DIY Embellishing

I recently posted about embellished sunglasses (here), so was thrilled to discover this DIY post on the lovely Cupcakes and Cashmere blog…  

All images, Cupcakes and Cashmere

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Lookbook Lovely Adam G

Today I decided to do something a little different, in that, today's lookbook lovely is a male, Adam G...
I think that he has the most impeccable dress sense.

All images Adam Gallagher, LOOKBOOK.nu 

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I'm not sure what I'll do...

 The Gifts of Life

skullsandlitas

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Sell Yourself

Riches for Rags

After the news of the closing down of my company, I immediately began the process of sprucing up my CV. Once complete I sent it to my brother for proof reading before sending it out to potential employers and various industry specific recruitment agencies.

Along with a few comments down the margin, he sent me some inspiration…

This was taken from an article in the New York Times titled 

“Admissions Essay Ordeal: The Young Examined Life”

I am a dynamic figure, often seen scaling walls and crushing ice. I have been known to remodel train stations on my lunch breaks, making them more efficient in the area of heat retention. I translate ethnic slurs for Cuban refugees, I write award-winning operas, I manage time efficiently.

Occasionally, I tread water for three days in a row. I woo women with my sensuous and godlike trombone playing, I can pilot bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed, and I cook Thirty-Minute Brownies in twenty minutes. I am an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, and an outlaw in Peru.

Using only a hoe and a large glass of water, I once single-handedly defended a small village in the Amazon Basin from a horde of ferocious army ants. I play bluegrass cello, I was scouted by the Mets, I am the subject of numerous documentaries. When I'm bored, I build large suspension bridges in my yard. I enjoy urban hang gliding. On Wednesdays, after school, I repair electrical appliances free of charge.

I am an abstract artist, a concrete analyst, and a ruthless bookie. Critics worldwide swoon over my original line of corduroy evening wear. I don't perspire. I am a private citizen, yet I receive fan mail. I have been caller number nine and have won the weekend passes. Last summer I toured New Jersey with a traveling centrifugal-force demonstration. I bat 400.

My deft floral arrangements have earned me fame in international botany circles. Children trust me. I can hurl tennis rackets at small moving objects with deadly accuracy. I once read Paradise Lost, Moby Dick, and David Copperfield in one day and still had time to refurbish an entire dining room that evening. I know the exact location of every food item in the supermarket. I have performed several covert operations with the CIA.

I sleep once a week; when I do sleep, I sleep in a chair. While on vacation in Canada, I successfully negotiated with a group of terrorists who had seized a small bakery. I balance, I weave, I dodge, I frolic, and my bills are all paid.

On weekends, to let off steam, I participate in full-contact origami. Years ago I discovered the meaning of life but forgot to write it down. I have made extraordinary four course meals using only a mouli and a toaster oven. I breed prize-winning clams. I have won bullfights in San Juan, cliff-diving competitions in Sri Lanka, and spelling bees at the Kremlin.

I have played Hamlet, I have performed open-heart surgery, and I have spoken with Elvis.

But I have not yet gone to college.

(The author was accepted at NYU.)

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Moving Along

Yesterday I received news that the company I am working at will be closed by the end of April. A little over a year ago, I was in the same situation (Goodbyes and Beginnings)…

I am doing my best to trust fully in the notion that everything happens exactly as it should.

"The thought of sitting in front of a man behind a desk and telling him that I wanted a job, that I was qualified for a job, was too much for me. Frankly, I was horrified by life, at what a man had to do simply in order to eat, sleep, and keep himself clothed. So I stayed in bed and drank. When you drank the world was still out there, but for the moment it didn't have you by the throat."

- Charles Bukowski

DAYDREAM LILY 

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Monday Musing

Wise words...

Blanc Pale

observando

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Happy Valentine's Day

sarie little friedman

If you love someone, tell them, and tell them often. 

Because people have a tendency to forget...

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Hearty Treats

Get into the spirit of things by baking some hearty Valentine's treats...

Letterpress Cookies, Spatula Magazine

Salted Caramel Brownies, Smitten Kitchen

Conversation Heart Cookies, Martha Stewart

Love Buns, Nigella

I am going to try out a new red velvet cake recipe for the occasion. If all goes according to plan, I will post a few pictures along with the recipe...

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Monday Musing

It would appear that I started on a Valentine’s Day theme a while ago, but I assure you that it was completely unintentional…

Riches for Rags

I have had the theme of love on my mind a lot lately, and as I have said before, I truly believe it to be the most important of all virtues.

That being said, I will, for this week, be intentionally posting Valentine’s Day themed posts, because I am a hopeless romantic, and love any excuse to celebrate… 

Patterson Maker

Someone once told me that he believes the key to a successful relationship, is giving your all and never expecting anything in return...

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Impulsive Compulsive

observando

Fuckits, n.: the rush of yielding to temptation, esp. to behave in a compulsive manner; the flood of relief that occurs after permitting oneself to indulge (see: Case of the Fuckits).

Several years ago, a recovering bulimic taught me this word. She was describing the cycle of her disorder: the days of starvation and white-knuckled control; the inevitable momentary weakness; the first few bites of  cookie or pie, eaten in the certainty that moderation would be possible this time; and then finally, inevitably, the tipping point when her willpower gave way and a binge began (“OH FUCK IT!"). 

Recovery, she told me, was about never giving in to the Fuckits.

As it so happens, the Fuckits are mutual friends of ours. Like those "networkers" who talk to you for five minutes at a cocktail party and then immediately friend you on Facebook, they've managed to connect at one time or another not only with me and her, but pretty much everyone I know. 

They have a knack for appearing at the worst times in my life: after a stressful day at work, as I open a bag of candy corn; when I'm already 2 white wines in, contemplating a third; or when I'm staring at Burberry skirts on eBay, biting my cuticles. 

They can be lots of fun, but they can also be overbearing, controlling, profligate assholes. No matter how often you spend time with them or what you do when they're there, you always feel a little dirtier in the morning.

In recent years, some of my friends have stopped speaking to the Fuckits. Their lives are better for it. These are the addicts, the Fuckits' favored few. At one time or another, they have each faced a stark choice: stay away from these guys, or die prematurely.  

My relationship with the Fuckits is less dire. I am what you would call one of their subclinical friends. They come around fairly often, but not so much that they're ruining my life. My impression is that they're at about the same friendship level with the majority of women I know.

Wouldn't it make sense for EVERYONE to defriend the Fuckits? Even if they haven't ruined our lives, why do we want to keep such an unpredictable, irritating, unbalanced company? Is there any reason we're still listening to their crazy schemes after all these years?

For me, yes, there is a reason. They might be full of crap most of the time, but the Fuckits are kind of my heroes.

When someone I know -- or something I read in a magazine -- tells me to be more patient, submissive, practical, or pleasing, the Fuckits know just the right response. When tonight was supposed to be the night of a thousand laundry loads, but I'm just too interested in writing this article, they smile and tap me on the shoulder. If I hear again that no one could possibly procrastinate as much as me and succeed, they make like a Roman emperor in the arena and do a haughty thumbs-down.

The instincts that tell me to go ahead and eat the whole sundae, to drink until I'm drunk, to stay up all night and ruin tomorrow reading random articles on Wikipedia -- they are instincts of surrender, of desire, of just-because-I-want-to. They are hungry, ugly, primal. They would rather expose themselves to embarrassment and criticism than miss out on something delicious. 

These instincts, these desires for something more, are amoral. They run strong and quick, right past eddies of worry, in search of satisfaction. Like water, they will flow forward by any means we allow:  wide, shallow floodplains of cheesecake; deeper, more frightening rapids of change. 

I'm scared of the rapids. It's convenient to let my life clog them with inertia and self-loathing, or to build dams in advance by internalizing society's opinions about who I should be.

How often my desires have run toward a big dream, a needed breakup, a lavish and impractical adventure that sounds worthwhile only to me, only to hit an inner Hoover and divert for something shallower. And how wonderful it's been the few times the Fuckits happened onto the scene, drunk as usual, dressed for some reason like Venetian gondoliers, singing in jaunty straw hats as they hand me sticks of dynamite: fuck it, fuuuuuck that shit, dooo it anyway, fuuuuuck that shit.

The Fuckits are irritating. They are insane. The stakes of hanging out with them are high, and I need to start inviting them to better parties.

Article by Anna Laimer, xoJane

Happy Weekend Friends

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Embellished Sunglasses

Sunglasses may be my favourite of all accessories – I own about 11 pairs, and hope to add a pair of pretty flower embellished guys to my collection soon...

C'est toi pour moi Moi pour toi dans la vie

Modette

C'est toi pour moi Moi pour toi dans la vie

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Playful Prints

Dust Jacket Attic

Riches for Rags

 Mireia M, LOOKBOOK nu

Riches for Rags

Glena M, LOOKBOOK nu

The Satorialist

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Monday Musing

 I believe that love is the world's greatest virtue...

Riches for Rags

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Worth Loving

A day in the land of nobody

How To Fall In Love With Yourself

Stand naked in front of a mirror for a long time, under unflattering light if possible. Trace the rises and falls of the little ripples on your skin — the scars, the dimples, the cellulite — and think about how much you try to hide these things in your day-to-day. Wonder why you hate them so much, and if this hate stems from somewhere within yourself, or as a result of being told all your life that it’s wrong to have physical flaws. Wonder what you would think of your body if you never looked at a magazine, if you never thought about celebrities and models, if you never had to wonder where someone would rate you on a scale of 10. Look at yourself until the initial recoil softens, and you can consider your features in a more forgiving frame of mind.

Listen to the music which makes you want to both sob and dance with uninhibited joy, and allow yourself to repeat any song you want as many times as your heart desires. Think of the person you are when you have your favorite song in your headphones and are walking down a street you feel you own completely, swaying your hips and smiling for no good reason — remember how many things you love about yourself during those moments, how much you are willing to forgive in yourself, how confident you are for no good reason. Try to think of confidence as a gift you give yourself when you need it, instead of something you have to siphon from every unreliable source in your life. Dance because the music makes you remember how much you love yourself, not because it allows you to forget the fact that you don’t.

Write a list of all the things you like about yourself, even if you think it’s a self-indulgent and narcissistic activity. Start as early as you like in your life — put down that time you won a trophy playing little league soccer when you were eight and then got an extra-large shake at the DQ on the way home, and don’t feel silly for remembering it. Try to understand how many sources in your life happiness can come from, how many things you could be proud of if you chose to. Ask yourself why you so tightly limit the things you take pride in, why you set your own hurdles for happiness and fulfillment so much higher than you do with anyone else in your life. Let your list go on for pages and pages if you want it to.

Touch and care for yourself with the attention and the patience that you would someone you loved more than life itself. Rub lotion in small circles on your elbows and hands when it is cold and your skin is dry and cracked. Make soup for yourself when your nose is running and curl up, with your favorite movie, in a pile of expertly-stacked pillows. Light a few candles and let their glow flicker against your body. Admire how gentle they are, how delicately their warmth touches you — wonder why you don’t let yourself do the same. Soak your feet in warm water at the end of a long day, until they have forgiven you for walking on them for so long without so much as a “thank you.” Listen to your body when it aches to be touched, and don’t be afraid to give it every orgasm that you may have been too ashamed to ask for in someone else’s bed.

Be patient with yourself, and don’t worry if a switch doesn't flip in you which abruptly takes you from “crippling self-doubt” to “uncompromising self-love.” Allow yourself all the trepidation and clumsy, uneven infatuation that you would with a promising stranger. Try only to be kinder, to be softer, and to remember all of the things within you which are worth loving. Listen to the voice in the back of your head which tells you, as much out of sadness as anger, “You are ugly. You are stupid. You are boring.” Give it the fleeting moment of attention it so craves, and then remind it, “Even if that were true, I’d still be worth loving.

Chelsea Fagan, How To Fall In Love with Yourself

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