happy easter!

I feel like such a scrooge admitting this, but I haven't really been enjoying holidays much the last few years. I love my family (and food) but I've felt this subtle shift and I can't help it. I knew something was definitely off when I didn't look forward to putting up my Christmas decorations last year, and then a couple weeks ago I got out my Easter decorations and gave up after putting out a wreath and a basket of fake eggs :p

That being said, I'm still dressing for holidays as if my life depended on it. I think this is my favorite Easter outfit of all time. I went back and looked at some of my previous Easter posts and it's absolutely my favorite of the bunch. It's also a pretty good indicator of how my style has evolved over the past year or so. (You can view all of my old Easter outfits here.)

skirt - urban outfitters | sweater - amazon | belt - h&m

shoes - bait footwear | brooch worn as a necklace - my shop
purple rug - amazon

room tour: my movie theater

I was promising a room tour back when I quit blogging in 2014 and I still haven't gotten around to it since I un-quit last summer. Sorry about that!

I thought I would start out with my favorite feature in my room. It's a new addition, and I'm so in love with it I could burst! I installed a 120" roll-up projection screen over my closet. The closet wall faces my bed, so I can sit in bed at night and watch my favorite movies on a giant movie screen! And in the morning, I just roll up the screen and it essentially disappears.



I don't even have words to describe how much I love this! I've had a projector for a few years, but until last month I was projecting onto the ceiling. I know, that sounds really cool actually -- and it was at first! But after a while it's not actually that comfortable and not at all conducive to eating popcorn, haha!

If you are someone who really loves movies, I think this is a really worthwhile investment. It was so much cheaper than buying a tv (the screen and projector combined cost less than the 42" tv I owned before this) it's not as much of an eye-sore as a tv usually is, and the experience is basically like being in a movie theater but also being in your own bed at the same time. It's obviously not the same picture quality as a plasma hdtv whatever, but considering the fact that I mainly watch older films that weren't produced with that kind of technology to begin with, it doesn't make a difference to me.



This is my little projector that I have installed above my headboard. My projector isn't available anymore (which is really sad because it's tiny, quiet, and came with roku built in!) but I think most mini projectors would work the same. I'm obviously not a fan of the black cords, but I think it's a fair trade considering I don't have a giant ugly black tv in my room, right? lol

And that's it for my little mini-movie-theater tour! I also posted a photo of the projector in use (with Arrietty in the foreground, naturally) right here :) And it probably goes without saying, but if you get/have a projection screen I'd recommend watching Purple Noon on it. Watch it, and then you can thank me later ;)

Now I just need to find some good black-out curtains so I can watch movies before 8pm!

Sources for everything: projector / screen / most of my shoes / projector mount / cat bag/ my dress is vintage / bedding is vintage / scalloped rug was from UO aaaages ago

breathless

Yesterday I got to see Breathless on the big screen in Princeton. If you're a fan of the movie, then my outfit should look familiar (if you're not, scroll down for a photo from the film) I've seen t-shirts with the Herald Tribune logo online, but I really wanted a sweater since that's what Jean Seberg is wearing in the movie (although hers has shorter sleeves and it's embroidered, so apparently my attention to detail only goes so far.) I got a ribbed turtleneck from ASOS a couple months ago and then waited until the last minute to paint the design at 2am the night before I wanted to wear it (progress photo here)

Breathless was one of the movies that first got me interested in foreign films about six or seven years ago, but I hadn't revisited it until I saw it again last night. I forgot how much I love it! I think it's a love-it-or-hate-it kind of movie, where people either really adore it or think it's vastly overrated. I clearly fall into the "really adore it" camp. It may be called Breathless, but it's basically the visual equivalent of a breath of fresh air.

I'm still working on honing my recommendations, but I'm planning on doing a series of posts here with lists of classic films to watch if you haven't tested the waters yet. It really only takes one movie - and it has to be the right one for you - to open up a whole new world of film that you haven't explored yet. For me the movie that made me a classic film fan was How to Steal a Million (celebrating it's 50th birthday this year, btw!) I saw it in winter of 1999 and it sparked a life-long love affair with cinema, which introduced me to so many other amazing movies I would never have watched otherwise -- like Breathless.

shirt - diy | pants - asos
 shoes - bait footwear | purple rug - amazon

happy go lucky

Happy St. Patrick's Day! I was originally wearing this this morning, but I ended up changing because my skirt kept falling down. I've lost a teeny tiny amount of weight since I bought it so I'll have to take in the waist a bit. I tried rectifying the problem by safety-pinning my skirt to my shirt, but that just created the weird bunching that you can see right under my cardigan in the photo. I'm usually pretty good at coming up with quick fixes for clothing problems but sometimes the only solution is sewing.

And in what must be the thousandth example of me being totally inept when it comes to releasing new products in time for holidays, I JUST listed these shamrock sweater clips in my store today. I'll console myself by thinking that I'm just 365 days early for next year ;D

ps. If you wanted any of my Easter brooches, try to get an order in by tomorrow (Friday) night. I'm trying to get them all in the mail by Saturday so they'll arrive in time for Easter :)

skirt - h&m | shirt - vintage | sweater - trashy diva

collar clips - my shop | shoes - bait footwear
purple rug - amazon

blue saturday

Saturday night I saw New Order in concert in Philadelphia! I can't even begin to describe how amazing it was, definitely one of the best experiences of my entire life. Hearing your favorite band perform your favorite songs in person... actually feeling the music, your heartbeat changing to match the beat, it's overwhelming in the best possible way. When my favorite song (Your Silent Face) started I randomly jumped in the air, I was so excited! I watched through watery eyes, my brain kept jumping back and forth between being in the moment and enjoying the song to thinking "oh my god, that is New Order right in front of me, they are right there playing my favorite song, how is this POSSIBLE, how am I this lucky"

They played a perfect mix of old standbys and songs from their new album (which is outstanding, by the way) A lot of their new songs have already become favorites of mine, so I was really excited to hear them in person (Singularity, Academic, and Restless were all on the set list. You can listen to their new album on youtube here btw.) For the encore they played two Joy Division songs; Atmosphere and Love Will Tear Us Apart. (At the end the words "Joy Division Forever" appeared on the screen behind them. Excuse me while I go sob for eternity.) I knew they had played Atmosphere at the Radio City show a few days earlier, and I was really unsure whether or not I wanted to see them perform it at the Philadelphia show. It's one of my absolute favorite songs, but a huge part of why I love it is Ian Curtis' painful vocals. But any trepidation I felt about that was erased immediately when I heard the song start at the show. Bernard Sumner did an excellent job with the lyrics and they projected the 1988 music video that paid tribute to Ian Curtis while they played. Goosebumps.



Okay, onto my outfit! Pretty much within minutes of securing tickets to the show, I came up with this outfit idea. The cover of my favorite New Order album, Power, Corruption & Lies, features the painting A Basket of Roses by French painter Henri Fantin-Latour, with a colored code that represents the title & track listing in the upper right corner. The painting has a creative commons license, so I found a high quality image online and had it printed onto a dress. Then I got square wooden beads and painted them to match the color code from the album cover. My mom (who is basically super-woman when it comes to... well, everything, but especially working with jewelry supplies) turned the beads into a necklace for me. I don't know if I've ever been more thrilled with an outfit before! It came out even better than I imagined. And I love that the dress just looks like a normal floral dress, the necklace just looks like a geometric piece of jewelry, it's not super obvious that I'm theme dressing unless you're a fan of New Order.

dress and necklace - DIY | shoes - bait footwear
sweater - f21 | purple rug - amazon

happy pi day!

Happy Pi Day! I actually celebrated yesterday instead, since Pi Day festivities in Princeton last all weekend long. I had pizza at Princeton Pi, got pi-shaped chocolate at Thomas Sweet, and of course I wore my new pi dress and my cutie pi brooch! It was raining & way colder than I was anticipating though and I think I might have caught a bit of a cold. Blerg! So today I'm bedecked in sweatpants and a sweatshirt and warm, cozy socks. Not as cute as my perfect pi day outfit, but definitely appropriate for a fun game of Yippi! at home ;D

ps. On the off chance that one person out there is interested, I made a Pi Day playlist a couple years ago, right here, and this year I made a pi themed movie list on letterboxd, here.

dress and brooch - my shop | cardigan - f21 | shoes - bait
purple rug - amazon

no filter

Well this has been an interesting week. On Monday night I noticed a weird shadow on my ceiling, which looked like a little person waving. It was cute, but I thought nothing of it, and then went to sleep. Then Tuesday morning I woke up to a GIANT water stain on the ceiling, soaking wet artwork falling off of my wall and droplets splashing onto the floor. I've had everything covered in tarps all week, since the plumber wasn't able to come out until this morning. It turns out we had two broken pipes and now they are fixed -- and my ceiling has the scars to prove it, lol!

As all this was going on I kind of flashed back to when I started my snapchat account last year. I really wanted to share more day-to-day stuff, kind of give updates when major setbacks occurred (I had a really hard time doing computer work Tuesday - Thursday this week because my computers were situated right under the leak) etc. But I really don't like snapchat. I don't actually like the idea that your photos disappear. I love the time-capsule aspect of social media more than almost anything else. Especially more than the social part, lol! I like scrolling back through my old photos, reading my old facebook updates, seeing who I was with or where I was at two, four, six years ago. I also don't really like that you have to post things right at the moment. I prefer to take a quick photo, keep doing whatever I'm doing, and then upload things to social media during my downtime. So snapchat just isn't for me.

BUT. Now that instagram's update makes it easy to switch between accounts, I decided to start an account for basically everything that would have gone on my snapchat. It's @kategabrielle_nofilter. I already posted some stuff last night to give you an idea of what I'll be sharing there if you want to take a peek.

One of the main gripes I had when I decided to quit blogging in 2014 was that I felt like my life looked too curated, that my own style was a caricature of itself, and that my photos only seemed to inspire commercialism (ie. where can I buy that item?) and nothing else. Even now, I often feel like my cats, my artwork and myself are "in the way" and that most of my followers would rather see whatever bedding or carpet is in the background. And I get that, I often look at photos and feel the same exact way. But even though I'm super in love with my bedroom and studio, and I clearly find pleasure in sharing my outfits, those two things constitute such a tiny, tiny fraction of who I am and what I love.

I always want to share things like what movie I'm watching that night, what book I just finished and everyone NEEDS TO READ IMMEDIATELY, whatever chick-pea-based recipe I'm hooked on at the moment, a low-light photo of one of my cats being devastatingly adorable, work-in-progress shots of projects that aren't quite photogenic yet but I'm simply too excited about them to resist showing photos anyway. So that's what this new account is for. It's called no filter, but tbh I'm still editing the pictures. I usually even brighten photos of my cats before I text them to my mom, I really can't help myself.

I like to think of this as the behind-the-scenes documentary account and my main account is the CinemaScope technicolor movie. I mean, I'm planning on taking outfit photos tomorrow or Saturday and you can bet your buttons that the busted ceiling will not be visible in those shots. But if you read this post/follow my new account, you'll know it's just been cropped out. And I think that's kind of cool?