star stuff

I purchased this illustration from Megan Bentley on etsy last week. I'm so smitten with her work, and I can't wait to hang this up when it arrives! It reminds me of the line from The Pale Blue Dot, "that's here. that's home." It gives me goosebumps!

pajama day

This month was a bit of a nightmare, and I'm saying sayonara in style. Well, not real style obviously since I'm wearing my pajamas, but I'm definitely spending May 31st living it up. To me, living it up means loafing around in pjs, drinking grapefruit juice and watching classic films in bed. I like to live life on the edge.

I spent the morning packing etsy orders, and now that I'm caught up I'm just going to spend the last 11 hours of the month enjoying myself, and anxiously awaiting June. I'm thinking of it like Mid-New Years Eve... I might even count down to midnight and whip out some sparkling apple cider.

wishlist wednesday

Trollied Dolly is one of my favorite designers.. they have a very 40's/50's style, and the prints are super cute! I snatched up this dress during their summer sale last year, and I love it to death! It was one of the select few dresses I own that I took with me to Disney World last year (to my dresses, that's like the equivalent of winning an Oscar or becoming President. It's quite exclusive.)

They're having a sale now (20% off with the code "herecomesthesun") and I'm incredibly tempted to get the sunflower dress on the left. Wouldn't it would be so ideal for a little picnic in the park!?

on repeat.

cardigan - forever 21 (really old)
daisy brooch - flea market
skirt - h&m
shoes - francesca's collections
ombre tights - c/o modcloth

Is anyone else a music repeater? When I'm hooked on a song, I literally don't listen to anything else for weeks. It's one of the reasons I ended up stopping my song of the week series here, because I'd be SO hooked on one particular song for so long that I just didn't want to listen to anything else, even for my blog. Right now I'm obsessed with Lullaby of London by The Pogues (it's usually something by The Pogues.) I just CANNOT STOP. Every single time I listen I find another part that gives me goosebumps, it's just so good*. I've listened to it so many times the last few weeks that even when I don't have my computer or ipod anywhere nearby, I find myself singing it in my head like a broken record.

Sometimes I get really tired of the repeat offenders and don't listen to them again for a really long time, but some just resonate so deeply that I know they're forever favorites. This is definitely a forever favorite. Want to have a listen? :)

*right now that part is when he sings "as I walked on with a heavy heart, then a stone danced on the tide" ... goosebumps, I tell you! goosebumps!

chick peas with broccoli & tomatoes

Last week I was trying to come up with a healthy lunch and concocted this dish that I've been having pretty much every day since. My mom has basically the same thing except she substitutes 1 piece of grilled boneless, skinless chicken for the chick peas, and has green beans instead of broccoli.

It's SO easy. I just combine 1 bag of steam-in-the-bag broccoli, 1/3 can of rinsed chickpeas, 1/2 a tomato cut up into little pieces, some parsley & oregano and 1 tbsp of Italian dressing. The total time is however long it takes to steam the veggies, then you just toss together the ingredients and dive right in! :)

ps. Maybe I'm just way too obsessed with The Office, but does anyone else automatically think of Michael Scott when they have steam in the bag veggies? "They have these bags of vegetables that steam right inside their own bag. So I'll get a glass of sangria, sit down in front of the TV, pop a bag of vegetables, before you know it I'm ready for bed!"

busy busy busy

dress - modcloth
shirt - forever 21
belt - dorothy perkins
shoes - marshalls

I have so much to do today, I think I almost wept when I looked at the clock and saw it was time to get up and begin my day. My to-do list seems to be a mile long, but I'm hoping to check off as much as I possibly can by midnight. May turned out to be one of the worst months ever for my family (you probably wouldn't even believe me if I listed everything that happened to us. When our sink broke last week I said "it's LITERALLY everything and the kitchen sink!!") so I just spent so much time away from my computer that things got really, really backed up. Deadlines are swiftly approaching so it's super duper crunch time!

Totally completely off topic, but how about Mad Men on Sunday?! I won't say any spoilers but my goodness that was one of the best so far this season! I can't believe there are only a couple episodes left... I feel like after waiting so long for this new season we should have gotten a few extra to make up for the wait. ;p

farewell, old layout

I've had the same header for almost a year, the same layout since January 2011 and the same sidebar buttons since I started my blog over two years ago. And this weekend, I finally changed it! It's not a huge difference ... I doubt anyone will be like "wait, what blog IS THIS?!" (In fact it's quite possible a lot of people won't even notice I did anything) but I really love the little changes I made!

If you're in a reader you can click through here to view the new design! :)

Book Fair update!

I just added over 20 new (old) books to The Book Fair! yay! Lots of goodies in this batch, including a lot of Judy Blume and Beverly Cleary (including this version of Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret with an AMAZING cover!)

Also, I recently got a bunch of Goosebumps and Baby Sitters Club books, so now I have BSC and Goosebumps themed Book Fair kits in the shop! :D

ps. Free US shipping on any two books with code TWOBOOKS

my wardrobe in review

Modcloth is having a contest where you can win a $100 gift certificate if you post a video on youtube showing off your 3 favorite vintage or modcloth dresses in your closet. This is my entry! I had so much fun making it, I might do more videos in the future :)

In the video I'm wearing the Milkshake Things Up dress, the Scene and Believed dress, the Feline Fabulous dress, and the Sprinkled with Sweetness dress. The song is Three Little Words by Claude Hopkins & his Orchestra. I got it from my favorite site for early 20th century public domain tunes - Jazz Online.

If you want to enter, the details are here and the deadline to enter is May 29th so hop to it! ;D

stormy weather

dress - charlotte russe
cardigan - forever 21
shoes & belt - modcloth
necklace - gift from amber

Taking daily outfit photos can be challenging when it's storming so badly that 3pm looks like midnight! You can probably tell from the graininess of the photos that these went through some pretty intense lightening in photoshop... sorry about that!

Despite the fact that it prohibits fantastic photos, I really love stormy weather! It's so cliche, but I absolutely adore getting cozy and watching scary movies whenever it's thundering outside. The one thing that makes storms a little less fantastic in our house, though, is that they scare the living daylights out of Chloe. She's usually a tough broad but the slightest gust of wind or drop of rain sends her darting under my bed, her fat little arms barely 1" off the ground.

star stuff

Sorry for the crummy photo booth picture... my brother (aka the only other person in the house with a camera or iphone) isn't home, so this was the best I could come up with for taking a picture of what's on my phone!

So, what IS on my phone, you ask? It's the Night Sky app! It determines which stars are directly overhead! And because it uses GPS you can use it in the daytime too. I tested it out for the first time today and, though I couldn't see them with my own eyes, I learned that the constellations Cygnus, Lacerta and Cepheus were hovering above. I cannot WAIT to try this out when it's dark out and I can actually see the stars on Night Sky in the actual night sky!!

Have you tried any astronomy apps or other awesome science-y apps?

what my walls are wearing

I get a lot of comments and questions about this wall that serves as a backdrop in 99.99% of my outfit photos. So I thought I'd share a little bit about what's on it today! The color is Frosty (I can't remember what brand now, but this is the paint swatch for it) although I think it looks just a tad more blue in real life than it does in my pictures. Now here's where I got everything that's on it...



1. Striped painting with two girls by Valerie Pensworth. Her etsy shop is closed now and I can't find another place where she's selling her prints, but she's one of my favorites!

2. Girl with a prism shooting out of her eye by Dada Dreams. I have a couple pieces from her.. I absolutely love her bizarre quirky creations!

3. Two portraits by Elizabeth Bauman. The blue one is a commissioned painting of my Grandmom Eve! Elizabeth sells prints and originals on etsy, and I highly recommend her work! She's also an incredibly sweet person :)

4. "Home is where my cats are" embroidery by me

5. Dirk Bogarde portrait from Immortal Ephermera on ebay. If you ever are in the market for classic film memorabilia I highly recommend Cliff! He's a classic film expert and super nice guy!

6. Jane Fonda collage from catwalk on etsy. I have a few more collages by her, too! I'm really smitten with this one that's in her shop now.

7. Floating head on purple watercolor by Amanda Blake. I love Amanda's work and I'm thrilled to have an original painting from her. I also have a gocco print in my office (not pictured in this post) of a girl holding a levitating egg.

8. Everything Will Be Okay screenprint by AJB + MTK on etsy. They don't have this in their shop right now, but someone on flickr asked me where I got it & wrote me back later to say they were able to special order one.



I'm in love with this apple pie print I got from Everyday is a Holiday! It's perfection. (And the fact that it makes me think of cozy fall nights with hot cocoa and my mom's apple pie definitely doesn't hurt!)



1. I got this French cat print at a little poster store in New Hope, PA but it's also available online. I found a 24x36 one on amazon here, but basically if you search for "Le Chat Domestique" you can find a bunch of them!

2. "You never know what's around the next corner" print by Heidi Burton. I LOVE Heidi's work -- it always cheers me up! Her shop is currently on vacation but you can view a close-up of this print here.

3. Another Heidi Burton print! This one says "Let your inner child out of its box sometimes to help with those important decisions" with word bubbles reading "Let's wear pajamas to the bank! And speak with Russian accents!" It's adorable! You can view the close-up of this one here.



1. Anna Karina painting by me. You can get prints in my society6 shop if you're so inclined ;) (ps. I also have prints of that portrait I posted two weeks ago here.)

2. Dress pattern painting. It's just a painting I did of some of the patterns on my favorite dresses. That's also available as a print in my shop, here.

3. Another painting by Elizabeth Bauman. This one is also very special, it's a commissioned piece of my grandmom and mom on Easter when my mom was a toddler! My grandmom and my mom both have prints of this one and I have the original :)



1. Only my cat understands me air freshener from Perpetual Kid. I love the look on the cats' face.. it's like "SAVE ME!!"

2. "Make art" mantra collage by Catwalk on etsy

3. Watercolor painting of the Dunder Mifflin Office building by Pam Halpert (ok, technically it's from the NBC store lol... it came in this kit)

4. Giulietta Masina collage from Catwalk on etsy (told you I liked her stuff!)

5. Eureka sheriff's patch from The NBC store.



1. This office cat is something I just printed from home. I couldn't find the original source online (I saw it on pinterest) and the highest quality images I could find were like 500px wide, so I just printed it in super bad quality then touched up the edges with pencil. It looks pretty cool though, regardless of the pitiful resolution since I fooled around with it once it was printed. If anyone knows the original source though I'd really like an authentic print!

2. Dwight bobblehead from The NBC store

3. All of the tulips are from Michaels. Maybe a DIY project though? hmm..



1. Print of an oil painting by Vivienne Strauss. Vivienne works in watercolor, oil and collage and I love ALL of it. This particular painting is one of my all time favorites!

2. Sunday in New York lobby card. I can't find another one of this exact card on its own, but it's available in a set from MoviePoster.com here. (Although please don't buy it, I might want to myself, haha! It's my favorite movie ♥)

3. Girl with the pink beehive that's actually a cat by Carol Roque. Was this made for me or WHAT?! I'm in love with it!

wishlist wednesday

These have been on the "coming soon" page at modcloth for the longest time and today they were finally made available for sale! :D I'm embarrassed to admit I gasped and did a little happy dance in my chair when I saw they were available. They're just so perfect! I love vintage dresses so much, but vintage-looking dresses that are brand spanking new are pretty high up on my list, too.

ps. If anyone was smitten with that cupcake tea party dress I posted last week, asos has a 20% off coupon that expires today! It's 20RMN, and it only works on full priced things (like that dress.) It was a teensy bit pricey even with the discount, but I justified it by counting it as an "I'll wear this on my trip to Disney World in November" dress ;p

sprinkled with sweetness

dress - modcloth
cardigan - old navy
shoes - urbanog

It's been a long time since I wore this dress. It's one of my all time favorites (I also own the same one in navy) but I totally forgot about it until I was perusing the sale section on modcloth the other day and saw that it's almost sold out. For some reason it made me so sad, I have no idea why! I just love this dress so much and I guess I naively hoped it would remain in production forever so generations of girls could experience the same glee as I did when they first tried it on.

Actually, that's bound to happen anyway if vintage continues to thrive even when we're all old and wrinkly. Some young thing in 2080 will be shuffling through the racks at The Salvation Army and come across this magnificent early 21st century frock. They'll let out a little scream of delight, then brag to their shopping companion that they found it first.

Then they'll log into the internet in their brains, and do a quick scan to find out who owned it first. They'll discover my blog archives and have a good laugh about the days before pink hair pills* ("she actually dyed her hair manually?! haha!")

*a girl can dream...

My top 4 tv characters that I want to hug

There are some tv characters that are so pathetic or sweet or sad or dorky that I just want to reach into my television screen and give them an enormous hug. Basically I think those adjectives apply respectively to Michael Scott from The Office, Marshall from How I Met Your Mother, Mason from Dead Like Me and Fargo from Eureka. (If you've been watching Eureka lately you'll understand why I think Fargo needs a giant hug!) Actually I think all four descriptions would apply to Michael Scott... he can be a little mean sometimes (cough, Toby, cough) but at heart I think he's just a pathetic, sweet, sad, dorky boy. Any tv characters you'd like to wrap your arms around and give them a little squeeze? :)

summerwind

dress & belt - forever 21
cardigan - old navy
tights and shoes - h&m

I'm very much a fall-and-winter sort of person, but for some reason I'm really excited about summer this year. I'm not sure what's come over me but I'm absolutely itching to spend my summer the way I did when I was a kid. Watching cartoons in the morning while drinking chocolate milk; going outside for a while to play with sidewalk chalk before getting too hot and rushing in the house, making a beeline straight for the nearest air conditioning vent. Forts made out of blankets, my mom's homemade lemonade and iced tea, swimming, grilled veggies and (boca) burgers for dinner, being covered head to toe in mosquito bites.

I usually have way too much going on to make this a reality, but I'm tempted to see if this summer I can jam all of my to-do-list items into a few hours each morning, then spend the rest of the day enjoying a pseudo-summer vacation..

confetti salad recipe

Here it is, one of the most delicious salads you'll ever eat. It's just so fresh and summery! And tasty! :D Here is my mom's recipe, although if you're impatient like me you might want to skip cutting everything into itty bitty pieces and just use the food processor instead ;D Also, using purple onions is important, because part of the charm of confetti salad is all of the different colors sprinkled throughout the dish! :)



Here's a text version in case you'd like to print it :)

4 c. Jasmine rice (made w/5c. water) .. let cool
1 green pepper
1 red pepper
1/2 large purple onion
1 cucumber (remove seeds)
1 carrot
1 bottle Good Season's Italian Dressing

Dice the peppers, onion and cucumber into teeny-tiny pieces and dump them on the rice. Grate the carrot over everything. Pour the whole cruet of dressing into the bowl, stir and let it get cold.

sleepyhead

shirt - modcloth
skirt - h&m
shoes - c/o bait footwear

I don't know what kind of virus I caught but it's really a doozy. I'm not sick-sick anymore but almost 2 weeks later I still feel run down and ridiculously tired. My dad caught it from me and he's still putting up with lingering effects too, so at least I'm not worried that there's something seriously wrong with me (normally if I was sleeping almost 12 hours each night and still felt tired all day I'd be more concerned ;p) But gee whiz I hope it goes away soon. I'm just SO sleepy!!

I know this must be the most boring blog in the universe right now, but when I feel lousy it's so hard to think of anything else to write about. Anyway, my mom and I are starting a healthy eating plan today so maybe the boatload of veggies I'm about to start eating (and the boatload of pizza I'm about to stop eating!) will help perk up my tired body :)

5 years with my sweet Hypatia

5 years ago today I brought Hypatia home. The road has been very rocky... she fell very ill 6 months after I adopted her and things have been rough ever since. She has severe gingivitis, which to a human might seem like just a nuisance, but to Hypatia it's very dangerous. She gets monthly shots that suppress her immune system so that her body won't attack her gums, but as soon as the shot wears off she has to hurry back to the vet or else her health deteriorates very quickly. Virtually overnight she goes from seeming perfectly fine to not eating, drinking, bathing or using the litter box. Over the last year it's gotten a lot worse and my veterinarian doesn't have much hope that we're going to be able to keep this going much longer. There are also long term effects from the monthly shot that may start kicking in now that she's been having it for 4 years, and the healthy time between shots seems to be getting shorter and shorter.

Words can't express how much she means to me. I love all of my cats, but Hypatia and I are basically joined at the hip. She follows me around the house like a shadow and sleeps on my pillow at night. When I've been out for the day, the first thing I do is rush up to my bedroom to see her cute little face and reassure her that I'm back. But as happy as I am that she is here to celebrate her fifth anniversary, it's bittersweet because I'm not sure we'll have another one.

It breaks my heart when I think about the inevitable, and how imminent it might be. But I'm really so lucky. For my entire life I'll be able to recall these five years that I got to spend with the sweetest, prettiest, most lovable cat on the planet. She has enriched my life so much and given me so much happiness... I can only hope that her little cat brain understands just how much I love her, and how much she'll always mean to me. For the rest of my life, I'll always be Hypatia's human.

confetti salad

dress - modcloth
shirt - vintage
belt - forever 21
shoes - h&m

Yesterday for Kyle's birthday we stopped at our favorite roadside food stand for burgers (I brought a Morningstar fake meat burger with me) and ice cream. We've eaten there hundreds of times, but for some reason yesterday the food was just SO good. One of those times where while you're eating you're fully aware of how amazing your meal tastes and you're almost on the verge of tears because you know it's going to be over soon.

We also brought along some of my mom's confetti salad from home. It's this amazing rice dish with peppers, carrots and onions chopped up into rice-grain-sized pieces then tossed in Italian dressing. She spends hours cutting up the veggies (I was like "just use a food processor!!" but she won't) and it literally looks like confetti by the time she's finished. I should see if I can get her to do a real recipe for me to post here later! :)

buzz buzz buzz

dress - modcloth
collar - luminia
cardigan & yellow belt - f21
black belt - old navy
shoes - urbanog

I find it funny that I almost always feel inclined to pair black and white with yellow considering these two facts -- I am deathly afraid of bees, and I spent four miserable years of high school at a place where the school mascot was a hornet.

Anyway! My little brother is turning 18 years old today! It's weird that I can remember the day he was born, when he was a tiny wrinkly little human, and now he's all grown up! About a foot taller than me, about to graduate from college (he went early) and driving on his own. It's surreal! On his 13th birthday we volunteered at the animal shelter, and that's the day I met Hypatia! I didn't actually bring her home until the 19th so I consider that her official anniversary and I'll do a special fifth anniversary post for her on Saturday! :)