could never tell you what happened the day i turned...

SEVENTEEEEEEEEEEN

click here to listen

(Marina & the Diamonds - Seventeen)

well, sometimes it just happens that I stumble across a song that's perfectly relevant and appropriate to the situation...like when I somehow found this song a day or two before my birthday. The lyrics don't pertain to me at all (in fact, the title of this post makes me seem much more badass than I actually am) except it's called Seventeen, and it (briefly) talks about turning seventeen, and I turned seventeen, so...yeah?
Mainly it's just a great song and she has a really powerful voice and this is an excuse for me to talk about music and listen to this song over and over.

November 20th this year fell on a Friday, granting me the holy grail of a "birthday weekend"...TWO days of special treatment for being a year older, TWO days of awesome food, TWO days of celebrating with friends, and TWO birthday outfits.

First off:



(Flash? No flash? Does it even matter?)

This is pretty much a formula for my ideal outfit: something badass and leather-jackety, something frilly and poofy, something shiny, red lipstick, wearing my hair down and having it actually look presentable, and red, white and blue. Oh yeah, I spray-painted my white oxfords silver. It was for Halloween - I'm sort of going in reverse chronological order here.

Didn't do a whole lot on Friday (mainly went home and fell asleep immediately, due to SEVERE lack of sleep the previous week.) Almost drowned (ok, not really) by falling asleep in the bathtub with my face barely above the water. I need to start managing my time better.

Saturday:

More shiny - it took me about 45 minutes to pin this halter dress into a strapless dress, and that's no exaggeration. My friends bought a tiara and made me wear it. Hey guys, I'm pretty sure that's for your Sweet 16. You're a year too late.



My SUPER DUPER AWESOME BEST FRIEND HANNAH (who wanted a shoutout, in case you couldn't tell) took the photo on the left* and we both thought it ended up kindasorta looking like a fashion photo. Too bad I'm incapable of opening my eyes in photos.


Well, that's not entirely true. I can also be a total creeper when the situation calls for it:

Aaaaaand I think that's a good place to stop.

ps. HAPPY 67TH BIRTHDAY JOE BIDEN (he shares my birthday)!


*incidentally, that cake in the foreground is german chocolate cake, the best ever. it was gone within 24 hours.

took me a month to break the news

WOW. Sorry about that, you guys. College applications are really kicking my ass right now. The good news is I'm actually getting some work done, but the bad news is that I went back on my promise and disappeared from the internet for wayyyy too long. I'll be posting sporadically (I have photos from Halloween, miscellaneous outfits, and NEW SHOES to sort through) when I can find the time. Watch this space! (Actually, I really shouldn't say that, because everytime I say "Stay tuned!" or "Coming soon!" I flake out and leave for two weeks.)

Another thing, before I forget - a while ago the lovely idée_géniale tagged me with a Beautiful Blogger Award and I was going to repost this right away but then I didn't get around to it and I broke the chain and now a 7 year old dead girl is going to come to my room in the middle of the night and strangle me...if you believe that sort of thing.

But what I'm trying to say here is, the rules of the award are that you post it, list seven things about yourself, and nominate seven other bloggers. Since I'm super late on this I'm not going to tag anyone, and I'm too lazy to think of anything interesting to say, but thank you, idée_géniale! If you haven't seen her blog already, go have a look. Doesn't she remind you of Zooey Deschanel? No? Maybe that's just me.

Anyways, for your viewing pleasure, here are some photos of me and my SUPER AWESOME friends being silly and playing dress-up. None of these clothes are ours (except my flapper dress) but oh, how I wish...




PS. Tomorrow's my birthday! Bonus points if you know another special someone whose birthday is tomorrow...

my one dream in life is to see a live taping of the Maury show

When I was sick last week, basically all I did was shop for shoes online, eat chicken soup on the couch, and watch trashy daytime TV. I'm better now, but I'm still kind of obsessed with those tacky, awful guilty-pleasure shows, especially Maury. Ever since my friend showed me this clip, I've spent way too much time on Youtube watching all sorts of crazy messed-up people reveal their inner secrets on the Maury Show (why anyone would want to do that is beyond me, but it makes things more interesting for the rest of us).

But there's something that you get from watching it on an actual TV that Youtube can't replace - the message after the ad break saying "Would you like to attend a live taping of the Maury Show in Stamford, Connecticut?" and then there's a website that you can go to and request FREE tickets.


OMG.

For some reason I never realized it was possible to get tickets (even though it makes total sense) and now it is TOTALLY going to happen. I told my friend who loves the show and she was like OMG GIRL. WE'RE GOING. and I am sooooo excited. Even though it won't be until April (once we both get into college). IT'S GONNA HAPPEN.



Soooo back to what this blog is actually supposed to be about...this is what I wore on Friday? I took all the fringes off the back of this dress (while watching aforementioned trashy TV) so now it's half-flapper, half-bodycon, 100% awesome. I know I'm wearing this jean jacket wayyy too much all of a sudden, but y'all will just have to deal with that because it is AWESOME.
(FYI I don't actually say y'all in real life, I'm from Massachusetts.)

Oh and I'm kindasorta taking a break from blogging for a week or two (except Halloween, because I can't not post my Twiggy costume) because the show I'm doing costumes for is going up in 2 weeks and it is getting craaaazy, and I need to work on that whole getting-into-college thing if I want to go see Maury in April. So...see ya then?

tag, you're it

I found out about the site Wordle recently and decided to give it a go...it's actually pretty fun and a little addictive. I felt like doing some sort of experiment to see which words popped up the most. These 4 are (in order) comments on this dress, people's Facebook statuses, words on this blog, and words on This Is Why You're Fat. Good thing I made them a while ago, or the words "tacky" and "communist" would be totally dominating the 3rd one.


(this last one was really hard to format because the words fried, cheese and bacon came up way too often and so they're HUGE)



uh anyways, this is what I wore yesterday? Nothing much to write about it. I totally stole the socks-over-jeans idea from cocorosa circa last spring (see here) and ended up really liking it, partly because of how it covers up the huge gaping hole in the knee of these jeans that just keeps getting bigger and bigger. But I've had them since 8th grade, so maybe it's time to move on...

who wants a twig when you can have the whole tree?

I DO I DO I DO



I've decided to dress up as Twiggy for Halloween this year! I'm really excited. It's not as creative as a flapper dress made out of videotape, but on the plus side, it's also not as time-consuming. I've actually gotten the comparison a lot before, which always surprises me a little - I guess it's mainly the way I wear my hair and lots of mascara. But I'm really looking forward to doing some crazy 60's eye makeup - I just need to find the perfect 60's dress to go with it.

Oh and title inspiration (at 0:28) =



mhmmmm girl.

ohmygodyouguys

OK, so...



I still can't decide if these are a travesty or a gift from god. They're $37 knockoffs of those Alexander McQueen motorcycle-jacket ankle boots, the ones that Steve Madden did a knockoff of and got in big trouble for. (yes, those are five separate links, just because I can.)
(McQueen on the left, Madden on the right, in case you couldn't tell)

So basically these are a knockoff of a knockoff, and they're as cheap and shiny as you'd expect - but come on, for $37, that's kind of ridiculous. In a good way.

It's also really amusing to me that they're from gojane.com, a site I usually associated with shitty plastic jewelry that featured prominently in Seventeen editorials circa 2006. I'm honestly not surprised that the vast majority of their inventory doesn't seem to have changed since the year 2000:


(sorry about that)

But I was surprised to see that their shoe section has (in my opinion) a pretty good range of designer knockoffs and all sorts of super-cheap things. Sure, there's a decent range of tacky prom heels, but there's also stuff like this:



I wish I had a better memory for designer shoes so I could connect these knockoffs with the originals...I wanna say Stella McCartney on the left, Nicolas Kirkwood (?) on the right, and the middle ones look more like Urban Outfitters than anything else. There are no links to the product page because I'm planning on buying a few of these and I'm too paranoid that someone else will get there before me.

Actually, I'm either going to buy them from GoJane or urbanog.com, depending on which one is more reliable and cheaper overall (I've heard everything from "Their stuff is awesome and super cheap" to "They're a total scam and they steal your money!"). Their shoes are actually identical, and not even in a knockoff-y way, but in a "these came from the same factory" kind of way.

See?


Oh and I'm definitely buying a pair of these for myself...


Alexander Wang knockoffs much? These actually have a really gross filigree heart on the side, but I don't care - come hell or high water, I am going to make it work.
(by removing the tacky heart, not by rocking its tackiness)

So basically, if you've had any experience (good or bad) with either of these websites, let me know before I get ripped off. It's not that I mind wearing poorly made synthetic shoes (just the opposite, in fact), I'm just worried that they'll take my money and never send me anything in return. Which would be really sad.

aaaarrghh

Apologies are in order for being such a lazy blogger. I've basically stayed in bed for the past 24 hours (with a few breaks) due to some unexplained illness that could be anything from the dreaded swine flu to just a bad cold. My activities for the past day: listening to Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, eating Werther's Originals, wallowing, and other things that start with the letter W.


Still can't decide if flash or no flash is better (or at least, which one is less bad). Can you say "seizure-inducing"? I know I can.
And this gif took me way too long to make...last time I used picasion.com but it seems to have disappeared. Anyone know a good gif-making site?

When I hit a creative block and can't think of anything interesting to wear, I go to Wikipedia and hit "random article" over and over until I find something that catches my eye. This time it was aurophilicity, a chemical term referring to the tendency of gold to attract gold. I don't actually have a lot of gold in my wardrobe, but I wore these boots (of course) with a decent amount of gold jewelry and a panning-for-gold-circa-1849 denim jacket (or at least I like to think so - after all, Levi's was founded during the gold rush, and I just associate beat-up denim with gold miners. see?)

I would've loved to pile on tons of gold chains a la Givenchy/Mr. T/Run DMC (whoaaa super rhymes) but...I don't have any gold chains.



I'm mixing silver and gold because I like to break the rules, and I'm wearing my Girl Scout ring (left pinky) upside down, ooh subversive...


Oh incidentally, I'm just as bad at ending blog posts as SNL is (sometimes) at ending skits. So...yeah.