Hi, this is Ben again! I've been painting with wine lately because it's an interesting color and it tends to make me come up with things I wouldn't have thought of otherwise. Obviously, people are my favorite subject. The wine starts out pink and then turns purple, but it depends on the kind of wine. Bacchus stayed relatively pink.
I just couldn't miss an opportunity to say: "Great job, Ben!" My talented husband redesigned our blog (he actually built this whole theme from scratch, spending his evenings digging in code!) and we love it now more than ever before. We're planning on sticking to this new look for awhile. We're still working on some pages, including About us and Shop, but it all should be done soon. What do you think of our new look?
coat||Ride Snowboards; scarf&sweater||from Moscow; jeans||Selected via ASOS; boots||Dickies
As you might have read, we received free glasses from Firmoo a while back -- lots of people did. I'm not wearing them here, these are actually similar glasses that I got in Korea a couple of years ago. Anyway, they asked if I'd be willing to share an image with them on their website, which I did. One of the comments the photo received was: "A kind father?" I guess I'm old enough to be a father, but I'm much cooler, and I can't let that pass as my reputation on the internet, so I made an effort to look less kind in this post.
As Katie mentioned in her last post, I've been wearing lots of colorful pants recently. And as I've mentioned before, my tendency in the past has always been to play it safe and wear things that don't make me particularly stand out. I have liked colorful pants for a while but was not brave enough to wear them. I'm not sure if it's age or what, but I finally don't care that much what other people think of my pants, so I've really been enjoying them. I need a haircut, though.
Katie bought me these pants for my birthday! I really like them. As I've mentioned before, my tendency in the past has always been to be a relatively conservative dresser, but I've recently been trying to incorporate some brighter colors and more interesting patterns, so Katie's been helping me. My parents gave me the boots.
The gif below that Katie made of me throwing a snowball cracks me up, something about the way I shuffle my feet makes me seem like a crazy potato.
Whenever we take photos near the house, our fashion cat Uno joins us. He sees the camera and tries to get in the shot. Although when he's relaxing on a couch or just being cute, it's impossible to take a picture of him! Such an unpredictable guy. But he loves outfit photoshoots. My favorite photos of the day are below. Hahah Don't get too close to Uno!
Since we moved here in July we've been getting more and more relaxed about what we wear. The pace of life and the overall attitude toward self-presentation is very different in a small town than a big city. No one cares as much here about what you wear. As long as you look clean and you're not naked, you're fine. In a big city like Moscow it's very important to dress to impress. Every day. You're being judged everywhere: on your subway ride, on the street, in a store, at school, in the office, etc. It's important to dress up. I would never ever wear the same thing two days in a row when I worked at an office in Moscow. And doing what might seem unreasonably uncomfortable -- like wearing high heels on your hour-and-a-half long public transport commute to work -- is an unspoken big city fashion rule, and you don't want to be the one who can't keep up with it. When you see other people around you going out of their way to look stylish every day, it motivates you to do it as well.
Now it's a different story. If you look like you really spent time dressing up in Sandpoint, you sometimes hear jokes about it or at least get curious glaces. I lived in Bozeman, MT for a couple of summers and it was the same way. As my mom keeps telling me, I shouldn't give up on dressing up. I should dress just as I did in Moscow. But I slowly make my way down to flip-flops, tank tops and sweat pants, and it gets harder to motivate myself to really plan my outfits in advance and spend lots of time ironing, applying a different nail polish every day, wearing make-up and heels because I know that no one will see it or care if they do.
This is why I feel my blog is so important! I know that readers see my photos and are interested in things like fashion and personal style. I am changing and my tastes, and preferences are changing, too. And through this blog, other blogs, your comments and advice I feel like I have more chances to stay in touch with fashion. It's not that I don't like the more relaxed atmosphere, but I enjoy taking pride in what I wear and I don't want to lose my inspiration.
Ben is very supportive, too. I love his taste, he always looks stylish wherever we live. And I love shopping with him. Usually we pick out the same items and it makes a decision making process easier. Although he doesn't share my love of plushy fleece things, haha. I can't ignore homey, soft, cozy, fluffy things, but when I show Ben a cute white fleece hoodie or something like that, he just says: "It's OK".
- I know Halloween is over but I really want to share my love for Kathryn's photoshoot! Check it out!
- Have you already had Holiday favorites at Starbucks? We had eggnog latte a couple of days ago! I've never had eggnog before, so I couldn't imagine what it'd be like. But I loved it! It's pretty thick though, I should have had a smaller cup.
- This shop has the most adorable animal prints, cards and stickers on the planet! Of course, I've ordered some already :-)
This shirt is another that we found at a thrift store. I really liked the deep but bright "royal blue" color, and I realized I had enough blue stuff that I could dress like a blueberry. I have my usual blue shoes, too, but we decided that they might be too much blue -- actually, though, these shoes have blue soles, and blue stripes inside, too, so they still matched.
Katie picked out this shirt for me on our thrift store trip to Spokane and I really like it! Actually, overall this entire set of clothes came from thrift/secondhand stores. We got the pants and shoes at Ross a month or so ago. The shoes need to be glued a little on the soles, but otherwise they're holding up pretty well for cheap shoes. Actually, it seems like mens' shoes are a good thing to look for at thrift shops, my favorite shoes that I've ever bought were $5 at a thrift shop, they're real leather with leather soles. Unfortunately, the soles are wearing out now, but they traveled with me for two and a half years to Korea and Russia and everywhere in-between, so I guess they deserve to retire now. I was telling Katie the other day that I don't think I'll ever have a really good reason not to buy shoes at a thrift shop.
Hi, this is Ben. Don't forget to sign up for our giveaway, I'm doing a painting for the winner!
I always feel like I should explain these posts since they are not necessarily usual. I like to write little poems sometimes, and as with most things I create, I can't actually explain where they come from or where I get ideas, so I don't really have an explanation for this poem except that I thought it would be funny to rhyme a bunch of words that sounded like "urt." The rest just came out.
Burly Burt had on a shirt
He'd learnt to be right curt
His arms were burnt
His moustache curlt
He slurred his dirty words
Four kooky cops came clambering
Caps clasped in crooked claws
To catch a crabby chambermaid
Who'd broken all their laws
Big Burly Burt was quite unnerved
He sawr it all proceed
They dragged her cursing, cane and cape
The strangest sight he'd seed
And Burly Burt got angry
He burst out from the door
He roared "have mercy on the girl,
you'll dash her on the floor."
But kooky cops, they cannot catch
Complaints called out this way
They crammed her crosswise in the car
Where she did kick, but stay
So Burly Burt tore off his shirt
And bared his brazen breast
With bellowing he bashed their brains
Then went inside, to rest
And Millicent, her name it was
Climbed up his quiet stair
And Burly Burt undid the door
To sit her on a chair
He looked into her face, so plain
And said, “Your eyes are two,
I'd like it if you married me.”
To which she said, “I do.”
And there they clung together
Dear Millicent and Burt
While lay the coppers conked outside
Their corpses cold, inert
As a counterpoint to the poem, here's a song I wrote for Katie last week:
Whenever I try to write songs they always end up slightly melancholy, even if I begin with a happy idea. I sometimes feel that I could take on a certain persona that would allow me to write a happy song, but I have trouble doing this in a way that feels true, so I generally just let the melody develop as it occurs and it usually turns out sounding a little sad or lonely. I guess I just have a touch of sadness in my soul. :-)
It's thunderstorming in Sandpoint that results in dark mornings and beautiful sunsets. We decided to take some outfit photos of Ben outside while it was bright and sunny. I love absolutely everything about this look and all the shades of blue. Sam-dog and Uno the cat loved it too and joined the photo shoot.
There will be more surprises from Ben this week. We are very happy to launch something special tomorrow!
It was a rare sunny and (kind of) warm day so we went for a walk! What started with us taking pictures of the trees, grass and our outfits turned into a crazy jumping and laughing session :-) You can see the results below.
PS: my husband is the best grasshopper in the world!
