Looking back on 2011

I'm so glad that I started blogging (almost) daily in 2011. I've changed a lot this year and I don't think I would have noticed much if I hadn't been keeping a detailed record of my every thought and haircolor ;) So here are some of my favorite posts, outfits and moments from 2011!

Favorite outfit: sugar spice and everything nice

Favorite post: Style Idol: Clarissa Darling

Moments: January was pretty uneventful, but I did take these photos for my blog header (replaced by my pink haired illustration this summer) with which I'm still pretty smitten! :)

Favorite outfit: eh-hem

Favorite post: You've seen her kind of eyes, watching you from underneath a rock

Moments: My little Chloe turned 9, I did a Style Idol post for my Grandmom Eve and I discovered Eureka

Favorite outfit: posh frock friday

Favorite post: Happy Pi Day!

Moments: My blog turned 1 year old, I discovered Twin Peaks, I made vegan mac & cheese and it was actually good!

Favorite outfit: what we see and what we seem are but a dream

Favorite post: I hosted a virtual slumber party on Amber's blog

Moments: I was accepted to the University of Toronto (but didn't end up attending), my parents celebrated their 35th wedding anniversary, I discovered the solution for tangled hair, and I fell in love with Arrested Development

Favorite outfit: posh frock friday

Favorite post: come with me where dreams are born, and time is never planned, and my cat shoe DIY

Moments: I celebrated my 4th anniversary with Hypatia, and my dad's birthday in Princeton, and I discovered Parks and Recreation (tv was pretty important in my life this year, it seems!)

Favorite outfit: sunshine on a cloudy day

Favorite post: star stuff, and my video for the blowfish shoes giveaway

Moments: Slumber Party Sunday was born and I won first place at the Washington Square Outdoor Art Exhibit!

Favorite outfit: up!

Favorite post: Spice Girls themed slumber party sunday

Moments: I dyed my hair pink, I dyed it back to red, I watched the weirdest movie ever with my best friends, and Andi did a really fun interview on my blog!

Favorite outfit: heart still beating

Favorite post: my favorite Wishlist Wednesday (paleontology themed)

Moments: I went back to pink, The first annual Clarissa Explains it All week, and I decided to try to tackle quantum physics (still working on that..)

Favorite outfit: posh frock friday

Favorite post: look what I made and look what I made #2

Moments: I learned how to sew my own dresses from scratch, I posted a room tour, and I completed the drawings for my 2012 calendar, my favorite Flapper Doodle work yet.

Favorite outfit: no one's gloomy or complaining while the flatware's entertaining

Favorite post: playing dress up

Moments: I finally started taking full-size outfit photos, I taught myself how to read music, I discovered The Big Bang Theory, Casey gave me the most amazing gift ever, Elycia drew a portrait of me, and I painted a mural on my bathroom wall.

Favorite outfit: posh frock thursday

Favorite posts: DIY faux beehive and DIY anthropologie landscape dress

Moments: I went to Disney World and turned 25, I said goodbye to pink (for now), I co-hosted A Very Merry Indie Christmas, made the most amazing vegetarian meal ever, and managed to capture Chloe in an outfit picture.

Favorite outfit: posh frock friday

Favorite post: messy

Moments: My Aunt Annie turned 100 years old!, I made a classic movie Christmas video, I discovered How I Met Your Mother, I finally found grapefruit tic-tacs, and I celebrated Christmas with my two favorite felines and my wonderful family :)

over the river and through the woods

dress- dorothy perkins

lace cardigan - h&m

belt - forever 21

shoes - c/o blowfish

I wore this for Christmas at my grandmom's house yesterday. A little fancy considering my brother wore sweatpants, but I couldn't let the holidays pass without wearing this dress out at least once! It seems so festive to me :)

After we opened presents (she loved the carousel, by the way!!) my Grandmom mentioned that she had some boxes of old photos I could go through next time I visited, and I was like "um.. why not right now??!!" so we spent the rest of the evening going through LOADS of old family pictures. It was fantastic! I can't wait to start scanning them all! There were some photos of Aunt Annie that I'd never seen, too, so I want to upload those to her centennial site & take them with me next time I visit her!

Tomorrow I'm going to do a 2011-in-review post, and then I think my next post will be in 2012. I didn't realize until Christmas actually got here how much I REALLY needed a break!! Not so much from blogging but just from constantly doing something every minute of the day. I need to unplug a bit and get some rest so I'm re-energized for the new year! :)

On Christmas Day

dress - modcloth
belt - forever 21
tights - target
shoes - c/o blowfish

I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas! Mine was fantastic! I absolutely LOVE giving gifts, and I had my parents' presents picked out since like September. I hardly slept at all on Christmas Eve, I was so anxious to see them open their presents in the morning! :D Then in the afternoon we went to see Aunt Annie at the nursing home. This was her first Christmas where she couldn't leave to come to our house, but she was in such good spirits! Laughing, telling stories and relaying anecdotes about life at the nursing home (she slapped another resident! her excuse? "she slapped me first!") She officially turned 100 on Friday, by the way!!

And now today is actually Christmas Part II in my family... my grandmom has us over after Christmas each year to open presents at her apartment. She's taking us out for breakfast, then we're spending the whole day watching movies, eating sweets and having fun! When we were little, she always took me and my brother on carousel rides... it was like our "thing," so when me and Kyle were out Christmas shopping at Michaels and saw a carousel in their Christmas village, we knew we had to get it! I can't wait to see her face when she opens her gift!! We even went through all of our old family photos to find pictures of us as children riding the carousel with her, and put them in a little card to go with it!

Did you get/give anything special this year or start any new traditions? I started one... on Christmas after our parents went to sleep, me and Kyle watched one of the Christmas episodes of The Office. We're going to do that every year now :)

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from me and Hypatia!

...and Chloe, who refuses to be held, but was, much to my astonishment, okay with letting me prop a hat on her head for twenty minutes.

we interrupt this christmas break to bring you exciting news...

The elusive modclothcouponicus has not been seen in the wild for more than a year. The legendary creature was often spotted in 2009 and 2010 but has been hibernating in exile for more than 12 months. But, alas! I opened my inbox this evening and low and behold... a coupon code was waiting for me, standing in plain sight! I could not believe my eyes!

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the modcloth coupon code has been sighted once more! Once a candidate for the endangered retail species list, it is now alive and well! Hurrah!!

Okay, but seriously. 25% off all sale stuff with the coupon code SALEAWAY. If you've fainted, here is some virtual water in the face and slaps on the cheek. Wake up! It's true! It's real! I can't even tell you how many times I've looked at the sale dresses and thought "okay, that's nice but it needs to be like $10 cheaper before I can actually buy it." And now, it can be! aghhh! The four beauties at the top of the post are all going in my shopping cart before they sell out (hey, I finished my Christmas shopping earlier tonight.. I can spoil myself a bit now, right? ;) That one on the far right, the beading heart dress, is only going to be $38 after the coupon!! wheee! If you get something let me know what! I love shopping vicariously :D

Ok, now back to the Christmas break ;) I might pop back in with some photos of Christmasey stuff and the cats, but no outfit posts or scheduled features until after Christmas :)

ps. I scheduled this for 6am, but I have no idea what time the sale actually starts. I'm hoping the code will already be working by the time this post goes up, but right now (1am) it's still not live yet :p

christmas break

I'm taking a little break until after Christmas. I hope everyone has a nice holiday season!

xoxo Kate

that girl

green suit - c/o JoJo's Vintage

necklace - handmade

tights - asos

shoes - MIA

I feel like a cross between That Girl and Mary Tyler Moore in this outfit! I've been gravitating towards really muted pastel clothes lately so this is a nice little burst of color for my wardrobe :)

Last night my mom was really blue and went to bed early, so my dad, my brother and I decided to super Christmas-ize the house while she was sleeping. She loves Christmas so much, but since me and my dad both work from home we end up spending a bit too much time working and not enough time enjoying the season with her. Hopefully this will help a bit :) I cut out huge Christmas lights from construction paper and taped them to our kitchen cabinets (I posted a photo on instagram here) and then I made lots of Christmas cookies shaped like candy canes and ornaments. I also made little word bubbles that say "Ho! Ho! Ho!" and "Merry Christmas" and taped them to all of the artwork downstairs so all of the kitties and people on the walls are all showing their holiday spirit ;)

100 hearts

dress - asos

cardigan - h&m

shoes - modcloth

tights - marshalls

This is what I wore for Aunt Annie's 100th birthday party on Saturday! I had bought a light blue vintage dress on etsy for the occasion, but sometime between the purchase & the party, Aunt Annie's health declined a little (don't worry, she's ok!) and we had to change the party from dinner at a local restaurant to lunch at her nursing home and my pretty 60's frock was too dressy. It'll definitely make an appearance on posh frock friday sometime soon though :)

100 years!

I made this design for the party invitations for Aunt Annie's 100th birthday party! The drawing was from a photo of her when she was a bridesmaid in her sister's wedding when she was only 16 years old, back in 1927! 84 years ago!

Like I said in my post yesterday, Aunt Annie didn't pay much attention to world events. But nevertheless, plenty of them have occurred since she was born. During her lifetime the Titanic sunk, World War I began, Marie Curie won the Nobel Prize and Mata Hari was executed. She was 15 years old when Rudolph Valentino died, 30 when Pearl Harbor was attacked and 58 when man first walked on the moon. And it is so amazing how far technology has come since she was born. She was 5 before the first light switch was invented, and now she's living in an age where I can search for and read the entire history of electricity on a portable computer that fits in my pocket.

Me and my mom made a little website for guests who couldn't make it to the party, if you'd like to take a look! It has lots of photos, a guest book and facts that my mom compiled from every year since Aunt Annie's birth! It's really awe-inspiring to look through the list and see everything she's lived through. There's also this video, which is an extended version of the one I posted last year. I found my original raw footage a couple weeks ago, which included about 8 extra minutes of amazing stories that I hadn't included in the documentary I made for my school project! She did seem a little frail this past Thanksgiving, but the cough she had has subsided and she seems just as spunky now, at 99 and 51 weeks, as she did in 2009 when I shot this!

ps. The flowers in the card design are from Just Something I Made :)

posh frock friday

dress - modcloth

cardigan - forever21

tights - we love colors

shoes - modcloth (similar)

hair bow - honeybean

Grey and yellow is one of my all time favorite color combinations! I was a little lost on how to make this dress work for winter, but I think pairing it with all-grey accessories really helps!

Tomorrow is my Aunt Annie's 100th birthday party (although her real birthday is the 23rd, we just weren't sure how many people would have been able to attend a party two days before Christmas). I'll have a post up tomorrow with some pictures of her, and an extended version of the interview I did with her in 2009. She is such a spunky lady... in the video she tells stories about how she used to sneak out to go dancing, about the time she went riding on a motorcycle on a trip in Cuba, how she found a gun in a pocket once while she was working in a laundromat and almost killed her boss! She doesn't remember a darn thing about world events (not even World War II, if you can believe it) but she can remember exactly what she wore to the dances, who she went with and what street they lived on. She's a remarkable woman, and I'm so lucky to have her in my life!

star stuff

Star Stuff and Wishlist Wednesday Thursday worlds combine! How amazing is this star projector!? I desperately want it for my bedroom now. According to the site, "it is possible to set up your AstroStar by aligning it according to your location and the time of the year, so it can project a map of the clear night sky all around you." Where I live the street lamps make it difficult to view the stars in the night sky, so this would be incredibly fun for someone like me who longs to star-gaze, but can't! Available here, and found via Kelly Christine.

weekly watch-along

For some reason I haven't quite figured out yet, Thursday is usually pretty quiet over here in the views/comments department. In the past I tried coming up with things to breathe some life into Thursday but it never worked, so I've decided to go the opposite route instead... I figure, while nobody is looking, I'll geek out a little bit and start an X-Files feature! Although, provided there isn't some huge cosmic reason for the deadening silence that befalls this blog once a week, I do hope you'll stop by on Thursdays if you're an X-Files fan or are looking to become one!

Here's what I'm planning -- each week I'll post about one episode, starting with Season 1, Episode 1. If you want to watch-along, just make sure you watch the episode sometime before Thursday so you can chime in (or, if you're like me and know every episode by heart you can do that without watching it right before the post, lol..) The X-Files is available on Netflix Instant, Hulu Plus and on Amazon Instant Video, so it's pretty easy to track down each episode. I'll start next week so that if anyone wants to join in you have time to watch Episode 1 before my first post! :)