Three girls in my bathroom getting ready. Have a great Friday.

Who knew posting one measly update a day would be so tough? Between love, work, friends, a dog, eyebrow waxes, beer, showering and sleeping I just do not know where the time goes.

Here are some amazing photos of our city shot by The Mister aka Okunola. He has quite an eye.

[@okjey on instagram]

(day FOUR.)

If you are my pal on Instagram you have probably already seen these photos but in case you are not, this is how we rang in 2012; same as the last few, with a quick jaunt to St. Thomas. This time we had friends in tow and it was made all the more memorable with their presence.

I’m hoping to get my life together enough to start posting regularly again. Lots going on in the new apartment… off to dye some curtains. Happy New Year!

It takes little to make me obsessive about something. I see something I like, I’m all in, going for the gusto. This usually only lasts a few weeks as I get bored quickly and don’t know how to finish what I start but I digress. Instagram has not bored me yet.

While I’m late in espousing my love for this iPhone application, I make up for it by constant use. I love hearting other people’s images. I love seeing folks heart my images. I click hashtags for everything from #chicago to #urban to #art to #kids to #flowers to #whatiwore. I cannot stop. I follow about 75 people on Instagram and I only know a handful personally. The rest I don’t really interact with in any other way, shape, or form. I just like their photos. Some shoot super artistic and beautiful snapshots that are plain old fun to look at while I value others for the peek into a life completely different than my own.

The problem is this: good old regular camera has taken a serious backseat, which means I’m losing what little skills I had in the DSLR department. It’s like speaking Spanish. When I lived in California I was constantly mistaken as second generation Mexican. In Chicago, my Spanish is so damn broken that yo tengo miedo when I have to speak it to people I don’t know.

I’m sure I’ll be both DSLR’ing and Instagramming the hell out of our new place but if you miss me in the meantime, follow me on Instagram and let’s be friends: my username is, you guessed it, urbancasita.

Remember all the presents I got for The Mister around Christmas time? His favorite gift by far was the DianaF+ “Dreamer” camera, a simple point and shoot whose many quirks — if that’s what we want to call light leaks and cheap plastic– have been embraced recently by folks looking for an imperfect, “dreamy,” and oftentimes blurry look. It’s like producing an Instagram or Hipstamatic photo with film, and many of the cheapie old-school cameras of yore are where those companies took their cues from in producing vintage-looking camera pics. We totally jumped onto the bandwagon.

I knew that waiting for the film to be developed would be a bit of a challenge after so many years of digital instant-gratification, but I didn’t expect it to take six weeks, seven phone calls and two (unanswered) emails to the district manager of Ritz Camera to get our CD (not even prints!) back. Needless to say, avoid them at all costs. On the bright side, now that they’re here, we get to relive some fun moments.

Like when we fed monkeys on a boat trip in Costa Rica this past March.

And our friend The Alligator.

And the gorgeous beach in Tamarindo, where we stayed.

And a side shot of our comfortable cabina at Casa Cook.

And a pair of volcanoes we spotted on our way back to Chicago.

There were a few shots of Pilsen, our favorite area in Chicago, as well. Pulling out a camera in sub-zero temps can be bad for your fingers so Chicago was out of the running for more than a handful of shots. As you can see from my outfit above– a long sweater, a short sweater, a jacket, a scarf, a hat, and probably two pairs of leggings– it was a cold, cold day.

Milwaukee got the short end of the stick as well, on a weekend day trip with The Mister’s dad to visit my dad. Our pair of fathers had a blast at Papo’s Sweet Water Organics, where we fed fish and explored the warehouse.

Remember the wedding we went to in Boston? That’s outside of the chapel on Brandeis University’s campus, freezing my tail off; completely worth it for such a beautiful occasion.

Finally, I feel I should also include our first batch of Diana camera photos in this post: we took it on a test-drive while on St. Thomas in January. The photos above are not CD version– they are scanned actual print images so that’s why the frames aren’t as clean.

And there you have it: the first four months of the year via real film.

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This was our block around 3pm on Wednesday afternoon.

The Mister and I headed out into the snow on the day after the blizzard to forage for food and drinks and to relieve our cabin fever. We brought cameras and trudged happily through the snow drifts, grateful for our adult snow day.

We were able to walk right down the middle of Damen. The main streets in our area were completely clear within an hour of the last snowfall. Streets and sanitation did an excellent job if you don’t count the Lakeshore Drive snafu. Still, the only things moving on the roads, other than legs, were trucks since the side streets were completely blocked by drifts of up to six feet.

Ouch. Wouldn’t want to be the one digging this guy out. We managed to free one of our cars from the hard packed snow by Friday morning and have left the second vehicle parked for now.

I took this shot looking east down Division Street at Damen. Never have I seen the street so deserted.

I loved this storm. I loved the thundersnow, I loved the day off, I loved our walk, I even loved shoveling the front walk.

Midwest is best always, more so with twenty-two inches of snow.

For the last few years the Mister and I have made a habit of jetting down to St. Thomas every January to get in a few days of sunshiney relaxation and to celebrate the New Year. While we love traveling to new places, St. Thomas is an easy, no-brainer destination for us; I used to live there and it’s where we got married. We stay in the same condo every year, know the island well, have our favorite grocery stores, restaurants and of course, beaches. Plus, I’m totally a pro at driving on the left. All we have to do is jump off of a plane and into a rental car (a new Toyota Rav-4 in this instance– super fun to maneuver up hills and on sand) and make a quick stop at the market before heading “home.” No maps, no guesswork, no worries.

The weather was a little cooler than I remember it ever being but we still made plenty of time for swimming and lounging in the sun. On two mornings we got up early and drove into Charlotte-Amalie, or “town” as it’s more commonly known, and shot some photos. The Mister got to test drive his Diana camera. We pick up the prints tomorrow and I’m giddy with anticipation. For now you’ll have to be content with my digitals.

We also made a super tourist stop at a gorgeous overlook above town.

We spent an afternoon at one of the three pools on the property. They’re almost always empty and, though I’m much more of a beach girl, great for relaxing with a cold beer.

When it came time to go home I was sad. I always miss living on island and we’ve both discussed moving back down for a few years. But then our plane lands and we start our drive into the city from O’Hare and the Chicago skyline comes into view and all of that melts away until instances like now, when I’m face to face with pictorial evidence of how beautiful and fun and warm and perfectly livable St. Thomas is. So let me stop looking at these pics and just hit post and walk my dog outside in twenty-degree weather and try to be OK with that.

See more of our pics here.
Interested in how I got these photos to look different from the ones you see in the link above? Read my latest post for ReadyMade, all about PhotoShop actions and including free downloads!

I stumbled into an internet rabbit hole after last week’s Boardwalk Empire and it led me to Gibson Girls, illustrator Charles Gibson’s lady subjects from the early 1900s. I love them.

These two are my favorites. I’ve been meaning to get a new tattoo for awhile and I wouldn’t be surprised if the one above ends up adorning my body as early as next week.

The “Gibson Girl” is probably the best remembered of the artist’s images. With her hair piled atop her head and a waist so tiny as to defy belief, the Gibson Girl represented a serene self-confidence that could surmount any problem. The envy of all who knew her, the Gibson Girl remained aloof of her surroundings but not to the extent of haughtiness. She was at once remote but yet accessible. The “Gibson Man,” equally as handsome and self-assured as the Gibson Girl, provided her perfect partner. The Gibson Girl and the Gibson Man in some ways represent the “Barbie and Ken” dolls of the early 1900s as icons of popular Culture.

via Eyewitness to History

October 1st is Independence Day in Nigeria, the country where my husband is from and where my father-in-law lives part time. I’m reposting some photos from their time in Naija and hope we can make a visit to Ile-Ife, the city my in-laws lived in while my husband and his brother were growing up.

If you’re in NYC, head over to another one of Freeform + Deform’s Happy Hours in celebration of Independence Day. It’s tonight at Buka.

If you’re in Chicago, stop by Rodan for a Fela Tribute. See you there!

Am I late to the party? I finally got an invite to Pinterest, the new pinboard site that allows you to make little boards of photos that get your juices flowing. You add a little “pin” button to your bookmarks bar and start surfing around the web; pin something you like and add it to a board whose theme you pick. My first board, pictured above, is “mujeres,” ’cause May loves the ladies! The boards keep track of the original URL and you can always click back there to read the piece the photo went with or click other folks’ “pins” to see where their original came from. Love!

“the organized closet” is my second pinboard next since one of my fall tasks is to get the disasters we call closets in order. It’s not helping much, as I find myself wanting the clothing in each closet I see rather than the organization.

If you’re on Pinterest, follow me here! If you’re not, head on over and sign up for an invite. It takes about three or four days and is well worth the wait.