Welcome, friends!

Hello, friends and thieves! Welcome to the newest installment of my blogging life: Thieves Like Us. In this little bloggy, you'll find (hopefully) helpful and inspiring tips and ideas to simplify and lushify your life. Really, this is just a medium to share news and cool tidbits with friends, but if others jump on the bandwagon, that's great, too! In an effort to be more deliberate and organized about this venture, TLU (not to be confused with TRL) will feature blips about, but certainly not limited to:

• Budget Fashion
• Design and Style
• Cooking and Cleaning
• Being Green
• Rescuing Animals
• Filling up Your Dancecard
• Musica
• Travel!
• Rants about my 'real' job (will try to keep these to minimum, but you know...)

Which brings us to the little requisite "Who are you, mysterious blogger woman speaking of thievery?" part of this welcome. Well, hello there, stranger - I'm Ashlee. I'm a peppy Texan transplant (a nomad, really), who's recently moved to Chicago and is loving it. I have a little shelter dog named 'Banjo' who can really rock a neckerchief and likes to sing along to Morrissey when I'm getting ready for work in the mornings. She's a hoot. I love many things, but topping the list are:

• My dog, family, and friends (duh)
• The sound of a slide guitar or fiddle (especially lovely when together)
• Mid-Century Danish furniture (especially if it's teak!)
• Marimekko prints
• Greek food
• Red Lipstick
• Sweden and anything Scandinavian
• Jasper Johns, Charley Harper, and Rothko
• Morrissey, Falco, Jeff Buckley, and other (for various reasons, usually death or sexual ambiguity) unattaintable rock stars
• Farmer's Markets
• Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day Eco-Friendly Cleaning Products
• Havianas flip flops and Converse All Stars
• Pilot G-Tec-C4 Pens
• Anemonies, Peonies, Asters, Poppies, and other wildflower looking flowers
• Synth Pop
• Men in glasses
• Windowsill gardening
• Homeopathy
• Impromptu cooking and happy culinary accidents
• Clothing swaps
• Shoes with (as an ex-boyfriend once coined) "shit on the toe"
• Infomercials
• Cate Blanchett
• Road trips and long train rides
• Exploring Chicago on foot
• Steve Martin, Chris Farley, and Triumph the Insult Comic Dog
• Cupcakes

I like other stuff, too, but ya know, that's good to get us started. So, welcome again! Take a load off and enjoy. Feel free to send me things you'd like me to post and all that good stuff. And, of course, visit as often as you like. I'll try to be vigilant in posting so that this can be a go-to site when you're looking to kill some time at your job. Because really, no one likes there job all the time. But you'll like my blog all the time. I'll bet Banjo on it.