GIFT GUIDE

If you're anything like me you also haven't started Christmas shopping. I hope none of you are anything like me.

I'm mostly still trying to find something for my sister, but she's probably the most difficult person to buy for ever. (Closely followed by my Dad.) I've ran across a few things I think are pretty neat, but these mostly describe things I'd like.


This cheeky key


Literally everyone loves blankets


An ornament for the designer in your life


Mason Jar shot glasses... because why not?


A durable bag, I got this one recently and its been amazing (and surprisingly large)

Happy Holidays!

FRIENDSGIVING











This Thanksgiving marks my 4th away from home. My first two at college were spent at my friend Kendall's home, and last years was in New York City with another friend, Taylor. While all those have been fun, I'm tired of being felt sorry for and adopted by other peoples families. I'm also tired from all of the traveling I've already done in the past few months. That's why this year, I decided to hold my own "Friendsgiving."

Blogger buddies Natalie and Anastasia joined my friend Victoria and I in Upstate New York this holiday for some time of relaxation and great food. Wednesday before Thanksgiving we received about 8 inches of snow, making us stay inside and enjoy each others company. We began this fourth Thursday of November with homemade pumpkin cinnamon rolls  and apple cider mimosas while watching the Macy's day parade. Since I was actually at the parade last year I didn't feel overly inclined to watch it, so I mainly dealt with food preparation.

After we picked up Natalie from the train station we got cooking on dinner, in which our main dish was a baked acorn squash  that we stuffed with stuffing and topped with parmesan cheese. (It was ordinary seasoned stuffing mix that I added golden delicious apple, pecans, and dried cranberries to at the end. I put turkey sausage in the mix for the meat-eaters at the table as to not omit turkey from the meal.) We struggled through cutting some very large sweet potatoes, but it was so worth it after they were oven roasted with olive oil and cinnamon. Mashed potatoes were made in a slow cooker, just chopped up and left there for a while with garlic and a bit of water. Victoria prepared a version of cranberry sauce that was super easy and delicious, as well as some toasted bread with garlic and rosemary!

For dessert, we went with a traditional pumpkin pie, and some not-so-traditional chocolate glazed donuts. (For those of you who don't know, I purchased a donut pan a month ago and I do not regret it. Buy one and make donuts. Seriously.) All in all, it was a somewhat contemporary twist on a traditional Thanksgiving meal. More importantly, it was delicious, and shared amongst friends.

I hope everyone was able to enjoy the day(s) off from normal obligations to spend time with friends and family! 

TASTE OF THE FUTURE






So I'm moving to New York City.

Not like tomorrow, but January is pretty close as well. I applied and got into a program that the school of architecture offers which takes place in the city (on Wall Street, to be specific.) As the school year, and calendar year come to a close I should probably find a place to live but I'm not too concerned because I'm just really excited to not live in Upstate New York any longer. But I digress...

The photos I took in late October during an extended weekend to the city. After our design studio midterm, as a class we were required to attend a 'field trip' into the city that was more or less just an intensive architectural tour. We visited firms, iconic buildings and areas, and looked at large scale construction projects. I went down a day early for it and met up with Anastasia and Natalie for a fun filled day with some blogger buddies. We frolicked through central park, went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art -which I had wanted to do for a while now- and then grabbed a delicious meal at a hole-in-the-wall thai place in Hells Kitchen. Natalie had to leave, but Anastasia and I went to a funny little bacon themed bar and talked about life and stuff.

The next three days were a whirlwind of running around the city with my design professors, visiting offices like Grimshaw and SOM, and seeing the Lever House and Seagram Building. We went to the West side to see a Bjarke Ingles construction site and went to Long Island City to visit our structural engineering professor at his office. When we weren't all running around, I was hanging out with my friend Taylor who I went to high school with, but she now lives in the city as a recent NYU grad. One night we went to an underground comedy show in the village and got macaroons, and another morning we got an amazing brunch at an adorable restaurant called Penelope's. One of our days ended in Brooklyn, and that night we took the ferry south to the Brooklyn bridge.
As we travel on the water with the wind blowing, staring at the city skyline lighting up the night sky, I was so content with things. If I wasn't already infatuated with the city, I am now.

TORONTO // NUIT BLANCHE




As a senior in college, I have always been a firm believer in education. For the most part, I've spent so much of my life learning through the eyes of others; teachers, books, movies, and more. I'm not entirely sure what switch clicked lately, but I'm seriously questioning the education system - especially the path that I'm taking in architecture. Maybe it's the fact that I've worked in the field, or maybe it has to do with the recent discussions I've had with professors and students alike in relationship to the future of our field, but something has irked me as of late. What I really want to get at is: in a field that has everything to do with spatialization, we do very little actually exploring those spaces that are talked about to us on a daily basis. How much are we really able to apply to our own work if we lack a basic knowledge it what it really feels like to be within a designed space?

And maybe this is why I love to travel.

So, I traveled far north this past weekend to Toronto, Canada to see an art show called Nuit Blanche - an multitude of exhibits that take over the city for 12 hours, from 7 pm to 7 am. A professor I had last year and I'm still close with had a sponsored exhibit (the tentacle sculpture seen above) in it which was one of the main reasons for going and the other was two of my friends who graduated last year had also planned to go so I was able to see them for the weekend as well. Let me tell you, I loved Toronto. It was big, modern, clean, friendly and walkable. We ate some great food (yes, we went to the Loose Moose) and saw some amazing art installations. A lot of the exhibits were interactive, such as the doors seen above, which recorded the door that was walked through and collected the data in an info graphic which was almost a social study. Many played with light, like the Walk Among Worlds which was made up of thousands of inflatable globes. We also took a ride to the top of the tallest structure in north America, the CN Tower, which was absolutely surreal.

Overall I was absolutely exhausted, getting back to Syracuse at 5 am and getting up 3 hours later for my train ride back to Troy. I'm seriously asking for one of these for my birthday so I can start sleeping when I travel because I can't seem to do that.

This semester I only have two more trips planned but both are to New York City; one for a 3 day"field trip" for my design studio and another for an Alt-J concert in November. I'm ready for a weekend without travel.

SYMPOSIUM STYLE





While we were at our symposium over the weekend, my lovely friend Victoria (who went with us) took far too many photos of me when I was not paying attention. Most of them were pretty horrendous. Some of them are okay, like the ones above.

So when it came to attending a conference/symposium like where we were at - filled to the brim with architects, artists, and students - we knew we should be presentable, but there was no need for a suit and tie like the professionals that attended. I brought my go-to light blue shirt that basically matched with everything and paired it with my new favorite pair of pants, which are maroon. They work so well with the rest of the blue and grey clothing I have. They also matched Jessica's cardigan which is why we have this fierce photo of us above!  I thought I would channel some east coast prep with a pair of blue oxfords, and then had some fun with the nautical themed anchor socks.

If you know me, you know I love fun socks.

WEARING: JCREW SHIRT //   // LEVI 511 JEANS // 1901 BLUE SUEDE OXFORDS // UO SOCKS // OLD NAVY BELT // SUNGLASSES JCREW // BAG JCREW //

CAMBRIDGE






A few weeks ago, the professor for my "In Sensory Culture" class (it's an architectural professional elective) recommended we attend a Symposium at MIT. Friday, Jessica, Victoria, Jackson and myself drove down to Massachusetts Institute of Technology to attend Seeing/Sounding/Sensing, and not only did we hear from some very knowledgeable and interesting speakers but we also got to explore.

After Friday's speakers on Seeing, we hopped on a train into Boston, which is basically just across the river from Cambridge. We were able to meet up with some of our other friends for dinner who had decided to spontaneously hang out in Boston as well. None of us had eaten all day, so we met up near Copley Square and ate at Globe Bar and Cafe. Since we were in Boston -a city great for seafood- I didn't pass up the opportunity to have a salmon burger. We got a hotel north of the city (because it was significantly cheaper) so we headed out of the city right after our meal. When we got to the hotel, we enjoyed drinks and the kinds of discussions only architects get into.

Saturday we got up early to make sure we could get into Cambridge in time to have breakfast and to make it to the (far too early) beginning of the conference at 9:30. Well we were definitely late to the conference, but had a delicious breakfast at The Friendly Toast  (I got Kate's Tofu Scramble). We sat through the remaining 3 hours of Sounding and after a quick lunch, decided we were going to skip the rest of the symposium to see all of MIT and then to see Harvard's campus and that's exactly what we did!

Being the architecture students we are, we visted all of the iconic buildings on each campus; Simmons Hall by Steven Holl, Frank Gehry's Stata Center, Saarinen's Chapel, and Le Corbusier's Carpenter Center. Basically we just geeked out and took way too many pictures a reasonable amount of pictures of pretty buildings. The weather was beautiful, and it was just amazing to not be on our own campus for a while.

Boston is the first east coast city that has made me re-think my plan of moving back to the west coast after graduation, and I'm not sure how I feel about that.

TAKE ME TO CHURCH




Earlier on in the summer, I wrote about a freelancing architectural graphics gig that basically fell into my lap. After months of contacting firms for a summer internship, one just kind of showed up and I took it. And now that I'm back at school I was asked by two different professors to be their teaching assistants. I'm definitely not counting on this being a reoccurring thing, but I'm going to enjoy these, and all the other spontaneous moments as they show up!

This photoshoot was one of those impromptu adventures in which a couple of friends and I were waiting for a ride to the grocery store (yay for not having a car) and I asked for a hand in photographing my new jacket, a quilted blazer from Topman, We ended up wandering around and finding this church (right next to a fraternity...) and chose it for pictures.

Thanks to Emily and Victoria for their help with this!

WEARING: JCREW SHIRT //  TOPMAN BLAZER // LEVI 511 JEANS // CLARKS DESERT BOOTS // UNIQLO SOCKS // SUNGLASSES POLAROID //

SINK OR SWIM



Today in Upstate New York it finally feels like fall. I'm beyond ready for pumpkin flavored everything, getting to wear scarves again and to watch the leaves turn magnificent shades of red. However, I do feel like I basically missed the entire "summer" season because I was working inside full time, rather than outside like in summers past.

Moving to new places for significant amounts has really revealed the elements that make me happy in an area. One of the two biggest things I missed while I lived in Colorado this summer was water (the other being cities). Being landlocked for the first time in my life, the tiny, man made lakes did not come close to anything I have in either Washington or New York. So, flashing back to my first full day home, I made a point to go to the waterfront and breathe in the salty air and on a day as nice as it was I had to dip my feet

Also, sometimes you never know what might wash up. I mean that literally and metaphorically.

WEARING: GAP SHIRT //  JCPENNY SHORTS // BOAT SHOES SPERRY // SUNGLASSES POLAROID //
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