Some lo-fi/dreamy goodness for a gray day.
(1st song via Be Nice Art Friends)

A jam-packed weekend of endless errand running, shopping (with Billy! he’s a good shopper, I love it), eating delicious food (japanese, cuban, american), planning for my class tomorrow, planning and packing for our trip to LA this week, and somehow trying to fit in time to work on a freelance design project. My brain nearly overheated Sunday evening, I swear.

We leave for LA bright and early tomorrow morning for the week to drive a car instead of getting trampled on the train (true story, had a horrid experience on the 7 on Sunday), lay on the beach, eat tacos, and hang out with my uncle and coworkers (my work is also in LA). If it hadn’t been such a crazy past few weeks, I would have been on top of my shit and had guest Bits Of My Weekend bloggers like last night. But that did not happen. So, I’ll see you in a week! I’m going to do my best to ignore the internet all week because I desperately need it, so if I owe you an email, you’ll have to wait a bit longer.

This week has been kind of crazy for me, so just a few great blog posts I had time to love:

Until Famapa blogged about it this week, I had no clue Stockholm had such crazy awesome subway stations. She posted some great links to photos, like this one above. Sometimes I feel like I’m in a cave when I’m in the NYC subway stations – nasty stalactite-looking drips that I don’t care to know the source of, and dripping water – so why not just embrace it and go for a cave decor?

Marta makes me feel lame for not making special Sweet Dreams packaging for my necklaces. Look at those beauties! Dang. via Amy

Seeing what Martha’s been working on lately made my heart skip a beat. Those colors!! I cannot wait to see her Fall collection.

Have a great weekend, everyone! I am so looking forward to sleeping in til an unreasonable hour tomorrow.

I told Billy that due to having a pretty crappy week, we could do whatever he wanted on Saturday, no questions asked. So that is how we ended up at a Mets game. Watching a baseball game is like watching paint dry to me, but at least it’s the perfect excuse to eat food that’s bad for you (Shake Shack at Citi Field FTW!) and people watch. Plus it was unbelievably gorgeous out, so it wasn’t all bad. Later that night we wished good friends a happy birthday while I tried to become a person who can drink whiskey on the rocks (fail). Sunday I didn’t get dressed until 6pm (true story) when I headed out to meet Lisa for a special showing of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off during the Film Society’s John Hughes day. His family was there, and Jason Reitman introduced the movie, PLUS we saw Molly Ringwald leaving Pretty In Pink! All in all, totally worth putting pants on.

Also, it wasn’t over the weekend, but I just wanted to mention that my jewelry class started last night and it went fantastic! I love everyone in the class and my nervousness melted away pretty quickly. Lena is really wonderful and I’d highly recommend taking one of the classes at her studio! Plus she has the best dachshund on the planet. I can’t wait for next week’s class already.

Because my film photos are split into two different weekends, I thought I’d split the posts up too between today and tomorrow, so as to not overwhelm you with 23 photos all at once. Plus, the weekends were so incredibly different it’s too weird to combine them. I used a different film, Fuji X-TRA 800, than usual (Fuji Pro 400H) because I wanted a faster speed since I knew I’d be taking a lot of indoor photos. I’m not super crazy about the results. The higher speed barely helped the low light, the contrast is a little higher than I like, and it did strange things to the color in shades of light. But, I’m not unhappy with them at all. Anyway, here’s last weekend!

24 hours in Philly is not enough. But then again, 24 hours is a perfect little trip, and we got most of Sunday to relax and not feel overwhelmed by going back to work Monday. We took a crazy cheap Megabus ride, which was an incredibly pleasant experience (I braced myself for a similar horrid Chinatown bus to Boston trip I had once), and stayed in a great little B&B that was super affordable. We ate oysters (and fries, and clams, and and and), hand-made ice cream, and downed delicious cocktails*. We walked and walked and WALKED and gawked at beautiful old buildings, and did a marathon-trip through the museum of art. We barely skimmed the surface, and I wish we could have seen more, but there’s always next time. And of course, I bought a bottle of SNAP. Which, who am I kidding, is the main reason I wanted to go to Philly.

*We basically planned our itinerary around the Num Num Girls‘ trip to Philly. I trust Caroline and Lisa with all my food eatin’ heart.

Today is Kate Miss Day* in the Blogosphere, so check me out on Modish as Jena’s first blogstar, and also myself and that wonderful boyfriend of mine are on You Are My Fave as a featured cool couple. Gemma Correll made this awesome illustration of us for the series, which makes me jump up and down with excitement. It might need to be our Christmas card this year**.

*Alright, not true at all.
** OK, you got me again. we do not send Christmas cards.

Songza contacted me to see if I wanted to create a music station on their site with a collection of my favorite songs, and I was like, hey why not? So scoot over yonder if you’re having a case of the Mondays and listen to what gets me through the day.

And then because it feels weird to have a music monday post without a video, a Corinne Bailey Rae song from her newish album, which I really like to listen to while I work. Love that girl.

So I’m sure by now you’ve heard about this crazy tornado-like storm that rolled through NYC last night? It was quite possibly the craziest thing I’ve ever witnessed. I’ve seen storms back in the Northwest, but a storm that only lasts 30 minutes that intensely strong? Madness I thought reserved only for the Midwest. It did the worst damage in Brooklyn, where Jenna took this incredible photo above, and in Flushing, Queens, where Billy’s school is. It took him FOUR HOURS to get home last night, when it normally takes 45. He’s going in to take pictures today if the buses are actually running, he says it’s like a war zone. I’m sick of reading comments on news sites from Midwesterners telling us to quit our bitching. When a tree falls in NYC, it most definitely hits something! You have to understand that a city this compact is so easily affected by the smallest interruptions.

For my fellow Gleeks: behind the scenes of the new season.

The Reluctant Father: an incredible photo series and words from a new father about his transformation from confused to pure love. Left me so misty eyed yesterday, I dare you to not feel moved by its honesty and love. via P.

I’m so inspired by Silvia’s DIY table made with hairpin legs. I don’t even need a new table, but I want to get some myself!

I can’t stop staring at this beautiful photo by Paul Octavius that Alison posted in her blogosphere round-up on Etsy. The colors are amazing, I want to make a necklace inspired by them.

I’m finishing up my roll of film this weekend, so Bits Of My Weekend should come on Tuesday when I get the photos back. Have a great weekend, everyone!

Please excuse the iPhone photo. I took a film photo but I’m too excited to wait til next week when I get my film back to post this. You can pretend it’s a real Polaroid? Yeah right.

Last night I made what I consider to be The Best Recipe Of The Entire Summer. Great timing with summer coming to an end in just a few days, I know, but this perfect perfect (PERFECT!) 75 and sunny weather makes me actually want to cook up summer food. I came across this recipe for a fun spin on the traditional chicken salad recipe on GOOP (don’t judge, the food and heath stuff is great, I just ignore the insufferable shopping and travel rec’s) and knew I had to try it because it sounded so simple and made of everything I love. And I was right. It’s so delicious I want to shout the recipe from the rooftops. Stop people on the street and shake their shoulders, shouting: “YOU HAVE TO TRY THIS RECIPE!!” I think you could even make a vegan version with tofu (baked?) and veganaise and it would still be pretty delicious. I served it open-face on top of crusty sourdough bread, with corn on the cob and a peach, plum and cantaloupe salad with a dash of honey, and a SNAP dark ‘n stormy, of course. Heaven.

Chicken Salad (from GOOP)
* 2 1/2 cups shredded cooked chicken (poached or roasted is good, incidentally this is great recipe for leftovers) (kate: I pan-cooked strips of chicken breast)
* 1 large stalk celery, cut into 1/4” dice
* 1/2 green apple, peeled and cut into 1/4” dice
* 1/3 cup toasted walnuts, roughly chopped (kate: we didn’t have any so I skipped it, which still turned out great)
* 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
* 2 scallions, thinly sliced
* 2 handfuls arugula, roughly chopped (kate: I used mâche as that’s what we had)
* 1/2 cup Veganaise, or your favorite mayonnaise (kate: I used regular ol’ mayo)
* 2 teaspoons fresh lime juice
* coarse salt to taste (about 1/2 teaspoon)
* freshly ground black pepper to taste (about 1/2 teaspoon)

Stir everything together.

Fall done right at Totokaelo.