So, if you don’t follow me on twitter, or you’re not my friend in real life, you might not know that I recently started getting into roller derby!  It all started when Chino’s old roommate (who is a referee) invited us to our first bout this past summer.  It was a double header so we saw the Yankee Brutals and The CT Death Quads jam it out against the opposing teams.  I was in love the whole time.  Then I saw Whip It! and I was reminded how much I wanted to give derby a shot.  About four weeks ago I was in the car with Chino and I finally admitted it out loud—”I think I really want to try out for roller derby.”  I found out that try outs were in a week so I borrowed skates from my friend Jay, practiced in the local high school parking lot after work a couple of times, and 3 weeks ago I tried out.  And guess what?!  I made the cut to stick around for rookie practices!  Today I got my first pair of skates and I can’t wait until practice tomorrow to start breaking them in.  Ahh!  So exciting.

PS: My favorite roller derby name is Em Dash, a jammer from Gotham Girls Roller Derby.  Hopefully I’ll make the team and get to pick a name of my own!

Stop at the Sign of the Lemon

Vacation began by visiting my grandmother’s house in Rhode Island. Anyone that’s tried it, knows that Del’s Frozen Lemonade is UNREAL (aka very delicious). I cannot go to her house without stopping at Del’s.

Family Time

My family and I went to Chicago to visit my brother who started working there last September. We spent the weekend and early this week hanging out; going on architecture cruises, bike tours, seeing Beyonce (she was staying at our hotel!), going to the beach and then some.

The Big Bean

We went to the bean, which is a huge stainless steel sculpture by Anish Kapoor (and is actually called “Cloud Gate”). Cloud Gate is a staple of Chicago’s Millennium Park. My brother tried to convince me that it was made out of one piece of steel, I believed him until I just read the Wikipedia article and found it’s made of 168 welded steel plates. It looks so seamless though.

Jay Pritzker Pavillion

We also walked around the Jay Pritzker Pavillion. The band shell is like it’s own sculpture!

Barefoot Sailors

We went down to the harbor to look at all the sailboats. Many of the sailors were readying their boats for the Chicago Yacht Club’s Race to the Mackinac, one of the longest fresh-water sailboat races in the world. If you downloaded Youth + Constellations you may have read that my Dad used to race sailboats, which is part of my obsession with all things nautical. (Not to mention that I think it’s really cute that most of the deckhands go barefoot.)

Carved Turtles

I took a visit to the John G. Shedd aquarium. The architecture there (much like the rest of the city) was amazing. They even had sea turtles sculpted into the ceiling.

Underwater Garden

At the aquarium my favorite exhibit was these sea anemones that looked like an underwater garden. I love the colors! I was bummed that the aquarium didn’t have any huge sea turtles. But they had baluga whales!

96th Floor

On my last night in Chicago, I went to the top of the John Hancock building, to the 96th floor and looked over the city. It was an incredible view, and a perfect ending to my vacation.

Yea still rocking that Prada turban-inspired scarf head wrap.  Gotta keep my bangs out of my face!  Today, I spent the afternoon at the beach with my best friend, Ashley.  Ahh to be funemployed!

Here are just a few more pictures and outtakes from the project Jill and I have been working on together in the past few weeks. Recently we’ve been hiking in the woods and shooting at the beach, Jill brought me to this awesome hiking spot in our town (Madison, Connecticut) that I never even knew was there before! Now that I’ve finally upgraded wordpress and school is almost over I promise I’ll get back to blogging soon.

If you, like me, amass a collection of inspiration outside of your harddrive you may be interested in my method of keeping those magazine pages, photo stories, and drawings more organized.

You’ll Need:

• 3-ring Binder (I use a 3-inch one for more space and durability)
• 3-ring Sheet Protectors
• Sticker Labels or Index Dividers
• Magazines
• Metal Ruler
• Olfa Knife or Scissors
• Cutting Mat (if you decide to go the Olfa Knife route)
•  Optional: Paint Thinner

Start by tearing out whichever sheets you want to keep from the magazine.  Something I learned from putting together contest entries at my W Magazine internship: a few drips of paint thinner in the spine of the mag will loosen the adhesive used to bind it, the pages will come out super clean and it will dry perfectly/without any ripples.

If the pages are too big for an 8.5 x 11 sheet protector (W Magazine and Nylon are both too big!) use the metal ruler and olfa knife to make nice, clean edges (or you can use a pair of scissors).

I sort all of my pages into these categories before putting them into the sheet protectors:

• Ads
• Art
• Beauty
• Clothes/Accessories
• Covers
• Design
• Interiors
•  ”It Girls” – Models, Celebrities, Socialites, Designers I like
• Stuff to DIY
• Textual Content

After they are all in protectors, and still kept in their different categories I put them into the 3-ring binder.  I used to use index dividers:

But I found that they dont stick out past the sheet protectors.  To solve this I made DIY tabs on the sheet protectors themselves using 2 sticker labels stuck together:

(I use this same method to tab important notes in my Moleskine that I want to find again later)

It was quite a task to take all the stuff I had collected in boxes and put them into one binder but I’m glad I did.   Now it’s a lot easier to find what I’m looking for, it’s easy for other people to look through, and everything stays neat.

How do you keep your inspiration together?