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What to pack: Hostel essentials

July 23, 2017 Randi

When I published my post earlier this week about my recent trip to Nashville, I ended up getting a lot of questions and comments about my decision to stay in a hostel for the first part of the trip.

(If you didn’t know, I stayed in an all-female eight-bed hostel room for the first few nights of my trip. It was a blast!)

I was a little caught off-guard by the questions, actually. I know hostels aren’t as prevalent in the U.S. as they are over in Europe, but I’m so accustomed to them that sometimes I forget they’re not quite as common here in the States! When I travel alone, hostels are always my first choice of lodging because they’re budget-friendly, and they’re a great way to build friendships with other members of the travel community.

When I say budget friendly, I mean it. Hostels can actually be dirt cheap. I’ve booked beds in the U.S. for as low as $20 a night… which means more money to spend on drinks, dining and souvenirs! And the building friendships part is no joke. Every time I’ve stayed in a hostel — both here in the U.S. and over in Europe — I’ve always met so many people from so many countries!

Because so many hostel-dwellers are traveling alone, everyone kind of ends up hanging out together. It’s great. Not only do you learn about different cultures, but you also end up having friends to spend your trip with, so you don’t end up playing tourist all by your lonesome. Plus, if you keep those connections via Facebook (I always do!), you have couches to crash on in the future if you ever need them.

But, hostels can sometimes be a little scary if you’re not totally prepared. If you’re a first-time hostel stayer, I’d definitely suggest booking a smaller one-gender room, like a four-bed female room. My first ever hostel stay was a mixed-gender 12-bed room in Washington D.C., and I was kind of terrified! I shared a room with two of my friends and nine incredibly drunk German men, and got about two hours of sleep. It makes a great story now, sure, but at the time, I definitely was not prepared for the experience.

But, after staying in a slew of hostels across two continents, I think I’ve become a bit better at knowing what to expect, how to prepare and what to pack.

A bachelorette party in Nashville

July 18, 2017 Randi

Pop quiz! If a 20-something girl tells you she’s going to Nashville for a weekend, why?

If you guessed “bachelorette party,” there’s a pretty good chance you’re right. So, I’m sure absolutely nobody will be surprised when I say that I just returned from an extended weekend trip to Nashville for my college roommate’s bachelorette party. It was a complete and total blast!

Because I have an unconventional work schedule, I decided to head down to Tennessee a few days early to explore on my own, since I’d actually never been to Nashville before. I’d found a convenient Southwest flight, so I departed Midway right from work last Wednesday, and stayed in Nashville until Sunday afternoon. The bachelorette party started Friday afternoon, so I had an evening, a day and an afternoon all to myself before anyone arrived.

Navy, red and polka dots

July 3, 2017 Randi2 comments

Happy (almost) Fourth of July, America!

I love Independence Day. When I was a kid, we used to day trip to my Uncle Mike’s house every Fourth to spend the holiday there.

My Uncle Mike wasn’t biologically my uncle; he was my dad’s best friend — and actually, my dad’s best man, too. He was a pretty prominent figure in my life growing up, so calling him my uncle always came naturally.

Anyway, Uncle Mike lived right on Strawberry Lake back in Michigan. Like, right on it. So every summer, my parents would pack us up and take us over a handful of times each year. We’d spend days learning how to waterski behind the speed boat, afternoons dining at Zukey Lake Tavern and nights catching fireflies, barbecuing and jumping off the rope swing into the canal behind Uncle Mike’s backyard.

And, the Fourth of July was no exception. Almost every year, we’d take the pontoon out for the day, park it at a sandbar and allow ourselves to sunburn waiting until dusk. Once night fell, we’d watch the fireworks show while fishing cold melon out of the cooler with our sandy hands.

Fourth of July was always a summer highlight growing up.

And, while I won’t be spending tomorrow docking the pontoon and lounging with a drink in hand, there’s something to be said for celebrating the Fourth here in Chicago, too. Miles of beaches along Lake Michigan, drink specials on rooftop bars across the city and the Navy Pier fireworks show?

Chicago is not a bad place to celebrate America’s birthday.

But, it begs the question: What do you wear?

Life lately

June 29, 2017 Randi1 comment

So, I almost made it to the end of June without a single hint of a sunburn… but some scarcely-applied sunblock and a strangely-positioned chair on the Big Star patio left me with just one half of one bright red shoulder last week. Sigh. I was so close, too!

Anyway, aside from trying to avoid the sun (#redheadprobs), here’s what’s been going on in my life lately.

Summer, summer, summertime: On crop tops and the ’90s

June 25, 2017 Randi

Whenever summer comes around, I end up getting DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince stuck in my head about once a week. Is that just me?

“Summertime” makes me so nostalgic for the ’90s. I don’t know about you, but “hey pull over real quick and throw your car in park to override its safety system so we can sync my iPhone up to your car’s Bluetooth audio connection and use Siri to switch tracks on Spotify” just doesn’t really have the same flow as “pop in my CD and let me run a rhyme.”

Seriously, mix CDs were about a million times better than streaming service playlists. I think I loved the fact that they were so permanent. Unless you had a million dollars to spend on CD-RWs, you were basically stuck with whatever 22 songs you could fit onto a few CDs for the whole summer.

So, yeah. I miss a few things from the ’90s, like ~~terrible~~ super awesome mix CDs, writing in Lisa Frank binders with gel pens, and original Nicktoons. But, the style? Not so much. I know there’s a huge fashion revival going on right now trying to re-popularize some of the styles from the decade, but I’ll pass on the muddy brown lipstick, butterfly hair clips and Steve Madden flatforms.

But, the crop tops? The resurgence of those suckers started a few years ago, and I can get behind it. I just probably won’t pair them with incredibly low-rise super flared jeans this time around.

Grab-and-go baked oatmeal cups

June 22, 2017 Randi

When it comes to eating breakfast on workdays, I am a grab-and-go kind of person.

Sometimes I’ll plop a big Pyrex bowl of sliced melon on my kitchen table to pick at while I get ready, but since my shift starts at 6 a.m., I ditch any and all morning activities that aren’t absolutely crucial to getting me looking socially presentable and out the door.

That includes sitting down and eating breakfast.

I do make coffee in the a.m. and drink my cup while I’m doing my hair and makeup, but a full sit-down breakfast — even if it’s just cereal and milk — is not possible. So, I usually end up bringing my breakfast to work.

I have a few go-to staples at this point. Overnight oats and smoothies are two of my favorites, but I like to keep a few things in the freezer for the days I hit snooze one too many times and don’t even have time to press “liquify” on a blender.

One of those freezer-friendly portable breakfasts? Baked oatmeal cups.

A morning and evening skincare regimen for summer. A great routine to help combo skin stay nice in the sun.

Current summer skincare routine

June 19, 2017 Randi

I have, admittedly, somewhat of a spotty track record with skincare.

All through my late teens and early 20’s, I slept in my makeup. And — even as recently as last year — if I ran out of face cleanser or couldn’t fit my moisturizer in my TSA-approved baggie of liquids, I’d just swap out my body soap and hand cream. Cringe.

I’ve been genetically blessed with mostly-clear skin. I have a pale freckly complexion that doesn’t break out much at all aside from the inevitable that-time-of-the-month zit, so I’ve always been able to get away with treating my skin like straight garbage.

But now that 30 is on the horizon (gulp), I’ve been trying to take a more active role in putting together an actual skincare regimen. As it turns out, it’s kinda hard to do! I’m planning on writing a post about how you can develop a skincare routine starting from scratch, but for now, I’m just going to share my current lineup.

Business cards: Design tips (and cute cases)

June 14, 2017 Randi

It’s actually somewhat embarrassing to admit this, but — for roughly a year and a half of my post-graduate adult life — I didn’t have business cards.

Whoops.

My last job had cards printed for me, and I relied exclusively on those for about three years. I used my personal cellphone for everything, so that number was printed on them. I wasn’t freelancing or side hustling at all back then, so my work-provided cards filled every need I had.

But, when I took my new job in early 2015, it did not come with pretty printed business cards right off the bat. Also, I had started freelancing and had joined a few professional organizations — which basically exist only for networking purposes.

And so, after putting it off month after month and scribbling my Twitter handle down on scrap paper (sorry everyone), I finally got around to designing my own personal business cards and having them printed.

And then, ironically enough, my job presented me with a case of 1,000 business cards two months later. Sigh.

However, I think it’s important to have more than one business card design — more on that later. So, right now, I have three different card options: My company-provided cards, and two different personal business card designs.

Designing both of my personal business cards was surprisingly hard! Picking a design, deciding what contact information I wanted to include… the process was a little more nitpick-y than I thought it would be. It took a few weeks of designing, editing, proofing and consulting to get them how I wanted them, but I’m really pleased with how they turned out.

Here are a few tips I picked up along the way.

Reflecting on high school graduation, 10 years later

June 11, 2017 Randi2 comments

It’s been an emotional graduation season this year.

I’m a few years removed from college at this point, so I usually forget all about graduation season. At least, until I’m trying to grab dinner during an early summer weekend and the waitlist is hours long and the restaurant is filled with smiling teens and 20-somethings. Then I remember.

But this year’s a little different. Not only did my little sister graduate from college, but I’m also celebrating two notable anniversaries this year: It’s been 10 years (!!!) since I graduated high school, and five years since I walked across the stage from undergrad.

While I want to say I can’t believe it’s already been a decade since I left high school with the rest of the class of 2007, it really does feel like so long ago. It’s been a whirlwind 10 years and I’ve changed so much. The change isn’t really noticeable day-to-day — or even year-to-year. But, when I look back at High School Randi dressed in a canary red cap and gown, nervously tottering across a gymnasium stage, a decade’s worth of change is glaringly obvious.

In a lot of ways, I’m still pretty unsure of myself. I work in an unstable industry, and I’m far from being “settled down” in that American Dream White Picket Fence kind of way… although, to be honest, that’s not what I want right now, and even though High School Randi didn’t exactly have a 10-year plan for her life, I think she’d be pretty content with where Grown Up Randi is at right now.

Pinned butterfly wall art

May 30, 2017 Randi2 comments

When you don’t eat meat and one of your good friends is a taxidermist, the jokes practically write themselves.

But, jokes aside, my friend Mickey is a taxidermist by trade. I’ve been friends with this girl since high school, when we both obsessed over things like UnderOath, pyramid-studded belts and Vans sneakers together.

I’ve always felt kind of bad, because I really wanted to support her career, but also I didn’t really want to gut and stuff a dead rat. You know, normal friendship dilemmas.

So, I got super stoked when I found out that she was offering a not-quite-as-gruesome class at the recent Pilsen Renegade Craft Fair pop-up: Butterfly pinning!

Important side note: No butterflies were killed during the making of this project. That would be sad. This little guy died naturally at a butterfly farm.

This craft takes two sessions to make, because the butterfly needs to be moist when you spread it, and then dry when you mount it. I did the first part of the project at Renegade, and then Mickey came over and helped me finish it up a few weeks later.

I’m totally in love with how this framed specimen turned out!

Oh, and the best part? She also sells these kits in her Etsy store (affiliate link), so you can actually buy your supplies and do this at home! No worries — the directions are included.