November Favorites

Coco Maria

Custard Heart Vintage

Eat. Sleep. Wear.

Happy, Honey and Lark

Kittenhood

La Vie C’est Yeye

Lemondrop Vintage

Milk Teeths

Skinny Buddha

The Capricious Club

Trini

Virginie’s Cinema

This Is What Happens...

Top: thrifted

Cardigan: Windsor

Skirt: thrifted

Shoes: Naturalizer

...when I get dressed in a hurry. I’m wearing black and white with a cardigan, and my skirt is on crooked. Yeah, that’s the side seam up in front there on my right.

Tomorrow I have to report for jury duty at the courthouse in downtown L.A. Normally I would be really upset about this, but for the first time in my life, I’m working for a company that — gasp — PAYS its employees when they’re serving jury duty! I know, classy. However, I don’t think they’ll be too happy if they have to do that for me when I’ve only been working there a month, so hopefully I won’t get put on a jury.

Kind of Mime

Top: H&M

Jeans: CJ by Cookie Johnson

Bag: American Vintage

Shoes: Jessica Simpson

I don’t wear jeans very often and I wear them for blog photos even less often, but I liked this simple outfit so I decided to post it today. I got these CJ by Cookie Johnson jeans with my employee discount when I worked for MyShape.com. They are the softest, most comfortable jeans I’ve ever owned. They also fit really well and don’t gap in back or slide down too far when I sit or bend down.

A horizontal-striped top always seems like the natural companion for these jeans, resulting in a sort of mime look. I found this top recently at H&M and I think the colors, stripe width and length are pretty much perfect. And this red bag is new to me, yay! I was pretty excited to find it in the American Vintage store on Melrose for $16 since I’d been looking for a simple red bag forever.

Tropic Thanksgiving

Top: One Clothing

Skirt: BCBG sample sale

Belt: thrifted

Tights: Target

Shoes: Target

It wasn’t hot today and I wore a coat over this, but I think it’s funny that I’m dressed up for Thanksgiving with blooming bird-of-paradise plants and palm trees behind me. I hadn’t worn this top in a long time before today. I found it at Ross four or five years ago and just haven’t been working it into my wardrobe even though I think it’s pretty cool. It seemed appropriate for Thanksgiving for some reason.

And this is the second skirt that I found at the BCBG sample sale. My friend Mary wrote a blog post about that sale if you want to see some photos and hear more about the insanity of it. I love this skirt and can see it becoming a favorite, although I think I might need to alter it...it fits great at the hips but large at the waist, hence the belt. I’m kind of afraid to get it altered, though, in case something goes wrong. The fabric is a somewhat thick ponte knit, and I feel like maybe that will make it harder to alter.

A Tale of Two Sweaters

Sweater: Charlotte Russe

Skirt: thrifted

Tights: Target

Shoes: Jessica Simpson

This is the sweater I wore in my first post on this blog! I’ve had it for at least 10 years, and it’s the sweater that started my popcorn stitch obsession. I’m amazed it’s lasted this long since I bought it at Charlotte Russe, which isn’t exactly known for their quality.

And speaking of quality, I tried to be a cool blogger recently and bought this ASOS sweater that I’d been coveting for months:

Unfortunately I won’t get to wear it because it apparently was stolen off our front porch and it’s no longer available in my size on the ASOS site. ASOS was awesome and issued a refund right away, but I would much rather have the sweater of course! I learned today that I can have personal packages delivered to my company’s corporate office, so from now on you can bet I’ll be doing that instead of hoping the mail carrier gets a signature or at least knocks on the door when he drops off a package.

By the way, my outfit today was inspired by this look that I saw on Christine’s blog FutureLint. Isn’t that a fabulous name for a blog? I love it! 

Shades of Brown

Sweater: H&M

Dress: H&M

Tights: Target

Shoes: Nordstrom in the ’90s

This is my favorite kind of outfit to wear on the weekends lately: a dress or skirt that’s loose and kind of short, a pullover sweater and tights. I’m ripping off one of my coworkers with the color scheme here, too, by the way. She was wearing a black and white dress with a kind of orangey-tan cardigan at work yesterday, and it made me want to pair this brownish sweater and rust tights with my bow-print dress.

I love how these clunky shoes are trendy once again. I’m pretty sure I bought them when I was about 13 or 14 for a school dance. I remember wearing them one Christmas Eve when I was a teenager with a sort of rosy, watercolor-print, lingerie-inspired skirt (which I also still have, but dang, that thing looks like it should be underwear!), a long-sleeved berry top, a necklace with a maroon pendant and my hair long and curly with a baby barrette in it. I also remember that I was wearing Pearberry spray from Bath & Body Works. Oh, ’90s memories.

Thrifted Thursday No. 30

Sweater, skirt and shoes: thrifted

Socks: Forever 21

I bought this sweater at Goodwill a looooong time ago and just wore it for the first time today. I’m glad I did because as soon as I put it on I remembered why I was first attracted to it. It’s loose without being shapeless, and I like the pattern, which I think is sort of Art Deco looking. I see lots of ugly ’80s sweaters in thrift stores by this brand, but...for some reason I thought this one was really cool.

Perfect Black Sweater

Sweater: H&M

T-shirt: thrifted

Skirt: thrifted

Tights: Urban Outfitters

Shoes: Naturalizer

I bought this sweater at H&M on Sunday, and I love it! I also bought it in dark teal/green because, as I mentioned in my last post, they were having a “buy one, get one free” sale. The quality seems pretty decent, plus the length is great to go with skirts and over dresses.

I was going to wear another skirt from my sample sale adventure today, but I realized when I put it on that it needs to be altered to fit right. I was annoyed because I really wanted to wear it today, although this bright skirt turned out to be a good substitute. And I have to admit that, even though I wear tights in lots of colors, I feel best in a black pair with a fun pattern.

Texture, Texture

Sweater: thrifted

Skirt: BCBG Max Azria sample sale

Tights: Target

Shoes: ancient Seychelles

My friend Mary invited me to shop at the BCBG holiday sample/warehouse sale in Vernon with her yesterday, and it was CRAZY. It was scheduled to run from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. I arrived at 8:15, but by that time the line to get in was wrapped around the block! We later learned that they allowed the first 200 people in right away but could only allow more people in as others left because of fire safety regulations.

Mary joined me at 8:45 or so because her alarm didn’t go off on time that morning, and we ended up standing in line for four hours. Why did we stick it out? I don’t really have a good answer to that question. However, I ended up with three beautiful BCBG Max Azria skirts for about 90% off the retail price, which means $15 each. And this is one of them.

I was excited to pull my vintage popcorn-stitch sweater out of the closet today to pair with this skirt too. I love the textures together, and this sweater is one of my most prized thrifted finds. The neck was partially ripped when I found it at Goodwill, but I sewed it up and you can’t even tell now (unless you look very, very closely). Wearing it again reminded me how nuts I am for popcorn stitching, and I ended up taking a quick trip down to the Old Town Pasadena H&M in the afternoon to buy two more popcorn-stitch sweaters. They have a deal on selected knits right now where you can buy one sweater and get a second free!

I’m about to Skype with my sister in Australia, so I’ll end this here. Have a good week, everyone!

Schoolteacherish

Cardigan: Nordstrom

Top: Nordstrom Rack

Skirt: thrifted

Shoes: Target

As I was looking through my photos from today just now, I kept getting this, like, hardened elementary schoolteacher vibe. I look really tired and crabby in most of them, probably because they were taken at 6:45 in the morning! I’ve decided to switch to an early work schedule instead of a late one because the late shift wasn’t helping too much traffic-wise in the evenings and I wasn’t getting home until 8:30.

I still can’t believe it takes two hours to travel 25 miles in L.A. traffic. We have some trains in the city, and it’s easy to get downtown from Pasadena by train, but unfortunately there aren’t any train stations near my office, which is on the west side. If there were, I would sooo be taking public transportation.

Now that I’ve complained about traffic AGAIN (sorry), I will say that at least I liked my outfit today. And someone at work complimented it. Yay! It’s pretty similar to this outfit with the olive pleated skirt and other fall colors...so I felt kind of lame for practically repeating the same look, but I guess it’s different enough. I’m dying to go shopping for some new clothes, though, especially sweaters. Although I’ve been trying to wait for my first two-week paycheck, I think I might buy some things this weekend. 

Gray and Simple

Sweater: Forever 21

Skirt: thrifted

Shoes: thrifted

Here’s my first blog photo taken with the new camera! Although I would have loved to invest in a fancy schmancy DSLR camera, they were way out of my price range, so I ended up choosing a Canon PowerShot.

I guess my outfit today isn’t too exciting, but what can I say? Sometimes I like to dress simply. I considered wearing rust-colored tights as well and making a reference to candied yams...then decided to take advantage of the 70-degree weather and stick with bare legs since it will be cold (by which I mean in the 50s and low 60s) here soon enough.

RIP Photosmart HP M425

Dress: thrifted

Sweater: thrifted

Socks: Forever 21

Shoes: Naturalizer

These are the last outfit photos I will ever post taken with our cheap point-and-shoot HP camera. After the camera died this evening, I had to rescue the day’s photos by removing the memory card. I was so glad I didn’t lose these photos because I think they’re a bit nicer than usual — the swan song of my little HP.

We were going to wait until December (a month when I get three paychecks, yessss) to buy a new camera. But now we have an excuse to upgrade this week! I’m actually amazed at how long our old $150 camera lasted...we’ve had it for five or six years, I think.

About the outfit: I wore this to do a little thrifting and walk around the Melrose area in L.A. with Jasen. This dress has a somewhat interesting story behind it that I wrote about here. I found it and the sweater I’m wearing at Quality Thrift, which is where I shopped today.

Thrifted Thursday No. 29

Top, skirt and shoes: thrifted

Tights: Anthropologie sale bin

I’m not hardcore enough to wear thrifted hosiery (well, unless I saw some still in the package), so today’s Thrifted Thursday outfit has non-thrifted tights because it was cool in the morning and I also didn’t feel like shaving.

I found the top I’m wearing at Goodwill. It’s an H&M top, and I love the length and peplum. When I first saw it, I thought it would be too short, but it’s actually perfect with high-waisted skirts. I think this is my new favorite top silhouette! Now I need to find more like it. Oh, and it has little bows on it...I forgot to take a close-up shot.

Shabby Apple Giveaway Winner

Good morning! The winner of the Ahoy! dress from my Shabby Apple giveaway is...

Congrats, Colleen! I’ll be emailing you shortly to get your info for Shabby Apple so they can send you the dress =)

Jewel Tones

Cardigan: Nordstrom

Tank: Collective Concepts

Skirt: thrifted and shortened

Shoes: Target

I wrote some editorial copy about jewel tones at work this week, and I think that’s what made me want to wear this skirt. I recently had it shortened because the original below-the-knee length just wasn’t doing it for me. It’s partly because the skirt is pretty full...it just seemed so big and billowy before.

I’m sorry I don’t have any Halloween photos to post, but I ended up working overtime on Halloween, and by the time I got home after inching along in L.A. traffic for an hour and a half, there was no point in dressing up. At least I have bat wings and ears to wear next year!