Appending a list or series to a pandas DataFrame as a row?

Sometimes it's easier to do all the appending outside of pandas, then, just create the DataFrame in one shot.

>>> import pandas as pd
>>> simple_list=[['a','b']]
>>> simple_list.append(['e','f'])
>>> df=pd.DataFrame(simple_list,columns=['col1','col2'])
   col1 col2
0    a    b
1    e    f

Here's a simple and dumb solution:

>>> import pandas as pd
>>> df = pd.DataFrame()
>>> df = df.append({'foo':1, 'bar':2}, ignore_index=True)

Could you do something like this?

>>> import pandas as pd
>>> df = pd.DataFrame(columns=['col1', 'col2'])
>>> df = df.append(pd.Series(['a', 'b'], index=['col1','col2']), ignore_index=True)
>>> df = df.append(pd.Series(['d', 'e'], index=['col1','col2']), ignore_index=True) 
>>> df
  col1 col2
0    a    b
1    d    e

Does anyone have a more elegant solution?

Following onto Mike Chirico's answer... if you want to append a list after the dataframe is already populated...

>>> list = [['f','g']]
>>> df = df.append(pd.DataFrame(list, columns=['col1','col2']),ignore_index=True)
>>> df
  col1 col2
0    a    b
1    d    e
2    f    g