Suggestion Time!

People o’ the internets, I need your help.

I will soon be traveling to Europe in a combination of planes, trains and automo-buses that will take, by my calculations, approximately FOREVER.

As a member of the short attention span generation I have absolutely no ability to entertain myself and therefore need you to suggest the books and the tunes that will do it for me.

So, what do you love? What do you not love so much? What should I avoid like the plague? Books about the plague are welcome as long as they’re not The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time because I’ve already read that one.

I thank you in kitten guns.

Pyow! Pyow!

Katie Daily Style – Literary Inspiration

• Grey dress – thrifted
• Blue cardigan – Target
• Blue, cream and tan belt – thrifted
• Blue and cream silk scarf – thrifted
• Blue and white silk scarf – thrifted
• Blue ballet flats – Old Navy
• Turquoise “coral” earrings – World Market

Using literary sources for style inspiration is something I’ve done on the blog before (check out my hypothetical outfits a la Pippi Longstocking, Anne Shirley, Elizabeth Bennet and Charles Darwin) but when E. of academichic issued the invitation to be inspired by a book’s cover I jumped at the chance. Any excuse to be nerdy, eh?

The sources of my textual inspiration?

• Ancient Denvers: Scenes from the Past 300 Million Years of the Colorado Front Range, Kirk Johnson
• No Great Mischief, Alistair MacLeod

One book is for work, the other for pleasure, but both are captivating my imagination. And what perfect pieces for inspiration: the soft blues, greys and creams of the oceans on each cover are calm and cool and make an appropriate palate for the rainy days we’ve been having.  If only I had some pteranodon jewelry…

I colored myself in grey and blue, added turqouise earrings that look like coral, and draped on silk scarves whose patterns and material move like water. Then I found some actual water and alternated between imagining I was a) standing on the rocky beaches of Cape Breton, NS  overlooking the Atlantic and b) atop slowly respiring mounds of stromatolites rising out of the shallow sea of the Denver Basin.

I also realized that, back in November, I dressed like one of my old Entomology text books.

See the resemblance (in more ways than one…)?

Chelsie Reads Books!

I just picked up a book off my pile of free books and read this awesome book:

The Water Rat of Wanchai by Ian Hamilton, is published by a small Canadian press, but is it ever great. I always have the urge to judge some of that smaller local stuff as dull, but I was not bored for a second. Kick ass heroine? Check. Crime and deception? Check. Love it! I enjoyed that some of it took part in Toronto, I love having visited places the character goes to, it makes you feel more part of their reality. And the pace was fast. You sometimes need that to keep my attention.

I can’t believe I left it in the book pile for 2 entire months! If I had read it earlier I would have been among the elite first people to read it. Ugh, my quest for world dominance has failed again. But we all know that is not my entire quest for world dominance, only certain Interrobang ladies know the full extent of those plans, and I probably left out some details. You know, for their own safety.

Katie Daily Style – Marian the Librarian

• Dress – Old Navy
• Sweater – swapped
• Belt – thrifted
• Amber pendants – Grandma’d
• Ballet flats – Old Navy

You can tell its time for my haircut – I can’t bear to wear it down anymore it’s gotten so shaggy and unkempt.

No offense to Chelsie, or my mother, or any other librarians out there, but I felt very much like a librarian in this outfit. Not a modern librarian (because as Chels proves, they’re tres chic), but the librarians of my childhood. I really feel like I should be suggesting copies of The Giving Tree or Free to Be You and Me to you all.

I’m in the middle of a BIG closet overhaul, which has ended up taking weeks because of my erratic schedule. However, it is a great excuse not to pick any of the clothes off the bedroom floor because the process. I can’t mess with the process.

This sweater is in the “Dude, I’ve never worn it and therefore it should not be allowing it to use up valuable oxygen* in my closet in case I have to hide in there to escape the aliens/zombies/Pampered Chef people” category. I’ve been giving each of those pieces one final run to see if they’re worth keeping, and then I’m taking the mountain of clothing on the living room floor** to the resale stores.

I think this outfit may be this sweater’s not-so-beautiful swan song. Off to the donation box it shall go to wait to be re-found by me in Goodwill two months later, and which point I will act incensed that no one has bought it yet.

And because I must,

*If wine can breathe, so can my cotton-acrylic blends.

**Still looking for an excuse as to why I haven’t picked these ones up yet.

Literary Inspiration – Anne Shirley

When Shakespeare’s Feminist Ending wrote about Anne of Green Gables (and Tori Amos and the American Girl characters – amen, sister!) as a feminist icon last week, I realized that I’ve yet to use Miss Shirley as inspiration for another make-believe ensemble.

I dropped everything I was doing and sat down to remedy my error by watching the series. And by “drop everything I was doing,” I mean “came down with the flu and have been stuck on the couch all weekend.”

Up first, an outfit inspired by two of my favorite scenes in the television series. No one rocks the straw hat, blue and white ticking/seersucker fabric and lace like the Anne-girl.

Modern Anne Shirley II by Interrobangs Katie on Polyvore.com

And then, a take on the famous puff-sleeve dress. In the series the dress is pale green, but L.M. Montgomery gave Anne a brown dress in the book, so we’ll go with authorial intent on this one.

Modern Anne Shirley by Interrobangs Katie on Polyvore.com

And if you don’t know why the carrot ring was included, get thee to a library!

I’m off to watch the series again, because as Christopher Walken once famously said,

I’ve got a fever, and the only prescription is…more Gilbert Blythe!

Ah, feeling better already.

Have any of you played the Anne of Green Gables Drinking Game yet? It’s really helping me knock back the Gatorade.

Katie Daily Style – “I Went to the Woods…”

• Grey sweater – Kohl’s
• White tanks – Target
• Black belt – thrifted
• Silver and bronze necklace – Anthro
• Skinnies – Dish
• Red flats – Hush Puppies

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. – Walden, Henry David Thoreau

Every year my school would take our annual pilgrimage to Walden Pond. The highlight was usually seeing how many dead fish we could spot (Walden wasn’t so healthy back then), but each trip always included a discussion on Thoreau and what he hoped to achieve by “living deliberately” in the woods.

Chelsie Daily Think: Reading Sci-Fi

I actually read a real Science Fiction book! Usually I stray far far away because of my perspective that I can not relate to flying unicorns, monsters, and other fantastical creatures. I similarly find it more challenging to develop collections of Science Fiction materials, so I often illicit help from colleagues who are more well versed in the subject.

While I was sifting through a bunch of Sci-Fi titles about a month ago, I read the summary of Orson Scott Card’s newest book, The Lost Gate, and was intrigued. The next week I got an Advanced Copy of the book, though it had been released that week, and you know what? I actually liked it! It was very low on fantastical creatures, took place in our current modern world, and I felt able to relate to it. There was some teleportation, but I was okay with that because I knew what I was getting into.

So there world, I have faced challenge and succeeded! Will I now read lots and lots of Sci-Fi books? Probably not. But at least I’ve read one! Face your challenges!

Literary Inspiration – Charles Darwin

The link in last week’s Thursday Links to a mix-tape for Alice (of Wonderland fame) reminded me that it’s been a long time since I created a “fashion mix-tape” inspired by my literary loves.

Today’s inspiration doesn’t come from fiction, but from the seminal text for the foundation of modern biology: On the Origin of Species. I re-read this book every few years, and slogging though parts may be, it never fails to inspire me and remind me why I think there’s nothing more amazing than the natural world.

On Saturday I wished Darwin a happy birthday and today I want to dress like him. Well, not exactly like him – the guy enjoyed a high collar the likes of which would completely obscure my graceful and swan-like neck – but the inspiration is there.

I think the 19th century naturalist would be proud of how my sense of style is evolving.

Girl Darwin by Interrobangs Katie featuring rain boots and a finch beak ring

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

- Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species

I’m Reading a Book

Have a great weekend everyone! Some of you may watch the Super Bowl. Others of you (myself included), will do everything in your power not to watch the Super Bowl.* What will I be doing instead?

Yep, even the bagpipes at the end. I’m hardcore like that.

*However, if offered Super Bowl nachos, I will eat those before going back to my book reading. But you all know how I feel about nachos.

Chelsie Daily Style – A Small Selection of the Past Week

Ugh, winter. I feel like I’m semi hibernating with the work, home, sleep routine. I’ve been doing a bit of crafting lately – but more on that later.

This shirt is almost like an Asian/Elizabethan fusion. It’s got a fusion collar, and nice flowy arms. It looks like it’s sequins, but it’s faux. Faux sequin print! I paired it up with my cigarette pants, and BAM! The black ribbon detailing rocks my world too.

Complete with awkward smile. You get a better idea of the faux sequin print from this one though.

This dress has been a bit of an orphan. I was feeling the wintery blah’s and decided to wear something I had neglected for a while that felt fun. I don’t think I’ve worn this much since I initially altered it while listening to the last book of Stieg Larsson’s trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.

The dress was a bit tight, so I took out the side seams and inserted a black jersey panel on both sides, through the underams and sleeves. These vintage polyester dresses don’t have much give, and those ladies had small shoulder breadth. I find that I’ve always had a bit of trouble with shoulders and clothes though… so the additional fabric was necessary.

There was a bit of red in the pattern, so I jazzed this ensemble up with my red blazer, threw on a purple infinity scarf, and felt pretty, and professional, all day long. Take that winter!!

Chelsie’s Decorating and Home Improvement Adventures

A couple months ago I mentioned that we put a new light up in the dining room, as seen in the picture below. This weekend I found these Calla Lily’s at Michel’s for $3 each, down from $6.99 each (highway robbery?), so I changed up my centerpiece. Internets, these look really good for fake.

At the same time as we installed that pendant lamp in the dining room, we installed this chandelier in the bedroom. I got it on clearance from Home Depot for a little under $50, regular $150, or something thereabouts.

More in context:

This weekend we put a frosted glass peel and stick film over the bottom pane of the bedroom window, which looks out into our neighbor’s side/backyard and into their side windows. You just cut the film to size, clean your window, spray your window with water, and slowly peel and affix the film to the window, then squeegee out any bubbles. The great thing is that if you mess up, or don’t like it later on, it’s simple to remove. I wish I had thought of this sooner, because it is fantastic! It lets light in, but you don’t have to constantly worry about putting the blinds down while you change.

At the same time as we frosted the bedroom window, we frosted the bottom pane of the upstairs bath window as well. It also sees into the side of the other neighbor’s house, and their side window, so we constantly had those blinds closed as well. The bath is not huge, and it’s painted a dark chocolate brown, so now it gets much more light and doesn’t feel so cavernous.

I also mentioned a couple weeks ago that I had printed and framed two images a while back, and this is the second. I collaged together a bunch of animal silhouettes for this print that hands in the bedroom.

I just got home from another publisher event today, and here is my advance book swag. I went a little bit lighter than last time.

Chelsie Daily Style – New Year’s Year

We went out for dinner on New Year’s Eve, in celebration of my birthday since I worked late the night before. We went to our favorite Thai restaurant just a town over. This was also a first expedition outside of townlines for our new car. We are currently leaning towards the name Sebastien. RIP, Gord.

S. got me this gorgeous cashmere sweater for my birthday, and to say it is super luxe and soft is almost an understatement. He made sure to get my measurements right by taking note as we custom adjusted my new dress form a couple days earlier.

• Cashmere sweater – Gifted
• Skirt – Armani Exchange (Altered) – Thrifted
• Lace tights – Givenchy – Winners
• Boots – Feet First
• Earrings – Swarovski

These lace tights are too classy to wear to work, but New Year’s Eve was a good night for their debut. They have been languishing unopened in my dresser drawer for several months. I got these boots about three years ago during spring sales. I think they were originally over $100, and I got them for about $20. A friend that was with me got the same pair. They are suede, and keep a nice balance for walking. They also have a cute bow in the back, and keep your feet moderately warm (well, with fancy boots you can’t be expecting to be super toasty always!). Unfortunately, I definitely can not wear these to work or health and safety would have my head.

Is anyone else noticing a lot of limits that their jobs impose on fashion? And I’m not taking extreme fashion choices here, like extreme sports. Or is it just our extreme jobs? Though I fail to see how my job necessitates extreme survival gear.

Note: I don’t wear survival gear to work. Though at my last job I did have steel toe boots and there was a safety footwear zone.

Happy Haul-idays

The Interrobangs love us some books! Luckily, Chronicle Books is giving away $500 worth of books to one lucky blogger, and one commenter (remember to provide your email address in case we all win!). Unfortunately, this giveaway is limited to the United States, which caused Chelsie some disappointment. But Katie’s happy! Below, are is our resident librarian’s qualified selections of fashion, decorating, crafting and cooking books… and maybe a couple history selections.

Chelsie Daily Happy – Books!

tax relief pretty

Katie Daily Happy – Post Script (in your pants)

business finance pretty