Category Archives: Chicago

October 2012 Challenge

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I’ll be linking up with The Nester again this year for the 31 Days Challenge — and what better travel destination to choose than my own beloved city? I’ve combed through my archives and I have lots of beautiful Chicagoland sites to share with you, as well as a whole bunch of restaurants. Some will be new to you and some may be old favorites.

If you’d like to join me as a cheerleader for the home team, I’d love some guest posts about your experiences in our fair (but sometimes windy) city. Just email me — my link is in the contact box on the right. Just send me your photos and text, and I can format the post for you.

Last year I just about killed myself with magazine-style articles about places in Europe that we visited. I’m hoping to keep this year’s posts shorter, with lots of photography. You know that I love a challenge; I think I’m ready to introduce you to my Sweet Home Chicago. See you Monday!

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Flower Stories: Bridal Veil Spirea

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Today would have been my father’s 89th birthday — 05/11/23. He loved plants of all kinds, but he especially loved flowering bushes and perennials. Happy birthday, Daddy.

I wait somewhat impatiently every year for the bridal veil spirea to bloom. It’s not actually in my yard; the roots are in the garden of the abandoned house next door.

We had a punishing rain last weekend and lost some of the fresh glory of the blossoms, but most survived. This post makes me realize that I need to plant my own spirea on my side of the fence, because when the bulldozer comes, I’ll lose all of this beauty.

I do my best to honor Oksana’s memory and to take care of her garden; it’s time to go to the nursery again in honor of my Dad and Oksana.

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Flower Stories: First Peonies

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Peonies are synonymous with Dad in my family. My dad became enamored with peonies and soon we had every variety he could find. We visited peony farms and he got them through mail order. You can imagine my happiness when our new house had mature peonies already planted — and we also brought some from our old house that have traveled from Dad’s garden through several houses with me in the Chicagoland area.

What’s not to like about peonies? They are dependable and gorgeous — the perfect companion to May’s beautiful days. We always used to expect our peonies to open just before Memorial Day, and took armloads of them to decorate the family graves at the cemeteries. This crazy early spring, while welcome, is wreaking havoc on the normal plant cycles in our area.

Remembering that I just got a new camera and have mostly used the automatic settings, I tried to take a photo of the peony in my cobalt blue vase against the outside door. This one’s not bad, but there were lots of others that were. 🙂 I’m loving the challenge of creating a new artistic expression in my life.

I’m also loving that my husband came home from the store with a bouquet of white roses and alstroemeria, our wedding flower. Insert double smiley face here. 🙂 🙂

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Food Cult: Sweet Home, Chicago

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It’s plastered all over my media; it’s on my lips pretty much constantly. We’re going back to France next spring and I can barely contain my excitement and anticipation of a very good time.

Every chance I get, I’m looking for French inspiration around me in my suburban Chicago “real life.” While friends were visiting last month, we discovered a new-to-us French restaurant one of Chicago’s trendy downtown neighborhoods. Kiki’s Bistro was fabulous.

The Thursday special was bouillabaisse…

And the salads were fresh and also creative…

From the minute we walked in, dressed in our mixed bag of work and tourist clothes, we were treated as friends. Kiki helped us choose wines, and our waitstaff could not have been friendlier or more knowledgeable. It was a wonderful experience; put Kiki’s Bistro on your bucket list for your next Chicago visit.

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Food Cult: Thai Food in Vienna!

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It was a nasty rainy night in March, and the restaurant was close to our hotel and close to the Opera house. Unfortunately, I can’t remember its name, but this is probably the restaurant. Whether it’s the right one or not, there’s nothing like a spicy satay and some Thai egg rolls to warm the cockles of my heart.

I’ve never actually been to Thailand, but in my somewhat limited experience, Thai food is pretty much Thai food, no matter where you go. If you’d like to try to make these luscious little morsels, here’s a recipe from Temple of Thai where you can also buy the makings if you can’t get the Thai ingredients where you live. Actually, I imagine you could probably live without the dried tree ear mushrooms and sub them out with some other kind of fungi. 🙂

I could barely type up this post without ordering out — we have a favorite Thai restaurant nearby and thankfully I don’t have to go to Vienna or Thailand to satisfy my egg rolls and satay cravings. Do you have a favorite Thai restaurant to share?

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InstaFriday

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Last week I stumbled on a blogger with a fun way to link up photos on Fridays that fits right in with one of my RENEW goals for 2012 — using my cameras more thoughtfully and intentionally. The challenge is to photograph the week using only the camera on my phone. And yes, I know it’s Saturday.

Normally I’m not a late starter, but with spring break and all, it took me a while to get into the groove, so I didn’t actually take my first photo until Monday. The re-entry back into my real life as a teacher and the inevitable early morning wake up was hard, very hard.

On my arrival at school, I discovered that my promised laptop had not been delivered over spring break. I have mixed feelings about it anyway, so I wasn’t heartbroken.

On Tuesday, one of my students was playing with this mirrored Rubik’s Cube. He said he needed a greater challenge… and then showed us that he marked up one side with dots to help him solve it. 🙂

Since it was grades week and I was feverishly trying to get everything done before the Friday holiday from school, I didn’t do much photography. On Friday, we met out-of-town family members for museum-ing. I took this photo from the window of the Chicago Cultural Center because I have never seen the Bean (Cloud Gate) from this vantage point. The yellow tint comes from the protective film in the windows.

I also took this photo of the stained glass dome in the Chicago Cultural Center. I know it’s not perfect — I took it with my iPhone, for goodness sake — but it gives an idea of the beauty of this often overlooked building among Chicago’s museums. The web site says it’s the tenth most popular museum, but in a city of museums, how many people actually get to the tenth one?

I didn’t take this photo, but I thought you might want to see a well-photographed picture of the Tiffany glass dome that is also in the Cultural Center.

Lest you think I’m trying to cheat on the InstaFriday challenge, here’s my photo of the Tiffany Dome.

I couldn’t resist taking a photo of this quote in the new modern wing of the Art Institute of Chicago.  When I looked up the attribution, I found that it was actually supposed to be a work of art. Silly me, I thought it was just an interesting quote on the wall.

It turned out to be one of those beautiful Chicago spring days — crisp and sunny. On such a day, it’s impossible to take a bad picture of the skyline, even on a smart phone.

If it’s Friday, it’s pizza day. We also had the double whammy of entertaining out-of-town guests, so it had to be a Chicago pizza day. We found a pizza place by the Art Institute that we’ve never been to and were happily surprised by both the food and the service.

A week that started pretty slowly ended up with a warm gush of family togetherness and yummy wine and pizza. It was another hot time in Chi-town after all!

Please stop by Life Rearranged and meet some new blogging friends. Everyone appreciates a little comment love.

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Breaking the Forsythia Law

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Where did winter go? We never had one in Chicago. This is by far the most beautiful spring I have ever enjoyed in 35 years of living in Chicago. The old joke is that Chicago has two seasons — winter and construction. In between we have about a week of fall and one day of spring.

I was so excited by our March spring (???? — when will the other shoe drop?) that I decided to take photos of the amazing forsythia that popped into bloom over the weekend. While driving through the parking lot of our newly renovated mall, I spied a well-shaped forsythia bush and stopped to take a photo. Sounds innocent, right?

As I’m focusing my camera on the perfect spot, behind me I hear someone asking, “Can I help you?” I turned around, saw what apparently was the shopping center security guard in his seekie car, and replied, quite obviously, that I was taking a photo of the beautiful flowers and that everything was fine. Still innocent, right?

Oh, no. It’s illegal to take a photo of forsythia in this particular shopping mall because if I can take a photo, so can terrorists, and terrorists aren’t allowed to take photos of anything in America. You know why.

I was very tempted to mouth off, but I said I understood and got back in my car. As I drove away, I really wanted to drive back around and flaunt the authority of “the man.” But then I thought about how getting arrested would look in the newspaper. It might just affect my credibility in the classroom, don’t you think?

I’m a law-abiding citizen and proud of it. And here’s the photo I took of another beautiful forsythia bush from a legal spot on the sidewalk. I’m really glad I didn’t get arrested for it, because no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get much out of my yellow petals blowing in the breeze. Note to self; don’t use HDR when the wind is blowing.

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All Roads Lead to American Idol

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The funniest thing happened tonight. I got a local public service phone call telling me that many area roads will be closed on Friday night due to the party being held at Arlington Park Racetrack for Lee Dewyze. I guess I had better get home and do my laundry instead of going over to my friend’s bar across the street from the racetrack where there will also be a party.

Although I think he’s an interesting guy (and a darn sight better than Casey what’s-his-name with the bleating sheep vibrato), I’m still solidly in the Crystal Bowersox camp.

When I looked up her bio, I found that she went to Oak Harbor High School, where my friend Ken teaches music. She transferred to the Toledo School for the Arts, which doesn’t surprise me. She also moved to Chicago and performed locally in my old Lakeview neighborhood.

It’s a tough choice: Crystal from Ohio or Lee from Mount Prospect? Only time will tell, but it ain’t gonna be Casey.

Linky Love: Renting Italian Villas

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This isn’t my year to do Italy, but I’m already thinking about next summer. My blogging friend Linda Dini Jenkins has written a wonderful post about renting villas in Italy for your next vacation.

Last summer we traveled with our friends Mark and Kathy in England and are looking forward to traveling with them again. For Christmas, they gave us Linda’s book, Up at the Villa: Travels with My Husband. For me, travel memoirs are like peanut M & Ms; I just can’t put them down until I’m all finished. Linda’s lovely book was no exception and I devoured it in one sitting. Ever since I saw Enchanted April for the first time, I have always wanted to rent a villa in Italy with friends. Apparently I’m not the only one, as Linda’s interview with Mario Scalzi proves.

If you are interested in traveling in Italy or just reading about it from your arm chair, I encourage you to link up with Linda. She’s a great writer with practical travel advice. Viva the Villa Experience!

This post contains Amazon Affiliate links, but I wouldn’t tell you to buy or read something if I didn’t believe in it. I’m just keeping it real.

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