i can't help it if it's true

Before I forget, I wanted to share some of the things I got for my birthday and Christmas this past year. (Hard to believe that it's already March, is anyone else ding for it to be spring? I most certainly am, and cannot WAIT until warm weather creeps back into my life.)

I got a few more things besides this, but the best has to be this Anthroplogie lace dress I've been wanting forever, and these triple strap black ballet flats from Golden Ponies on etsy that I saw through Fieldguided (favorite blog. everything about this is appealing to me, and makes me want to specify my wardrobe/life to pastels and sailor stripes and cats. and really great bangs. which reminds you i forgot to show you my new hair. damn).

I still need an event for the dress, and I'm terrified of catching the lace on something whenever I even try it on, but the shoes have already gotten some action when the days are a bit less snowy. Pretty cool if you ask me.

I'm compiling a wishlist for spring, so expect to see something up here in the near future!

Begging you to sit for a portrait on the wall

so here it is; i am twenty years old. i don't have much to say, other than i can't believe that it is snowing again and slowly but surely i'm getting sick of winter. so, so done with the whole thing.

i need a fresh start; i've told you this already. so, though it's terribly cliche, i'm cutting and dying my hair this week. nothing too drastic yet. i've wanted to go blonde for years but the colorist doesn't want to damage my hair, so i'm getting highlights. also, though i do love having ridiculously long hair (it's down to my waist now) it's heavy as hell. and completely unmanageable for a girl with no idea how to do anything with it. pity, since only a few years ago i was dying for long hair, but whatever, don't we always want what we don't have?

please excuse the terribly unflattering photo of me with dirty hair and no make up; it was my birthday so i was allowed to be a slob. funny, since i had a birthday dress and all that picked out. of course i ended up wearing my most comfortable thrifted flannel and jeans, stuffing my face at my grandmother's house. a completely acceptable way to celebrate turning 20, i say. i suppose that speaks volumes about the kind of person i really am, doesn't it?

speaking of which, i've started writing in a journal, something i haven't done since i was eight or ten or so. there's something about getting words out on page in ink that has always drawn me to writing, hence the scores of notebooks lying about my room. i have a thing for buying moleskine journals, because i become entranced by the idea of filling them with pages of writing and drawings, but then think that my work isn't good enough so they go unused, and instead i have tens of sticky notes tacked to my walls with ideas and half formed poetry, waiting to be good enough to grace those pages. i'm really an awful english major, haha.

wow, well if you stuck around to read all that, thanks! the dozen roses were a gift from my mom, it's a standing tradition that she gives me roses on my birthday, and i love it. that and having red velvet cake are the two things i can count on each and every birthday. flowers are just what i need to help scare away the awful, deadened feeling winter seems to bring with it. why couldn't i have been born in the summer?

i'll show off the rest of my loot later, when i can get around to photographing it during the daylight hours. can you believe i've been sleeping in until noon almost this whole break? and not going to bed until as late as 5:30 am, mind you. i'm all mixed up.

just a reminder to check out my tumblr on occasion, since that's where i post all that inspires me/ the moods i'm in. it's like a mini peek into my little world. terribly pink if you ask me, but i guess that's what i'm into nowadays. also, i tend to update that way more often than i should.

drink up baby, look at the stars

i'll be keeping this brief as it's 3:30 am here and i'm probably going to sound like a fool if i try to write more than necessary, but i wanted to say happy new year (a week late, of course) and i hope all of your holidays were as warm and full of awesomeness as mine were.

i had a pretty great and simple christmas and then for new years went to new jersey and spent the weekend with one of my best friends from school; my first new years away from home, because i'm an adult! (snl reference? anyone? moving on...) and now, as i'm typing this, i'm realizing that i will be turning 20 in less than two days...something that both frightens me and, well, frightens me.

on one hand, i can't wait to finally be in my twenties and to see how this new decade of my life turns out, but then again i'm kind of terrified to leave my teenage years behind. i feel like the last few years flew by, and i never had chance to appreciate being 15 or 17 or whatever, and now it's gone! it scares the hell out of me how fast time goes.

ok, i better put the mini quarter life crisis away for now, as this 19 year old (holding on to that until the last minute, haha) should really get to sleep before 4 am at least once this week. responsible adult right here.

(ps sorry for the scary ghost that is me in the above photo, it's all i had that resembled and outfit post. for shame.)

next time maybe i'll show you some of the stuff i got for christmas/my birthday? shameless showing off of my possessions, that's what blogging is all about, right?

so much to tell you

photo cred: searching hearts on flickr
has it really been an entire semester? i'm terrified with how fast time has flown by, and so sorry for not keeping up to date here! i have no real excuse, all thing considered, just plain busyness and lack of interesting things to say.
on that note, I think it's time to take this blog in a new direction. Seeing as I don't post as often as I like anyway due to lack of inspiration/photos/etc., i think i should stop trying to post for the sake of getting something up here. i'm going to try to be more deliberate with what i say and show you from now on; after all, i am an english major. incorporating something semi-intelligent into my ramblings is certainly a good thing, right?
also, i'd like to get back into photography, and by that i mean good old 35 mm film stuff. this also could end up making posts few and far between, but jesus it's been far too long since i've even held my camera, and that's a damn shame.
lastly, i think this space needs a facelift. anyone have any suggestions for a new header design? i'm thinking girly with masculine touches...and have no clue how to execute such a thing. but now that i'm off from school for a whole month (!) i'll certainly have enough time to figure it out.
so, if i don't see you, have a wonderful and happy holiday season! check my tumblr for updates and the things that have been keeping my brain alive while i studied for exams in the past few weeks; there are some gems up there that i think need to be printed out and pasted on my walls. new project? quite possibly.

a room of her own

Random rings that I've been wearing, from left: Octopus Me on etsy, forever 21, old American Eagle, estate sale. Below: new bowl and cup from Anthropologie and Starbucks, respectively. I figured that it's about time to show off my new digs, seeing as I'm finally all settled in and back into the swing of things. I had a clear plan in mind when I was getting ready to move in, and that really helped to streamline the process and helped me to get my space too look exactly how I wanted it to.

I knew that, although bigger than last year, my room was going to be relatively small. I also knew that I needed a comfortable living space, so I decided to loft my bed up high and bring in this vintage love seat from home. This has proven to be a great idea, because I'm much more comfortable working in my room now, and I actually utilize all the space that I am given.

As far as closet space goes, I didn't want to make the same mistake as last year of bringing too many clothes and getting frustrated with an imbalanced and overstuffed closet. So, along with a few new key pieces, I updated and simplified my wardrobe to only include those pieces that I knew could work week after week and still be able to change up. I'm working on forming a working wardrobe, and I think I'm much closer to that now.

I organized my desk so that I used the space efficiently, and as far as decorating my wall I took a whole bunch of photographs that I've saved to my pictures folder over the years and printed them out on heavy cream colored card stock. I used sticky tack to put them up, and voila! A cheap and completely unique wall space, which I'm pretty excited about. I think that my wall is my favorite part of the room, because every day I can look at photographs that inspire me artistically and stylistically. I'm really excited to get this year going!

credits: None of the photographs pictured on my wall are mine, they are from many different sources including Etsy, Sarah McNeil, Deerlings.blogspot.com, fashion editorials, and unknown sources. The Polaroids are a set of note cards from Urban Outfitters.

So, how do you decorate your space?

"but you are not even close / to being the field of cornflowers at dusk"

Back to school in the morning. Finally got around to completely hand-making something this summer; behold my new floral tank top. I traced a thrifted tank onto an old sheet, sewed it up, and added that teeny pocket for good measure. Not in love with it, as this truly is my first solo pattern-less project, but it will do for now.
Also, wanted to document just how long my hair has gotten in the past few months, and this is after a good two inches were lopped off last week. I'm seriously considering chopping off another 8 inches and going blond, but I'm scared of what could happen if I don't get the right colorist...so we'll see.

Meet my new leather backpack, leather boots, and thrifted 90s beauty book as well as not thrifted copy of The Selby. I've discovered Goodwill to be thrifted-leather gold; that backpack is just what I've wanted for a long time, and to get moto boots, brown ankle boots, and pointy toed Dingo's in one go? Magical. Also, both that 90s thrifted book and the Selby are awesome, the former for featuring Christina Ricci and Kirsten Dunst as teens, and the latter for providing much needed inspiration for dorm decor. Which will most definitely be interesting this year, and I promise to share once I'm settled in.

farewell, summer

To start, here are a few drawings I've made in the past week or so. Apologies for the awful lighting! My scanner refuses to scan anything too light or in a book, so I'm out of luck for a while.
I actually false-started this post a week ago, so ignore the date up top!

I'm popping in to let you know that I'm still around, but that my laptop (and hence all my photos and inspiration folders) is down for the count and refuses to let me access blogger and Google (but still works for everything else...which is really irritating). So, I hopped on my family's home computer and, though I'm lacking photographs besides these poorly lit shots of a few drawings I've made, I thought I'd share what I've been up to for the past few weeks. First of all, I got to go back to the Gathering of the Vibes music festival for a night, which was a totally different experience than it was last time around. There were way more dead heads, way more people on drugs (amusing and frightening, I have to say), and it was actually a lot more fun to be an observer of everything going on. Also, there was no mud, thank god! Other things I have been up to: hiking, swinging in the hammock, cooking good meals, painting my nails, drawing a ton,reading even more, buying new jeans, falling back in love with pastels (wrong time of year for that but whatever), going to my first ever pro football game (yeah Giants!), watching too many movies, etc. I've been kind of avoiding the whole going back to school thing, and I realized I have less than a week before I move in! That's crazy, and I'm not sure that I'm ready to get back into all that again. I guess I hate feeling trapped at a place, if anyone knows what I mean. So, with me going back soon I'm not sure I can promise a lot of updates for the next month or so until I'm settled, but I do have a lot planned, including an entire blog overhaul, so please stay tuned!

For now, take a glimpse at some of the people that really inspire me this week!

-Sarah McNeil
Her Etsy, her blog, her flickr...I love it all. Adding a print (or two or ten) to me Christmas wish list. I'm so ready to start a Christmas wish list!

-Blushing Ambition

Just started reading her stuff, and it's a bit different from what I usually follow but I like how clean and put together everything is. Also, I love her hair.

-Bree Dentice
Found her shop via Sarah McNeil, and I rally wish I could afford a necklace! Another thing to add to my wish list.

Also, go out and buy/borrow St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, by Karen Russel. I really enjoyed each of the stories, and finished the collection way too fast.