Colour-coded

As a kid and throughout my teens, I was always told that there were colours I couldn't wear because I was "too pale". What can I say - I grew up iron-deficient in the wettest, greyest little town in Norway. I'm not even sure I can tan. But yeah, colours like yellow, navy blue, salmon pink, coral and turquoise were all off the menu. And those are all colours I love, by the way.

Then I met my husband, who kept saying, in a sort of envious, put-upon way - "Well, of course you can wear that - you can get away with it!" no matter what colour I tried on. And then I realised that actually, while flourescent banana yellow won't do me any favours (except if I really, really need a fake sick note from the doctor), dark and mustard yellows actually look okay on me.

Same with navy blue, and all the rest. Somehow, they bring out my pale colouring in a really favourable way. So now I'm taking part in the Dress Your Best Week that academichic are hosting, and one of the things I'm celebrating about the way I look is my pale skin and general pale colouring. (And my mad, rabid gaze, apparently! ;-P )

This outfit is my favourite out of all my remix outfits so far, by the way. It would be totally work-appropriate if I just added my little black kitten-heels and a pair of tights. I'm also wearing my floral Anthro top backwards today - can you even tell? Ah, but will I wear it inside-out next? Hmm maybe, maybe not...

Blueberry juice

My husband picked this dress out. He saw it in the store and went, "Whoa, that's really nice!" and that was my main reason for getting it when it went on sale. Six months later. Because I remember these things. I'm sad like that. 

Thing is, I never really made friends with this dress, because I felt blocky and clunky in it. That's why I included it in my remix - to get to know it a little better. Adding the short jacket helps outline my waist (I think). And the great thing about an eggshell white dress is that you can pair it with just about any colour and it will look okay.  

I realised something when I was eating my lunch today, and feeling smug about how healthy is all was - a wholemeal salad warp with a bottle of blueberry juice - I matched the juice. Yes, I colour-coordinate with my food now. Because nutrition is important.

Infestation

I wanted to mix things up today and take my picture on the stairs - but that would've meant disturbing this little guy while he was having his lunch...

In other news, we have moths. Which is only sligthly less yucky than having syphilis. So the three little closets that the hubby and I share (1.5 closets each, eh?) will have to be sprayed to within an inch of their life, and hopefully that will kill the moths before they can eat all our clothes.

Doing the 30 for 30 right now has turned out to be a huge blessing in disguise, since I already had a set, uh, set of clothes to wear. Everything else, with a couple of exceptions (track pants, PJ's, all that jazz) has now been packed away in those little underbed storage things. And holy crap, does my half of the closet(s) look empty now!

But weirdly, the emptiness is kind of liberating, because I can see everything at a glance... And I'm just going to leave the rest of my clothes in those storage bags for now, until the damn moths are gone and the 30 for 30 is over. Here's hoping I won't desperately need that raincoat...

Hazy

So the heatwave came and just about knocked us all unconscious. The air seems to shimmer with heat. Trains are cancelled because the tracks are overheating. And, just like Cinderella, one little girl on my street has lost her shoe...

I like this blurry photo because it shows you what today felt like. Hazy.

As for the outfit, this is my mustard yellow top - but even after darkening the pictures, I'm not even sure I can tell, and I wore the damn thing. With the belt and billowy top, I felt like a 1960's office lady.

My bangle is really cool; it's all one bendy wire, like a beaded slinky. I bought it at a Christmas market in Germany last year, and Victor calls it my voodoo charm, because there are tiny rattling bells on it.

Both the top and skirt are from different seasons of Anthro sale, and I'd do that curvy, all inclusive brackets thing if my hand were only steady enough on my tabled. Sadly, it's not. Hence the two arrows, in case you were wondering. And yes, that's me photographically scalping myself. To let off steam, obviously.

Because I'm a bad person...

Most of my outfits don't have a name, but I'd like to call this one Citrus Punch. Because it's bright enough to make people rock back on their heels as if they just got punched in the face. 

I had been stalking this cute raspberry skirt since forever, and I was hoping that by the time I'd finished my 30 outfits, it'd be on sale. But then, Anthro sent me an email about their summer sale (the bastards!) and sure enough, this skirt was part of the sale. And since their sales operate on the principle of "buy now, or regret it forever", I cracked. 

So I'm officially a Bad Person, and I'm also exchanging one of the skirts from my original remix lineup for this one. I mean, since I cracked and bought it, I may as well remix the crap out of it, right? I realise that's not much of a penance since it's a skirt I've been longing to own and wear, but it's the best I can come up with. 

Anyway, I wore this outfit to go to the Okinawa Festival in Shoreditch with Victor and Christa yesterday. Not only did they put up with my request for outfit photo-taking, Christa jumped into some of them. I swear, this huge flowing skirt brings out my inner Dracula... I was only trying to wrap Christa in it, I didn't punch her in the stomach - honest!

They had live music there, which was pretty interesting. Okinawa is kind of isolated from the rest of Japan, so their culture is pretty unique, and the same went for their folk music. They played everything from a rousing work-song for wood-cutters to a grandmother's song about her newborn grandchild.

There were also a few food stalls, so I got to try sour yakisoba with tempura (so, so good) and Okinawan ginger bread (not gingerbread, but actual bread with ginger in it) which was incredibly yummy. I want the recipe...

This necklace kills fascists...

...well, at the very least, I could take down a burglar with it! Yes, look what I found on ebay... several weeks ago, may I ad, and long before the 30 for 30 started!

Originally, I'd been lusting over this necklace in pink, but when I emailed the shop, they were all sold out. And then I had one of those weird sleepless nights, when I woke up from some nightmare or other and couldn't go back to sleep. So then I had the idea of looking for the necklace on ebay, and while they didn't have the pink version there, they did have the turquoise one that started the whole teardrop necklace craze on the internets in the first place.

When I woke up, I didn't remember if I'd really bought the necklace or if I'd dreamed it all. But there was the seller's email in my inbox, and now I finally have the necklace, thanks to Grace who sent it on to me from America. I'm glad I opted for the smaller version, with 12 big beads as opposed to 16, because even that feels like wearing a really heavy bib!

Next time I can't sleep, I'm not allowed to touch the computer. At all. I can do boring things like the washing up, or I can read a book with a flashlight. But that's it. Not that I'm not happy with the necklace - I love it! And it's not like it was bank-breakingly expensive. But this can't happen again...

This shirt is awesome

This shirt is awesome for two reasons. One, it's pretty. And two, I can wear it backwards! So really, it's two shirts in one, and that makes it an ideal remix item. It was also on sale, does that count as a reason for awesomeness?

This outfit would never have happened if not for the remix - if not for the fact that it was sort of rainy and kind of cold, and my black jeans were in the laundry basket. I just wouldn't have thought of pairing this shirt with my bright red pants otherwise - but I wound up really liking the effect.

I'm behind on a couple of outfit posts - either I wasn't happy with the outfit, or I didn't have time to take pictures. But there's no time limit, so I'm not stressing...

Wedding anniversary outfit

This Tuesday (June 21st) was our wedding anniversary. We didn't actually remember until June 20th. That is, I remembered. When I asked the hubby what day he thought tomorrow was, he went "Uh... Your mum's birthday?" in a sort of hopeful I'm-not-in-trouble-am-I? kind of way. This is what we did to celebrate:

That's right, we went to see Wicked. And it was, well, wicked. I was honestly not expecting to enjoy it that much, we mainly picked that show because Victor had been wanting to see it for ages. But it was great.

We stupidly did my outfit photos on the crowded, windy street outside the theatre, which is why you can barely see the actual outfit. So there will be a retake fairly soon, because leaving it like this is just too annoying... I'm finally wearing my beloved Target dress on the blog - it just had to be altered because the drapey front kept flapping open and exposing my boobs to the world. My boobs weren't happy with that arrangement. Victor also pointed out that I matched Elpheba, which I guess was very subconsciously rad of me.

Bulgarian Super-heroes

Meanwhile, in Sofia, someone went and did this to a famous sculpture:

Either it's a socially conscious comment on the Americanisation of Bulgaria, or someone just got really bored of all those grey statues. Either way, I think it's rather nifty! We actually went to Sofia last year, so I've seen the thing in real life - and this was definitely an improvement...

Stormy weather

I felt a little iffy about this outfit - is the skirt too short, are the tights to bright, is this really me? But when I went to eat budget lunch with my friend Christa in the park, the first thing she said when she saw me was, "Cute outfit!" And then I felt a little better about the whole thing!

Today was all sunshine and blue skies (and cold winds, hence the tights), until I got home and wanted to take pictures. Then the skies opened up.

You probably can't see it in these pictures because I'm standing under a ledge, but it was raining like crazy right next to me. My right arm kept getting wet!

Also, more than half the pictures came out blurry. I may have accidentally broken Victor's camera somehow...

The Flying Karamazov Brothers

They wore leather kilts, black boots and perfectly pressed white shirts, and they juggled everything from eggs to burning torches. Sometimes, all four of them would stand in a square as they juggled, their missiles intersecting in mid-air while they spun, jumped, twirled their kilts and told bad jokes.

For instance: A skeleton walks into a bar and says, "Can I have a pint and a mop, please?"

When one of them dropped a baton, his "brother" helpfully cried out, "Oh, look - a monkey!" in an attempt to distract us all. The juggling was, 99% of the time, seamless and breathtaking and amazing. Sometimes things went wrong, but that only made it more lovable.

And they performed Swan Lake. Four grown men in tutus hopping around on stage - it doesn't get more wrongity-wrong than that! ....but we loved it.

If you live anywhere near London, this show is well worth a visit. And if you live in the US, you're in luck, because that's where they're from. And they will have to go back there, eventually - sadly, we can only borrow them for so long.

Epic camera fail

This post is just to say, eventually there will be pictures of the outfit I wore yesterday. Eventually. You see, I'd left the memory card out of the camera, so the hubby had to take the pictures directly onto the camera's memory. And then we realised we have NO clue where the camera cord is. So until we find it, this post will just have to sit here like a lost orphan. Epic, epic fail.

Trench coat and stop sign

Shh, can you hear that?That's the sound of me being too lazy to post my outfits. 

Thus, we have three outfits in the same post, because I'm lame. The last one comes first. Sooo... This is what I wore yesterday. There was also a red scarf to balance out the other red bits, but of course I forgot to put it on for when we were taking the photos. 

I wound up standing under that tree, while it still rained, so I'd stay dry while we took my photos - but I kind of like the effect. 

I debated for the longest time whether I should include my trench-coat in the remix, but it's a good thing I did! What with all the non-stop rain and howling wind we've been having, I've learned to love this coat like never before - especially on Friday, when I just about lived inside the thing.

Oh, and when I say the pants are customised, I mean "I dyed them red in the washing machine." I also dyed the inside of the washing machine red. But we don't talk about that.

 We can talk about the top, though - that's the best piece of Fauxthropologie I have ever seen in a Peacock's. I'd missed out on buying its gorgeous triangle-endowed cousin earlier in the month, but I actually like the knock-off version better! I'm considering putting some stitches in to create a drapey effect across the front... I guess we'll see how bored I get with it before this remix is done! 

Moving along... In my search for glam places to take my photos, I have reached a new low. But it was raining, people were playing tennis just behind me, and there were other recycling bins I could put the camera on. Seemed like a win-win situation at the time.

As I was leaving, a flower-pot blew down from one of the ledges right above me and landed right where I'd been standing a few minutes ago. Sure, it was just one of those flimsy plastic ones, so I'd probably only have had a headfull of dirt, but I'm still glad I didn't get to find out.

We are having the wettest, coldest summer ever. Here I was, wondering if I should even include jeans in my remix items - good thing I did! Everything paled next to that stop sign - can you even tell that my shirt is purple?

Scandinavia And the World: When cliches are true...

 ...but in a good way! Polina introduced me to this webcomic, and I am so, so hooked. "Scandinavia and the World" is a comic about why the Scandinavian countries are the way they are, and it's so spot on. T Sweden is the techy geek, Denmark is the cute and carefree one (both when it comes to alcohol and, ah, hanky-panky), Norway is the big nature loving outdoorsman, and Finland... Finland is fantastic - he's mysterious and silent, and always carries a beer and a big knife. And Iceland is an extreme sports enthusiast who enjoys parachuting into volcanoes. Best of all, Poli and I read this strip...

And then we looked at my holiday photos from Japan. And wouldn't you know it - lots of pictures of trees, and birds, and turtles and SHIT! Heheheh. You can take the girl out of Norway...

I borrowed the image from the Scandinavia and the World website, here: http://satwcomic.com/the-world
Go read it, seriously. This lady is a genius. But be warned, it's seriously addictive!

Concrete fortress

 I ventured all the way out to the Barbican to take these pictures. The Barbican is the most weird and wonderful building complex in the world, after Gormenghast. I managed to find a corner of it with only a handful of people, and this is the result.

See that weird James Bond style crooked camera angle? That's not me being artistic, that's me balancing the camera on one of the flowerbeds. And the bag is my gym bag with my swimming gear in it, because I took the pictures on my way to the pool. How glamorous am I, right?

That black top is the one with Indian style tassels at the bottom - it's probably the most versatile of all my 30 items so I'm guessing I'll be using it a lot. I seriously have no idea where it's from, but either it's thrifted or someone gave it to me. Wardrobe amnesia.

And because my rather rad necklace was hidden by my hair, here's a closeup. I bought this at Anthro for a song - literally, I sang to them, and they gave me the necklace to go away.

The Turtle Moves

In the forest, the great stone turtle crouches, straining against the pillar that has been plunged through his back. Flat eyes glare past the stone lanterns, making monks and pilgrims stop dead in their tracks. 

That blank gaze follows you, makes sure you are looking away when the turtle actually moves. Inch by inch, the pillar gives way, as the monster strains against the spells carved into the rock. 

A shift of a hand-span takes a hundred years, but the turtle is patient. 

Sometimes, unwary humans step too close. Sometimes, they are alone. The turtle is always hungry, but it does not starve. Birds know better than to perch on its great granite head. 

We think their chirps are beautiful songs, as we step over fallen branches, walk around the pillars, pause for a photograph. We do not realise that they are warnings. 

...Yup, that's me at Gesso-ji temple in Matsue, coochie-cooing the great monster turtle. The stone was warm to the touch...

A kind of 1940's vibe

That's what I felt I had going here, with my little polkadot shirt and button-up cardi. Or maybe it was the colours, they were straight out of an old photo.

It was so old fashioned, in fact, that Victor called me "Princess" today, with that casual 40's sexism that makes the term so endearing. He was only kidding though - or maybe playing LA NOIRE has done something to his brain...

I've decided, since I'll be posting my outfits and some of my friends might find this boring to read about, that for every 30 for 30 post I do, I'll do a post about something else. Like something from our trip to Japan, or about a comic I just discovered... We'll see.