These days it comes and goes

An outfit post! I've been meaning to do one of these for ages now, because.... that's what you do if you want to talk about clothes, right?
We'll see if this conformist mindset works out, or if it's just too much of a bother. I'm not home very often during the times of the day where it is conveniently lit to take pictures, and sadly I am not the member of the duo with the SLR. So please excuse the graininess of the shots, and the lack of color. Hopefully this will be practice for my photog skills.






Sweater Dress: Banana Republic, Belt: Vintage, Shoes: Fluevog, Socks: Front and Co.

Mix

I feel like I've done so very much this week... and yet, so very little. All week we've been writing snarky articles, and going to places for material for said snarky articles.
There gets to be a point when you just don't have anything clever left to say...
And so you hide away in a comfy coffee shop and eat things. Like sandwiches with apple and cheese and desserts solely of chocolate and caramel.

Kristen's shoes (the brown ones): Fluevog. Kristen's hat: Off the wall. My shoes: Dolce Vita. Ring: Random Bumbershoot purchase.

la mer est...

excuse the french. I just watched Coco avant Chanel, and so plenty of french swirling around in my head, along with visions of being as amazing as Audrey Tatou. One can dream.

A couple of weeks ago we had Justin visit us from Arkansas.
Out of the blue, we decided to just walk from my house to Granville Island... it was pretty fun...
Then we skipped out on psych and hit up Benny's, as per usual.

Glint

We were both having terrible days today, and so rather than do something constructive, we went shopping.
In retrospect, it's a bad idea to go to Gravity Pope when you have just spent two and a half months of your clothes budget on one pair of boots.

We tried on Fryes. So very comfortable. After making a pile of boxes, we made vague promises about coming back and buying a pair... I think the sincerity of those promises was mostly wishful thinking.

The situation got worse when I was suddenly transfixed by the sight of my absolute favorite Christopher Kane t-shirt in the Gravity Pope 'tailored goods' side (it sounds so high brow, and it is). So very soft. And the rest of the store was full of clearance Comme des Garcons, Rag and Bone, Alexander Wang, Opening Ceremony...

Some days, though, there's no need to actually buy anything. The experience of just gliding happily into the store, stroking the fabric, cooing over the unattainable... a little fantasy land.

Here's a few things that have caught my eye lately. The ring in particluar. It's made by Alkemie, a company out of LA that creates everything out of reclaimed metals. A store on Main St. here in Vancouver carries them, and I fell in love. I'm a big fan of all of their animal rings, the wolf, the hedgehog and the octopus. Take a look and find your favorite.

Glint by flashbang featuring Opening Ceremony

Come back baby

So.. If you check this blog at all, you may remember the shoes I was posting about here.
I went and tried them both on, and the boots won hands down. I actually ended up liking the brown boots better than the black.
This morning I had fun jumping up and down in them. Wheee... new shoes.







I can't stop humming Combat Baby by Metric.

Anthropologie 101

So this morning, the sun is (sort of) shining over Vancouver, and the birds are singing outside of my open window. I nearly forgot it was January, and instead, mistook the month for April. These happy spring-ish thoughts (and being in a shopping-y mood) led me to www.anthropologie.com. I have always been a huuuge fan of the store/website, but had never quite explored it to its full potential.
Let me explain.
The first thing I see is their new collection of 50's inspired dresses. SAY NO MORE, I was hooked. Imagine this:



With a bright red trench and a brown square leather bag, umbrella in hand, braving the drizzly spring morning to go to class. Perfect. And then I found these:





The scarf is perfect to brighten up an outfit and add some pattern and texture...and the green cardigan looks like the ultimate vintage store find, with the bright woodsy green colour and the flower embroidery. I can imagine it nicely paired with a short brown skirt, a red skinny belt and oxfords. BUT WAIT, that's not all. They have shoes..the prettiest, most delicate jewelery I have seen in a long time...and then I found the house and home section.
You can DECORATE YOUR HOUSE through the same store?!?!?
heaven. bliss.





That bowl is gorgeous. So is the weigh scale timer. And yes, that is indeed a cookie jar in the shape of an owl. There was also a utensils' jar that looked like the lion-monster creature from "Where the Wild Things Are". They had everything from baking dishes to curtains to those decorative sticks for martinis.
And I was positively enchanted by these:





These are KNOBS. You put them on cabinets and drawers and things. My mind was sufficiently blown. I didn't even know you could buy individual knobs as pretty as these. The white and blue porcelain inspired knob reminded me of the traditional Delft Blue pieces from the Netherlands that my Oma has hanging on her kitchen walls.
I had to stop looking, or I would have too much to blog about, and too many pictures to post! I hope to take a trip down to the States sometime in the near future, and Anthropologie will definitely be on my list of places to shop.

Indeed, it feels like home here.

This evening, whilst downloading some stuff from off the camera, (a recent Sartorialist-like photography spree for our Ubyssey stint), I uncovered the following pictures... Oh and I just got off the phone with Dani, who reminded me that we had already written a bit on Benny's, buuut, seeing as thought it's ONLY the best coffee shop this side of Vancouver, another post can't hurt...
So, picture the two of us, on a late Tuesday night after a hellishly long Psych class, sitting at a solitary table on the staircase landing. We're sipping some delicious tea that smells like flowers, and we've covered the table in our journals and artist pens and pencils. And then we write and draw to the sounds of...whatever's coming up next on the barista's iPod. There is no better way to spend a weeknight.

Scaley things that taste good

On Sunday, I decided to work on one of my New Year's resolutions to stop subsisting on rice and beans, and actually cook something interesting. So when I saw trout on special for $2.50, what could be better?

I googled 'pan fried trout' and the first link turned out to be the simplest recipe. But this seemed good to me. I could stick to my other resolution, i.e. don't spend so much money on bags of cornmeal and random spices you will never uses again.



Mind you, I had never done this before. Cooked fish, that is. Any sort of fish. Fortunately, the fish had already been gutted, or this might have been a bit of a disaster. I probably would not have been able to decapitate it... I felt sad enough with this pitiful little guy flopped in the bowl.
Doesn't it look sad?

It took me forever to work up the courage to actually roll it in the flour-pepper-salt mixture, but it looked rather cool. Like a fish mummy.



It smelled very yummy once frying.



The fish actually goes really quick. Like the recipe says, it's pretty much 5 minutes on each side, and done! I added some rice and peas, and had the best dinner in ages. Inexpensive, quick and tasty.



Ate. the. whole thing. In one night.



I'm sorry about the picture quality. And the lighting in this room is kind of making me look ghoulish. Rarrrrr fish.
(my hands are like that to keep it from dripping all over the place)



Dishes time! With my scrubber friend :)

Does anyone know any other good fish recipes that they would like to share?

Step carefully...

When I was a little kid, I was fascinated with bugs. Well, any creature really - bugs were just the most plentiful living things in my backyard. Under the guise of helping my mom garden I would overturn rotten wood, dig around in the soil and rummage in the compost to find some new friends. Then I would either attempt to catch them and give them names like 'wormie' and 'snailie', or peer from a healthy distance with a mixture of revulsion and fascination.

Beetles in particular amused me. We had this one species in our yard that was pretty easy to find under old wood, they were big and black and shiny. It was always great fun to pick one up from its hiding place, and then watch it clamber furiously back into hiding.

But one day, I picked up one of my friends, not one with any obvious horns or big pincers. I was in the process of christening him when out of nowhere he bit me! I had never felt so betrayed - I flung him down on the ground and started crying, although it didn't really hurt. No more beetle friends after that.

That's not to say I've let one cranky beetle ruin things completely. Just the other day I saw all these shiny blue beetles on pins in glass cases, and although I have no idea what use they could be, it seemed like a potentially wise purchase at the time. There's something about the glossy color that they have... out of nowhere something bright and shiny can appear, then fly away as soon as it came.


Yes, all of that just to say that I think that these Fluevog boots are just as nice and shiny as beetles.
My brother was amazing and got me a gift certificate to Fluevog, so now I am contemplating my choices. Heels or boots, that is the question.

Step Carefully... by flashbang featuring Fluevog