Adorable Blouse...

How freaking cute is this Alexander McQueen blouse? I am obsessssedddddd with it.

photo from neimanmarcus.com

Love the colors (Orange & Blue, Go Illini!), love the enormous bow on the collar, Love love love it!

When I finally have a big girl job I will wear wonderful things like this allll the timeeee. Wheee!

BEAUTIFUL Chicago Summer!

For those of you aren't around these parts, let me just inform you that the title of this post is chock full of sarcasm.

Now, while Chicago is more than well-known for the HORRENDOUS winters, a lot of people (somewhat surprisingly) don't know about Chicago's (usually) blissful summers. The proximity to Lake Michigan means beaches for summer beach volleyball leagues, day drinking, and dog beaching. There are street fests every weekend, and generally just tons of stuff to do. There has to be, in a city that has 8-9 months of misery every year (it snows in April, regularly. Sometimes in May). That's why we put up with the brutal Chicago winters, for the gloriously lovely Chicago summers.

Until this year.

This summer has been absolutely miserable.

It pretty much rained the whole month of June, and here we are in August, and it's currently 64 degrees and raining at 3:00 in the afternoon.


This is what I see from my living room/ bedroom on a beautiful Chicago summer day:


This is what I can see (or rather what I CAN'T see) today

Here's a little view down towards the ground. Beautiful, huh??



UGH. All I wanted was my Chicago summer. :(

Weigh-In Wednesday!

Greetings lovelies!

I am SO excited to write this post today.... I lost 4.5 pounds this week!!! Yes, you read that right... FOUR AND A HALF POUNDS! YAYYYY!

Which brings my grand total to 10.5 pounds since January. I still have a LONG way to go, but I'm so glad that working my butt of this week paid off.
I worked out with my trainer again yesterday and went to his kangoo class on Sunday... seriously ya'll... he's an ass-whooper.

Of course I texted him this morning about my big loss and he wrote back "Yay! Congrats! Now go do some damn pushups!"
Haha. I'm glad he's just as serious as I am about losing 30 pounds by Christmas!

So this week I tried to eat as healthy as possibe... but let's face it, I wasn't perfect.
I ate french fries twice (don't tell Mario! Ha). Sunday I had a wrap that had fried chicken in it with ranch dressing (and fries). I don't regret it. It was deeeeelish.
Monday and Tuesday I ate really well. TONS of veggies and fruit. I kept track of everything I was eating, for the most part.
I realize that I won't lose 4.5 pounds every week (although wouldn't that be nice!). 1-2 pounds a week is healthy and still a tough goal to meet. And that will get me to 30 pounds by Christmas, if I stick with it!

For now all I want to do is celebrate with a big slice of deep dish pizza! Haha.

Hope everyone is having a wonderful hump day!

People Never Cease to Amaze Me

As you regular readers know, I like to write about people I read about in the news who I think deserve the death penalty.
See previous posts here and here.

I feel like I could write an entire blog only on the fucked up things that people do. Excuse my language, but there is no other way to describe someone who decapitates an infant as seriously FUCKED UP.

This post isn't going to be about someone who necessarily deserves the death penalty... but it's seriously fucked up. (Okay, last time I'm saying that... let's stick with f'ed up).
So I'm doing my daily rounds of online news-reading when I come across this story:

Nebraska Man Stole Virgin Mary Painting to Pay for Abortion

I was thinking of all the things that I have to say about this, but honestly it's going to get my too riled up and I'm getting ready to go out for a pleasant dinner, so I'll just let you guys read and comment.

Again, I ask: What the hell is wrong with people?!

What does 2 years of law school crap look like?

This.

Ew.
In preparation for the new school year, I'm cleaning out my bookshelf... it is stuffed to the brims... mostly with stacks and stacks of outlines and crap.

I don't know why I've hung on to my first semester torts outline for so long... maybe because I worked on it for so long I couldn't bear to part with it?
I would actually venture to say that I haven't read what's on 50-75% percent of this enormous stack of papers. What a waste.
Welp, I'm over it. All of this crap is going in the dumpster. I've got a stack of new books that came in from Amazon this week that are MUCH more entertaining and they need space on the shelf!


P.S. - I'd like to also issue an apology to Mother Earth. So much paper! What a waste. Law school is SO not green.

Feeling a little bit stresssseddddd

Hey everyone.

I CANNOT BELIEVE that classes start again on Monday. AH!
I feel like I have an unbelievable amount of things to do between now and then... probably because I do.

I haven't finished unpacking from Europe yet (that is #1 on my to-do list), so my room is a total disaster. I think this only exacerbates my 'school is starting there's so much to doooooo' mentality. So first up on my to-do list is to get my crap unpacked, put away, and my luggage put back into storage.

Aside from the normal reading for classes, I also have to do take-home finals from my classes in Prague. Those are not due for three more weeks, but I know it's going to be here before I know it and really want to get some work done on them tonight/tomorrow.

I also need to go to the grocery store and just get a bunch of miscellaneous crap done.
I have no idea why I'm stressing out so much - It's not really school stuff that's stressing me out, just the amount of stuff in general that I have to do. Let's be honest, I never read for my classes, it's not like I'm really going to pick my 3rd year to start doing it.


In other news - I am SO SO SO sore. Mario kicked my butt this week. We've decided to work out twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so I have a nice long break from him this weekend. :)
I just need to make myself get to the gym to do some cardio! I went for bike rides yesterday and today, but I'm gonna try to get some treadmill time in this evening too since I've been eating everything I can get my hands on today!

Hope everyone is having a way more exciting weekend than I am!

Thanks for your support!

I am totally overwhelmed with everyone's responses to yesterday's Weigh-In Wednesday post.
You guys are awesome, and totally going to keep me motivated.

I am still sore today, but Mario is coming over in about half an hour, so I'm ready to get going again!
I had every intention of taking a spin class at my gym yesterday, but about the time I was supposed to leave there was a tornado watch and torrential downpour in Chicago. NOT cool! Since I'm currently car-less there is NO WAY I was going to walk to the gym in that. (Of course I could have gone downstairs to the gym in my building and hopped on the treadmill, but I didn't. Oopsiesss).

After my workout with Mario I'm going to do some more research on purchasing my new bike (sad. :( RIP pretty pink bike). If I don't find anything online I'm going to go back to the bike store I bought my old bike at and get one from them. They have one that I really like, but it's green. Not ideal, but it's a nice bike, so it'll do.

Hope everyone is having a great Thursday, it's almost the weekend. YAY!

Weigh-In Wednesday

I'm not quite sure how I'm going to address my "weigh-in wednesday" posts here... I don't really feel like publishing real numbers (I know, isn't that the point?), but to be honest I'm totally embarrassed at what I currently weigh.
I CANNOT BELIEVE I've let myself gain 40 pounds over the last 5 years. SICK.
Also - I'm not a "normal" sized girl. I'm 5'10". I'm a good 5-6 inches taller than ALL of my girlfriends, so I don't feel like weight is a really relevant thing to talk about with this audience (for the most part - with my weight watchers buddies it's a totally different story!)
Okay... enough of me trying to justify not putting my weight on this blog. Bottom line is, I don't want to, and it's my blog, so dammit, I don't have to if I don't want to.

So, I weighed myself this morning, and I'll just post weekly updates on how much I've lost (hopefully!) every Wednesday, as well as updates on how working out and training is going.

The more I think about this, the more I think that a lot of you probably don't want to read this... so feel free to skip all posts titled "Weigh-in Wednesday" if you prefer to read this blog for my snark, sass, and commentary on my desire to own ridiculously priced consumer goods. Don't worry, I'll keep those posts coming frequently. And hopefully there will be even more ridiculously priced consumer goods as I lose weight and can fit into nice clothes again, yay!

So - a recap of yesterdays session with Mario:

OW.

It was painful.
But it was a good painful.
He totally kicked my ass for an hour, and I'm hurting today. Not the worst soreness I've ever had, but pretty damn close (freshman year of high school basketball practices were worse, I think). We did lots of leg work, but also some arms. Way more squats and lunges than I wanted to do, and way more jumping jacks than I ever wanted to do. (I think only male trainers would make a girl do so many jumping jacks... ummm hellooooo I'm a D cup, even with 2 good sports bras on, jumping jacks hurt!).

I also went to Whole Foods yesterday morning and stocked up on tons of veggies and fruits. When I got home Monday night I had a coupon in the mail for $20 off any purchase of over $100. Seriously - amazing coupon.

I'm going to go to a spin class at the gym tonight... it'll be great cardio (always is) and will hopefully help loosen up my sore muscles before Mario comes over to abuse me again tomorrow!

Hope everyone has a great humpday!

Junior League

I know lots of you Legally Fabulous readers and lots of girls whose blogs I read are Junior League members....
Just wondering if there are any Junior League of Chicago members out there? I am thinking that I would love to join and would love to chat with you about it!
Let me know!
XOXO

Things that I NEEEEEED!

This Milly dress:

image from Neiman Marcus

OMG. To die for.
Seriously... I love bows and ruffles and girly things. I think once I get 20 pounds or so whittled off, it's going to be mine. I need it, right?

Idiot of the week award goes to...

YOURS TRULY! Ugh.
I am such a ruh-tard.

So last weekend when we were in Rome, we went to visit a beautiful church. Pictures here!
One of the people that I went with is a friend from school who is not religious in the slightest, and would probably most likely identify himself as an Atheist. However, he can appreciate beautiful painting, sculpture, architecture, and history, so he went to see that church with us.

When we got out of the church, he told me that the first thing that popped into his head when he sat down in one of the pews was the Smashing Pumpkins song that starts out "The World is A Vampire" (come on... don't pretend like you don't know what song that is. Ha). SO inappropriate, but SO funny.

So of course this made me get the stupid song stuck in my head, so I went home that night to our apartment and bought it on iTunes.

Now I knew I was running low on money, but I didn't think it was anything too serious... ohhhhh how I was wrong.

Turns out that I had just about a dollar in my checking account, which is linked with my iTunes account. The Smashing Pumpkins song was $1.29. (see where this is going?!).
So it overdrew my account, and the lovely Chase Bank charged me a $32 insufficient funds fee. FML.

Luuuuckily we got our financial aid disbursement on Friday and I have mine set up to do direct deposit, so I'm not like stuck in Prague or anything like that, but STILL.

So basically, I paid $35 to have a song by these guys:


I suck.

Mad Men

Do you guys watch Mad Men?
I feel like I had never even heard of it until like the last 6 weeks... and all of the sudden everyone is obsessed with it? Apparently there were 2 previous seasons of it and season 3 premiere is tomorrow. I don't even have a clue what it's about...
Is this something I need to add to my Netflix repertoire?

ROME pics!!

I took over 100 pics in my three days in Rome and I seriously don't know how to narrow it down to post some here... but I will try my best.

I loved Rome.
Beautiful city, beautiful people, delicious food... amazzzinggggg!

Here are just a couple of the many pics I took (and excuse my captions as I don't know what most of the stuff was, ha)

No idea what these first 5 pictures are... just awesome stuff we saw when we first got there!

These are from the Pantheon... I feel like they're not very good pictures for how incredible it was!
From wikipedia: is a building in Rome, originally built by Marcus Agrippa as a temple to all the gods of Ancient Rome, and rebuilt in the early 2nd century AD.
The building is circular with a portico of three ranks of huge granite Corinthian columns (eight in the first rank and two groups of four behind) under a pediment opening into the rotunda, under a coffered, concrete dome, with a central opening (oculus) open to the sky. Almost two thousand years after it was built, the Pantheon's dome is still the world's largest unreinforced concrete dome. Since the 7th century, the Pantheon has been used as a Roman Catholic church dedicated to "St. Mary and the Martyrs" but informally known as "Santa Maria Rotonda."






Up next... the most BEAUTIFUL church!


the ceiling

view of the altar... incredible

Trevi Fountain
From wikipedia: The Trevi Fountain (Italian: Fontana di Trevi) is a fountain in the Trevi rione in Rome, Italy. Standing 25.9 meters (85 feet) high and 19.8 meters (65 feet) wide, it is the largest Baroque fountain in the city.





This was BY FAR my favorite thing we saw in Rome: The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. It was seriously INCREDIBLE.







this statute is something ridic like 15 meters high and 10 meters wide. ENORMOUS.

here's a view of the colosseum from the top. amazing

K I'll have more pics coming in a later post if you wanna see 'em! For now I'm off to dinner!
XOXO

Book Recommendations

Hi everyone!
I need suggestions!
I am currently ordering my textbooks for this semester from Amazon (barf, I know), and want to pick up some novels to read too! I take the bus to/from school every day, so I usually have a good hour of reading time (yay Chicago), and like to use the time to read good books that aren't for class!
I love reading stupid girly books, but also like movies about law/criminals, etc. Here are some of my favorites:

(images from amazon.com)

Based off of these - any suggestions for new books to read?

Thanks!
XOXO

Lasty day of classes and Amsterdam pictures!

Today was the last day of classes, wahoo!!!
We got our take home final, which is going to end up being about 30 typed pages, due in 30 days... Totally doable. My last take-home final was 30 types pages and I only had 7 days to complete it, so I'm not worried about this at all. I'm going to try to get a lot of it done after I get home (ON MONDAY!!! WHEEEE!!!), but let's get serious... ya'll know I'm a serious procrastinator and will be e-mailing it to my profs 10 minutes before the due date.

We are getting ready to head out for a little party with the study abroad gang... it's nice to not have to pack to go anywhere for the weekend.

I am SO OVER living out of my suitcase though. When I was packing I felt like I brought SO MUCH stuff with me but seriously, I am going to throw most of my clothes away and not even bring them back. We have a washing machine here, but it doesn't feel like anything gets clean when you wash it, and with no dryer things don't really dry right. Everything feels yucky and I feel like I've been wearing the same three shirts OVER and OVER again. I can't wait to get home, get some of these European/lawschool/life pounds off, and get some new clothes!!!

NOW - enough of my ramblings, I'm all over the place today (I may or may not be a litttleeee bit hungover, forgive me!) It's picture time!!!

Here are some pics from Amsterdam - it's such a beautiful city! I loved it.

Let's start off with a pic of what Amsterdam is famous for (well, one of the things). Hookers are EVERYWHERE. It is SO bizarre. This picture was actually taken from my bed at 10 AM on Sunday morning. The girl had been standing there in her lingerie, and then I looked a couple minutes later and she was in business. Sick.

It was gay pride weekend in Amsterdam the weekend we were there... how did I get so lucky? :)
The first pic is of the billboard advertising it, and the following pics are from the street fest and parade. The parade is actually a boat parade that goes through the city's canals... it was so awesome

We took a paddle boat out on one of the canals... it was a great way to see the city. There are boats and bikes everywhere... love it

This is what most of the buildings look like... and if you're walking along they feel like they're going to fall down on top of you.

There are also bikes EVERYWHERE... Amsterdam is a huge biking city.

"i amsterdam" is their little slogan... this sign was outside one of the museums... pretty cool

more boats on the canals

I had to take this picture... these were my favorite bikes! Seriously, how cute are they?

pic from outside the Van Gogh Museum... It was pretty cool, but SO crowded. Hard to enjoy a museum when your'e fighting through masses of people to see anything

and finally... our little bed and breakfast we stayed for the weekend. I was SO glad we didn't have to stay in a hostel. ick.

Hope you enjoyed the pics! I'll post Rome and Prague pics soon.
XOXO