Wednesday 15 December 2010

The box of Stepho's in the fridge is calling my name.

Snowed. A month ago, though.

I wish it would snow right now. Then maybe our dying, sad, so very sad Christmas tree would maybe not seem so sad. I had left it outside during this very snowfall below and it either froze to death or was crushed by the weight of the snow. I know, probably the former. Either way, it was not a happy one when I brought it inside. Now it honestly just looks pathetic, weighed down by a stand of dollar store lights and ornaments already too bulky for its petite frame. Pathetic, but hopefully in a Charlie Brown Christmas tree kind of way. Now I have to watch that movie. And post a picture of the tree because I went on about it too much and now you're all like, well let me see it!!

Snow first.









Monday night/early Tuesday morning/later on Tuesday morning after sleeping for >4 hrs was something I never wish to repeat. And sometimes I hate university.

My end-of-term lack of motivation resulted in starting an 8 page German research paper 2 days before it was due. It turned like a piece of crap and I will never show it to anyone in the whole world, but it's done and I only have stress pimples and a piece of crap German paper to show for it. Maybe 8 pages doesn't sound like that much, but if, like me, the most you had written in German until now was in the realm of 1 page, I think you would find that 8 pages was enough to make you cry in your bed at night.

Last exam tomorrow. 8:30am.

Wednesday 24 November 2010

Mouse hand is always cold.



via... the internet.

"How my heart beats when by accident I touch her finger, or my feet meet hers under the table! I draw back as if from a furnace; but a secret force impels me forward again, and my senses become disordered. Her innocent, unconscious heart never knows what agony these little familiarities inflict upon me. Sometimes when we are talking she lays her hand upon mine, and in the eagerness of conversation comes closer to me, and her balmy breath reaches my lips,—when I feel as if lightning had struck me, and that I could sink into the earth." - The Sorrows of Young Werther (Die Lieden des jungen Werthers), Goethe, 1774.

I guess people don't change.


Last night I made this cake, added 2T poppyseeds to it and put a simple sugar glaze on it rather than (ick)cream cheese icing. Aaand, mashed the pears just with a fork since they were already past prime and slapped it into a bundt pan because, really, who has 4 tiny loaf pans? I'll probably have my second piece of the day now.

Saturday 20 November 2010

After all that counting... I still lost a button.

Not generally too much of a, shall we say, product whore, but I thought maybe I'd share a few that are really rocking my world right now.




Sweet almond oil as a body moisturizer.
It soaks in promptly and traps all the moisture after a shower. Softy.



Clear mascara to comb through the eyebrows.
Keeps eyebrows where you want them! And then darkens them a wee bit.



Baking soda? Really?
We'll go over this later... it's really interesting!

It snowed last night in Vancouver. Before I went to bed I wanted to shut off all the lights and watch the snow fall in the glow of the street lamps across the street. And then I realised it was just the floodlight blaring into the window that needed to be turned off. Yeah, I think it's time to say something about that.
It was nice from our bedroom, though. The nearest street lamps were a ways off and it was really dreamy. Then I went to bed in a giant hoody and sweatpants because it was cold and lonely.

Monday 8 November 2010

Those little babies are growing up so fast!

Without warning, one day, once upon a few days ago, a big ol' nasty floodlight was installed right outside our living room window. This is an absolutely true story.



I took these photos after dark one evening. You can see everything... perfectly.



It is quite pretty, really. The light pours in from sundown to sunrise and it does make things all nice and cosy. And we save on our electricity bill, ha ha. Buuuut, I'm sure you can see into our apartment as if the universe was shining a universe-sized flashlight right in our living room window. Oh wait...

School time, boys & girls!

Sunday 7 November 2010

Dry lips means you have eaten too many chips.

Although Halloween is officially over - I know because I have a giant box of 95 mini chocolate bars (that number is now significantly diminished) totaling 1.1 kg sitting beside me that I scored in the sale only post-Halloween can bring you - here are sum pikchas from a pumpkin carving party, nay, contest, I went to a few weeks ago in the Qube.




Karen. Mwah. Ambitious pumpkin design, girlfriend.








The pumpkin I "carved". I didn't hollow it out so that it would stay fresh and I can eat it. Nom.

I'm kind of really in love with this skirt but it seems to "fancy" for everyday. It's silk. Grey & mustard striped and long and flowey and makes me feel like a real lady if that's okay to say. Maybe if I just start wearing more real lady skirts this one wouldn't feel like dress up. If only I hadn't hemmed every skirt I've ever owned... I should have listened to my mother when she told me longer hemlines would come back in style. Mothers of 18 year old girls are often, unwisely, not headed, however. But naw, I still like my short skirts too!

There are chips on sale at Super Valu for $1.66 a bag (and that's just crazy) and C & I thought it ended today so he asked me to go stock up after work and when I got there I realised that the sale is on until Januaaaary and then I saw that they had hot dog flavoured chips and I really want to get those now. After the crazy success of Doritos cheeseburger chips.

Thursday 28 October 2010

Ramble, vent, whine, contemplate.

It's been a month. And you know I said that like "bean" and not "bin".

These are just nonsensical (perhaps a smidgen sensical) ramblings of a blogger only half-way through her first coffee of the day.

I feel like I've almost become scared of this place. This, my wee little blog. And I thought about why (apparently for a month) that is and I came so close to shuttin' 'er down - I was literally on the settings page ready to make it private only. The answer that makes the most sense as to why this has stopped being a pleasure and started being work is ... : I don't know what I want from this space anymore.

It is, in fact, partially work as it's aspiring to be promotion of my Etsy shop. (My Etsy shop being a whole other can of worms entirely.) And I suppose work as well due to the fact that you have to do things that aren't super fun in order to have a successful blog. What's a successful blog, anyhow? And why aren't the things you should do to have one of these successful blogs fun? They sure seem like fun; showcasing other blogs, visiting as many blogs as possible, creating a little community in this space, etc. How's that work?

Back to the question of what this blog is supposed to be. Is it entirely promotion? Not at all! But is it a fashion blog, per se? Or a personal journal? I don't feel as if I really have enough content, knowledge or drive to make this a fashion blog.

So then I am thinking of this to post, I tend to get overly critical and decide that either nobody would ever be interested in that, or I look like an ill-informed, ill-researched fashion blogger wannabe who is the last one to be up on anything (and here we are back to the lack of interest for most readers) and I will be exposed, once and for all, as a fashionista fraud who actually is not with the hip hop happenin' times of the wacky world of fashion.

What to do, what to DO? Right this second ago, I thought of just bucking up, soldering on, and what I would post next. I cringed. I know of some bloggers who proclaim that they will stop blogging the minute they stop enjoying it. I wonder if they truly mean it. Am I even going to post this or will I be my usual self-critical self and decide that whoEVER will read this at all. Readers just want photos. Readers think reading is boring. I am one of those readers, mostly.

I usually save such introspections for a diary diary but I feel like today the world-wide-web isn't prohibiting me from saying what I feel, as the scary, publicity of the internet usually does. As it should, honestly.

It's really easy to simply say, it's your blog, do what you want with it. Is it 100%, no-strings-attached, no catch, THAT simple? Because I, unfortunately, don't see it that way. I suppose that if that were to be my game plan, some people in the vast universe of the interwebz would find what I have to say/post appealing, but I guess that's a scary prospect. Trying to figure out what people want and gleaning what you can from sites before that have worked seems like a more fail-proof plan. But now that just sounds lame, uninspired and unoriginal.

I don't think I necessarily find blogs that are all over the place in their content to be too terribly interesting. Variety is usually good, but don't you read a blog because you find its topics interesting? And if Jenny over there is posting on Fendi handbags one minute, forestry the next and CSI Miami the other, the continuity and cohesion is left to the wayside. And it becomes messy.

But maybe that's not the point. Not everything you post is going to be interesting to everybody. That is why you blog regularly and if what you post doesn't do it for Jim-Bob one day, the next thing you post may just well be right up his alley.

Self pep-talk!

Although I'm not entirely sure where this pep-talk has gotten me this morning. Food for thought. I've exhausted this train for today.

That's right - no photo.

Monday 27 September 2010

Holy smackers! That is a lot of cabbage rolls!



This gal immediately caught my eye over at Copenhagen Street Style. For me, the outfit is a bit on the ho-hum side (though certainly better than what I've been coming up with lately!) but just please look at that close-up. Fresh fresh FRESH. Amazing hair, great skin, no makeup and looking perfect.



Now if my skin were only as lovely as hers, I would gladly follow with my best face forward. Sadly, my sebum production/blemish factory of a face still thinks I'm 14.

Sunday 26 September 2010

Certainly, this is no time for fooling things.











When Sister & I took a walk in between rainy periods in Pacific Spirit Provincial Park near UBC recently. It's so refreshing & gratifying to suddenly realise how lucky we are to live in such a beautiful city. I attend university amid a rain forest plunging into the Pacific Ocean...

I have an image/feeling of Vancouver/the West Coast that I suppose stems from trips here as a kid; it is so faint & fleeting that I can only hold onto it for a matter of seconds and can't even conjure at will. But it reminds me of what drew me here four years ago. Now I can't imagine not living here. (At least for the time being...)

Now, Advanced French Composition homework & banana pear muffins in Cyril's pyjama pants.

Wednesday 22 September 2010

Do you ever wonder what would happen if we just weren't here?

Typing from my new (hand-me-down yet souped-up) laptop! My big brother is a computer man and thus obsessively buys new computer things and thus gets rid of older computer things, making them available for purchase at seriously discounted prices and in seriously refurbished quality. Plus he installs fancy things that are too complicated for me.



Imma tell you what - I really have not felt this fashionably uninspired in quite some time!
School. School deserves to be blamed for everything. Soul-sucking, money-draining, procrastination-master-creating big mess.



And so consequently I have been wearing a variation on this outfit since Friday. Today is Tuesday and this is what I wore today.
Now why should I choose today of all days to post a self-proclaimed uninspired look? See qualification # 3 of the soul-sucking etc big mess. That, and I find "everyday", "errand" getups very interesting. We all have 'em; here's mine. For the past four days.



Tomorrow is the last sunny day before doomsday. What should we do to savour it?

Monday 6 September 2010

Let it sing, brother. Let it sing.

Hello Vancouver, nice to see your true colours again. I have possibly, minimally missed them. Then again, is not rain, jazz trumpet and homemade sweet, milky chai tea the love triangle of the century? Soon joining the menage-a-trois is a handmade salmon burger for lunch. Yes, Vancouver, you're alright.

If I were even thinking of stepping outside my one-bedroom apartment today, I might like to shimmy down the street in something resembling this:




But I think Etsy item descriptions are calling my name for the day. And maybe so is Louis Riel, A Comic-Book Biography. I should confess my graphic novel love soon - in a world-wide broadcast.

Friday 3 September 2010

There were quirky titles on that one as well.

Well, I... still... only have seven items in my shop, BUT NEVERTHELESS the time has come for a sale!



You pick items from your inventory to list at the beginning of July, they get listed near the end of July, THEN IT IS ALREADY FALL.



So, Fall, thank you for that! But that means sale time! And I must say, it was rather fun slashing those prices with my own two hands. Happy Etsy browsing.



Quite unrelated is this:

Going through an old LiveJournal I kept for over 4 years, I was inspired (& embarrassed!) by how much I used to write. Almost every day. And though I started it 6 years ago, I still like my style of writing back then. But I suppose that comes with writing just about every day. I also kept a pen-and-paper diary at that time. I certainly feel rusty and self-edit a whole lot on this blog, but perhaps the simple act of writing more often would ease some of that. If only a bit. Get ready for some blah blah blah!

Thursday 26 August 2010

Family Photo Album Pt. III



Granny & Grandpa
Grandma & Pappa
Me, brother & sister
1990, making us munchkins 3, 7 & 1 years old. Brats, I'd say...

My baby sister, dad and I are headed to the airport in a few hours to join the massive Medicine Hat gathering that is my grandparents' 90th birthday party. NINETIETH birthday party. And still so cute and still so lively. Thanks for the amazing genes, you crazy kids.

And if you happened to sneak over here from my lil' Etsy shop, fear not, I will be back from the Hat on Monday to spank those parcels on the bottom on the way to the post office!

Sunday 22 August 2010

If they hadn't been there, we wouldn't even know we existed!! *

Enter: cat pillow. It once had pink ears and purple eyes; too much love and look what happens. It was my grandparents' (or lived at their house, anyway) and I remember it being around the house but what does a kid want with a throw cushion, even if it is a cat. But now that I'm all grown up and whatnot, when I saw it in the "To Throw Out" pile, I just had to give this scrappy thing a home in my scrappy apartment.



Thrifted, altered dress.



I wore this to Karen's birthday a few days ago. It was during a Vancouver heat-wave and leaving the house at 10pm in this and sandals was so heavenly. It's getting colder; I made chai tea from scratch 2 days ago.

* Snippet of the heated argument wafting in from Stepho's back patio at this very moment.

Friday 20 August 2010

That certainly did not go as planned, Billy-Jimbo.

Vancouver in the summuh is so very, very nice.













Lighthouse Park, West Vancouver. Again.

Me thinks it's high time we had some outfit posts over here.


(You know when you're unemployed, working seems like the only thing other people do? Yeah, you know that feeling? And you think that every other Joe Schmoe must have the most interesting, rewarding, best-paying job in the world and everyone you pass is happily heading to or from their place of employment and you try to guess what kind of amazingly fantastic place it is and you know you will never end up in someplace cool like that and you even get bitter when your boyfriend has to stop watching Big Love with you so he can go to his stupid inventory shift from 8-10:30 but secretly you would love nothing more than to do exactly that? So glad y'all feel me on this.
)

Sunday 15 August 2010

Itchy shoulder blades.

Milk glass. Officially obsessed and will be scouring thrift stores for this stuff.


source


source


source


source

We have all seen it before, but how did I not notice how beautifully creamy and smooth and delicate it is?!

Why don't we just stop and the whine-shop and we'll leave you there.

Today was a hot day.
I showered, put my hair up. Then I decided to wear a vintage dress that requires a SLIP - ANOTHER layer of fabric on my skin(!!) and walked my sweaty self around the hot, hot city, printed CVs and proceeded to sweat even more while undertaking the nerve-wracking task of handing out those very CVs. With sweaty hands.



Taken in cooler days...



I made Kool-aid slushies today and that helped. Grape flavour. I have more in the freezer if you want to come over.

Thursday 12 August 2010

One rabbit, two rabbit, three rabbit, four.

Priiiiiints!

Anna Sui Fall 2010








Chris Benz Fall 2010






Peter Som Fall 2010









All via style.com

I hope none of us here are those crazy people who think/hope Autumn is closing in - and if you are, you are certainly crazy and you need to stop that nonsense this minute. It was mildly nice, though, to look at black tights and boots through tha kump-yooter screen.

Feeling out of sorts lately... I've never had an "existential crisis" before. What am I doing; what do I want; where am I going; how will I get there; what reason do I have to ever get off this couch?

I'm looking for employment - yipee.