blame it on pinterest

More specifically, blame it on some of the people I follow on Pinterest. Even more specifically, blame my burgeoning obsession with polka dot jeans on this board (by which I also mean to blame it on Tracy and Jessica (hi)). I ill-advisedly got onto Pinterest last night, before I attempted to go to bed, and spent a significant amount of time drooling over the gorgeous pairs of pants they'd been pinning. I don't think it's a full-fledged problem yet, but give it time, give it time... In the meantime, some of my favorite pairs of polka dot pants.

1. J. Crew / 2. Old Navy / 3. Forever 21 / 4. Instagram / 5. Paige Denim (on Shopbop)

I like #2 a lot, because it seems like you can't tell that it has a pattern at first, which I find really interesting. It might be more obvious in person, but I just find the concept of it being a little bit of an illusion pretty cool. "Oh, what lovely lilac jeans you- THERE'S POLKA DOTS ON THEM OH MY GOSH!" It's always kinda fun to surprise people, right?

Seriously, though, I'm pretty sure I normally reserve this level of "waaaant" for ludicrously expensive ballgowns.

What are you seriously wanting to own right now?

finally you'll see

I have Part of Your World stuck in my head today. No judging, 'kay? (I should actually watch that movie again sometime...) It's already been an eventful week, this one, and getting more eventful by the moment. Naturally, I chose the semester with the heavier course load to get really involved in campus life. Not that 16 hours is that heavy a course load, but still, it's heavier than what I did last semester. Last week was, of course, busy too, but it was definitely enjoyable, just like this one's been. I think I actually enjoy this "constantly doing stuff" thing a bit.

Some of my outfits from last week...

Monday, I had to be professional for stuff, so I ran around doing stuff in a sweater dress, because I figured being professional didn't come at the expense of being warm.

 

Dress - Body Central | Pants - F21 | Boots - E's Closet Boutique | Necklace - thrifted

Tuesday or Wednesday, not sure which, saw me messing around with my outfits a little. Tuesday, I didn't have anything going on, and I had pledge class on Wednesday. I don't really know which day I was actually interesting on, alas.

 

(also look at that FACE in the third picture there... What was I doing? We don't know!)
Shirt - JC Penney's | Dress (as skirt) - F21 | Belt - Papaya | Tights - Target

Thursday, I went out to pizza with all the people in the fraternity I'm pledging, and it was awesome! (Except for the part where I forgot that the next day was the day I got money back on my card... That wasn't so awesome, but apparently you're allowed to be a bit clueless as a freshman). I really wanted to try the whole peplum thing but without any commitment to a piece, so I paired a similarly colored top and skirt (a heavily rolled one) to create a fake one. Not exactly sure I'm sold on it for myself...

 

Shirt/pants - F21 | Skirt (as part of shirt) - idk it's like ten years old guys | Hair clip - Albertson's???

Friday, I had Snow Ball. Before that, though, I wound up going, after classes, on a really long and really cold walk all around University Circle. It almost was all of campus, but I decided I was hungry. This was also the night I ate at both Panera and Chipotle within an hour of each other. I swore I was going to get the Chipotle and save it to eat till after Snow Ball, buuuut then I ate it anyhow. Seriously, I've got an addiction, and it's bad.

 

Shirt - Deb | Sweater - mom bought it from somewhere? probably Dillard's | Pants - F21

I wound up failing to acquire full-length pictures of myself at/for Snow Ball (boo! bad self), but I have a partial one, cropped for my friends' privacy:

That was a very fun night, and I danced like crazy. Unfortunately, I also unintentionally went en pointe while shoeless (and really you shouldn't try it in anything but proper pointe shoes but look who's an idiot here...) and jammed a toe. I'm probably lucky that that's all I did... I spent the rest of the past four days dealing with that, and the ankle I rolled at one point on my walk home. Ah well, stuff happens!

TED Talks

Is anyone else in danger of becoming addicted to TED Talks? Just me? Kay, that's cool. No, but in all seriousness, it's almost a problem. I spotted a piece on Refinery29 today about Olivia Bee, an 18 year old photographer who's shooting all sorts of campaigns for big companies, and let me tell you, she's the coolest. Refinery29 linked to a piece by the Guardian, who had linked to Bee's Ted Talk, and well, I'm going to ignore the fact that I was going to write about something else today in order to give you her talk, because it's pretty damn good.

Enjoy, and tell me your reaction to her!

Oscars!

I didn't watch the Oscars, I confess. I don't really care too much to see it - I'm not a big fan of watching awards shows, and anyways, I'm drowning in homework. (DROWNING I TELL YOU, DROWNING! okay, melodrama over). Still, I caught a few glimpses whenever I took a break from work, and there were definitely some people who really stunned.

My picks for best dressed are definitely...

I went to get ice cream late last night and saw Halle on screen in our lobby and wow. She was beyond gorgeous in this dress.

Charlize Theron's been one of my favorite actresses since I saw Aeon Flux and fell in love with her hair and voice. Still, I don't really follow people's careers much. I don't know what she was on the carpet for, but she definitely wins for looking absolutely gorgeous.

Amanda Seyfried is just absolutely beautiful, and while I do generally like bolder gowns, this one was a lovely choice for her.

Kristin Chenoweth was, overall, my favorite for the night. She had an absolutely gorgeous gown, and looked absolutely fantastic.

all pictures: source

Finally, let's just talk about how absolutely adorable Quvezhané Wallis is, alright? She has a puppy purse, and the puppy is dressed up too.

Who were your favorites?

it's Friday!!!!!

This has been a very interesting week, and a lot of things I didn't anticipate kind of just...happened, or popped up randomly. We've been spending a lot of time deciding our living situations for next semester, and my roommate agreed to share a room next year, and I think we've almost got our entire suite together. Just gotta figure out one more dude so we get to keep our suite as a co-ed one... Overall, though, this has been a good week. There've been plenty of things to keep me occupied, most of them fun. Next week currently looks calmer, but after the way everything snowballed (heh, our dance is called Snowball... sorry, excuse me) this past week, I'm not going to really trust it to stay that way. I have something Tuesday and something Wednesday and that's it, to the best of my knowledge. I could use a calm week, I think.

My favorite things for the week are below. (And not a one of them is the blasted game my floormates have been playing non-stop for the past four days I'm so tired of listening to the noises from it).

if you have a source, lemme know please!

I love the way these dreads look on her, and the way her face is angled. Overall, it's a really cool picture, though no one really seems to know where it's from.

thank you to tumblr's creativity!

source

Who else who's seen my pictures from senior year thinks I totally could have used this back then? Yeah, I do too. It looks extremely useful. Not that anything could help when I didn't straighten my bangs, but still.

source

Just...don't mind me. I'm going to sit here and drool over this gorgeous piece of clothing.

Also, remember the post at the beginning of this week? Well, since the shirt was from Kohl's, I received an e-mail about it. I didn't think that linking would be particularly relevant, since the shirt is like six years old, but hey, apparently that's a good thing to do with all your clothes. The more you know. As a refresher, this is the outfit:

Now, why would this be a favorite? Simple: there's a discount code in it for you guys! From now (apparently it started on January 11th) until March 9th, if you use the code TENFORBLOG on Kohl's website, you get 10% off. It can also be used to stack savings with another department level code, which is pretty sweet, since it always sucks when you have multiple discounts somewhere but can't use them together. Pretty sure that's a good enough reason to be a favorite, don't you?

planning ahead

Last Thursday, before I realized it was Valentine's Day (I still deserve an award for how observant I am, I swear), I posted this, featuring a selfie of me with one of my current not-projecty-projects, one that's seen me ordered to watch Project Runway and somehow made my Arabic teacher decide to show off his art from his old yearbooks. It's really a fairly simple thing - I've been sketching outfits in order to find new ways to wear different pieces, because creativity sometimes needs help, especially when your wakeup time is 8AM every day.

 

I've even put checkmarks next to the ones that I know work and are good outfits. It's pretty fun to have ideas for outfits when I don't want to think, honestly. Does anyone else do something kinda like this to figure out things they can wear? Lemme know if you do.

beautiful books

I love reading. If you saw my post about my room a while back, it's pretty obvious that books are a Big Deal to me (heck, if you've seen any of my pictures of my room in my parents' home, it's also pretty obvious, because there are even more books there). Normally, I really only read fantasy and science fiction books (and occasionally historical fiction) - basically only fictional stuff. However, I spotted a pin a while back about the book Dreaming of Dior. Written by Charlotte Smith and illustrated by Grace Cowan, it is a beautiful book full of wonderful stories about the collection of dresses Smith inherited from her godmother, Doris Darnell. Given that I got it less than a month ago and have already read through it a couple of times, you can probably imagine my reaction when I discovered today that there's a second book, Dreaming of Chanel. Obviously, I ordered it right away.

The books are wonderful, not because of the beautiful dresses in them, but because of the stories about them. I think my favorite story in the first book was about the first designer dress Doris owned, bought in college, which she wore to a dance with her future husband. It was one of the cutest stories I've ever read about a couple, and there are many more like that story within the pages. I'm excited to see what other beautiful clothes lie within the second book.

Has anyone else read one of these? Let me know your favorite story&dress! (Also, side-note, if you've read them, tell me I'm not the only one who's been super surprised by some of the stories Smith's told about herself because damn she's been up to some interesting things!)



ps: I forgot to mention, the black sections on the outfit on Dreaming of Dior are VELVET and so cool.

E's Clothing Boutique

In my last post you might have noticed some shoes that haven't been seen on my blog before. That would be because they're brand new. My old black boots from Charlotte Russe finally died, which...makes sense, since they were probably never meant for serious amounts of walking I do. (I don't think anything except hiking and combat boots are, but that's probably a different discussion). Regardless, once those died, I was splitting my shoe-wearing between just two pairs of booties, and realized I needed some taller boots, and also needed to do a better job of rotating between shoes, in order to keep them around in the best condition possible for the longest amount of time. I'd spotted these shoes on a store I found through Pinterest a while back, and, well, I decided to nab them.

source

The site in question is E's Closet Boutique, and as far as shoes go, they're pretty bloody good. I'm in love with the color and that little gold detail, and the overall fit of the shoe. The only problems I think I have are that I didn't realize just how narrow the end of the foot is, and that my big calves had just a little bit of trouble with the size of the shaft at first. Overall though, it's absolutely lovely, and fitting a bit snug is definitely not a bad thing. We'll see how it looks as they age - considering how hard I am on everything I own, it'll be quite interesting.

Overall, I definitely plan to order from E's again. They were pretty fast, and I definitely like the overall product. Maybe next time I order, I'll try some of their clothes - they're pretty cute, after all!

the last week

The past week was a whirlwind of things,  and while I thought this week would be calmer, I'm coming to the conclusion that I simply might not get a calm week in the foreseeable future. Honestly, today's been the only fairly calm day in quite a while. I have an interview (!!!!!!!!!!!) this week, get to start pledge class (is it weird that I'm excited? I can't decide), and go to Snowball, my school's fancy winter formal-ish dance thing. Any excuse to be super fancy is a good enough excuse for me. I keep telling my Econ seatmate/friend that I'm usually not ALWAYS dressed fancy, but I don't think he's ever going to believe me, the way my life's going. Not that always being fancy is a bad thing, of course, though I'm pretty sure he thinks it is. I think I like being busy and having lots of things to do, and excuses to be fancy, really.

Monday, I didn't have to do much, so it was fairly casual for me. And overall a pretty good day, I think.

 

Dress (as shirt)/pants/boots - F21 | Vest - thrifted

Tuesday, surprisingly, I didn't have anything. I just dressed up because I could, and enjoyed it immensely.

 

Blazer - thrifted | Skirt (as dress ) - TJ Maxx | Belt/shoes - F21 | Leggings - Target

Wednesday was induction, and the final planning meeting for a big event for the club I'm exec on. It was hectic, but fun, and also saw me trotting from my building to Thwing in under ten minutes while wearing heels. Considering that it usually takes me longer than that in boots or flats (granted, I meander), I think I managed something quite impressive that night. As for that leggings/stockings combo that sort of looks like tights...let's just say that improvisation is fun. And that I really need to actually go acquire some more tights.

 

Blazer - thrifted | Dress (as shirt) - F21 | Skirt - Jason Wu for Target | Heels - Payless

Thursday was Valentine's Day, and an Accounting test. It was also the day that I forgot was a holiday, despite numerous reminders, and found myself staring at a floormate wondering why she looked so fancy on a Thursday of all days...before realizing. Not one of my finer moments. Granted, I did have tests on the brain, so I think it might be excusable? Maybe? No, not really... At least I got to visit the Natural History Museum and ogle DINOSAURS for a paper!

 

Shirt - J.C. Penny's | Pants - Target | Shoes/belt - F21

aaaaand the dinos/other prehistoric critters in question (well, the ones I'm contemplating using for my paper, at least):

A Dimetrodon

Triceratops!!! I'm sure you guys knew that, though!

Dire Wolf skull! (compared to a modern wolf skull)

I'm actually kind of excited for this paper, because I think dinosaurs and historical things are super cool and interesting, which means I've been completely in love with my SAGES class thus far.

Friday was the day of my club's event, which was exciting and terrifying all at once. I didn't actually wind up with pictures of what I wore during it, but since I'm basically wearing the same thing to Snowball, I think I can get away with that. My overall for the day outfit was fun, just like the day was once the Econ test I had was done with. Also... I kind of straightened my hair. :C I'd made so much progress at liking my hair's natural (albeit confusing) texture, and then I took a shower, had it dry the way I always do, looked in the mirror, and hated it so much I couldn't stop myself. It makes me sad, because it's such a goal of mine to try making peace with my natural appearance, and then I have days like that. Still, it's one day after starting this sometime in Senior year, so I suppose I'm doing pretty well.

 

Cardigan/pants/boots - F21 | Shirt - Kohl's | Scarf - The Meadows Museum

Saturday wasn't what I'd call "GO GO GO GO", but I simply wound up NOT getting a picture of my outfit at all. Probably because I got distracted by a floormate racing onto the floor with a horsemask, but that's a different story... Sunday was much more relaxed, and also offered the opportunity to begin breaking in my new boots.

 

Cardigan/shirt/pants - F21 | Boots - E's Closet Boutique | Necklace - thrifted

What was your past week like/what does this week look like it'll be like for you guys?