You dance up on them haters

Happy Friday :) Wear something bright and sexy to celebrate the beautiful weather this weekend. 

Outfit from Karla's Closet. Post title from Tightrope by Janelle Monáe. So much love.

Give a smile and turn around

I love tattoos. These are absolutely beautiful.

Post title from Freak Like Me by Santigold. She be on repeat all day long.

But my heart beats too fast

Beautiful scarves from Block Shop, a textile company founded by two sisters in Bagru, India.

Post title from O Sangeeta by Daniel Hart.

I could see for miles, miles, miles

My life long dream has been accomplished. I am in the lovely city of Maastricht in the Netherlands with my dad who has work here. And while wandering around, I found the store I have stalked online from my dorm room in Evanston far too many times. Yes it would be Scotch & Soda, an Amsterdam based fashion brand, which I previously posted about here and here. If I had endless amounts of money, I would dress me and my future man in everything from this store. I have to bring my dad back, just to have an excuse to return and go through the men's clothing. 

I bought myself some pants way on sale, and can now say I am a proud owner of Maison Scotch pants. Ah what a life. Even the people working there were attractive. I never thought Dutch was a beautiful language, but it never sounded so good coming from a well dressed young man.

Post title from Holocene by Bon Iver.

How dare you say it's nothing to me?

I have been here a week, and I've seen five museums, three churches, two gardens, a cemetery, among other monuments.  Man, I'm beat.  But très contente :) The Musée d'Orsay just about killed me. I must go back. And there is still so much more to see! I don't think it should be legal for one city to be so rich with culture and history. 


So unfortunately I don't have this view outside my window. But my area, Neuilly-sur-Seine is quite nice too. Former President Sarkozy used to live in this area, and current President Hollande grew up here. No big deal... There are also body guards outside the apartment building next door, not quite sure who those are for.

Without a doubt, Paris is the most beautiful city I have ever been too.


Post title from Slow Dancing in a Burning Room by John Mayer. My current song obsession.

Can't keep hanging on to what is dead and gone

I don't know what it is about these two outfits, but I'm obsessed. Maybe it is the denim and light shirt. Or maybe the pop of red. It all looks so clean and fresh. Happy Monday :)

Post title from Myth by Beach House.

Gonna take my cares away

This actress, Ashley Madekwe, has really great style in fashion and interior design.  All these photos come from Refinery 29. Check out her personal fashion blog, Ring My Bell. Some people are really cool.

Post title from Black River by Amos Lee.

 

My life, I broke it

Finally moved into the apartment... I have never cleaned so much in my life. I have no internet access, so posting is difficult. This is a good thing though because all I can do is read. And learn how to cook. Which is hard.


I love her makeup (from Sincerely, Jules). Red lips with a black outfit is always classy. Happy Friday!


Post title from Bad Girls by M.I.A.

The further out you look, the further out you'll be

springtime from Olivia Rae James on Vimeo.


This may be my favorite video ever. Can I please be her? I posted her photography earlier, when she traveled in Europe for a year. Also check out how adorable she and her boyfriend are. Sigh. The post title comes from the song in the video, The Next Time Around by Little Joy.


Have a lovely weekend! I shall be moving into my first apartment tomorrow! Ooh ooh.

But I am weak and I will fail you

Date a girl who doesn’t read. Find her in the weary squalor of a Midwestern bar. Find her in the smoke, drunken sweat, and varicolored light of an upscale nightclub. Wherever you find her, find her smiling. Make sure that it lingers when the people that are talking to her look away. Engage her with unsentimental trivialities. Use pick-up lines and laugh inwardly. Take her outside when the night overstays its welcome. Ignore the palpable weight of fatigue. Kiss her in the rain under the weak glow of a streetlamp because you’ve seen it in a film. Remark at its lack of significance. Take her to your apartment. Dispatch with making love. Fuck her.

Let the anxious contract you’ve unwittingly written evolve slowly and uncomfortably into a relationship. Find shared interests and common ground like sushi and folk music. Build an impenetrable bastion upon that ground. Make it sacred. Retreat into it every time the air gets stale or the evenings too long. Talk about nothing of significance. Do little thinking. Let the months pass unnoticed. Ask her to move in. Let her decorate. Get into fights about inconsequential things like how the fucking shower curtain needs to be closed so that it doesn’t fucking collect mold. Let a year pass unnoticed. Begin to notice.

Figure that you should probably get married because you will have wasted a lot of time otherwise. Take her to dinner on the forty-fifth floor at a restaurant far beyond your means. Make sure there is a beautiful view of the city. Sheepishly ask a waiter to bring her a glass of champagne with a modest ring in it. When she notices, propose to her with all of the enthusiasm and sincerity you can muster. Do not be overly concerned if you feel your heart leap through a pane of sheet glass. For that matter, do not be overly concerned if you cannot feel it at all. If there is applause, let it stagnate. If she cries, smile as if you’ve never been happier. If she doesn’t, smile all the same.

Let the years pass unnoticed. Get a career, not a job. Buy a house. Have two striking children. Try to raise them well. Fail frequently. Lapse into a bored indifference. Lapse into an indifferent sadness. Have a mid-life crisis. Grow old. Wonder at your lack of achievement. Feel sometimes contented, but mostly vacant and ethereal. Feel, during walks, as if you might never return or as if you might blow away on the wind. Contract a terminal illness. Die, but only after you observe that the girl who didn’t read never made your heart oscillate with any significant passion, that no one will write the story of your lives, and that she will die, too, with only a mild and tempered regret that nothing ever came of her capacity to love.

Do those things, god damnit, because nothing sucks worse than a girl who reads. Do it, I say, because a life in purgatory is better than a life in hell. Do it, because a girl who reads possesses a vocabulary that can describe that amorphous discontent of a life unfulfilled—a vocabulary that parses the innate beauty of the world and makes it an accessible necessity instead of an alien wonder. A girl who reads lays claim to a vocabulary that distinguishes between the specious and soulless rhetoric of someone who cannot love her, and the inarticulate desperation of someone who loves her too much. A vocabulary, goddamnit, that makes my vacuous sophistry a cheap trick.

Do it, because a girl who reads understands syntax. Literature has taught her that moments of tenderness come in sporadic but knowable intervals. A girl who reads knows that life is not planar; she knows, and rightly demands, that the ebb comes along with the flow of disappointment. A girl who has read up on her syntax senses the irregular pauses—the hesitation of breath—endemic to a lie. A girl who reads perceives the difference between a parenthetical moment of anger and the entrenched habits of someone whose bitter cynicism will run on, run on well past any point of reason, or purpose, run on far after she has packed a suitcase and said a reluctant goodbye and she has decided that I am an ellipsis and not a period and run on and run on. Syntax that knows the rhythm and cadence of a life well lived.

Date a girl who doesn’t read because the girl who reads knows the importance of plot. She can trace out the demarcations of a prologue and the sharp ridges of a climax. She feels them in her skin. The girl who reads will be patient with an intermission and expedite a denouement. But of all things, the girl who reads knows most the ineluctable significance of an end. She is comfortable with them. She has bid farewell to a thousand heroes with only a twinge of sadness.

Don’t date a girl who reads because girls who read are storytellers. You with the Joyce, you with the Nabokov, you with the Woolf. You there in the library, on the platform of the metro, you in the corner of the café, you in the window of your room. You, who make my life so goddamned difficult. The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. You will not accept the life of which I spoke at the beginning of this piece. You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being told. So out with you, girl who reads. Take the next southbound train and take your Hemingway with you. Or, perhaps, stay and save my life.

-Charles Warnke

Here beneath my lungs, I feel your thumbs press into my skin again

Yes wedding posts are annoying. But this lovely bride has a pink dress and a beautiful tattoo! I love everything about this from her hair to the setting... Australia. I want to go to there. Title from Welcome Home by Radical Face.

My heart is breathing for this moment

Last night, which should have consisted of writing a paper and studying for a midterm, ended up being a dance session with friends featuring past and present boy bands. So worth it. What better way to get through winter quarter? (post title from Moments by One Direction...I melt when I listen to this song. No judgment.)


Anywhoo check out this lovely lookbook by DSquared2 via Honestly...WTF. It reminds me of  1960s London. Perfect combination of elegant and sexy. I am especially loving that last black dress. Yes please. (Click on image to zoom)

She sees mirages of mountain ranges

Some weekends are just odd. Somehow 48 hours went by and almost nothing school related got done but a whole lot else did. But oh the week has started, and one must return to normalcy. Even if you (or me) are behind on life, paint those nails red and get on with it. 

Post title from Monday Morning by Death Cab for Cutie.

And I get weak, I get weary

Elegance.  From Colenimo. Song title from Time Flies by Lykke Li.