February Mix: Going Back
Growing up in the 90s and early 00s, we listened to some pretty cool music (I’m looking at you, Spice Girls). But because my parents had a strict “no pop” thing going on at our house, I was also exposed to some great groups from my parents’ generation. This mix has a little of both worlds, from Fleetwood Mac to, of coures, B*Witched. It will either make you smile or make you sick. Enjoy!
GOING BACK, listen to it here. Playlist:
- C’est La Vie - B*Witched
- Only Wanna Be With You – Hootie & The Blowfish
- Stop – Spice Girls
- I’m Every Woman – Whitney Houston
- Don’t Stop Me Now – Queen
- Upside Down – A*Teens
- Rocket Man – Elton John
- Doctor Jones – Aqua
- That Thing You Do – The Wonders
- I Want You Back – Jackson 5
- Say My Name – Destiny’s Child
- Fortunate Son – Creedence Clearwater Revival
- No Scrubs – TLC
- Goodbye Angel – Fleetwood Mac
Cover image via Lisa Frank (obvs)
D*S Knits Project
Do you recognize these colors? I had some wool left over from my sweater project, and thought I’d use it to make a herringbone cowl for the Design*Sponge January Instagram Challenge . No matter the outcome, participating has really helped me get my knit on and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed getting to check out the work of the other knitting contestants. If you’re on Instagram, check out the hashtag #dsknits to see the projects other folks are working on. Very inspiring! I’m feeling the urge to go into business like so many of these other women!
1 x 3: Personal Style Blogs
As promised, I deliver to you the first post in my 3 x 3: Best of Style Blogs series! First up: personal style blogs! While my Google Reader is filled to the brim with PSB’s (great acronym, it’s totally working), the three I’m sharing with you today are where I find the most inspiration. Click through the images for direct links to each of these lady’s outfit posts.
The Time Is Grey - First off, this lady is gorgeous. And French. So clearly she’s just, like, a really chic and awesome person. Second, her name is Anaïs, which takes her coolness to even greater heights because the name just so happens to also belong to my favorite songstress ever. So there’s that. And third, and this one’s beyond obvious, she has great personal style. Behold:
Orchid Grey - Speaking of Grey’s, and long beautiful I-want-it-so-bad hair, Orchid Grey is another great style blog. Julie’s tagline is “Big Hair, Small Wallet” and boy, is that cool with me. Since my wallet is growing more and more minuscule by the day, it’s great to see a style blog where the outfits are clearly in your price range. Or thrifted! Not only do I dig Julie’s wild style, I also love reading the little updates she posts about her life. It’s a crazy world, this bloggosphere, where we get glimpses into the personal lives of people we don’t know. I started following her blog just before her engagement, and I was so excited when I heard the big news. Excited for someone I’ve never been in contact with, but through images and words have been brought closer to. Without further ado:
Framboise Fashion - Last, but certainly not least, is Framboise Fashion by the fabulous Danish Aussie Sarah Mikaela, a blogger who’s living, and stylin’, in Copenhagen. Apart from coveting her duds, which is sort of a given here, I also covet her photography. This girl can work her way around Photoshop like a pro. Check it:
Check back next Monday for my top three Style & Interview blogs!
Bits & Bobs No. 9
Scenes from Monday’s Inauguration over on Jezebel.
Daring to go dark on the lipstick front, over on Cup of Jo.
As I’ve shared before, I have a bit of a garland obsession. Chock it up to my Waldorf childhood or just to the fact that I love flowers. Design*Sponge shared a gorgeous wintry floral head wreath from The Ladies of Forêt that I’m aching to replicate.
These gorgeous images from photographer Hannah Davis‘ journey blog, Drift, blew me away (via Miss Moss).
More radness from Miss Moss: 2013 calendars. I have yet to invest in a new one (last year I went for a Nikki McClure, and I might just do it again because her work is so darn cool), but these two from spreadthelove and prismaticprintshop, respectively, are right up my alley.
Flipboard Makes You Fancy
Today I attended my first Alt Channel class of the new year! The event was hosted by Flipboard, a social magazine app that was founded just a few miles south of here, and focused on how to use the app and the interface benefits for bloggers. Despite getting off to a patchy start (sound quality can be rough on the nets), the class was informative and exciting! Care to transform your favorite social media sites into a gorgeous magazine that you can flip through? Don’t mind if I do! I immediately downloaded the app and added all of my favorite content. After seeing what a beautiful job it did with the blogs I follow, I tested my own out.
Well done, folks. You’ve made my blog (and by extension myself) feel fancy!
Do you use Flipboard? And, this is the more important question here, does it make you feel fancy?
My First Knitted Sweater
This December I was mad productive and knitted my first ever sweater! With pockets! Though I’ve worked with needles from a young age (thank you Waldorf and dear Ms. Maloney!), I had never tackled anything more complicated than a cable hat and a lace shawl. But with the weather turning stormy and the epic amounts of unproductive TV watching that were bound to occur in my future, I decided to seize the day. I purchased seven skeins of beautiful wool yarn* and found this simple and gorgeous pattern on Ravelry (hi, Agnes). The time was ripe for success! With the aid of trusty YouTube and a strong work ethic, I conquered the hell out of this project, finishing in about one week! If you’re a knitter, whether a newbie or a pro, I’d recommend this raglan beauty. It’s simple…and has pockets! What’s not to love?!
For those of you who don’t know how to knit but have always wanted to learn, look no further than this simple tutorial on Design*Sponge. To try anything more complicated, search for how-to vids on YouTube. Soon, you’ll be knitting away!
*For more details on the sweater pictured above, visit my Agnes project page over on Ravelry.
3 x 3: Best of Style Blogs
1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12
While I might not dress like it at times, I’m ridiculously into all things style…and have been from an early age! As a wee one, I loved to wear “special legs” (my personal term for tights that I invented in preschool), flowery dresses, and heeled Mary Jane shoes. When my parents forced me into the necessary (in their minds) turtleneck in winter (gah!), I’d wear it under whatever party dress I’d selected for the day. I’d be seething with anger about it, but I’d be seething in style!
As I grew older, I drifted away from dresses and became a strictly no-fuss pants-are-best kind of gal. I discovered capris around first grade – pedal-pushers as my mom called them – and purchased my first bell bottoms in second grade (boy, did I think those jeans were boss!). Then came the pair of bright pink cords that I wore every day the year I turned 9 until the knees gave out.
While I suppose my personal style has evolved somewhat since elementary school, I now wear dresses and special legs (pardon, tights) occasionally, I’d say it’s moved in a direction that’s more focused on casual comfort. For example, I own several pairs of heels that I’ve acquired over the years, but I rarely wear them. Even when an occasion calls for some fancy dressing, I’ll spend a good five-minutes debating over whether to go with comfy flats (and I’m talking, like, Keen comfy here) or the shoes I keep in my closet in case an event of this nature were to occur. And I’ll almost always go with the flats.
I’m the kind of person you’ll see walking down the street in hiking shoes, leggings, skirt, sweater, and brightly-colored Pashmina and think, “Gee, she’s in need of a little makeover.” I know people think this at me because I do it all the time to other folks and there’s no way I’m alone. It’s part of the human condition to judge and judge we do. I’ve received the once-over-frown-smile look from stylish ladies often enough to realize that they’re judging my outfits (that, or they’ve got a serious case of bitch-face. I have it too. Solidarity, sista). “Throw a carpet bag in the mix and she practically looks homeless,” they think in my general direction. I wish I had a sign that was only invisible to these particular folks that read, “I am well-aware of how not-classy this outfit is, but it was the closest I could get to publicly-acceptable pajamas. I plan on doing better tomorrow.”
Not that being comfortable has to come at the cost of stylishness (or that any of this shit actually matters). I see classy and yet comfortable-looking ladies strutting around this town all the time. How I yearn to be like them! (Just a note, these classy/comfy-style peeps are almost always middle aged women.) I guess I haven’t quite mastered my personal “look” just yet. I’ve established styles I like, head on over to my Pinterest for a mere smattering of looks, but still don’t have a carefully curated closet that produces a cohesive style day in and day out. Also, I’m lazy. As I said before, I prefer to be in socially-acceptable pajamas if I’m going anywhere on a cold morning or right after I’ve woken up.
Anyhoo, when I’m not in yoga pants and a brightly colored scarf, I like to play with more interesting (though still comfy!) looks and draw much of my inspiration from style blogs. And I want to share them with you because they’re, like, quality, man! Starting next week, I will be posting some of my favorite 1. personal style, 2. style & interview, and 3. street style blogs, featuring three blogs in each category. Get pumped!
It’s Getting Cold In Here
When I was home over “break,” Eric and I acquired a second down comforter. You see, I am a blanket stealer and Eric has had enough of it. While this extra comforter hasn’t affected my warmth much at all (like I said, I am a blanket stealer, hence always nice and toasty), it has added some extra color to our room. When my family and I went to Bali five years ago I purchased my first ever, and only, quilt. When we returned home from the trip, I converted the quilt into a nice little duvet cover so that it could fit over my comforter. It’s beautiful and I love having it back on my bed. Here are some more lovely quilt images that I’ve discovered through Pinterest, obvs. Enjoy!
Taking A Break
Like many students, every winter throughout college I migrated back home to stay with my family for the holidays. The break would last about a month, wherein I would get horribly sick (let’s face it, I’d probably had a total of 5 hours of sleep during finals), lounge around the house in sweatpants, drink tea with my high school besties, and de-compress/de-stress from my grueling college semester.
I’ve now been out of college for over a year and am happy to report that, while I no longer get horribly sick when I return home (thank the heavens), for the second winter in a row I have had the luxury of spending 2-3 weeks with my family in their home on the Central Coast.
Now, if you’re still in college, you might not realize how envious some of my working friends are of my vacation situation. For most of us when we enter the working world, “winter break” becomes a phrase of the past. Instead of a month-long chill-sesh in December and January, one must continue with one’s job, hopefully getting the chance to spend a couple paid (and heavily rationed) vacation days with family and friends at one point or another during the holidays. This is the life of the working college grad. This should be my life, but for some very lucky reasons it has, blessedly, not been just yet. Here’s why:
My first year out of college I was lucky enough to have a boss who understood the necessity of being away from the freezing-ass cold of West Philadelphia in December and let me take a very generous break to be with my family in California (for the record, I did get some work done…some). Technically, I was on a paid vacation and, technically, I should have only been home for a week or less (thanks, VISTA), but, happily, I was able to have a “winter break” like the college kid I still felt I was. And it was lovely! When I returned back to work in January I was ready to tackle whatever grant proposal came my way! I had had my flu, I had relaxed deeply, and I had visited with the high school buddies that keep me going. It was great!
After my service year ended, I was lucky enough to have a “summer break” (read: lived off/spent all of my meager savings) before beginning work as a consultant in August. And then, due to the contractual nature of my new job, I received this wonderful little break in December, which meant, and means until next week, that once again I am on “winter break” when really I should be slogging away at an office somewhere wishing that my weekends were two days longer.
So, while I do not know how long this job will last and while I have yet to figure out my professional goals in life, I take comfort in the knowledge that while I am in this tele-commuting ”free-lance consultant” unstable/confusing/and bizarre point in my career, I get to spend my days wherever the fuck I want (ahem, can afford). And this holiday season, I am spending them curled up on the couch in my parents’ family room, trying to make out the words on my computer screen over the intense glare that is coming from the window behind me. It’s a rough life.
Yes, there’s a part of me that wishes I had a career with a steady income, but there’s also another part of me, and, let’s face it, in this moment a much bigger part of me, that’s so dang pleased that I get to spend this long stint of time back home. Maybe I’ll have normal adult vacations in this new year. But right now, I’ll bask in the glory that is free-lance employment and enjoy the last few days of my break. Suck it, bitchez.
This story was first posted on Beginners and titled “The Break.”
Image via b$/ram
Hello Again
It’s been awhile! I am back from a long blog-hiatus and am as refreshed and as busy as ever. Since much of my after-work (think after 5pm) time has been devoted to Beginners of late, KU has been simmering contentedly on the back burner of the stove of life for a few months now. And while it has been a whole lot of fun to work on new projects, and while I can’t wait to see what that beautiful venture (Beginners, obvs) has in store, I think it’s time to get back to my blogging roots and start posting here again.
I must confess, not much has happened since I stopped writing in October. I am still living and loving in Berkeley, still figuring out what my passions are, still trying to illuminate career goals. The usual. I spent most of December and part of January in Santa Cruz with my family (more on this break of sorts next time), venturing down the coast for a few days to see more relatives too. It’s been lovely. The following images were taken over the last month; the first few on a day-hike at Wilder Ranch in Santa Cruz, the second to last in LA, the final on our journey back home.
Eric and I are now back in Berkeley. Over the last few days we’ve (ahem, he’s…) been assembling a small-scale aquaponics thingy in our room. We’ve now been to Home Depot, like, way too many times. But it’s coming along nicely, I think! We’ll be posting about it over on his blog, Electric Tree House, over the next few weeks…if it works, that is. I’ve been working on new websites for both my padres and cooking up a storm! For example, this evening we made bahn mi and vermicelli bowls. Can you say, no yell, YUMMY! And last night we made feijoada, a DELICIOUS, and I’m talking fucking-fantastic, Brazilian bean dish. Try it! It’s amazing!
It’s a little past 10pm now and Eric and I have made a pact to be in bed by 11pm as much as possible this year, so I must sign off! Let’s see if we can wake up at 8am (also in the pact) and do yoga (that’s in the pact I have with myself) too. I’ll let you know!
