Rabbit Year

I think I would've preferred the irony of the Rabbit year being next year with it being a leap year and all. Happy Lunar New Year!

I hear that the Year of the Rabbit isn't good for the Ox, but the beauty of horoscopes is that if you don't like one, you can always just click on another google search result.

I know that I haven't been keeping up with my blog as much as I would've liked. I have a feeling if I do, it's going to be that "on average" I keep up with this blog to a point where I blogged once a week. It's not as though I don't think about it. It's just that I feel like I don't have the time for it. That's the issue though, I FEEL like I don't have the time, when actually, I do. I feel I want to do better.

Anyway, I'm finding my resolution of not buying any clothes getting rather difficult. Not because I have any huge urges to buy clothes, but more because:

and

I ripped my favorite work pants. They didn't even rip on the seam. I don't know if it was foreshadowing because when they ripped, I was sitting down to eat a bacon bowl. If that wasn't enough, my sister's cat peed on my favorite tweed blazer. Mother Nature has forsaken me. My resolution has now become a test to see if I can literally persevere through literal wears and tears. Here I go.

One day at a time

In the spirit of trying to maintain my blog without resorting to half-assed posts, here I go.

So far in honor of my resolution of not buying any clothes (among other resolutions), I've gone a good 17 days without any new clothes. I feel as if I'm going into this resolution rather confidently. Knowing that I'm not going to buy any clothing has drastically decreased my interest in outlet malls save those that contain Cosmetic Company Stores or MAC stores.

I think nature is working against me, guess what came in the mail over a span of two days?


Seriously. As if I didn't already get 5-6 emails a day telling me the exact same thing. It's kind of easy to see how I got into clothes in the first place. Catalog bombardment definitely contributed to my consumerism. Now I just feel disgusted at the waste of paper.

2011 is going to be a bit of a minimalist year. For me, it's not about new fashion as much as it is examining my past decisions while wondering "What was I thinking?" Interesting year. Very interesting year.

Better late than never

Normally, I'm a mad present wrapper. I believe that presentation is as important as the present itself. That doesn't mean I opt for professional wrapping - in all honesty, I think professional wrapping lacks style; it's more a militaristic regiment of wrapper, bow, tag. I like gift towers connected with ribbon, brown paper packages tied up with string, and newspaper.

While I don't believe in spending too much on wrapping paper, I like being prepared. A lot of good supplies can be acquired at Ikea. Some of the tissue paper is left over from Victoria's Secret and Anthropologie. I save wrapping paper from Christmas and birthdays. I have some nice brown wrapping paper for my brown paper package moments. Generally, since I have a prepped surplus that's replenished from time to time, I never really have to buy much in terms of wrapper. I generally always get colored tissue paper - you never know when you'll need lime green.

I was rather pressed for cash this Christmas. I think the bigger thing on block was my creativity. While checking out with my sister the lady in front of us let us go ahead of her since we only had one item. I observed a bar of soap and questioned her about it since it was cool looking and among other things, she told me that the bar was only $2.50 - I thought that was wicked cool and wanted to make it a soap Christmas. Since I wasn't done with my school projects until late, I didn't have time to dwell on the presents I would give to people and decided to go back to the grocery store (mind you, specialty grocery store) for the soap. The soap is Pre de Provence - Country soap. The thing I found odd was that a packaged gift set of 5 of these soaps were on sale for $18. With each soap at ~$2.50, that $12.50 for the soap and an extra $5.50 for an uninteresting box and a plain green ribbon. To that I said "screw this" and I bought 6 soaps, 3 different kinds, the better smelling of the 5.

Usually at the grocery store, they have narrow brown paper bags for wine; I picked up a couple of these. In the words immortalized by Julie Andrews, "brown paper packages tied up with string, these are a few of my favorite things.." oh yeah. Using the paper bags from the grocery stores is a shorter version for the packaging process. Being hardcore with those lyrics, I don't use tape with my brown paper packages; everything is held together by the string and using a brown paper bag makes this considerably easier.
All you have to do is push the soap to the bottom of the bag, maintain the shape, fold over the bag continually and the excess lies flat. You end up with a boxy shape like what is shown in the picture and you hold that shape down with sting tied in a crossover fashion.

If you want the prototypical brown paper package, you just have to switch out the brown paper bag with brown paper. The trickier part with this is tying it. The general approach is to hold all the soaps aligned in the desired shape. Wrap the soaps as you would a boxy present, just don't use any tape. When taking in the extra wrapping paper off the sides, make sure to fold it so that it is more triangular so that it will be easier for the string to hold the package together. It ends up looking like the picture to the left. A bonus with this is that sometimes, the pull of the string opens everything. It has some old fashioned, pre-tape charm to it.

I tend to get creative under time pressure and with low funds. I still think that there should be some cohesiveness to my presents. As a small present for my cousin, I got the following: a book on cocktails with some nice pictures - I've seen it previously selling at Anthropologie for $15.95, but I found it at a book outlet for $3.99 - liquor miniatures that are about 50ml each and also about $3 each - and (individually) the most expensive item, a designer chocolate bar by Voges Haut Chocolate at $7. I think it all works well and is essentially a feel good present. I know I would like this for myself and I recently discovered that sometimes, getting presents for people that you would want yourself has some merit.

It turns out that my older sisters like the things I buy for myself oppose to the things that I think they'll like. My sister says "when you buy me things, think of yourself - of course that results in me buying things for myself which they ask to borrow. I suppose I shouldn't assume that our styles are so different. It might be a reflection on the thought that if I were to get them presents that I'd like, I put as much thought, care, and interest into their presents as I do for myself. Not bad.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Oi me

Howdy! School's been busy, but more so, I've just been lazy. The weather is more fall like and I still haven't posted up the pictures of my auction previews. After some rather cool pictures I took of my clothes, I decided to redo the lingerie and shoe pictures. I suppose I can post up the clothing pictures in the meantime.

I'm currently at school and my pictures are on my computer at home. I suppose I should be studying anyway, but that's always the case.

Among other things, I recently had a birthday. Self celebration is expensive. I bought myself some birthday presents from Betsey Johnson and Anthropologie. Seeing as I can elaborate on those a little later (with pictures), I'll just go on to another lesson learned the hard way.

On the last blog I had decided to get the cut I want in pants, I have to buy wide legs and have them tapered. Turns out, pants can only be taken in to where they don't distort the overall line of the pants so - tapering wide legs? Unless I would be able to try on the pre and post alteration pairs, I could not see a difference. You live, you learn, it costs.

Budget Hullabaloo

You can find a wealth of knowledge in magazines like Lucky when it comes to clothes and where you can get them on any budget. It just happens to be the budget standard of an already working woman. I guess college student budgets would only prompt a magazine of ideas of how you can use things that you find at the thrift store. Really, even the lower cost items would still be a stretch sometimes.

As such, being a college student and having to budget money and clothing (for space's sake) drives me to develop a clothing budget. Texas Tax Free Weekend is upon me and I've waited until the last day to fully utilize it at the Prime Outlets, 3rd best place to shop in the world according to The View. I can only spend so much and I'm putting it towards what's lacking in my wardrobe.

- pencil skirts
- summer slacks
- blouses

Face Paint

I've had issues with make-up for a while. I've always felt that it was used to temporarily mask problems oppose to fix a problem...I think this view might still hold. I've never thought of it as enhancing good looks, maybe deemphasizing the bad would be more correct. It's not like you naturally enhance your blue eye lid.

I've felt that telling people they look good as the result of makeup is...kind of off. It's not different from having your hair styled. It should be more like..."I like what you did with your face."

Despite all this, I've come to the conclusion that makeup is a part of the presentation package and regardless of how impeccable one's style is, clothes aren't enough.

As shown in the previous blog, I went to my friend's wedding recently and I was planning for it a good while in advance - shoes, hair, the dress. I'd been practicing make up for a good few weeks prior to the wedding only to have my cousin's boyfriend do my make up professionally.

Make up is expensive when you don't know what you're doing. I'm finding there's this mad tendency to buy everything in every version possible to see what works (i.e. eyeliner). It's been rather financially draining since I've developed a penchant for MAC cosmetics. Makeup Art Cosmetics seemed to fit my sentiments on make-up. Eye-shadow application was the hardest thing for me to grasp.

I think my best recommendation is finding what fits you in terms of makeup. Experiment with lower cost makeup before buying higher end versions.

For me:
MAC's Studio Fix, eyeshadow, blush, lip gloss.

Formerly lacking a brain for make up, eyeshadow was amazingly difficult for me to apply and I have many pictures of myself looking like a raccoon. For lining my eyes, I tried everything from liquid liner, to this thing that looks like a marker, to a crayon, to a pencil, to eyeshadow. I think liquid liner is fun, but I favor using eye shadow as liner.

- to avoid having raccoon eyes, I use a small angled brush to apply a line of eye shadow, I brush it out a little. Sponge applicators are a little better for eye lid application and I use a pencil brush to get shadow into the crease. After lining, I use a little of the medium shade (assuming the darkest shade is lining and the lightest shade is on my lid) brushed out slightly from the liner.