Mustard + Navy at the Art Museum

Dress: c/o Sugarlips // Purse: Shoedazzle // Wedges: Thrifted

Earlier this month, my family and I took a trip to the Seattle Art Museum. I had been raving about their European Masters exhibit to my mother, and so we went up there on the first Thursday of the month, which is their free day. I think the exhibit might have been even better the second time around--I got to examine all of my favorite paintings more closely, and pay closer attention to some of the ones I had skimmed over on my previous visit. We also moved through the exhibit quickly enough to be able to explore other parts of the museum as well, like the ancient and classical art as well as the modern art. I also discovered something exciting--a Pollock. I've never been a huge admirer of modern art (though I can appreciate it), but I've always liked Jackson Pollock. My mom loves modern art, so we ended up spending quite a bit of time wandering through those exhibits, while my dad, on the other hand, refused to even venture into the modern art exhibits, which is too bad, because he missed some neat stuff.

This dress has quickly become a spring staple for me. When Sugarlips sent it to me last August, when it was hot and humid, I didn't really see myself wearing it all that often because it was a sort of warm, spring dress. However, in this cool Seattle spring, it's absolutely perfect. The skirt is lightweight and spring-y, while the top is heavy enough to keep me warm. It's also wonderfully simple, so it can be dressed up or down, which I love. I've been very content with just wearing this around the house (as you can see from my first two vlogs!) and then dressed up a bit for occasions like the art museum. 

Do you have any favorite spring staples?

Hope you all are having a lovely week!

PS~ I've just finished filming a video about my record collection. You can look forward to seeing that up on the blog and my YouTube channel within the next couple of days!

Getting to Know Me Vlog: Q&A Part 2

Hello everyone! I finally finished editing and uploading the second and final part of my questions and answers video. If you missed the first one, you can watch it here. In this video, I finish up the personal questions and move on to questions about school, and finally, Doctor Who. Since I couldn't really think of anywhere else Doctor Who-related questions would fit, I decided it deserved its very own category in the video. I did start to sound a bit tired towards the end of this video--my voice was drying out from talking so long! Hopefully it's not too noticeable.

Anyway! Thank you all so much for watching, and for all of the wonderful questions you submitted! I hope you enjoyed the videos; I know I had a blast answering all your questions and learning to work with my camera's video setting a bit more. Be sure and let me know what you think--I love reading your comments! I'm hoping to film another video or two next week--I've got a few ideas already and I can't wait to try them out!

Have a lovely weekend!

I Wear a Bow Tie Now. Bow Ties are Cool.

Dress: Thrifted and Refashioned // Blouse, Heels: Thrifted // Tights: JCP // Bow Tie Necklace: eBay

I always love jersey dresses--they're so soft and comfortable, and this one in particular is cute and flattering. I picked it up for $4 at Goodwill a couple weeks ago, and since it was a little shorter than I like, I added a black strip of fabric to the bottom and was ready to go. I can definitely see this being worn a lot in the coming summer months, especially if Seattle's weather warms up!

I also wore my bow tie necklace in honor of the Doctor Who season finale...because bow ties are cool. Since my family doesn't have cable (probably a good thing, seeing as how I love watching TV), I had to wait until Sunday to watch it from iTunes, though it had aired Saturday night. I really should have forced myself to stay far away from the Internet until I had seen it--spoilers were everywhere! I tried to avoid the spoilers, but I ended up figuring quite a bit of the episode's premise from what little I did see. Still--it was fantastic! And also crazy. I'm still going nuts over it, which shows how big a geek I am! 

Also, just a quick note, but I'm sorry about my irregular posting lately. I always blog from my iPad, using the Blogger app, which usually works pretty well, but there was recently an update for the app that somehow causes every single picture I upload to come out blurry, pixelated, and unusable. Because of that, I have to upload my pictures to my mother's laptop and post from there. So that's kind of put a cog in my blogging schedule! Hopefully it'll be back to normal, or at least somewhat more regular, soon!

Hope you all are having a lovely week!

Please Pardon the Mess

Hello, everyone! 

Well, I finally decided it was time to update my blog's look. So, on Friday, I sketched out a tentative design, and today, I downloaded the fonts that I wanted, created the graphics, and uploaded them. It is very nearly done, but there will still be small updates going on over the next couple of days or so. I'm hoping to have everything done tomorrow, though, so we'll see! I'm planning on updating my little bio on the sidebar with a font to match, and I'd also love to update my other pages (like my contact and about page, as well as the tutorials one...that one needs an upgrade for sure!). Until then, though, the blog here will be under construction, and might be a little messy in the meantime.

Anyway, what do you think of the look so far? 

Hope you all are having a lovely start to your week!

Getting to Know Me Vlog: Q&A Part 1

Hello everyone! I promised myself that I would get my vlog filmed and uploaded this week, and so I did! I had so much fun answering all of your questions, and I tried to answer all of them, though I might have missed one or two. I don't usually talk very much since I'm such an introvert, so I thought the video would be fairly short, but it ended up actually being really long (apparently once you put me in front of a camera I can't stop talking), soooo I split it up into about three parts, which I will be posting over the next week. There are four categories, which I labeled "Fashion," "Personal," "School," and "Doctor Who." There were only two questions for Doctor Who, but since they didn't really fit anywhere else, I made them their own category. Also, since I forgot to put it in the video, the song in the beginning is "Singing in the Rain" by Gene Kelly. One of my favorite songs by one of my favorite actors in one of my favorite movies!

Anyway! I hope you all enjoy it! Be sure and let me know what you think, and if you have any suggestions for future videos, I'm all ears!

And if you have any comments on the formatting and video quality, let me know! Due to issues with uploading the video to YouTube from my iPad, I ended up uploading it at a lower quality than I had originally intended. Hopefully next time I'll be able to get the video uploaded at a higher quality.

Have a lovely rest of your week!

Swan Lake

Dress: Forever21 // Heels: Target // Jacket: Thrifted // Clutch: Vintage // Earrings, Ring: Gifts

A few weeks ago, my friend Arielle and I went on a rather impromptu night out to see the Pacific Northwest Ballet's production of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. I have to admit...I have never been a huge fan of ballet ever since I saw The Nutcracker when I was ten or eleven. I didn't like it that the dancers never spoke, and the seemingly endless dancing bored me half to death. Still, I've always had a slight obsession with Swan Lake. I love the music and the story, and I grew up watching the animated film The Swan Princess (which I do still watch occasionally...it's one of my favorites!). So, when I found out that the PNB offers special discounted tickets for people 25 and under, I called my friend and asked her if she would be interested in going, and we ended up going that Friday! 

It was absolutely spectacular, and now I'm interested to see more ballets in the future. I think Swan Lake's magic definitely won me over (the very handsome prince had absolutely nothing to do with this).

I had quite a bit of trouble coming up with an outfit for that night...I realized that I own a pretty sparse number of "dressy" skirts and dresses, and I wanted to look classy and dressed up without being over-dressed, since I've noticed that people don't dress up as much for these things any more, which is really too bad. So I settled on this simple dress from Forever 21, added some tights, and my very favorite shoes. I styled my hair in a very Audrey Hepburn-style, and voila! Perfect for a night at the ballet.

I also have more photos from the actual night of the performance which I was considering doing a separate post of. Would any of you like to see them?

What do you think of ballet? Have you ever been to one?

PS~ Thanks for all the great questions you've left for my vlog! I'm hoping to film it sometime next week. And there's definitely room for more questions, so keep them coming. Anything you'd like to know about me (within reason, of course!), ask away!

Free as a Bird and Vlogging

Dress, Sweater, Shoes: Thrifted // Necklace: Shaylynn's Faerie Shoppe // Tights: JCP // Tulle Slip: DIY

I finished up my finals for the semester this past week, and now I'm wonderfully free for the next month, until the summer session begins. Last week was incredibly stressful, what with having to write a final speech, study new concepts for statistics, and study for a cumulative statistics final. I had a topic all planned out for my final speech, then as I was outlining it, I realized it wasn't going anywhere, and so I changed to a very different topic for an informative speech--the possible benefits and dangers of fluoride. Fluoride sounds like a pretty dry topic, but I found researching it incredibly fascinating. Of course, all the research was done last minute, but I was able to find loads of relevant information. It's actually something I'd like to look into a little more...it is also personally relevant, because I have a very mild form of a condition called fluorosis on my teeth, which is a sort of mottled discoloration, and that's caused by fluoride (and it's permanent!) and has actually become an increasing problem in the US.
Anyway...the speech wrote up surprisingly quickly, and despite a lack of practice, I delivered it without making too many blunders. I did discover, however, that I cannot say the word "mouthwash"--it came out like "mousewash", and as soon as it came out if my mouth, I had to stop talking to swallow my laughter. When I'm nervous, I tend to fumble with my words, which isn't embarrassing to me so much as it is funny, unless I say something really weird!

Overall, I'm just happy to be finished. For now, at least! Public speaking and statistics were two of my most dreaded required classes, and I am incredibly relieved and grateful to have survived them both and gotten them out of the way!

Oh, and I've been planning a few different vlogs! Since I had to film my speeches, I got more used to making videos with my camera as well as editing them, so I'm more confident with that and with speaking in front of a camera. I'd love to do a sort of Q&A video for my first vlog, and I am looking for questions! So, if you have anything you'd like to ask me, just about anything at all, whether it's personal or whatever, ask away! You can submit questions either in the comments, or send me an email at deckedoutinruffles@gmail.com. I'll try and answer every single question if I can!