tim and he took it to the counter and bought it and then I put it on for the rest of the day.

Then we went to the Old Town to meander a bit before stepping into A New Leaf, which is basically a cave of botanical wonders. Tim wanted me to pick out a bouquet of flowers to take home because he's sweet like that.

And then we spent the rest of the day at home. Tim played and sang me a beautiful rendition of "Happy Birthday" and we snuggled and ate guacamole.

It was a perfect spontaneous day. 

It's good to be 25. I'm finally feeling like I know a thing or two. I also felt like that at 18, and then I went to college and realized I didn't know anything. I suppose I feel the smartest when I'm not in school.
The end.

January recap + first impressions of Oak Park

Well. where did January go?
We got on a plane to leave France on January 10th and landed directly into a whirlwind of activity that has only recently settled down. Moving mostly looked like this:

I thought we'd be able to make a quick job of it, but I was wrong. As soon as we got back to the States,  the busyness of high booking season swamped us. For a solid week, I did nothing but email with potential new clients and arrange meetings to talk to them about shooting their weddings.  

Friends and neighbors who may ever consider hiring a wedding photographer: don't wait until the second week of January! This is when EVERYONE else starts their wedding vendor search for the coming year and dates fill up so fast.  Also, September is apparently the new June when it comes to prime wedding dates. I am sad to be missing two very dear friend's weddings this year because we already had their dates booked, but we're also feeling extraordinarily blessed to have a full year of work ahead of us. 

More on that later. 

What you need to understand right now is that we lived in that chaos pictured above for about 10 days longer than originally planned because clients and meetings trump packing and moving. And I only had one tantrum about it.

I've picked up a few easy transition skills due to my nomadic tendencies, and this is one pictured above is a favorite. The first belongings I bring to a new house are always very dear to me. It helps me form an attachment to my new home and feel like it's my safe place. This is the "Je t'aime" (I love you) print I got for Tim for his 25th birthday last April and it also served double duty as decoration at our wedding. I know I'm long overdue on telling those stories, but just love me and forgive me. I'll get back into it soon! 

Tim, iPhoning on the office floor before furniture got there. Do you know how dangerous it is to iPhone this way? If you get too relaxed, you're liable to drop your iPhone onto your face, which HURTS and you can guess how I know this to be true. I still do it this way, though. Tim too. We like to live on the edge. 

Snow and 20 degree temps doesn't stop us from asking 6 of our closest to haul our shtuff up to the 3rd floor. Look at these troopers. 

Just look at them I tell you! Amanda (in the red scarf) is 8 months pregnant here--not that you could tell because she's still looking so fine-- and she even helped haul in boxes and load up my new kitchen.

Side note: when Tim got dressed that morning, he specifically said he wanted to wear his yellow hoodie because Peter always wears his own identical yellow hoodie when he has to do manual labor and then they'd match. That's what best grown men friends do I guess? 

Seriously--our friends worked so hard to help us get settled. They got all cold and sweaty and bruised and sore just so we can live comfortably in our new apartment. That was such a gift. 

Our first breakfast in our new apartment. We take breakfast pretty seriously, if you can't tell. 

The view from our new office. 

We are seriously loving Oak Park. It's the perfect blend of city and suburb. We can walk to a grocery store or walk to the El stop and take the train downtown. The architecture is amazing and keeps me so inspired. It's quiet. It's old. It's diverse. It's almost perfect. 

One of the most refreshing aspects of it for me has to do with race relations and city planning. I lived in Kansas City for 5 years before coming here, and as much as I loved that town, it was hard to deal with the after-effects of racist city planning that took place in the early 1900's. Even now, Kansas City people and neighborhoods are very monochromatic and there is little overlap and interdependence between the black and white communities.  Every day as I went from school to work to church, I passed back and forth between two opposing worlds that had such a hard time intertwining. I thought this was normal in the MidWest, but Chicago is proving otherwise to me now.

Especially Oak Park. It turns out that while Kansas City was tightening their hold on segregated neighborhoods, Oak Park was making concerted efforts to integrate the community and enforce fair housing regulations. I can really feel this missing tension when I walk around the Lake Street shopping district, meet my apartment neighbors, or sit in a pew at a neighborhood church on Sundays.  People look each other in their different colored eyes and smile around here, and it's made a wonderful impression on me. 

Have a wonderful Monday, you dear people.

we're moving!

And now for a post where I don't overthink my life too much and just tell you what's new:
We're moving in January. In Chicago, also known as the Windy City, where the wind chill is known to cut through layers of wool and leather, straight down to souls, and makes eyes water not just because it's a physiological reflex, but because being outside in that weather just makes you sad. It's going to be great!

The first time I came to visit Tim in Chicago, we spent a Sunday afternoon at a dear family friend's home in Oak Park. As we were driving through this neighborhood, the old architecture turned me into a rubber neck and I suddenly piped up: "Where are we right now?!".
"My mom grew up here," Tim answered.
That's a valuable statement for a guy who was raised in France and didn't come to the states to live until he was 18. This neighborhood has rich history for him. I find this so fascinating; my mother-in-law grew up marinated in the culture of Oak Park, then moved to France, fell in love, and raised her children there. Without even realizing it, she must have continued to live and teach cultural norms specific to Oak Park to her children, and when Tim decided to go to college in Chicago and encountered his mom's old neighborhood, he felt like a certain amount of "home" was there too.  I loved it.

Tim's parents own the place we live in now and we've been renting from them. It's been great, but now that Tim's brother and sister in law are expecting a little one, they need these three bedrooms and finished basement more than we do, and we want to be closer to the city for work anyway. The first place we looked was Oak Park. After seeing a couple of duds and getting discouraged, I got a call back from a building management company that had advertised an apartment with lots of windows. We went to see it, and fell in fast, optimistic, googly eyed love. We do that a lot.

This is the building; a concave structure with the ethereal light of heaven shining down into everyone's homes and hearts.

This is that wind I was telling you about. Flattering, no?

There was a problem: we saw the apartment at the beginning of November and couldn't move in until end of January. We knew it would be gone by then, so I called up the building manager and expressed my undying love and affection for her apartment and begged her to please call us in January if another one came open. She must have found my begging to be charming because she replied that they might hold it for us if we put in an application fast enough. So we did and we were approved. We decided to go see the apartment again and think realistically about living without a dishwasher or in-unit laundry, on the third floor without an elevator. It turns out that modern inventions can't trump natural light and deep, deep closets or free radiator heat.

This is our new place: