New Fashion Inspiration

I discovered the street fashion blog Advanced Style today.  I am forty or fifty years younger than the average woman Ari Seth Cohen features on his blog, but I have nevertheless found this collection more inspiring than any other fashion blog, magazine, or website I have yet seen.

Here is what I have learned:

You do not need to seem distant and cold to be fashionable.  The warmth and confidence that emanates from a smile will make a person seem more comfortable in her skin and thus more fashionable than those around her.  Evidence:

If you like it, then stop questioning it and wear it.

Embrace the hat.

And most importantly, don't wait around for your "best" body to appear. Wear what you love now in the incredible body you have. As Beatrix Ost, the woman below, says, "In your body is a good place to be."

 


As I was looking through the photos, I kept thinking to myself, "This is the kind of woman I would like to be in forty years."  I stopped myself.  Why wait?  This is the kind of woman I want to be right now.

Northern Exposure

I'm moving to Alaska.

For an as-of-yet undetermined length of time, I will be working on an Alpaca and Llama ranch on the Kenai Peninsula.  I only decided to go last Sunday, and will be leaving in about twelve days.  It's probably a good thing I am leaving so soon, because my excitement grows by the hour and if I had to wait much longer, I'd probably spontaneously combust.

Because that's totally possible.



In the meantime, I'm patching clothes, gathering supplies, and getting everything in order. Mostly, though, I'm wandering around the house waiting to run into someone in my family so I can exclaim, "I'm going to Alaska!" for the sixty-second time.

Also, despite what the title might suggest, I'm trying my hardest not to allow my love of the nineties show Northern Exposure influence my expectations of Alaska, even if I've been in love with Ed since I was sixteen, want a disk jockey like Chris in the Morning, and am very tempted to get a Maggie O'Connell hair cut.

Remember, Olivia: Cicely does not exist.  And even if it did, Ed would now be about forty.

(if you would like to make an AWESOME collage like the totally pro one featured in this post, you can go to Photovisi!  That thing should go in my portfolio!)

A Day at the Zoo

My mom was cleaning out her study and found a piece of lined paper with my handwriting on it under her desk.  I'm going to let you read this little gem for yourself:

A DAY AT THE ZOO 

One particular Saturday, Billy and Laura went to the zoo.  Their father Arnold took them because their mother had a headache and needed "Mommy Time."  Billy and Laura thought it was funny Mommy got a headache every Saturday. 

Billy liked the monkeys and hyenas.  Laura liked the elephants and tropical birds.  Daddy liked the pretty lady at the concessions stand. 

While Daddy talked to the pretty lady at the concessions stand, Billy laughed at the hyenas.  One of the hyenas got angry at Billy and Billy got scared and fell into the hyenas home.  The hyenas ate Billy and laughed. 

Daddy was still talking to the pretty lady at the concessions stand.  Laura was playing in the tropical birds aviary.  An escaped spider bit her and Laura died. 

Daddy was still talking to the pretty lady at the concessions stand.  Then he heard screaming.  When he found out why people were screaming, Daddy was scared.  Mommy was going to be very angry. 

THE END

I would like to add that based on the handwriting I must have written this in the last few years, when I was probably no younger than nineteen.  And to think they let me babysit children.  Also, based on the psychiatric profile we can create from this piece, I have a problem trusting men and fear zoos.  If you have any other neuroses you can contribute based on this piece, please feel free.

Pyrographs

Drawings created with fire.  Pyrographs.



From the Anthropologist.

Things that happen when you get a tonsillectomy

I just spent fifteen minutes looking for an old Harry Potter cup with a built in straw we used to have.  I think we gave it to Goodwill years ago.  I feel disproportionately sad.

Also, in a vicodin daze yesterday, I told me mother the sound she made while writing in her journal was stressful enough to give me a heart attack; repeatedly told my family they were "too tense" as my father and brother attempted to set up a PS3; and openly wondered if I was a bad person because I was considering starting a new sketchbook, even though I already have a couple others I'm using.

Apparently, narcotics and having pieces cut out of me doesn't put me in the most rational state of mind.  Who knew?

1995

Levi's 511

These are such Portland jeans!  I love the idea!  However, why don't they have a women's line as well?  C'mon Levi's, do you really want to make the statement that only men need jeans in which to commute to work?  That only men bike?  I'm pretty sure women would benefit from some reinforced, water resistant jeans too.