Day 23 – Outfits

Here are three outfits I wore last week, as always click through to Flickr if you want the details and as a bonus, check out Alex’s new Viking look!

Last Wednesday

Last Saturday

Last Sunday (taken in my new apartment!)

Alex gets in touch with his Norwegian roots!

Day 17 – Guest Post Thursday

Today’s guest post is a pretty awesome one cause I get to introduce my friend Ruth.  While both of us moved away from Chicago this fall, we got to know each other during our 5 years of shared location, similar outlooks to handling social awkwardness, a mutual interest in exploring fashion in cheap thrifted ways, enjoyment of movies, coffee and occasionally a good bout of gossip {or as we like to call it, discussing community bonds}.

Hello Abby’s friends!

After years of casually discussing style with Abby and admiring her wardrobe and fashion sense, I’m excited and flattered that she asked if I’d be willing to write an outfit post.

Outfit: Thrifted cardigan, jeans, shoes; Shirt from sister, scarf old

I moved from Chicago a few months ago and in the midst of figuring out life in a new place with new activities (Grad school! Internship! Job!) I have discovered that the change in roles and social settings has resulted in reconfiguring how I wear clothes. I find myself often wearing unexpected or new outfits as I figure out who I am and where I fit now. This would be one of them. I wore this primary colored, striped outfit to class a few weeks ago and decided it’s the perfect outfit to wear while out with visiting friends. I love stripes in any form, especially when I can wear them with red loafers! An added plus: all the colors make the autumn and impending winter a little more bearable.

Day 15 – Outfit Tuesday

If you have been following my set posts, I am actually switching today’s topic with tomorrow.  Which, in all honesty, is mainly due to my recent re-discovery of the computer game Civilization.  Of course the last time I played it was back in high school and it was version 2 (and maybe 3 by the end of my obsession?) and I was fighting with my brothers for the computer time.  Now it is Civ 5 and I get to have super polite (Alex is way to nice to fight) conversations with my boyfriend to use his computer to play it.  Ah, the joy that comes from playing a computer game for 3-5 hours in a row!  I have to say I like getting to feel this nerdy again.

But yes, I did actually wear some clothes this past week and I have two outfits for you.  The first one I wore to church on Sunday and the dress (while you can’t see it super clearly) is a great example of why it is a good idea to go shopping with friends.  I would never have picked this dress off the rack, but Jess’s sharp eye saw its potential and I have loved it ever since.  Plus I always like finding a way to wear this cardigan because it is both snuggly warm and super comfortable.

My second outfit I wore today to work and it was inspired by the super awesome guest post written by my friend Ruth that you will all get to read on Thursday.  I recently purchased some leggings and tights from the online company We Love Colors and while I haven’t been too happy with a few of the tights (and probably will return them) I have really loved the leggings I got and this pair of tights.  Stripes are fun.

Day 9 – Outfits

Here is what I wore to work yesterday.  I wanted to look a tad more professional considering I had 4 meetings yesterday (of course 3 of those were webinars, but still).  The quick eyed of you may notice how this is my second time wearing that striped shirt in a week or so, which I think means my personal stylist wins again (that means you Jess!).

As always click through to Flickr if you care to note the details of the outfit (although big hint here, most of it came from a thrift store)

And as a special treat for you, because I have no shame, here is a video of my posing in front of mirror for 18 seconds (and yes, of course I listen to NPR in the morning, don’t you?).

Day 2: Outfits (or how I wear clothes most of the time)

Sunday

I wore this for a day of coffeeshops and reading.  Fortunately I was very productive with my Sunday and finally got the video of the Wilderness Wind 25th Anniversary Dinner completed, but as luck (and our rather shoddy internet) would have it I haven’t been able to get it uploaded to YouTube yet.  But I have to say I am decently pleased with what an iPod Touch and around 4 hours of editing can come up with.

Monday

I wore this on Monday to work, and as you can see it makes a pretty unconvincing costume. But seeing as I didn’t really dress up for my actual official Halloween party, this should come as little surprise. I had, of course, all the best intentions and unfortunately little of the time and energy part. Also it is good to note that due to the extreme ease it gives me, expect that most of these outfit pictures will be with the crappy resolution of my iPod Touch camera and not my fancy camera. As always, click through to Flickr if you want to see the details of each outfit.

So……(drumroll)……update on Job/Future location/Life in general!

For some reason, this draft (just the title) have been sitting here empty for close to a week.  I think having big news is sometimes a bit of a paralyzing force for me.  Like I have realized before, change is incredibly enticing for me, but the transitions needed to actually make them happen, often exhaust me.  But on to the good news…….I got offered an Americorp (VISTA program) in Seattle and I accepted it!!!!!  I will give more details of the position later, but I will say it takes me further into the tech/Information Science of my MLIS than I had anticipated back in January (which I find to be super exciting).  So as of mid-August I will be living and working in the fair (if slightly cloudy) city of Seattle.  I will be filling the recently emptied slot at Hedgehog house, home to both awesome friend David, boyfriend Alex, and two other equally lovely/hilarious housemates (who I shall not name because I don’t know wether to call them by their actual names or Katie’s clever pseudonyms).  Now my life is consumed by to-do lists, packing lists, empty boxes, storage containers, shredded old files, papers in need of recycling and all the huge spectrum of emotions that come from such a big life change.  Obviously the solution all of this lies in the following photo:

While I may not have my life entirely in order (yet!), I do finally have the summer haircut I have been hankering after for almost a year.  Seattle, here I come!

An update and some random/happy thoughts

Well earlier this week I finally got the news that I didn’t get the job.   Obviously that isn’t the happy thought, but actually it really isn’t the end of the world.  I knew going into it that my chances of getting the job were low (not due to any lack of awesomeness on my part, but mainly due to the huge number of equally qualified folks applying to all the same jobs as me) and I was really glad to get the chance to get two more interview practice sessions in.  Sure, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed, but at the same time I never really thought I would actually get this job in the first place.  However the one thing that I have found to be a bit of a downer is that it is looking pretty likely that whatever happens next fall, I won’t be working at a school library.

But on to happier thoughts:

• Today is Friday! Bringing my countdown to summer down to a measly 7 days!  And while I knew that was coming up, I had managed to kind of forget all the awesome things that brings with it – sleeping in, unstructured days, beach time, lazy time, craft time, sitting on the porch swing sipping iced tea time, movie matinee times, etc.
• Summer also means a chance to really tackle my out of control to-read list.  I kind of have this half-way serious goal to read as many books this year as I did last, which might be quite hard unless I read about 10-15 picture books like I did for my children’s lit class last spring.  However my alternate goal is to just equal the same number of pages as I read last year and on that account I am doing okay, but a little behind.  But first on my perfect summer read list is Game of Thrones, which I keep hearing endlessly good things about and it has been way too long since I have read a really long involved fantasy series.  Plus this way when the first season of the TV show comes out on DVD I will be prepared.
• Last night while I was hanging out with Jess and Becca, while the later packed for her upcoming trip to India, I did some mental calculations and discovered that I own 17 cardigans (of which the majority are thrifted)!  I guess this is more a hilarious thought than a happy one, but I just find it so amusing.  Especially when you consider that a) 5 years ago I am pretty sure I owned maybe 1-2 cardigans, tops and b) I actually wear all of these pretty regularly c) could I be a more stereotypical librarian?.  In fact I think this collection would be worthy of its own unique post.   But for brief preview, here are 7 of them that have managed to already photograph:
  

Weekend update

So as expected this weekend was quite fabulous.  Not only did all the traditional activities such as outlet mall shopping, cooking, laughing, talking, etc happen, but Sunday was a perfect sunny day in the 80s which allowed us to have the best pool/beach day we have had yet.  Because I am a firm believer in the concept a picture is worth a thousand words, here are some of the highlights (or here is the link for the full set.

Jess makes even raw meat sexy

Pretty flowers I found during a walk down to the lake

The following photos are all good demonstrations of how I have gorgeous friends.

Crystal is such a great story-teller.

Miriam enjoys a tall frosty glass of a mystery liquid that may or may not be Steph's incredible mojitos

The line-up

Jess in her perfect cocktail dress

I swear this woman is a secret spy for possibly the Russians, or more likely the French

Our home for the weekend

Miriam and Becca

This one makes me laugh every time, I love everyone's expressions!

Happiness in photo form

Oh and before I forget, the interview on Tuesday went well and I should hear by the end of the week if I am moving on to the next stage or not.  Keep your fingers (and toes) crossed!

What I packed for Spring Break

So last time I went on a longer trip to Seattle, I got really into packing and planning my outfits.  You can read all about that experience in my post here, or see the outfit pictures here.  When I went to Seattle in January, it was only for a weekend and I was rather preoccupied with other things to put a lot of time into packing.

Now, I have never really loved packing and heading into this most recent trip, I had a really busy week, so I knew I wouldn’t have a lot of time to hem and haw on Thursday night while packing my suitcase.  So I decided to make myself a packing list, which ended up evolving into this:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?hl=en&hl=en&key=0AlITWgPpocRadGNVMEg2VEJrVUNUaG9SNDZGdGdyMXc&output=html

I think part of the appeal of this kind of organization is that this kind of capsule organization rarely happens in the broader strokes of my life.  If you looked at the current state of my desk right now you would be surprised indeed that I sometimes make packing spreadsheets.  Although part of that is also due to the never-ending work of job applications and needing to have about 5 different file folders nearby at all times.  But anyways while I never actually got around to photographing any of the complete outfits I wore on the trip, here is what the packing process looked like:

Here are all the parts of the spreadsheet (at least the clothing related ones) laid out on my bed. I tried to stick with a someone related color scheme, but mainly just packed things that I thought looked nice together.

This is what my suitcase looks like when I pack a tin full of cookies in addition to rainboots and clothes.

Unfortunately I never got around to taking photos of my outfits, but overall I found putting in the work of creating a spreadsheet of packing as opposed to my more typical random assortment was quite helpful when spending a week in different location.

day 24 – Outfit Post Wednesday

I seriously need to clean my mirror! Although I think some of the scratches may be of old age origin and not just dust, but still I should give the mirror the benefit of the doubt.  Anyways this outfit was in large part to feeling ridiculously underdressed at student teaching Monday.  It was parent-teacher conferences, so I knew there would be no students and therefore assumed, “oh, work day, therefore wear comfy jeans and a get ready to put up a bulletin board!”.  Fortunately I at least wore a nice cardigan to cover up my grubby tee-shirt, but none the less, I felt distinctly out of place amidst all the teachers and staff in their nicest pantsuits, all prepared to meet with the parents of the Northshore.  So Tuesday was my attempt to make up for that oversight on my part.  As usually head over to Flickr to see the details of the outfit, although I will say I think this outfit says a lot about my closet in that it is both 50% thrifted and showcases my boots which were an investment to say the least.  Although I have to say my favorite part of this outfit was my hair, which I learned how to do by watching a neat tutorial on YouTube.  I think this may become a go to hair style for me, fairly simple and actually lasts throughout the day, even without hair spray (which I have always hated!)

In other news, the drive from Evanston to Lafayette and then to Goshen went well today and Jonathan and I safely arrived in Goshen.  Since then I have baked one pie, made cranberry sauce and stuffing and had supper with my parents.  Jonathan is busy down in his “workshop” playing with robotics (because that is what he does for fun!), Mom is setting the table for tomorrow, Dad is picking Tim and Charletta up from the train and in a little while I am going to head out to have a catch-up drink with Steph.  I hope you all have happy thanksgivings and tomorrow I will share more details about the dishes I have cooked and maybe even the meal in general.