t-shirt: The Limited
cardigan: Express via Discount Fashion Warehouse
jeans: Target
flats: Forever 21
necklace: Kate Spade, gifted
bracelet: Etsy
watch: Coach, secondhand
UGH. Has it really been two whole weeks since my last post? Insane. (These photos are from June. Insaner.) I've been busy writing, and then recovering from, one of the most challenging, research-heavy stories in my freelance career. It was rewarding, but man, did it have me exhausted.
That story comes out in October; meanwhile, if you're local, you can see my most recently-published story in the August issue of Columbus Monthly. It's a feature on Dublin City Schools that is way, way less boring than it sounds ;)
Ok, ok — shameless self-promotion over.
What else is new? I have two, potentially three, photo shoots lined up for next month, and another I just finished, so that's pretty cool. I've started using the money I earn on shoots to save for some gear that might let me take my "side hustle," as Hayley calls it, semi-pro. First up on the list is a body upgrade, probably to this, since I won't be able to afford full-frame anytime soon; another fast prime lens, because my 35mm f/1.8 is nice, but doesn't give me the bookeh I want in full-body portraits; and a nice all-in-one zoom lens, probably this or this. If I keep getting steady work like this, I might be able to make all the upgrades before my next birthday!
Other new and exciting news: Matt and I are getting a puppy! I've been trolling Petfinder.com and the local shelter sites basically since we got back from the honeymoon, because that's what newlyweds do, right? Get a dog? Well, I finally found the most beautiful German shepherd/pit bull mix that has basically all of the qualities we want in a dog earlier this week. I contacted the shelter with very low expectations; puppies that cute don't tend to hang around long. But to our surprise (and delight!), the shelter called us the very next day. Things moved really quickly after that, and as long as everything goes well with her spay today, the little furball comes home with us on Sunday. The only downside to this, of course, being that we won't get to really play with her for the first week or so. Don't worry; there will be pictures!
I've also been getting more involved in my Big Brothers, Big Sisters match lately. For the past two years, I've met with my Little at her school, during her lunch period on Fridays. At the end of last school year, she asked if we could also become a community match, which is the more typical program you think of when you hear BBBS. We just started doing our out-of-school meetups last month, and it's been really cool getting to know her outside of her academic setting.
So yeah, that's where I've been! Just lazing around, doing not much of anything as usual, haha. So. Anyone out there ever had a puppy before? (I haven't.) Other than peeing and pooing everywhere and chewing on everything, what can I expect?
shirt: secondhand
sleeveless button-down: New York & Company
maxi skirt: Target
d'orsay flats: Forever 21
necklace: giveaway win
watch: secondhand Coach
Oh hi June, when did you get here? Funny, seems like mid-May was just here. No? You've been sneaking up for a while now? Huh. Imagine that.
It's been nearly a month since the wedding and frankly, I still feel like it just happened last week. As much as I try, I've had the hardest time getting back into any semblance of a routine. This week, Matt and I only just got in our first climb since...oh, since these pictures were taken, maybe? And these pictures are two months old.
Not that you'd ever know it, of course. It's been so unseasonably chilly the past few weeks; I haven't even packed my sweaters away yet. And I've been wearing a lot of my business-ultra-casual outfits, like this one, lately. It's the best of both worlds, really! I look pulled together but the soft and flowy fabrics are ridiculously cozy. Slap on a sparkly necklace and your'e good to go!
I'm sure soon things will start to feel normal again...right? Right?!
It's official: If I'm not at work or working on an assignment, I am in full-on hibernation mode. I had yesterday off for President's Day, but took today off as well thanks to either a stomach bug or something I ate yesterday. And with the frigid temps outside, all I want is to hide under 18 thousand layers of blankets and sleep until it's spring. Heck, I'd take temps in the 30s if I could get 'em; it's 17 right now (4 with the wind chill) and we're not supposed to see anything above freezing until the weekend...when we're supposed to get another dump of snow before the temps plummet down to highs in the 20s again. I don't know if this is winter's last dying gasps or if things are gonna stay this crappy until after Daylight Savings kicks back in, but I sure hope it's the first.
But enough about how much I hate the cold and the snow.
t-shirt: H&M
cardi: Forever 21
jeans and flats: Target
necklace: Jane.com
I'm fairly sure I've blogged an outfit like this before, but I have this lovely new, unshrunk mustard cardigan and I went to a trusty ol' standby for styling it. Honestly, I've been doing a lot of repeats lately; this weather just saps all the energy out of me and makes it hard to style an outfit creatively. But I said I was done complaining about the weather, right?
I guess it could be worse. Now I have an excuse to stay in and work on projects in the evenings and on weekends; I don't feel like such a recluse for spending my Friday nights with a hot glue gun when everyone else I know is doing the same with Netflix or what have you. And the central Ohio area has been spared a lot; we've received nothing compared to the feet of snow that's been dumped on New England this year. Still, I find myself daydreaming more and more about the Mexican beach where Matt and I will be spending our honeymoon. We're inside the three-month mark now, and I couldn't be more excited!
sweater, slacks: thrifted
short-sleeve button-down: New York & Company
flats: Target
necklace: gifted (Kate Spade)
Welp, you're looking at a pretty close approximation of my outfits all this week: sweater, a layer under it, warm dress pants and flats that are easy to throw in my bag while I wear my heavier winter boots. Because all week, temps have been in the teens or single digits, with negative-degree wind chills. Yesterday morning, the actual temp was -6 Fahrenheit, with a wind chill of -22! It's not okay, guys. I'm too delicate for this bitter winter clime.
But I haven't been letting the chill get me down too much. I layer fleece-lined leggings under my pants for the walk home from the bus stop. (Matt, who works second shift during the week, is a saint who drives me to work every morning in his well-warmed-up car.) I have my rated-to-20-degree boots that perform well enough even when the temps are below 20. And I have a killer long down jacket I got at the end of last winter from Burlington Coat Factory. I'm even managing to make it to the gym most evenings! If you know anything about me, you know that's a feat even in nicer weather. So I guess I can't complain too much.
In other news (cue abrupt subject change), our wedding is exactly four months from today! I still have so much to do...cutting wine bottles for our centerpiece vases, making the flower-petal candle holders for our other centerpieces, assembling all the flowers we made, making my veil, doing my dress fitting(s), designing and printing our invitations and other miscellaneous stationery, doing final meetings with the few pros we did hire to confirm all the details...eesh. It's gonna be a very busy four months. I can't think about the big picture too much, or I get super stressed out and panicky. I just have to take things in baby steps: This weekend is devoted to bottle-cutting and editing some photos from a newborn session I had the other weekend. Keep it small and manageable, that's my motto :)
How do you deal with massive projects? And while we're doing the whole ask-questions-at-the-end-of-the-post-to-encourage-feedback thing, are the temps abysmally cold where you are, too? How do you even handle that? (I'm thinking of you, Sydney, up in what I can only assume is the frozen tundra of Canada. I'm shivering just thinking about it.)
I've been pretty terrible about taking OOTD photos lately. That's about to change, thanks to some really cool photography-related Christmas gifts I received, but that's a topic for another post. Today's post is strictly about what I wore for the various and sundry holiday gatherings I attended this year (and every year, really, because big families rule).
sweater: H&M
short-sleeve oxford: New York & Company
skinnies: Forever 21
boots: Madden Girl via Famous Footwear
necklace: Express
If the background looks unfamiliar here, it's because these photos were taken by my sister at our parents' house. I literally dragged her away from the party and snuck into an empty room so we could snap these really quickly. I bet being a style blogger's relative is so much fun, haha. We celebrated Christmas with my dad's side of the family the Sunday before the holiday, so things got kicked off nice and early for us.
sweater: Express via Discount Fashion Warehouse
jeans, flats: Target
necklace: Jane.com
This is easily one of my favorite sweaters, and I guess I must have good taste because I always get compliments on it. I swear, this thing no sooner comes out of the laundry before it's back on me. I don't know if it even ever gets put away on the shelf. Anyway, I wore this to a few gatherings on the unseasonably warm (like, 60s warm, it was magnificent) Christmas Eve. We started at my parents' house for our immediate family's celebration just west of Cleveland. It sounds like it'd be small, but even with one of my sisters in Hawaii with her husband and his family, we still were up to nearly 20 people. Between my parents, me and Matt, my two sisters and their fiancé and boyfriend, my two brothers and their girlfriends, and my youngest brother and sister who are way to young to have significant others, it was quite a party. From there, Matt and I popped over to Akron to hang out with his dad's side of the family for a few hours before driving back to Columbus and collapsing exhaustedly into bed.
sheer button-down: Express via Discount Fashion Warehouse
red plaid tank top that you can barely see in the pic: Target
skinnies: H&M
boots: Target
necklace, bracelet: Etsy
Christmas Day dawned much colder (welcome to Ohio), but we roused ourselves and prepared for another long day. Fortunately, this year we were able to stay in Columbus the whole time, heading over to Matt's parents' house for a quiet present-opening sesh with them and Matt's sister and brother-in-law. Then Matt's mom's side of the family descended on the house and everything dissolved into chaos. I kid, it was a really nice gathering. My soon-to-be-in-laws are pretty rad. After that was over, we popped over to Matt's grandparents' retirement home for a quick visit, then over to his aunt and uncle's house (on the other side of the family) to greet the newest addition – an eight-day-old little girl who basically stole my heart. Matt got to hold her and, having never held a newborn in his life, he did pretty well! (Though if you ask him, he'll say it was the most tense 10 minutes of his whole life, haha.)
Wow. I'm getting exhausted again just thinking about all the festivities last week...and that's with us skipping out on a gathering! Yup, big families rule, but they also are crazy as hell. And I wouldn't have it any other way :)
t-shirt: Old Navy
jacket/blazer: thrifted
skinnies: Forever 21
flats: Target
necklace: gifted Kate Spade
That's right; the weather outside certainly is frightful. We got our first real snow of the season last night; now there's an inch or two of icy/slushy/powdery mix on the ground. Delightful (not). Get ready for these wonderfully lit outdoor alley shots (from last month) to disappear; it's time for me to make the switch to shooting indoors. Womp womppppp.
Also frightful this weekend was my intense anxiety level. I had probably the worst shopping experience of my life on Saturday, when I tried to buy a corset for under my wedding dress. Seriously guys, if you need a quick fix for hating yourself and your body, I highly recommend corset shopping for two hours. I apparently have weird proportions, so everything that fit around my stomach wound up giving me awkward and heartbreaking armpit fat, which apparently is a real thing. And everything that avoided the apparently-a-thing armpit fat was way too big in the stomach. I wound up buying a strapless bra and a stomach-only corset piece thing (kind of like this, only it goes from your bra line down to your hips, not from your waist down past your hips). They were way more than I wanted to spend, but I'll at least be able to wear both of them under other outfits. Plus, I now get to go up to my grandma's house and try on the dress again (I have to make sure the undergarments work, of course!) so it's not a total loss.
Then Saturday night, I had a host of wedding nightmares. Awful stress dreams about not having a dress at all (I walked down the aisle in a gray maxi dress and a cardigan), about being in the wrong venue, about the music not playing right during the ceremony...basically, everything was just wrong. Then I got a text from my sister; a fire on campus at our alma mater had destroyed the apartment I lived in my junior year. It was an attic studio apartment above a flower shop, and the entire attic just collapsed into the apartment below it. I was devastated; I had a lot of great memories in that apartment. Obviously the situation is so much worse for the students who are living there now; they lost everything they own. I'll be donating to the university's fund for them; if you have some extra cash lying around and want to do a little good with it, you can do the same here. Just select the "Ohio Parents and Family Endowment."
So between bad shopping experiences and dreams and sad news, my Sunday was shaping up to be a huge sulk-fest. But then I went to a meeting for a new project I'm working on and it honestly turned my entire day around. I left feeling excited, optimistic and refreshed. I don't want to go into too much detail on the project, because I'm honestly a little terrified that my contribution will be terrible, but if all goes well I'll divulge more in the spring.
Aaaaand that was my weekend. Here's hoping yours had more high points than low ones!
Okay, yesterday things got a bit heavy and I was/am dealing with some triggers. I'd be lying if I said I'm feeling back to 100% normal, but my motto is "fake it till ya make it" so I'm just gonna do that. We now return to your regularly scheduled frivolity.
t-shirt: thrifted
jeans, flats: Target
belt: H&M
necklace: Jane
In other news, I am so so relieved to finally be showing some fairly sharp pics again on the blog. I think I've finally figured out the weirdness I was experiencing, namely that I had changed my focus area settings without realizing it and was messing around with pre-focusing my camera on a stationary object instead of letting the remote focus for me because apparently my cheapo remote does that. That noise you hear is me cheering, obvs. And okay, maybe these still aren't totally perfect but they're such a vast improvement from the entirely-out-of-focus-crap I've been shooting that I don't even care.
I don't usually tuck my t-shirts into my jeans because hello, nerd alert but honestly, the pearls kind of give it more of a ladylike vibe than a dorky one, I think. Plus, leopard print. Speaking of, this is an H&M belt so obviously it is falling apart after like a year of ownership, so I am in desperate need of a replacement. Never thought I'd be saying that about something with leopard print on it, but there you go. So, a call-out: Has anyone seen something like this belt recently, at a reasonable price?
Not that I really need it, seeing as how I'm leaving for a weekend bachelorette party for my friend Jenny tomorrow and Matt and I have a beach trip coming up, but I have a day off today nonetheless. Sadly, I can't do much of anything fun because of this:
Man, I need a pedicure.
Fear not; it's just a very minor sprain. I (intentionally) dropped from the top of a 10- or 12-foot bouldering route while climbing yesterday and landed poorly. The super-thick padding in the drop area actually was to my disadvantage, I think; when I landed, my ankle rolled right under me. It didn't hurt too badly at the time — I even kept climbing for another hour or so, and got a route I've been working on for a few days — and I just iced it when I got home. But when I woke up this morning, it was swollen and I had a hard time putting any weight on it. I've been RICEing it (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation) all day, and I think the swelling is starting to go down. I can walk to the kitchen or bathroom with little pain, but stairs are still hard and the Aleve might be masking that anyway.
But enough about my stupid ankle. Hey guess what! I have some in-focus pictures from a few weeks ago to share today.
button-down: New York & Company
skinnies, flats: Target
necklace: Express
I don't really know why, but a crisp white shirt with skinny jeans always just makes me feel so polished. It's the simplest outfit, but I always feel so put-together in this combo. The best part is, I feel just as good about it in pointed-toe flats as I would if I were wearing heels. Comfort and style FTW!
What's your go-to for a polished but comfortable look?
(Yes, short post today, but check back later this evening for an update on wedding dress shopping this weekend, if you're interested in that sort of thing. There will be pictures.)
blouse: thrifted
blazer: Express via Discount Fashion Warehouse
skirt: The Limited
flats: Target
necklace: Jane.com
So I was inspired to re-create this outfit, originally worn by Ashley of The Cream To My Coffee, the second I saw it on her blog. Part of it was the fact that I knew I had all the pieces to do so, but mostly it was just a cool-looking combination that I was excited to try. In retrospect, I'm wishing I had added my thin black belt to the skirt, or untucked a little of the shirt to spill over the waistband. Oh, well.
Unfortunately, the zipper on this skirt broke shortly after I wore this. Well, it didn't so much "break" as "get caught in the material next to the zipper, tear it to shreds and basically become inseparable from it." I'm debating whether I want to remove the zipper and try to sew in a new one. Has anyone tried this? Is it hard?
dress: c/o eShakti
belt: came with a skirt from JCPenney
flats: Target
Friends and Twitter followers may be familiar with my phrase, "That's a problem for Future Emma." As in, "I really want to watch this movie, but I have so much work to do. Oh well, guess that's a problem for Future Emma."
Needless to say, I am rarely a fan of Past Emma.
So imagine my surprise when I went to edit some photos for today's post and realized that Past Emma had already edited four outfits' worth of photos! Proof that Past Emma is not always a jerk to Future Emma. Now I can go back to editing the last of the Marley photos.
Speaking of, can I ask you guys a huge favor? Kellen entered my favorite shot of Marley in a Parents magazine contest. If she wins, the photo I took of her will be on the cover of the magazine! This is obviously pretty exciting for both of us, so if you have a moment, could you please vote for her here? And if you feel so inclined, you can vote from multiple computers, your smartphone, your tablet and using your Twitter and Facebook account. I think you can also vote once per day via each of these methods. She is/we are currently #28, which is amazing and definitely within the "we could win it" range. Thanks so much if you vote!!
Disclaimer: I totally meant to get this post up after work yesterday, but first I had to take Perdita out for a test ride with her new battery, and then there was thunder, and as soon as I got home the tornado sirens went off. I'm absolutely petrified of tornadoes, so I kind of went into crisis-mode and started moving all our valuables and Spazzy (in her carrier) down to the basement. It turned out to be nothing, but by the time it was over all I could think about was unwinding with a giant glass of wine and a Game of Thrones mini-marathon. So, without further ado, here's the post I had started:
Random title, I know. But this rain, amiright? Sorry. I hate relying on weather for post fodder, but it's such a convenient thing to write about. Weather is literally ALWAYS happening. And lately it's been pretty intense around these parts. Columbus hasn't seen quite as much action as northern Ohio, which got some major flooding. I even saw a friend's Facebook post showing the interior of a Macy's that was six inches deep in flood water! It just so happens that one of my bridesmaids and most of my immediate family live up there, but everyone's doing okay so far, thank goodness.
blouse: The Limited via Discount Fashion Warehouse
blazer: Express via DFWh
skirt: Forever 21
flats: Target
I have to admit, I think I felt better about this outfit while I was wearing it than now that I'm seeing it in photos. I felt very polished and trendy -- mint, stripes, animal print -- but it kind of looks frumpy to me. Except for my butt. Case in point:
BAM! Seriously. Dat ass doe.
Okay but for real. Does that ever happen to you guys? An outfit seems great all day, then you see it in pictures and just kind of think ehhh....notsomuch. Please say I'm not alone!
