End Of an Era

What I Wore:
Dress: ASOS (via Zero Style)
Cardi: Suzy Shier
Tights: Joe Fresh
Shoes: Ardene
Hairbow: Shopper's
Sunnies: Universal Orlando

Last Friday was my dad's last day at his job. After 32 years at the same job he is now a retired man! These pictures were taken in one of the garden areas where he used to work. His coworkers had a retirement bbq for him over the lunch hour which was really nice. I went with my mum, sister and aunt to celebrate with my dad and his colleagues. My dad was head gardener at one of the 5 garden areas (where he planned the bed designs and helped with the planting etc.) and worked at the other areas occasionally throughout the year. The gardens were my favourite place to go as a child and I always thought that if I got married I would love to do it in the area where he worked. The gardens are so beautiful I am glad I was able to take some outfit pictures there, I am going to miss being able to go in and explore whenever I want. My dad's retirement definitely marks the end of an era. I am so proud of him and the work he has done over the years. Congratulations to my dad and his retirement!

Romantic Hearts

What I Wore:
Shirt: ASOS
Necktie: Thrifted (Goodwill, actually a brooch)
Cardi: Smart Set
Skirt: Made by me (no pattern)
Tights: Target
Shoes: Ardene

This outfit is definitely one of my most recent favourites. My second ASOS order arrived last week and I have been trying to come up with great ways to wear my new loot! I ordered two shirts and *gasp* a pair of pants. I have worn the other shirt and pair of pants already, but not outfit pictures yet. This shirt definitely worked well with the brooch at the neck. Ever since I bought it in Florida I have been meaning to wear it like that. I am loving the weather lately, it has been so perfect. Fall means I get to break out my favourite cardigans and wear loads of tights. You really can't lose. I am so excited to be able to wear layers again. I feel like I have so many more outfit choices when I can wear sweaters and tights.  

Since I have given a few downer reviews of films lately I thought this would be a good time to give a positive one. Last week Colin and I watched Romantics Anonymous on Netflix. I have been meaning to watch this one for a while but never got around to it. I am glad I finally did because it was super cute! the story follows Angélique, a brilliant but painfully shy chocoltière, and Jean-René, a middle-aged chocolate factory owner who has never been in a relationship. Jean-René highers Angélique to be the new sales rep for the factory, although she thinks she is being hired to make chocolate. After some confusion Angélique decides to stick it out, facing her fears of interacting with people, and helps to revamp the factory in the process. Jean-René's therapist recommends that he ask Angéliquue out to dinner and the story just takes off from there. It is a very heartwarming tale about two extremely introverted people. This is definitely a great movie for introverts and extroverts alike. The characters are interesting, and it portrays introverted relationships very well. I highly recommend it if you have a few hours to spare this week.

Quarter Century

What I Wore:
Dress: Made by me (no pattern)
Cardi: Thrifted (Talize)
Tights: Target
Shoes: B.A.I.T c/o Cut Out + Keep

The perfect fall outfit for the perfect fall day. The perfect day. Today is my birthday! Today I turn 25! I am a quarter of a century. I know a lot of  people would be experiencing a quarter life crisis right now, but I am happy to say this is not the case for me. 24 was not a great year (which most of you probably know if you have been around here for a while), so I guess I kind of experienced that one a bit early. Luckily 25 is definitely looking great. I have a second job in my field, Colin has a second job, we might finally have our own place, everyone is healthy including our pets, I really can't complain. Everything is turning up Millhouse! Even Google is wishing me a happy birthday!

Today I have to work, but over the weekend I had a fancy dress potluck on Saturday and dinner with my immediate family, aunt and cousin on Sunday. It was a been good weekend (sadly I had no time to take pictures, worst blogger ever!). Happy Monday and happy fall everyone!!!

50s Schoolgirl Chic

What I Wore:
Shirt: Thrifted (Talize)
Skirt: Made by me (no pattern)
Sweater: Thrifted (Value Village)
Tights: Joe Fresh
Shoes: Payless

First of all, you can't really tell from this picture, but the print on the shirt is a very small gingham. I am not sure why, but sometimes I have problems photographing certain stripes/checks and they look super weird in pictures. This shirt is definitely one of the "problem prints," haha! Weird photography errors aside, I am so happy I found it during my last trip to Talize. I really love the collar and the neckline in general. It has a 90s does 50s vibe which I enjoy immensely. Not that I am a huge fan of 90s style (or lack there of, I am using that term loosely), but they got this one right. I feel like a bit like Audrey Horne from Twin Peaks. She kind of channeled the 50s vibe a little bit, but also had the schoolgirl look too. I felt a bit like a 50s teen heading back for the fall term in the getup. I am so excited that it is almost fall and that I can wear tights and sweaters again. I amassed quite the tights collection over the summer and cannot wait to test them out with different fall looks.

As per your suggestion from this post I finally got around to borrowing Fire Walk With Me from the library. I watched it two nights ago and I must admit I was a little disappointed. Personally I felt it just didn't have the same fell as Twin Peaks. A lot of the characters that I really liked from the series weren't in the prequel, or barely even made an appearance e.g. Andy, Audrey, Lucy, Log Lady etc. There wasn't enough of Agent Cooper either, and he is really the best part of the TV show. I also feel like they already told us the whole story piece by piece in the TV series, so the movie felt a little redundant. In my opinion it would have been better to make a two hour movie wrapping up the series instead of telling a story that we already knew. I did like that they explained Bob and the one armed man's relationship a bit more. That whole thing just kind of clicked when they called the little man "the arm." That was pretty cool. But once again I think it would have been better to close of the story from the TV show instead of recreating the events that took place beforehand. Maybe that's just me. Anyone who has seen both, what do you think? Am I stepping on toes here? 

A Short Skirt At The World's End

What I Wore:
Dress/belt: Bealls
Socks: Ardene
Shoes: ASOS

I absolutely love this dress. I am a sucker for anything that is black and white, and the peter pan collar sold me on it. It's a little short, definitely not appropriate for work, but it is great to wear on days off. We were experiencing a bit of an end of summer heat wave last week too so I was grateful for any sleeveless clothing I could get my hands on. I am also in love with these shoes from ASOS. They were part of my first ever order from there, along with the sweater I posted about on Monday and a dress I am saving for my birthday (next week ahhh!). These shoes are my first pair of proper flatforms and they are super comfortable.  I can wear them for an 8 hour shift at work and my feet still feel like I am walking on clouds. The style is a little more summery, but I am going to try to wear them into fall as much as possible. I wore this outfit out last week to go and see The World's End with my sister and Colin. 

Speaking of The World's End I think it is time to discuss my opinion on it.
*Spoiler Alert*
I love Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, and I love  Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. I have seen both of those movies a ridiculous number of times and know them by heart. So of course I was really excited when I heard that they were finally making the final movie in the Blood and Ice Cream trilogy. All of the trailers looked great for The World's End, and even critics liked it, which is surprising for comedic films. The story is set around Gary King (Simon Pegg) and his four friends Peter Page (Eddie Marsan), Oliver "O-Man" Chamberlain (Martin Freeman), Steven Prince (Paddy Considine), and Andy Knightley (Nick Frost) from high school.On the last day of school the five friends attempt to complete and epic pub crawl, called the Golden Mile, that consists of 12 pubs spread out across their hometown of Newton Haven. They don't end up completing the journey, and don't attempt to complete it again before they move away for university. As the years go by the friends grow apart, Gary and Andy (Frost) have a particularly bad falling out and don't speak to each other again. Fast forward to more than 20 years later where Gary is leading a relatively unsuccessful life that involves a tiny apartment and self help groups.Gary decides that he wants to get the gang back together to attempt the pub crawl again. After much persuasion his friends agree and they all head back to their hometown for the weekend. Things start to get weird almost immediately after they arrive, and the five soon discover that the townspeople have been replaced by "robots" (who are actually controlled by aliens). I thought this was a brilliant concept and I liked how they handled giving the townspeople an eerie, off putting vibe. The story continues with Gary attempting to complete the Golden Mile while his friends try not to get replaced by the "robots." The action scenes were great, and there was no shortage of the hallmark Pegg and Wright witty repartee. Sadly things went sour for me in the last 10 minutes of the movie. I really did not like the ending. It did not have the same feeling as the other two movies in the trilogy. I mean not everything is happy-go-lucky at the end of Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz, but at least they have some kind of closure. I think that was the entire problem, there was absolutely no closure for the major plot points of the movie. Sure, they escape the aliens and save the world from being taken over, but once they escape the group gets separated and never see each other again. You never find out why Gary tried to commit suicide, and he and Andy never really make up. Gary doesn't grow up or realize what he wants from life, he just befriends the younger robot versions of his friends and they form and old west style gang. It wasn't even bitter sweet, it was just depressing. I really wish they would release some kind of alternate ending that touched on the unresolved stories. Obviously this is just my personal opinion, but I think this one was my least favourite of the three movies. Have any of you seen it? What did you think?  

Horse Shirt

Here is a sneak peek at my latest sewing project. It's actually finished, but I haven't worn it yet so I thought I would do a sort of "before" post since I haven't done that in a while.

 New Look 6148, I made shirt E.

I had been eyeing the fabric forever at work and waited and waited until it went on mega sale to purchase it ($5/m and I only needed 0.8 for the whole shirt!).

I love how the point at the front turned out. Unfortunately the fabric pulled fairly easily so there are a few tiny snags, which makes me sad, but it is probably one of those things that only I will notice. I am excited to wear it and show you the finished product.

It is nice to be able to sew again. Things have been so hectic the last little while this is the first thing I have made in over a month! I haven't really been able to take advantage of having a whole sewing room to myself, cry cry. With another move coming up again and working two jobs I am not sure how much I will be able to do in the future, so I want to get as much done as possible in the time I have now. I have already started on a smaller project which I will share once it has been completed.

Life Lately

Since I have been absent on and off on here for a while I thought I would share some pictures of random things that have happened in my life lately. If you follow me on Tumblr you might have seen a few of these already so I apologize for double exposure haha, bad joke.

Luna thinks she is a book.

Gratuitous selfie time.

 No-Face wants to read my book too. It's called Lirael by Garth Nix and it's very good.

 Kitty snuggles with Sable.

 Kitty brooch, I really have worn it a lot in the last few weeks.

 A bunny just hanging out in the grass on our way back from seeing World's End  last week. More about my thoughts on the movie tomorrow.

One Hep Cat

What I Wore:
Sweater: ASOS Curve
Pants/Leggings: Joe Fresh
Shoes: B.A.I.T c/o Cut Out + Keep
Headscarf: Thrifted
Brooch: Black Iris Design
Sunnies: Metro

I bought these pants/leggings (not really sure which one because they are a weird mix of both) when we were up at the cottage but it has been too hot to wear them until now. As soon as I saw them I knew I had to have them. They remind me of those cigarette pants that women used to wear in the 60s. I have been looking for a pair for a while and am excited to finally own some. I am also happy to finally be able to wear this sweater. I bought it more than a month ago in my first ever ASOS purchase, but haven't been able to wear it because if the ridiculous heat. The heart-shaped elbow patches sold me on it, but the $13 price tag wasn't so bad either. So far I am really happy with the things I purchased from ASOS, and I can;t wait for my second package to arrive. It should be here sometime this week, *eeeee* I got the polka dot cat brooch at FanExpo and have worn it a ridiculous number of times since then. I love pairing polka dots with stripes, and the kitty kat is just too cute. I am surprised it didn't make it into an earlier outfit post, but things have been crazy around here.

Speaking of crazy, I am ready to shed some light on what has been going on in my life. As some of you may remember, Colin and I moved up to his dad's house about two months ago. Last week Colin's dad decided to rent out the house, which left us unsure about what to do next. We hemmed and we hawed (more like I freaked out and Colin was reasonable), but finally settled on moving back in with my parents. I am not going to lie, it was a rough week and all I could think was "this year has really sucked." The prospect of moving again was not appealing, and not that I don't love my parents, but I feel like at this age I should be living in my own place and have a grown up job and a grown up life. I had plans. Unfortunately things don't always work out as you plan, sometimes you just have to relax and roll with it.

Lucky for us, rolling with it seemed seemed to do the trick. On Friday, just when I had resigned myself to feeling shitty, Colin got a second job. Very good news indeed. I have also been keeping a secret for a while. I didn't want to share until it got closer to the date, but next week I am going to be starting a second job too. I will going to be working as an interpreter, giving people tours at a few museums. I am really excited about this and very happy to be working in my field of study. The reason this didn't make me feel great last week because the job is kind of far away, and I was stressing about the commute on top of everything else. When I get stressed out I tend to worry about anything and everything and it becomes a vicious cycle. Now that Colin has a second job (which is close-ish to my new job), we might be able to move into our own place somewhere in between both sets of jobs. I have said job way too many times in this post. There's no guarantee that we will be able to get an apartment, but at least it is something to look forward to. Two new jobs and the possibility of our own place. Just like that things went from bad, to worse, to pretty awesome. Maybe this will finally teach me to relax a little and not to stress out when things don't go perfectly.