One last picture of the Windy City.

There were a couple of questions in my comments I wanted to answer. HappyKatie wondered what I got at Lush.

Well, I got totally sucked in by their newest product, Shower Jellies. They are slabs of jiggly... well... jello like stuff that you can freeze, smoosh or cut out with cookie cutters then use as a shower gel. I got the The Big Calm... coconut and pineapple scent that is calming.

The soap in the upper right hand corner is Sandstone Soap. It actually has sand embedded on one end for exfoilation. I am always very smooth after a week at the beach so I have big hopes for this soap.

I also got a Magic Muscles Massage Bar. It has cinnamon, spice oils and aduki beans that will help relax sore muscles. Oh and I got a little tin to put it in.

I also got goodies for friends at home, but I can't remember what they were. I pretty much based all those purchases on how good stuff smelled.

Lady S wanted to know what Amy Sedaris was doing with the wand in the multi picture I posted.

She was demonstrating how you can use a wand to make guests think you use magic in the kitchen. You can see it here in the this video clip. (the video is cropped funny because a certain someone was holding the camera vertically for the video.... I'm not gonna name names, but let's just say HE feels a little silly now. I was able to rotate it with an iMovie plugin I downloaded. )

More around Chicago

We went for breakfast at Orange... I have wanted to eat there ever since Giada went for Giada's Weekend Getaway.

Aaron got the french toast kabobs and I got Popeye's eggs. The frushi wasn't ready yet and I was bitterly disapointed. 

We went on the OFFICIAL Chicago Architecture Society's boat tour. The whole time the line "A three hour tourrrrrr" was going through my head. 

Chicago's famous Garrett Popcorn. The cheese popcorn is good. The caramel popcorn is good. Combine them together and they are fannn-tastic!

Katie from happykatie.com caught me taking a picture of a bus stop on the street. She is just about the nicest person I have ever met. And she directed me to Filenes Basement. 

Piglet enjoyed shopping on the Magnificent Mile. Piglet spent way too much at Lush. 

 
 

I find myself attracted to this trolley. Must be the name.

Would someone drag me away from this bean?!

Other notes and observations

My hair, albeit short, doesn't do well in humidity

I am going to have some shoulder issues this week after carring my laptop everywhere this weekend.

Stuffed pizza is good. 

I need to order more moo cards.

BlogHer Closing Party

The party was hosted by Dove. As part of their freedom to go sleeveless campaign, they had t-shirts and supplies, so you could cut them up and make your own funky t-shirt.

Elizabeth Edwards was the closing speaker and she attended the party too.

I have to say that BlogHer was a super experience. Hearing panelists talk about a topic that I enjoy so much was a treat. I also loved meeting other bloggers and readers of my own blog. I had a great time!

The Art of Crafting

Amy Sedaris and Piglet

Really... need I say anything?

When I apologized for how grubby Piglet she said... "Oh that's okay... he's a dirty toy"




Amy was on a panel with Kristen of Craft Leftovers, Natalie of coquette.blogs.com and Crafty Chica... Kathy Cano Murillo who I was thrilled to meet in person. I think this was my favorite session of the conference.

Excellent.

BlogHerers at lunch


Piglet came to Chicago too.




Woah... Edy's parked outside of Haagen-Daz... there is going to be an ice cream rumble.




at the Navy Pier... the short get shorter and the tall get taller

Pictures from BlogHer





I am liking the Art of Life Sessions




Full room! Note the guy right smack in the middle.




I am meeting so many cool people... long time readers and even someone from Rochester that lives a few blocks from me!

Starting in the upper left and moving clockwise...Tricia at cheekyattitude.com, Jenn from jenandtonic.ca, Donna from donnadeclemente.typepad.com and Monica from nupboard.blogspot.com.

Monica (Lady M) even brought me a gifty! Too cute!

Pics from around Chicago





Okay... so I am a wee bit obsessed with THE BEAN.

The Hotel



There was a big plum pillow on my bed.




Remember those crocheted doll cozies your grandma had on her extra roll of tp?

This is the upscale version.




These mirrors are evil. I thought... oh I just take a little look see. Yowza! I do not need to see my pores that close!




They are filming the next Batman movie outside my hotel! Nothing like hearing gunshots and seeing a helicopter fly down the street at traffic light level!

I made it to Chicago in one piece and am at the BlogHer Conference. Currently waiting for The Art of Storytelling session to start.

Already collected my goodie bag and met a few readers! Too cool.

Aaron gets here this evening and is going to attend the conference tomorrow... which I am quite pleased about.

I left my camera cable in the hotel room, so no pictures til tonight.

Now it must be obvious that I am pretty busy most of the time. And when you are busy all the time, things fall through the cracks. 

I was reading through the sessions that are going to be at BlogHer and I noticed that Kathy Cano Murillo was going to be there. Then it hit me. Over a year ago Crafty Chica sent me a copy of her book Art de la Soul so I could read it and blog about what I thought. Ewwww yeah... never got around to that. Goodness knows what happened... but how horrible that I forgot. 

Anywhooo, I did read it and it is awesome. I even made my friend Kenn from Mexico City read it and he oohed and ahhed over it. It made me want to do some sort of crafts that reflect my half Korean heritage. It's hard not to get excited over her vibrant and colorful craft ideas. 

Now that I am on a roll... here is a shout out to Threadbared. I read Mary's blog for quite awhile and she sent me a copy of her book when it came out too. It is hilarious and now I can't throw out any of the old knitting and sewing magazines I have sitting around.

There... I feel so much better now.

My bug turned over 50,000 miles and I totally missed it. I meant to pull over and take a picture of the speedometer, but I somehow missed it. 

Maybe I should get it some of these VW decals to celebrate.

Aaron brought me home this ladybug cupcake. It was so cute and tasty... but the icing turned my mouth black. Not. Good.

I really should have posted this sooner, but I am going to be at BlogHer in Chicago this weekend! (look down at the "C's"... it's me!) I am not exactly speaking, I am going to be working at the Taking Your Blog to the Next Level Lab segment. I will be there to help anyone that wants to learn how to start their blog on Blogger.

Sooooo...

#1 Is there anyone out there that plans on going?

#2 What are some of the must visits for Chicago? I have never been to Chicago before. I know I want to go to Minnies. Minnies serves itty bitty food. Hee heee!

One of the great things about living near the Erie Canal is biking on the canal path.

Today we went to pick up MY NEW SCOOTER! It took us awhile to find one that was small enough for me and we decided on a Buddy. And I got it in pink! I can hardly stand it.

I have to get my insurance and registration and then Aaron is taking me out to practice riding. I am guessing that since I now have it... it will rain the rest of the week... I'm pretty sure.

We picked up my scooter from a shop by Ithaca, so we spent the afternoon there and had dinner at Moosewood to celebrate the new the new scooter.

Pictures of the new scooter and our afternoon in Ithaca are on My Gallery.

I happened to be near the Art-O-Mat at the RoCo recently so I thought I see what I would get. This time I got a pair of glass bead earrings. What a surprise. I love them! I love Art-O-Mat.

Our CSA farmer told us he dehydrated watermelon and it turned out like delicious fruit leather. We have successfully dried bananas and apples in our food dehydrator so we were pretty excited. Aaron sliced up half a watermelon and it sat in the hydrator for 24 hours.

It tasted horrible. It tasted like rotten watermelon. Anyone out there ever dehydrate watermelon with better results? Or have other good dehydrating ideas/recipes? 

Bleah.

When we went to see Guster, they made a point of showing that they no longer drank from plastic bottles, but they all used recyclable aluminum water bottles. I meant to look into them but forgot about it until I saw these Sigg bottles at Wegmans. 

I have read things about plastic water bottles like they are made from PET (petroleum based plastic) and only 14% of them end up being recycled. Of the ones that are recycled they are just reduced to a lower level plastic that is then not recycled. 30 million PET water bottles go into US landfills EVERYDAY. 

Reusable water bottles sense. Especially the fact that bottled water isn't any different than tap water. Why pay for it?

I used to have a Nalgene bottle at work... but someone TOOK it! Yuck! Who does that? Well, it is gone now and I am looking at these cool Sigg bottles. I had a few questions like, is the aluminum harmful? The website fact page says that the bottles have liners that ensure 0% leaching.

Now I just have to decide what design I want.

We have been getting a lot done outside lately. Working outside involves a lot of carrying piles of dirt, weeds and plants from one place to the next. I am currently drooling over these Tubtrugs I saw on NotMartha and Da*xiang.

I love the different sizes, the colors and the flexibilty. The website says they are frost and UV proof, superstrong yet flexible. I can think of a hundred things we could have used one for... building our patio, planting our front garden, cleaning out the garage...

Remember the strawberry popcorn I planted in my garden last year? Well, we were sitting around the firepit when I got the bright idea to pop it in our outdoor popcorn popper. 

It popped... quietly and without much gusto. Look at the tiny little kernels we ended up with. 

We won't be putting Orville Redenbacher out of business anytime soon. (check out Orville's gourmet recipes!)

Today we went to Homearama. There were only 5 houses instead of the usual 10 and they were smaller, but I still saw some neat stuff...

I loved the floor of this walk in shower. It is made up of lots of little pebbles.

One house was decorated in an Italian theme. I loved this table in the kitchen set up as though someones grandma had been making Sunday dinner.

This was the best kid's room... decorated all in a Monopoly theme! So cool.

This was such a nice room. The jars on the shelves all have sand in them with labels like "Nantucket", "Cape Cod" and other beaches. A beach collection!

I took lots of pictures...  you can see more of Homearama in my Gallery.