CHICAGO: The Windy City is Mighty Pretty

Two years ago today we set off from Michigan upon the Amtrak to Chicago for our honeymoon. My first memory of hearing about the all American city was hearing Doris Day as Calamity Jane singing about the windy city, which is mighty pretty and my heart always longed to step foot there. Visiting certainly did not disappoint, I never got around to sharing everything we got up to (and the things that I did, well blogger lost most of the pictures since that time so I deleted them) - from the eating at Mercadito (first try of Mexican food), staying at the gorgeous Amalfi Hotel to being like kids at the Museum of Science and Industry or the Field Museum. To be honest, we never did a quarter of the things there is to see in that city and it's a place I long to return too. Hopefully in the coming year or two we'll make a trip back for a future anniversary. Until then, as I do every time as this date in December arrives, I remember just  how much fun we had in the windy city (in honesty it was more cold than windy, but that's beside the point).

Sadly blogger went through having a major, major tiss with a lot of my photographs from 2011 so a lot of my original Chicago posts I've had to delete *sigh*. I hate technology at times.

What city has left you breathless?!

1916 and Railroad Postcards

A little unknown side to me (at least unknown on my blog) is my love for trains - for riding them collecting memorabilia about them and model railroads. One of the reasons why we need a house of our own is because of all the model railroad trains and gear we own that we have no room to make use and use them in the apartment. So when I found these two vintage railroad postcards I knew I had to buy them for myself and add them to my collection, luckily they were only 50 cents each, but what's even more surprising is what I learnt while scanning these postcards. 

Now i'm not too sure of the train nor the engine featured in this postcard but what's exciting it that it was postmarked October 19th, 1916. While the penned author narrows their name down to the initials G. A. B, it was dedicated to their "dear friend";

"Will write a letter at school 

Rensselarville, N.Y

Oct. 16, 1916

Dear Friend; - We arrived here about 1:30. Did not have any trouble. Everything worked fine. My pocket book was (...) all right. It wasn't very cold tonight not as cold as Sat. Passed a motor (...) on the (...). Be sure and write a letter tonight. Tell me if you have any time.

Your friend

G. A. B"

Reading unfamiliar 1910's handwriting isn't the easiest but you get a general lovely sense of the note, of someone going back to school, a note about the weather and sights along the way. Everything we'd now sadly not give a second thought to when we type out a text message.

The second postcard probably dating to the same era shows the flagship locomotive of New York Central's Empire State Express No. 999 - credited at the time as being the "most famous train in the world" as it was the world's first high speed passenger train.

Rather more then a note or a postcard this card remembers a dinner meal on this particular train - each item from cantaloupes to the potatoes, tomatoes and pickles marked and remembered. I love the notations "Great huh" and toothpicks. 

But what's even more special is what I learn when researching the Empire State Express using that infamous free encyclopedia - this train was detonated to the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry - a museum we visited on our trip to the Windy City. I, yes little old me had not only seen this locomotive in person, but i'd actually stood on it.

Yeap that's me.

Jellies

Jelly fish have to be one of my favourite creatures to photograph - they are so capturing and memorizing in their movements and with interesting aquarium lighting you can get some good shots really easily. I've enjoyed taking photographs of Jelly's at The Deep in Hull and also at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago - the latter being home to a Jelly Fish exhibit which is being extended through into 2013. The aquarium itself is really worth a visit if you're ever in Chicago - we got to see a aquatic show with dolphins, a 4D film alongside seeing all the different exhibits but I especially loved the corals and the Jelly's. So I thought it was about time the Jellys made a show on my blog! Our Chicago pictures and stories seemed to get a little delayed and pushed aside because of Christmas, I hope you don't mind their publication half a year later!

Have you ever visited the Shedd Aquarium? What are your favourite animals? Do you have an animal you love to photograph?

A compact that is a little odd

Me and the boy are having a super long weekend together to celebrate his birthday and becoming a fully licensed social worker after passing his exam last week. As a result I'm flinging a scheduled post or two at you. And what would be better then one about compacts?

Sometimes you get compacts that are a little odd. The flight map upon this compact intrigues me more then anything. I won it on a lot on eBay. What attracted me was that it covered not only a somewhat map of the USA but that it featured three of the cities I'd already been to - Pittsburgh, Detroit and Chicago, plus some more that I one day want to be lucky enough to visit. It's vintage and has a vintage plane on it, what more could I want?!

The route shows what was a flight plan between Seattle to New York. Saying that - to me the map seems a little wrong. Geographically Chicago is after Detroit as the bird flies. Detroit lies between Chicago and Pittsburgh. But on this map - it's the other way around. Maybe I have it totally wrong?!

Additionally there's some green thing upon the compact. Don't get me wrong this compact, on the top at least has seen some use. Debates are out if the green was a map of the land or it's something that's been stuck on afterwards. Trying to remove the green sadly removes the flight map and plane. 

As with many of the souvenir compacts they tend to date from the 1950s and I figure this is most probably true of this one too. If I knew anything about planes this would have been useful to date it by. Sadly I'm not. The compact is goldtoned with one large framed mirror inside. Although the top has seen better days inside the compact is in great condition. While it's unmarked by brand it has two compartments each with their own puffs and flaps, one for powder which has a "made in USA" marked upon the bottom and another for rogue, the latter has remnants inside.

Don't you just love things that don't really add up sometimes?

My Shutterfly Photobook

One of the most addictive projects I've ever done is making our Chicago photo book. While I'd love to have the skills to make a scrapbook an online version was much more workable for me. Yet I wasn't sure which company to try, but after a play around I decided to use Shutterfly. Shutterfly aim to provide the user with a range of templates, cover styles, embellishments and designs to create a personalised book for you and your memories. It was these extra touches of embellishments - for example being able to add pins, stickers, tape, banners and love hearts, that set Shutterfly aside from the other photo book websites which merely provide a printed photo album with the added line of text. 

Online design board - your uploaded photos and pages line the bottom with design options for layouts, backgrounds, embellishments and a library of idea pages are on the left. You can edit, arrange and preview your photo book pages at anytime.

How long you spend and how detailed you make your photo book is entirely up to you, you have the ability to save and store your photos online and return to your project as and when you need. Because it's up to you how creative you want to be, you don't have to be an entire genius at either computers or graphic design, the templates really do help you on your way. From designing to ordering my book took me three weeks - Christmas and New Year happened mid way and I was determined to do a good job on our honeymoon photographs, verging on somewhat obsessive.

I opted to make a 8 x 11" photo book with a hard cover, you're provided with twenty pages with any extra charged at 75 cents each of which I added ten extra pages. Shutterfly seem to run a lot of promotions so we got our book at a discount with addition savings on the extra pages, another offer provided at the time, free shipping on orders over $30 so we saved again. In all, our book cost just under $34/£22.

It took just over a week for our photo book to arrive and they provide you the ability to track your package. All their parcels are bright orange and are safety wrapped. Inside of which was my first ever photo book. I love how shinny the front cover is, for which you can add your own photos and words - I opted to cover ours with a photograph of the bean. The quality of the paper and the printing is of a very high standard, when you upload your photographs a warning appears if they are of a high enough resolution. Even the one photograph which was of a low resolution came out as good as the rest.

The printed page of the computer screen [first photograph], the spine, and the spine and back of the cover the later of which you can design and embellish as much or as little as you require.

Would I make a photo book again and use Shutterfly? The answer to both is yes. I love the personalization you can create and their offering of inspiration. To be able to have my photographs properly printed out is an extra bonus especially to the quality to which they are printed. Whether I would create a photo book for normal everyday occasions is a different matter, but for important events such as our honeymoon, children, big holidays, etc I could really imagine making one. Shutterfly also allow you to order your photographs as prints and make other photo gifts so it's a very useable website with something for everyone.

Have you ever tried making a photobook? 

VINTAGE: 1933 Century of Progress Chicago Compact

As anyone knows I have a secret love for the city of Chicago - I get the same great feeling I had about moving to and living in Newcastle [and it's the city I hint most about moving to]. Chicago was also where we had our honeymoon, so a compact that was designed to commemorate the 1933 World Fair that the city hosted was always going to be a winner.

The World Fair 1933-34

The first World Fair was held in Crystal Palace and hosted by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. This fair, also known as the Century of Progress was held between 1933 to 1934 to celebrate Chicago's centenary with technological innovation as it's main theme, held around where the main museum campus of Chicago is today.

The compact itself is a double compact - holding what remains of the rogue in the top compartment and pressed powder in the bottom, with a double hinged mirror separating the two. It is in fact a very small compact being 2.1" x 1.7" wide - a scale representative of it's era. The famous Century of Progress logo appears upon it's blue enameled top. Overall it's in a brilliant condition for being so old - with only slight marking on the bottom - the hinges and the clasps work perfectly and comes complete with both puffs. While these commemorative compacts aren't rare [there's always a few in varying conditions on Ebay for various prices ranging from $30-100] they still command a strong selling price even though they are actually unmarked as to whom manufactured them. Nevertheless I love being able to own something from one of my favorite places especially now that the compact has entered it's 79th year.

On a related note the blog might get a bit compact heavy shortly, in addition to the two other Christmas compacts from the husband i'm currently bidding my way through Ebay. I jokingly laughed that the boy could buy the transformers lot he had his eye on if I could spend the same amount on compacts - deal done! So with $60 on my side i'm trying to get my hands on a wide range of compacts. Compacts and transformers [as in the toy not train transformers] are the only things I ever bid for on ebay - what do you lovelies end up buying there?

Vivian Maier

Sometimes you just stumble upon images, or people; or both and you totally associate and fall for their work. This happened to me with the photographic work of Vivian Maier through a showcase of her work within this months issue of Photography Magazine. Born in the United States, Maier was raised in France only to return to her home country at the age of 25 with a camera. Becoming a nanny, her spare time was spent photographing the everyday occurences upon the streets around her; showcasing the people; events, society and the life of middle 20th century America mostly Chicago and New York mainly in black and white and shooting "at the hip". Yet the majority of her work remained unprinted yet along acknowledged, it was only till they were found among an auction lot. I'm more then glad they are finally having their chance of seeing the light of day and I thought with my love of photography I just had to share some of her work upon my blog. 

Seeing her work has really inspired me to try and focus on taking some real "streetlife" photographs, I know people possibly don't like being in random strangers photographs so it won't be an easy mission, but I think it would be fun to at least try. Watch this space. 

If you want to see more of Vivian Maier's work [which is where all the above images are taken from] I urge you to check out the website in her honour.

Chicago

Credit

The [slow] speed of the visa processing as been making us rethink the timing of our honeymoon - that and where we're off to spend our first few days and nights of married life. Going by averages and other peoples experiences, we have a minimum of three months of waiting plus having to work my notice. Gah. This leaves us looking at September/October [hooooopefully] before I can think about moving. Gutted. Unfortunately this would mean sorting out a road tip for November - dark nights and chilly days doesn't open much forgiveness for lazy days outside and tourist season seems to wind down at the start of October.

Plan B or C was required. Do we do B - postpone the honeymoon until next Spring or C - find somewhere else. I guess the attached photograph gives you a bit of a clue ...

To say I wasn't slightly gutted at postponing the honeymoon is an understatement. The planning and the thought of this road trip has been one of my key things in keeping me strong through this visa process. It would be our first holiday in our new life together as Mr & Mrs. I kept thinking if we didn't do the honeymoon as soon as we married we never would. That it wouldn't make the wedding special if we didn't do it straight away.

Plan C was finding somewhere else more city based that still offered us plenty to do if the weather was grey and had things to do of an evening. Chicago's our next big city and at a five hour drive away, makes it reachable for long weekends. So plan C it is - we're off to pop over to tour neighbouring city and splash out on a posh hotel for three nights, enjoy the theatre, some posh restaurants, have afternoon tea, hit some museums and the pier.

Last weeks moment of spoiling ourselves was getting the Rough Guides book to Chicago, it seems so full of maps, information, guides, tours, hotels and restaurants that we could spend weeks in Chicago and not see or experience it all. It looks such a clean city, one mashing old and contemporary so well together.

We  will do our road-trip. - I'll make darn well sure of it, and if anyone has any Chicago suggestions we'd love to hear!