This is what I wore Monday, to do some wandering around and go to the Freak Revolution meet up. Crankyface is courtesy of walking several blocks while hungry!

Let’s break it down:

• dress from Hot Topic (I KNOW, RIGHT?! I mean. ahem. I really like it. I think my favorite thing about it is that it’s longer in the back than in the front, which prevents the problem of skirt-shortening in the back that is caused by my butt. I’m sure other girls with some badonkadonk can sympathize.)
• secondhand Hyde belt
• Farylrobin Visby boots (I got them from OnlineShoes.com, who has them on sale. Amazon also has them for a similar price now. If you’re thinking of ordering, I’d say they run true to size.) They are super comfy! My first pair of Farylrobin shoes, and I am duly impressed.
• DIY’d fascinator, with bird skull from Alicia
• Necklace from CMandMJewelry on Etsy.
• purse from Buffalo Exchange
• glow-in-the-dark white skin courtesy of being inside all the time and slathering on sunscreen when not

Close up of face/fascinator:

And the necklace:

I love it. It looks much better in person, I was really impressed by the quality – I think I’ll definitely be ordering more from them in the future!

I am ridiculously worn out, for not having done much this week. Just some hanging out, meeting awesome new people, and trying to navigate Austin with the crazyass traffic. We’ve been walking a lot of places because of it! Maybe that’s why I’m so worn out. Either way, I’m having a great time meeting people and it’s totally inspiring! I’m amped to start working on things after this week – I’m effectively taking this week off, with Saturday being the last “party day”, Sunday being for recuperation, and then I am going to start kicking ass and taking names as of next Monday.

I hope you’re all having a fabulous week and enjoying spring! It was surreal, we left for Missouri last Friday and most of the trees here didn’t have leaves – then Monday morning, when I walked outside in the sun, I said “Wow, everything turned green over the weekend!”. I love it. Spring is DEFINITELY here!

• One of the most powerful questions ever.
• Breaking away from Generation “Now”.
• The idea of a feminist fashion show is a fascinating one to me. This post at a l’allure garçonnière talks about one that actually went down.
• How to Practice Major Mega Supreme Bodily Love…Daily!
• Making your travel dreams a reality, part III.
• NSFW (but very funny): Porn for women.
• and another one from Danielle! jeez lady, why ya gotta be so awesome. the suck factor of life balance, + passion as a cure to stress

That’s all for this Monday, folks! Posting this week will probably be light, as I will (hopefully) be out enjoying the SXSW madness. Hope your week is off to a great start!

Self-love by Loving Earth

I’ve noticed a serious problem with the way people go about trying to get healthy, at least in America. Diet and exercise programs are all geared towards visible results, as fast as possible, whether it’s healthy or not. This sets people up for serious disappointment. Why? Well, if the person is dieting and exercising in a healthy fashion, results can be very slow to show themselves, if ever (more on that in a second). I propose that instead of setting out trying to look thinner or buffer or what-have-you, you should just do what feels good.

This is a scary idea, I know. Due to a lot of variants that aren’t really worth getting in to (or I’ll go on all day!), we are taught from day one that our bodies can’t be trusted, that they are base and dirty, and that we need to keep them under control at all times. Doing things for the sheer sake of pleasure – of whatever kind – is viewed as decadent and to many people, absolutely immoral! These leaves many many people totally out of tune with their bodies and with no idea how to take care of them aside from what is shown in mainstream media (and we all know what a great source that is).

So what do I mean by doing what feels good, instead of focusing on visible results? Well, I’ll use myself as an example. I do about 30-45 minutes of yoga and exercise every morning. I’ve been doing this for probably six months now, and there really aren’t a lot of visible results (aside from increased flexibility, but that’s, you know, not something you can see unless I’m showing it off). Last time I weighed myself – we don’t own a scale, so this was around three months ago – I weighed around 145, at 5′2″. I’m sure I haven’t lost much, if any, of that weight. By the way, that puts my BMI in the “overweight” category, but we all know BMI is a total crock. It also happens to be the only “scientific” way of telling if someone is overweight/obese or not. FYI: if I was about 15-20 pounds heavier, I’d be in the “obese” category. Brings a new light to the word, hmm?

Anyways, sidetracks aside, I do yoga and exercise because it makes me feel great. I can totally tell the difference if I don’t do yoga in the morning. It’s the same for food – I certainly don’t think of myself as deprived in any way whatsoever. I don’t count calories or worry excessively about my food intake. I don’t eat much processed food, hardly eat fast food at all, and never drink soda. Why? Because it makes me feel like crap. I can definitely feel the difference if, say, we’re on a road trip and end up eating gas station food and fast food. I feel like total crap the next day.

If my lifestyle was focused on losing weight, staying very thin, and obsessively tracking what I eat, I would have given it up a long time ago and I’d definitely be less healthy as a result. I simply do what makes me feel good – I eat good food and exercise because I feel great as a result. It seems to me that it would be better overall if we all tried this same system (if you can call it that) – no guilt trips, no calorie counting, no assigning labels of “good” and “bad” to foods, no strict plan that sets the person planning it up for resentment and failure (see also: diets don’t work). Just doing what makes your body feel good.

It’s hard to put into words the way this changed my relationship with my body. When you get back in tune with what you, as a physical human being, need, and get away from eating junk food, or giving moral labels to food (what is up with that, by the way?), or not ever exercising, the change is amazing. The pure joy of being more in touch with my body is enough of a reward – once I learned to listen, I figured out what I needed and when I needed it. I feel much better and calmer (although I’m sure the yoga has a part in that – I’m pretty fanatical about it!), all the time. I highly, highly recommend giving it a go! Obviously I can’t make any promises about how you’ll feel, but it’s a good journey to take.

Further reading:

• Self Esteem is Revolutionary.
• Gala Darling’s posts on radical self love.
• Shapely Prose
• More on intuitive eating.

Saturday was kind of a mixed bag. I didn’t get photos of the outfit I was wearing earlier in the day, but I started off frustrated because my hair was not cooperating (just went poofy and frizzy instead of curly with volume) and my bracelet kept catching on my lace top. I met up with Amanda to go to Zara up in the Domain, and aside from feeling rather out of place (as she said: “I feel like someone’s going to walk up to me and say ‘What’s your tax bracket?! You don’t belong here!’”), I did find some cute stuff. For very inexpensively, I might add!

However, about halfway through, I realized I’d lost one of my brand new studded nOir rings that I’d bought on Gilt. I was kind of upset anyways, because I ordered an eight (I’ve never worn larger than a 7.5 before), and they were VERY small. I can fit one of them on my ring finger with some effort, but they fit better on my pinkie. Poochie said she ordered size 7 and they barely fit her size 5.5 pinkie. However, Ashe got the same rings and said they fit her fine. What gives, nOir?! Ugh. Anyways, they fit ok on my pinkie, although a tiny bit loose, and so I figured I’d keep them rather than return them, because I liked them so much. One apparently fell off somewhere – I think it was probably in the car, as I realized it shortly after entering Forever 21…I just haven’t dug around in the car to see if I can find it, quite yet. Our car is a bit like the one in Wristcutters, so it very well might be futile.

After realizing that, I found some cute things, and then I went back to the car and it wouldn’t start. I promptly freaked out, only to realize it was just a loose connection around the battery. Whew. Crisis averted. I then swung back by the apartment to pick up Matt while Amanda got Lennon from his rugby game, and we went to Taco Bueno for lunch. We then reconvened for  the 10:15 show of Alice in Wonderland – we got there at 9ish, and there was already a line! You can see our outfits above – I’m not 100% for sure where Amanda got her things at (wait, actually, the dress is from BX and the shoes are from SoLa). My rundown looks like: diy bleach-striped Target tank, vest from TJ Maxx, I think the capris are Tripp, got in a clothing swap, Fluevog shoes, and I believe the hat is from Fantasies in Leather on Etsy.

Face closeup:

Jewelry closeup:

nOir studded ring & rabbit ring is from F21. It gave me giggles because it looked like the bunny was wearing a studded collar. Hardcore bunny.

SO. Movie thoughts:

I really liked it. I know it’s probably not cool to like something so hyped, but I thought it was pretty awesome. The visuals were ,of course, absolutely stunning. I agree with Retro Chick in thinking they probably toned things down for the chillins. I do love that the story was basically a young lady coming in to her own – I felt like that Alice would be a great role model for little girls! The pacing was fine by me, there were some funny parts, and there were also some neat things thrown in for those geeks who watch for them (i.e., me – anyone else catch that the Mad Hatter was a redheaded, kilt-wearing, Scottish-accented man trying to incite rebellion against a tyrannical queen? Or was that just me?).

Not the most comprehensive review ever (this is why I’m not a film critic) but in short: go see it, if you get the chance.

Oh and…

This is Arthur. He hangs out right outside our door waiting for us to give him bread scraps (you can see the edge of our door in this photo, that’s how close he gets), and he is a very large duck. I had to explain to the neighbor that the things on his face aren’t tumors (apparently her adult daughter won’t go anywhere near him, because she thinks he has tumors on his face. which makes no sense either way…), but just a marking that that breed (species?) of duck has. I know this because we had ducks when I was a little kid. I don’t remember any of them wagging their tails though, and Arthur does. It is HIGHLY entertaining.

That is all.

The following post was sparked by reading about the BME internship contest (you can vote for the finalists here), which was linked to in Gala Darling’s latest Carousel. Actually, a combination of reading about the internship contest and a comment that was left on the post, from Sunny:

Oh man, I wish I knew about that BME contest when it started, that’s seriously been my dream job for years, I gave it up when I went into college though because everyone kept telling me you can’t go to school for anthropology and take it into body mods around the world!

1st thought: How sad that someone would be so discouraging to her, because that sounds like a very plausible idea to me!

2nd thought: What a cool job that would be!

See, I’ve always thought that if I ever went back to college, it would most likely be for a degree in a “useless” area (read: area that would probably result in a career in academia). Something like anthropology, dead languages, or religious studies – along those lines. This isn’t a new thing. I distinctly remember my mom finding one of Jaye’s opening lines in Wonderfalls particularly humorous:

Gretchen: Did you end up over-educated and unemployable like you said in the yearbook?

Jaye: Yep. Went to Brown, got a philosophy degree, now I work here.

(She works in a Niagra Falls souvenir shop.)

There are lots of reasons I’ll probably never go back – the cost, mainly, the fact that I’m so curious I’d love to study all of those things (and more – which isn’t really feasible), and that with the educational system the way it is, let’s face it, a lot of people end up teaching who have absolutely no business doing so, even in colleges/universities. But the main reason I haven’t seriously considered it is because, let’s face it: I’d never make it. I would have to be constantly monitoring my appearance and speech to be taken seriously within academia. And we all know I have serious issues with people restricting what I do with my body.

Which is why a career in anthropology studying body modification in various cultures sounds so appealing – I’d get to do all kinds of reading and talking about something I find interesting, plus (and I might be wrong), I’d think that would be one academic specialty where it would be perfectly okay to show up looking like a tattooed, fairy-haired weirdo.

It’s all kind of a moot point anyways, because even if I did go back to college/university, I don’t know if I could pick one thing to study! I’ve always been interested in so many things and reading a list of the things I wanted to be “when I grow up” shows as much – writer/artist, marine biologist, something with linguistics, Egyptologist, business owner, indie fashion designer.

And while I’m getting better at handling so many passions & understanding that I don’t necessarily have to pick just one thing to do for the rest of my life (cue ominous music), I still get frustrated sometimes. Like reading entrepreneur or lifestyle design books and they harp on about how the path to happiness is finding your One True Passion and figuring out how to make money from it. Uh-huh. How in the world do I pick just one passion?! If I could make a living by being professionally curious, I’d be totally set.

I always thought that this was a Michelle-thing, and that other people didn’t have this issue. What a relief to realize that no, not everyone is like that. I’m getting much better at juggling my passions myself – I have this site and the Valkyries project as creative outlets, Matt & I are working on a project together where I’ll get to flex my business-y muscles, Style Therapy is a bit of both creativity & business, and of course there’s always reading on the side. Among the titles currently on my Amazon wishlist: DIY U: Edupunk, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education (I can’t wait for this to be released!), How to Make Webcomics, and Teach Yourself Icelandic.

Anyways, apparently The Renaissance Soul and Refuse to Choose are great books on the matter. I’ve got The Renaissance Soul on hold at the local library, but it is taking forever! for it to get to me. I  ordered it out of impatience, now I’m waiting on it to arrive – & I’ve never seen a bad thing from Barbara Sher so I might go ahead and order Refuse to Choose too. Stay tuned for reviews!

And as always, I’d love to hear what you think – are you a one true passion person or a too many passions to count person?

• Jealousy’s a Green Eyed Bitch.
• SXSW is coming up and I am sooo excited! Tolly over at Austin Eavesdropper has some tips for you: How to Dominate SXSW & part two is here.
• How to embrace your true beauty – what a sweet article!
• Making Your Travel Dream A Reality: Part 1 & part 2.
• Memo: quit beating yourself up already!
• Found via Life Without Pants: Justin Timberlake and the Art of Presenting Well. Hilarious!
• And another one from the lovely Ashe Mischief, this time at IFB: Stop getting low-balled as a blogger. She hit it out of the park with this one – SUCH a well-written & needed post.

Oh, by the way, I’ve jumped on the bandwagon and now have a formspring! So..yeah. Anyways, I’m going to be very very busy this week, working on Matt & I’s project (no need for suspense, I don’t imagine it’s something that will interest too many of my readers), working in general, and gearing up for SXSW! Because of all that, I might not be replying to comments or emails as fast as normal. Just a heads up, lovelies! I hope you are all starting your week off right.

Project Beyond the Runway

Edited by Fashion Pulse Daily

Reading through the links this week, I realized that fashion week or no fashion week, fashion will most certainly go on! A winter snowstorm couldn’t even slow down New York Fashion Week, and the links below are testament to the wonderful style that exists beyond the runway, such as Ode to Awe’s jewelry discovery, how to look chic while lounging by Cafe Fashionista, and tips for vintage shoe shopping by Wicked Whimsy. Don’t get me wrong, I love being ‘in the know’ on runway looks and trends, but how you interpret them and work them into your personal style is so much more important than remembering which designers showed one-shoulder looks this season!

As expected, there was a fabulous round-up of links in the forum as well, all worthy of your eyeballs!

Links à la Mode : February 25th

39th and Broadway – A Side of the Industry Unknown by Most: Life as a Corporate Fashion Designer
British Style Bloggers – Cherish forever what makes you unique, ‘cos you’re a yawn once it’s gone
Cafe Fashionista - A step-by-step guide to looking luxurious even when lounging
Clutch22 -Up close and personal with Vivienne Tam as she expands her fashion+tech innovations to a new category
CMYKaboom – Independent Fashion Bloggers (IFB) ‘Tweet Up in the Tents’ event
Debutante Clothing - Vintage Jewelry: Q&A with Lucite line Circa Sixty Three
Fabulous Finds Gal – Moonstuck at the opera with photographer Bersa
Fashion Pulse Daily – Sonia Rykiel Pour H&M; the debut and the review
Holier Than Now – New Take on Florals (5 Under $50)
Idiosyncratic Style - A Girl’s Guide to Maternity Style
Independent Fashion Bloggers : Evolving Influence Recap : Part One
Individual Chic: – Would you have wanted a Computer Engineer Barbie when you were smaller? Or would you love one now?
Night Watch – 10 Questions with Model Clara Zapffe
Ode to Awe - Denmark based Alidra Alic’s Alice-inspired jewelry
Oranges and Apples – Rules for advertising and sponsorship on blogs
Retro Chick – The Ethics of Blogging
Smiles Go with Everything -10 Tips for Shopping on Ebay: How to find great deals on awesome duds.
The Coveted – Visits Nine West HQ for a sneak peak of AW10 shoe collections!
The Style PA – Gives Henry Holland a grilling ahead of his House of Holland show.
The Sunday Best – Do men get better service when they shop?
Wicked Whimsy -What to look for when buying vintage shoes
Workchic – Fall 2010 NY Fashion week collections: recreated runway to the office outfits

HOKAY. So here we have: T-shirt from Rock N Swap & then dyed unevenly (more on that in a second), H&M hacked up skirt, JUMP booties, Tarina Tarantino bracelet is from BX, secondhand necklace, no idea where I got the teensy pentacle necklace, heart ring is off eBay, Hyde belt.

Jewelry detail:

And as you’ve probably noticed, I went and changed up my hurr:

It’s SFX Sonic Green mixed with a bit of Splat blue. The dark chunk on the right side of the photo is SFX Deep Purple, but it is currently being disagreeable and choosing to just show up as almost black in most lights/photos. It took me a few days to get used to it (I stuck with the purple so long, for me! I think anything would have been a bit of a shock), but I’ve decided I like it. I was originally attempting platinum with chunks of turquoise but my hair (and the remnants of the purple dye) had other ideas in mind, SO.

Anyways, this is what I wore to see Amanda play at a benefit for the Boys & Girls Club!

I am continually amazed by the great photos I get with this camera under most conditions. Unfortunately, zoomed in from 20-30 feet away using the flash at night is apparently not one of those conditions. Who knew! If you want to see more photos, check out Amanda’s website.

She’s really good! Totally undersells herself. She’s only been playing three months and has already mastered one Dixie Chicks song, at least. (Psst. Amanda. I vote for “Earl Had to Die” next time!) This is all mysterious magic to me, the person for whom reading music notes is like trying to decipher ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. Worse, actually, I think I have a better handle on the Egyptian!

Back to the dyeing. Yeah, so, in my infinite wisdom I decided that, instead of trying to find a plug for our kitchen sink and putting the clothes in that one at a time, I’d just tump them all in the bathtub, since I’ve decided I kind of like the unevenly dyed look. And tote some boiling water in from the kitchen, since the water’s supposed to be super hot. Well, that part resulted in a burn, and while the clothes turned out okay (I’m sure you’ll see the rest of them soon), the bathtub…hmm.

I have dubbed it the Zombie Bathtub. Which of course, prompted a debate between Matt and I about how a zombie bathtub would spread its zombification. The odd stripes on the bottom are from masking tape – I had put some on the shirt to attempt leaving some spots totally white. I was unaware that when the masking tape hit the super hot dye-bath it would be all “EFF THIS NOISE” and immediately sink to the bottom of the tub. Thanks a lot, masking tape, you fail at life.

All I’ve got to say is that I damn well better get a lot of wear out of the clothes I dyed, since not only did I get a burn but I’m going to have to scrub and bleach the bathtub after I just cleaned the whole bathroom a week ago! I’m sure I’ll be able to get it out, but just a PSA for other adventurous crafters: bathtub dyeing = bad idea.

Pull the plug, lady!

I’m sure you’re all waiting with bated breath to hear the results of the internet diet & my thoughts on it after finishing! I ended up just doing one hour a day; thirty minutes in the morning and thirty minutes at night. I was originally going to do two hours a day, but figured I might as well do as little as possible. Without further ado…

The good:

• Once I had a time limit established, it was really, really easy to stay under that time and still get done everything I needed done. A large part of this might be due to my personal situation (I know a lot of other people get more email/comments and are subscribed to more blogs than I am), but with 30 minutes I managed to check my email, check job listings, read comments/delete spam, read a blog entry or three, and even tweet a couple of times.
• I found it a lot easier to stick to my morning routine of doing yoga before anything else. I’m not sure why, maybe because I knew I’d be closing the laptop after 30 minutes, and then I’d end up doing the yoga anyways.
• I generally found myself less stressed out throughout the week.
• Lots more time for reading.
• And for some reason, I slept much better than usual!

The bad:

There wasn’t any bad, actually! Except coming back to a large backlog of blog posts in my Google Reader. And missing my Twitter buddies.

Thoughts & reactions:

I think the weirdest thing for me was realizing how not-bad it is to only check email twice a day. I had this vision of my email inbox overflowing, with me frantically trying to keep up, and in reality? Not so much. I don’t know if it’s because checking your email every ten minutes gives the illusion of receiving many more messages than there actually are, or what, but there you have it.

The main thing I decided is that I need to cut down my intake of internet-based media, pure and simple. I’ve already cleaned up my reader by some 30%, and I’m unsubscribing from email lists left and right. I think a large part of the reason I’ve been feeling very stale and in somewhat of a rut lately is that most of the things I read or look at are internet based – this isn’t bad in and of itself, but for my brain to have a large reservoir of inspiration to draw from, more variety is needed.

The problem is, as I noted last time, the totally frickin’ addictive nature of the internet. My eventual goal is to try and get everything internet related that needs done in two or three days a week. All the internet-based writing, blog maintenance, email reading/replying, that good stuff. The rest of the time, I’ll be keeping it down to two hours a day. And I’m going to keep only checking my email 2-3 times a day, as well as stay off the computer for an hour or two before bed since it seems to have made me sleep so much better.

Oh, and as far as the direction of the site? I decided I’d just write what I wanted to, and make up new categories all willy-nilly as needed. Which means there is a strong possibility of non-fashion/style related posts in the future, just a heads up!

Another short one this week! Still getting caught up after the end of the internet diet and all.

• How to be miserable as an artist.
• 100 ways you can start loving yourself right now. (Note that turning off technology was on there. I’m totally ahead of the curve!)
• Simon Doonan’s tribute to McQueen is one of the best I’ve read yet.

How awesome is THIS?! (found via Fashion Pirates)

• 6 Steps for Totally Nailing a Job Interview.
• The ethics of blogging – definitely a good read!
• Also, I have to add, we got a Swiffer this weekend, and it is AWESOME. Need to keep a broom around for particles too big for it to pick up, and I think we’ll of course keep the mop & mop bucket for heavy duty cleaning, but I am amazed by this thing. It picks up approximately 536% more cat hair than a broom, which of course makes me happy. I’m convinced that cat hair is made up of microscopic ninjas, it somehow finds a way to hide everywhere.

Like I said – a short one this week, but hopefully the Lady Gaga + Star Trek mashup makes up for it! Have a freakin’ fabulous week!