cats and more cats

Another cat print dress -- shocker!! And am I wearing cat shoes with my cat dress? You bet your kittens I am! It's an unwritten law of Catladydom that one must wear cat shoes with a cat dress. Look it up in your manual if you don't believe me ;)

Arrietty decided to get in on the outfit photo action this time (well, I lured her into the picture by dangling a mouse near the camera. potay-to, potah-to.) Her anniversary is coming up sort of soon and I'll do a whole big birthday post but can I just say how much I absolutely adore this cat? She loves to snuggle and trots after me around the apartment when I move from room to room. She caught me so off-guard... when I adopted her I knew that I was capable of caring for and loving another cat after Hypatia but I really didn't expect to get such a wonderful little buddy.

Just look at this face and that big fluffy tail. She's a keeper.

dress- c/o oasap | shoes - delias | tights - urban outfitters

style gallery

For a while I used to post all of my outfits on Lookbook but eventually I stopped.. the site seems (at least to me) to be more for edgy streetwear than pretty dresses. I just didn't feel like I fit in. I actually had forgotten that Modcloth has their own outfit gallery until they e-mailed me recently about a contest they're having to promote their Style Gallery. I uploaded one picture last year and then it completely slipped my mind as I hopelessly sent my pastel outfits into Lookbook oblivion.

I'm going to start uploading my outfits there again, and if you're interested you can follow along. They just started letting users follow each other. To promote the new feature, the user who gets the most followers by 1/27 will win $100 gift card, and two of the people who followed them will also win $50 gift cards!

I spent way more time than I care to admit scrolling through the gallery last night and was favoriting looks left and right. There's so much cute style on there! And there's a lot of variety -- it's not like everybody is wearing the same thing I do. There's edgy, cute, spunky and effortlessly cool. I think it's so nice to see so many fun, original looks. You don't even have to be wearing modcloth clothes in your photo, either! You can see my favorite looks here.

If you take outfit photos you should definitely try it out! Or even if you don't yet, it's a great place to start if you don't want to take the leap into blogging just yet :)

try a little kindness #3

I was a bad blogger and just whipped this up really fast to make sure I still got a kindness post up today. Oops! I was up until 4am working on a different project (I'm sharing it later this week, it was definitely worth the sleep deprivation!) and was just way too tired to work on this post until this afternoon.

This download includes a set of printable notecards that you can hand out to show your appreciation to the kind human beings in your life. Sometimes the best random act of kindness is acknowledging and showing appreciation for a different one.

If you'd like you can download an 8.5"x11" free printable of this design right here (just right click and save!) They print two per page.



You probably already heard about this but I think it's pretty awesome and wanted to share.

Ok, so Jezebel offered $10,000 to anyone who would send them the unretouched photos from Lena Dunham's Vogue photo shoot. Then someone gave them the pictures and they presumably forked over Ten. Thousand. Dollars. And then the awesome Nicolette Mason and Brad Walsh stepped in and decided that that much money could be much better spent.

They started an indigogo campaign to raise $10,000 for women's empowerment -- specifically Step Up Women's Network. You can see their campaign page (and contribute, if that floats your boat!) right here. I absolutely love this story and I hope so badly that they meet their goal. It's wonderful when a crappy internet thing turns into an inspirational internet thing :)



1 - Shovel your neighbor's sidewalk
2 - Slip a happy note into a library book for a stranger to find
3 - Go on a loose-change treasure hunt in your house and donate the money. You can take the change to a coinstar machine if you don't want to manually count it out.
4 - Next time you're at the grocery store keep an eye out for donation bins near the exit. Mine has one for donating animal food and one for canned goods, so I usually get an extra can of cat food and an extra can of beans and drop them on my way out. It's less than a dollar per shop but it makes a small difference.
5 - If you have a friend that's feeling blue, make them cookies or send them a card.. give them a call or order a surprise pizza! It's amazing how much one small thoughtful gesture can brighten someone's mood :)

instagram

Some of my recent photos from instagram! In case you missed my post last month, I stopped posting on my old account and created a new private one in October. I was being harassed on my old account and wanted a safe, private place to share some of my favorite moments and interact with friends. I've been enjoying instagram so much more now! I'm sad that I lost all of my followers and about 3 years of photos (my favorites of which I'm starting to re-post for throwback thursdays :) but the peace of mind that comes with a private account is wonderful.

Originally my new account was "scathinglybrilliant" (for obvious reasons) but last week I realized that if I logged back into my old account and changed the name it would free up "kategabrielle" again and I could snatch it for my new account! It probably caused some confusion (even *I* feel confused trying to explain it lol) but I just really wanted to be able to use my name again.  SO long story short, my new private account is now kategabrielle. I'm approving most follow requests from public users and if you're a (nice, kind, friendly!) private user who wants to follow just let me know your username in the comments so I know to approve your request :)

ps.  I think I win the award for blog post with the most mentions of the word "account"
pss. I doubt anyone is interested but if the new drawings in my photos caught your eye, they're available as prints in my etsy shop. blah blah blah