Sunday Style: First Try

As I said on Friday, I love fashion.  I love being creative, and putting clothing and accessories together to create a unique look.  I enjoy observing the outfits of others to come up with new ideas of how to coordinate different items.  I love fashion.  

I've been wanting to add fashion posts to this blog since it started, and well, folks, today, it's time!   I have been excited about this all day!  I took a whole bunch of what I hoped would be excellent photographs of myself... and they were bad.  

 It's been a bit of a frustrating process though because, well,  I'm not going to post them.  Yeah.

I'm awful at photographing myself.  First of all, I'm not as photogenic as I would like.  I can pull a sultry/ seductive thing moderately well, but I try to smile, and I look like a bit of an idiot a lot of the time.  

Kind of like that.  Also, I like macro effects for fashion photography, and these are hard to pull on yourself.  Along with this, the lighting in my apartment really isn't conducive.  Basically, I should have waited for Danny to get home from work so that he could help me with this, but, I didn't.  One of these days I'll ask him to take me outside and photograph me until I feel really pretty.  One of these days.  He's just busy, and there aren't too many daylight hours at this time of year.

So, my first set of photographs were pretty much failures.  I was using a flash, and you can tell.  It's washed out.  Like, really washed out.  Also, the flash is reflecting off of my tights, which is not cute.  I was having a hard time posing for the still camera, which was lower than my face.  I wasn't particularly pleased with any of them, and my self esteem was a bit low.  Then, I got on my computer to complain about blah blah blah, I'm so not photogenic, blah blah wahhhh blah fat blah so bad photography no photo good wahhhhhhhhh.... and I noticed that my Photobooth was open from when I was playing with it earlier.  Because I like to try and fix the problem when I'm upset, instead of wallowing in self pity and loathing like an obnoxious and toxic pessimist, I started taking some photographs.  The light was shining down through my window, my makeup, so carefully applied, looked much better close-up.    The shots weren't full body, and it was easier to use angles to make my legs look longer. I am very, very pleased with the resultsAre they amazing quality?  No.  Was this a good lesson for me in creativity and self-esteem?  Yes.  I learned something today.  Today is a great day.

I'll be trying to post a new Sunday Style every week, to keep me on track with dressing well.  My real reason, though, is that getting my photo taken, when it turns out well, increases my self esteem immensely, and, since like most young women, my self esteem could be measured in mililitres,  I'm going to decide that this is a good thing.  Even though my self esteem has increased tenfold over the past year or so, I'd like to feel even better about myself than I do, because it gets in my way, so if this is going to help, fabulous.  I'll take it.  I'll have it.  I'd like to feel consistently confident.

So, I hope that you enjoy.  I hope that you like my outfit, and think that I look pretty neat. I love how these turned out, and I feel great about them, which makes me so happy. I hope that you like the photographs.  I'm going to stop rambling now.  Or, at least try.

Uhhhh.... here I am (below) with an Abraham Lincoln mug covering my face.  Yay!  Fun, right?

Sorry about the rambling.  I get caught up  in things sometimes when I'm writing posts for this blog, and then try to apologize with silly photographs that have no relevance to what I'm posting about with the hopes that they will fix what I may have broken by making things more complicated with my rambling that happens when I'm nervous and oh god, I'm rambling again now, aren't I?  Ahhhhh....

Have a nice Sunday.  Here I am in some clothes.

Dress: H&M

Shoes: Aerosoles

Tights: Kmart... yes, really.

Earrings: Street Vendor

Sweatshirt (also seen in the Lincoln mug photo): Forever 21

Shorts: Target

Travel and Pack

So many blogs do "packing" posts before they go on vacation.  It's pretty awesome.  These lovely people of the internet will artistically place all the stuff that they are taking with them on the floor, and take photographs, so that their readers know what it is that they have when they are on vacation.  The outfits they will wear, the cameras they will use... it just makes me happy.  Since travel, fashion, and photography are three of my loves, this makes sense.

Thus, I have decided to do one of these packing posts.  I'm in West Grove, Pennsylvania at the moment, visiting my family.  I grew up in this house and it is always pleasant to come back and visit!  My family just had an addition put on- a sunroom and a patio, and wow.  It's so gorgeous.  I'm so happy for them!  My parents had been talking about doing this since I was a little kid, and I'm thrilled that they finally took the plunge and put on the addition.  The spaces are lovely, but they are also rather wonderfully decorated.  I'll probably be sharing some photographs on the Travel and Toile Facebook Page.  Which, by the way, is pretty awesome, so you should totally check it out.  For reals.  

In any case, I'm here because my little sister, Julianna, is graduating from high school.  I'm so proud of her! She's going off to school in Boston in the fall to major in Marketing and Communications.  And so the Buck clan spawns another artsy girl.  Hooray!

So, yeah.  Here's my stuff.

Hehe that's my new martial arts uniform!  Complete with my badass muay thai shorts.  Can you tell how happy I am about this???  I'm so happy.

West Grove, Pennsylvania, USA

Kitsch Me Up and Urban My Outfitters

Call me a hipster, call me what you like... but I really love Urban Outfitters.  True, they sometimes stock some bizarre things, but they offer delightfully trendy and fairly high-quality clothing for decent prices.  Their sales are fantastic.  And, the bizarre things they stock are just... awesome.  They're awesome.  Urban has some really nifty stuff.

I've gotten some excellent pieces of clothing there, and I plan to get many more in the future.  Beyond clothing though, this place has delightful homewares.  Like the company's higher end/ mori girl shop Anthropologie, there are a lot of home goods at Urban that are really lovely and unique.  Little figurines, pretty shaped candles, cups, plates, etc.  We have a neat plum-coloured, tiered side table from them in our apartment that I got for like $35.

  Unlike Anthropologie, they also stock a lot of sassy and "inappropriate" stuff, like party banners with curse words raunchy sayings, sex books, and well, just other tchotchkes that some might deem inappropriate.  This collection of stuff is always fun to look through, just to see what kinds of wacky things they can sell!  Though, you do find a few artistic gems from time to time that aren't really mainstream enough to sell anywhere else.  They also sell cute and funny kitschy items from old cartoons and such, which are generally fun to look at too!

 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

Inspiration Fridays: Ballet

I am a dancer.  

I have been saying that I used to be a dancer... I stopped, basically, when I got to college because I was focusing on other things, and was hurt.

 But working on this show has convinced me that I need to begin taking classes again as soon as possible.  It's a part of me, it's who I am.

I love dance.  It feels like breathing.

That gorgeous moment of lift when you hit a perfect pose in your pointe shoes- there is nothing like it in the world.  Freedom.  The lights are on you, you look beautiful, and you have risen above the clouds.

Ballet feels like pure ecstasy.  Nothing I have ever pursued; acting, singing, photography, nothing has ever made me as happy as I am when I do ballet.   If I thought I could have made a career of it, I would have done so in a heartbeat.  I still would.  But, I'm nowhere near good enough.  And I am definitely nowhere near skinny enough.

Not that there aren't difficult moments- sometimes I have wanted to throw my shoes across the room.  However, I've come to the conclustion that the good outweigh the bad.  I love ballet.  I love dance.

I want to say that I am a dancer again, but in my heart, I never stopped dancing.

It doesn't just inspire me- it defines me.

All photos lovinly ripped from Google Images.

Paintings by Edgar Degas.