Monday, April 30, 2012

Little Black Dress

Monday is a harsh mistress. I totally wasn't ready for the weekend to end even if I didn't do anything interesting. Just watched a lot of playoff hockey even though I'm not a fan of the teams left. Stupid Penguins and Canucks and Senators!

Today I had to brief my Deputy, who is the top bureaucrat in the department, so I dressed for the occasion. Plus, it's freakin' cold here!



Dress: Trina Turk (from NYC a few years ago)
Blouse: 172 grams from Renaissance
Shoes: Fluevog Wonders | Ayers

I hadn't planned to layer this blouse under this dress - it was a last minute addition. The sleeves on this top are quite fitted on the upper arm but they are belled and flowy at the bottom which makes it more interesting. It's also quite a long blouse so I was worried that it might peak out at the bottom but I got lucky there.





You know what's great? A dress with lining. All dresses should be lined. And have pockets.  I wish this dress had pockets; then it would be the perfect little black dress.


Today's flair. Duran Duran baby!

Saturday, April 28, 2012

Malaise

Yesterday I was feeling out of sorts. I don't know why but I was pretty sulky all day. Who doesn't have those days where you walk around with a big pout on your face that says "Leave me alone"? Even taking these photos felt like a chore and I had to delete a lot of photos where my face just said "grouch".

April 27


Necklace: F21
Sweater: Zellers
Jumpsuit: Lilith
Shoes: Vivienne Westwood Anglomania for Melissa

I love this jumpsuit and I love these shoes but I just felt like a rumpled mess. Even the look on my face says "MEH".

This jumpsuit is a linen blend so it wrinkles the moment you take it off the hanger.


I order to take an interesting photo, I put on my coat.

I bought this coat at Smoking Lily's tiny wee store in Victoria. It's about the size of a closet. I remember grabbing it and trying to buy it with my debit card but their machine was down so I had to run down the street to a bank machine to get the money so this coat could be MINE!

And it was a great purchase. I've had it for about 5 years and it's machine washable and still looks new. I get a lot of complements on it.

The only weird thing about it is that one panel is of a different screen print - something like a rural road with power lines. Kind of an oddity.

And the back.

I could have sold this coat a few hundred times but I'll never give it up. It probably cost me close to $300 but my per wear cost is about $1.00.  Worth every penny!



Even my cat Merlin is Pouting! 


Thursday, April 26, 2012

Inspiration

This outfit was inspired by recent outfit pieces posted by two other bloggers. 


Scarf: Alexander McQueen
Sweater: Club Monaco
Dress: Shabby Apple
Skirt: Banana Republic thrifted
Shoes: Cydwoq from Ped Shoes

First off, I got the idea to hitch up a little bit of the dress to add some interest to the outfit from Sheila. She used brooches to gather up her skirt. I used on of those clips with elastic between them (I don't know what they're called.

I kind of like how it turned out.

The second element is my Cydwoq shoes. Megan Mae has been wearing some Cydwoq flats which reminded me how much I like these shoes. They are almost architectural with their angles and strappy leather.



These aren't totally comfortable though because there's a zipper on the back of the shoes that cuts into the back of my achilles tendon so I keep it unzipped about a centimeter.

The heel of these shoes is a bit lower than the toe, kind of like Earth shoes "negative heel technology". These are prettier though.





I added some flair. These are my favourites. Who doesn't like guitar playing squirrels and embracing their peculiarity?

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

More than just colour and shape

Today was a bit of a better day but we've gotten very busy. My job is quite variable - sometimes busy and sometimes slow. We're definitely in a busy period. So busy I almost forgot to take outfit pictures.

 I'm smiling again!

Blouse: Club Monaco
Dress: forEvaMore etsy store
Belt: From another dress
Shoes: Desigual

I discovered that Desigual had started making shoes from Sal in this post on Already Pretty and like her, I also knew I was done for. I had to track down a seller that would ship to Canada which I found on eBay. These aren't as elaborate or as patterned as some of the Desigual shoes but I love the stripes (which you can't see in these photos) and blocks of colour.

I'm not a big fan of pink but I figured that I could deal with a pink heel.

Of the shoes, I think I'm in love.


I last wore this dress "pre-blog" but I have a photo here. It's just a thin fabric sheath with some strategically sewn folds on the bodice.































Here's an instagram photo of the shoes so you can see the stripes. I'm meganfluevog on instagram if you want to add me.

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

But where's the stupid lie that has to make it's point

I had the most frustrating day today. I make it a point to not talk about my job too much here so I won't go into any details but my day may have ended with me slamming my hands on my desk and yelling "ARRRGHHH!" very loudly.

When I got home though I was happy because my UPS package was delivered. Stay tuned tomorrow for that reveal but first today where I wore my new ASOS shoes. Every thing else is a blog rerun.


Blouse: Club Monaco
Dress: Noa Noa via eBay
Shoes: ASOS Sonita T-bar (they are now on sale)

These shoes and tights don't exactly match but it's close enough. I really liked the blue with the rusty-orange colour.

I loves me some t-bar shoes. So retro-esque. Some say these shoes are too juvenile for an almost 41 year old woman but I say "shut up" to those losers! I can be cute if I wanna!
Here's a close up of my necklace. I wish I could remember where I got it but I thought it was a pretty good choice for me.
My motto...


 


 


Monday, April 23, 2012

In which our heroine actually smiles with teeth

I'm waiting for a package that was supposed to be delivered by end of day today, which was an hour ago according to UPS. Such a frustrating exercise when these things don't show up when scheduled. *mutters angrily* *kicks things*

Yes this is totally a "first world problem" but I want my package!

Today I tried something new - smiling with teeth rather than just smizing at the camera! I'm usually very uncomfortable smiling in photos since I don't really have a chin and when I smile that particular affliction becomes more noticeable.


Focusing on the positive, I like how this dress emphasizes my favourite body part - my neck.

Dress: Thrifted from Formerly Yours (local)
Necklace: Pretty Chic
Shoes: Fluevog Truth | Pilgrim

Pretty psychedelic dress, eh? I almost didn't buy this dress because the purple and yellow (gold) combination reminds me of high school. These were my school colours. Eck!




I bought these shoes at the Gastown store in Vancouver in 2010. I almost didn't get this colour because I didn't think it was very versatile but I'm glad I took a chance.

I also wasn't sure about the "white wax" coating but I really like how the blue colour underneath is starting to show through as the wax starts to wear off.

These shoes were the shoes of my dreams in the 1980s. Pointy toes, big buckles - glad I can have them now.

I also have a pair of my other dream shoes, the Munster. If only I had the courage to wear them.

Sunday, April 22, 2012

A day off


Friday, April 20

This is Friday's outfit but I just got around to posting it now because yesterday I spent most of the day helping my husband to pack up his old studio and move things to his new studio. Then we went to a photo exhibit/competition where my husband won best portrait and then we had supper. It was a long day.

T-shirt: Club Monaco
Jeans: trapperjane.etsy.com
Shoes: Fluevog | Bass Minstrel Marian


Friday was a less busy day but I had a long nap in the afternoon so it was also a bit of a wasted day.







Every person should have a pair of cute, red flats in their wardrobe. I also have these in teal. Once I wore one of each as you can see in this photo. Not really an everyday look but fun for a photo shoot. The funny thing is that when we were taking these photos, our Premier was in the drug store at the same time. Technically he's my boss (at the highest level) but I'm pretty sure he's never met me.














Jetta is doing much better now but isn't quite out of the woods. She's eating more but she's also doing strange things like wanting to stand in sinks full of water but not drinking anything. We're spoiling her rotten too - anything to get her to gain weight.

Thursday, April 19, 2012

TGI Thursday

I have tomorrow off so I may have dressed more casually today than I should have because it felt like Friday.



Sweater: Danier via Value Village
T-shirt: Old Navy
Pants: Lilith from NYC
Shoes: Vivienne Westwood for Melissa

Everything is thrifted except for these pants which cost.... well I'm not going to tell you that but I think they were worth every penny. They have everything that I like about pants - mid-calf length, big pockets, wide legs. Irresistible!

Like I said above, I have the day off tomorrow but I'm probably going to end up spending the day helping my husband move stuff into his new photo studio. Hopefully I'll be able to sleep in a little bit.

Also got my hairs cut after work. My red is nice and bright again. A shout out to my peeps at Jay Wells to whom I showed my blog tonight. *waves*

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Cute or Ridiculous?

This outfit was inspired these boots and by Melanie from Bag and a Beret's Monday outfit. Melanie always looks so funky and chic. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that this entirely works on me. At work today I kept saying that I knew I looked ridiculous but I was Honey Badger* about it.


Sweater: Danier via Value Village
Necklace and Dress: from Meow
Bloomers: from some store in Paris
Boots: Fluevog Bellevue | DeVere

Grey tights might have been better to give this a solid long line.

I didn't have any meetings today or really any this week, which is rare, so I felt it was ok to take a risk and wear these bloomers. I'm not really sure how to style them. I might end up giving them to my husband for his studio wardrobe.





















I bought these boots about a year ago and returned them because I didn't think I'd wear them but I kept thinking about them. Then the black paisley design sold out.

Unfortunately I noticed last week on the website that this colour was restocked. Now they are MINE! MINE! ALL MINE!













* Honey Badger don't care. Honey Badger don't give a shit.

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Pyjama dress 2: Electric Boogaloo

She - Wore - LEMON....



Sweater: Club Monaco
Scarf: came with a hank of hand dyed yarn by knitivity.com
Dress: eShakti
Shoes: Hush Puppies from beyondtherack.com

Got these shoes from Beyond the Rack - one of those discount designer/name brand clothing websites. They were super discounted so I thought, what the hell. And they're yellow.

Since I tend toward outfits that are "matchy matchy" I decided to wear them with my yellow pyjama dress.

It was a grey, foggy day here so this was a nice sunny choice. It's not the most inspired outfit ever though.

Comfy shoes, pyjama dress = slightly yawn?


This is probably something that Captain Obvious would say but these also look good with jeans.

In other news, I'm so happy that I'm going to be getting my haircut this week. My "Louise Brooks" style is starting to look more "Little Lord Fauntleroy".

Monday, April 16, 2012

Black Jersey


I forgot to take my camera to work again today. Luckily it was still bright and sunny when I got home.


Dress: Shabby Apple from Pretty Things Boutique
Tights: Simon in Montreal
Shoes: Fluevog Wonders | Ayers

The dress was last worn here and the shoes were worn here.

Just a plain black dress with plain-ish black shoes, jazzed up with fancy tights. Yes, unfortunately it's still tights weather here though it's getting warmer. Makes me believe spring will finally come.

Sometimes the simplest outfits are the best outfits.




Just because you go simple, doesn't mean you can't add some subtle pizzazz.

And an update on my cat, Jetta. She had an ultrasound today and her bladder looks fine but her intestines show some issues that could be irritable bowel syndrome or lymphoma. We're treating her UTI and hopefully she'll keep eating well and gain her weight back. If she stops eating again, we'll consider getting a biopsy to determine what to do next. Poor sweet girl.

Sunday, April 15, 2012

Sunday

My photos from Friday will unfortunately never see the light of day because my photo card broke. Too bad since my outfit was so cute.

Here's a crappy iPhone photo that I took of my skirt and shoes.


Porcupine! I got this skirt from etsy from Salmon Street Studio which seems to have closed.

I was wearing my emerald green Smoking Lily blouse with it.

I may have mentioned on here that I have 3 cats - Dougal, Merlin and Jetta. Jetta was quite old when we adopted her - the shelter guessed she was about 10 - which was about 4 years ago. She's the sweetest cat in the whole world. On Thursday we noticed that she was off her food which is very unusual for her since there's nothing she likes more than food. Yesterday we took her to the vet and the news isn't great. She's lost almost a kilogram which is a lot when you only weigh 3kg to begin with, she was a bit dehydrated and there's lots of nastiness in her urine. Tomorrow she's having an ultrasound of her bladder to see if she has tumours and she's being tested for hyper-thyroidism. Poor little thing.


Spare a thought for my Jetta-girl tomorrow if you can.

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Yellow....and chickens

I know today is Thursday but this is Wednesday's outfit.

Yesterday was a very weird day. It started out normal enough - I got up and went to work - but I left work early because I was traveling about 3 hours to a city in a neighbouring province for a meeting that was held today. And that's when things got a little weird.

First, let's set the stage by showing you my outfit.



Necklace: gift from husband from China
Blouse: Vintage Givenchy from etsy
Jeans: H&M
Boots: Fluevog Operetta | Mirella

Pretty bright, eh?

Yes, I was wearing jeans on a Wednesday, something I normally wouldn't do but I knew I was going to be sitting in a car for 3 hours so I wanted to be comfortable. It turned out to be a good choice.

I was hitching a ride with a colleague, B, who was going to the same meeting and when he came to pick me up he said he had to make a stop at his house before we got on the road.

He lives about 30 minutes outside the city and his neighbour had phoned to say that one of his chickens had gotten loose and a dog was chasing after it and had possibly injured it.

When we got to his place he asked if I could help hunt down the chicken. He moved toward his neighbour's deck since the chicken was last seen heading that direction so I went to check out the coop.

That's when we discovered a hole in the chicken wire and two other chickens were loose. The first was caught quite quickly but the other ran into a group of trees and bushes.


So here I was, running around in $500 boots and a Givenchy blouse, flushing a chicken out of the brush and trying to herd it toward B so he could put it back into the coop, saying "here, chicky chicky chicky..bawk bawk"...

We successfully rescued the two chickens we could find and then searched around his yard and his neighbour's yard to find the last and possibly injured chicken. We had to give up though.

Then we drove to our hotel where our meeting was being held, which wasn't even in the city so there was nothing to do other than sit in the bar. I had a beer, a glass of wine and 4 martinis. This was a very bad decision on my part. Definitely not one of my shining moments of intelligence.

Luckily my meeting which was supposed to go until 4:30 ended at 1:30. Sitting in a meeting with a hangover is challenging.

I didn't get a photo of today's outfit because I couldn't find a place where I could sneakily set up my camera.

So glad tomorrow is Friday.


Oh, the missing chicken was found, safe and sound, uninjured. Lucky chicken.

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Black and White and Silver

The Good: I went to my favourite consignment store on Saturday to pick up the money I was owed for the shoes that I took to them to sell.

The Bad: I gave them more than half of the money I was owed back buying this tunic/dress and shoes.



Tunic/Dress: americanretro (from Crimson and Clover)
Skirt: Lacy Skirt (Knit by me)
Shoes: Vivienne Westwood Melissa Ultragirl flats (from Crimson and Clover)

This tunic is a smidgen tight in the arms but not enough to discourage me from wearing it. The pattern is a bit loud and hard to photograph but you can believe me when I say that it's cute.



A big Thank you! to whoever gave up these shoes. So cute and shiny and practical in the rain! And they were only $50.00. New these shoes go for $150.00.

I'm heading to New Brunswick tomorrow for a meeting on Thursday but I'm taking my camera. I'm not sure what to take to wear though. I'll have to search through some outfit photos for inspiration.

Saturday, April 7, 2012

Bright Saturday

This photo is incredibly unflattering but I'm posting it anyway.


Sweater: Joe Fresh
T-shirt: from Frenchy's
Skirt: Reitmans
Tights: Anna Sui
Shoes: Fluevog Fellowship | Erika

Pretty bright, eh? Red and orange and fuchsia.

Joe Fresh clothes aren't the best quality but I have bought a few pieces of this brand to fill small gaps in my wardrobe with "trendy" colours or styles. I don't feel so bad wearing this bright orange sweater a few times and then passing it along to someone else. I do prefer to spend my money on higher quality pieces that will last a long time and I'll get a lot of use out of.

I've mentioned before that my husband is a photographer. He's had the opportunity to do a bit of traveling and been under the tutelage of some good mentors.


Here's one of his recent photos, which was accepted by Vogue Italia for inclusion on their website.


This photo was taken in Brooklyn when he was there in March.

Friday, April 6, 2012

The Music Between Us

Earlier this week Keely of Casual Chic Kiki posted photos of herself in simple jeans and t-shirt combinations and noted that some bloggers only post photos of their work week outfits. I'm definitely one of those, mostly because work is the best place for me to take photos. My house is small and has terrible lighting so it's hard to take pictures inside there and it's been very cold so it's been hard to take pictures outside either before or after work (not to mention in the winter it's dark when I leave for work and dark when I get home).

Anyway, this morning B and I were up early to go to our favourite breakfast spot so I decided to take a photo of my outfit. This isn't exactly a typical "day off" outfit since I rarely, rarely wear sneakers. This is about as casual as I ever get though.

Glasses: Jee Vice | Angel Kiss
Sweater: Pretty Things Boutique
T-shirt: Duran Duran concert t-shirt bought in Montreal October 2011
Pants: Joe Fresh
Shoes: Cheapy off-brand sequined kicks!

I'm on my way to help my husband move more of his photo gear into his new studio so this will be utilitarian and funky.

I wear glasses most of the time but I take them off at work since I don't need them to use my computer or to read documents so I rarely have them on when taking my photos.

Sparkly shoes! I bought these when I was out a few years ago with B and my sister and we all bought a pair. They're like a party on your feets!

Thursday, April 5, 2012

Pretty Pucci

Today I wore the first two things I bought at the Crimson and Clover Consignment store. I didn't realize it until I got to work that my outfit was entirely thrifted (other than the tights). Well, the sweater was from Joe Fresh but I think I got it for $5.00 or something crazy like that.



Sweater: Joe Fresh
Dress: No Tag from Crimson and Clover
Shoes: Emilio Pucci from Crimson and Clover

I didn't notice until the first time I wore this that there was a longer piece on the front which makes me like it even more.

My favourite part is the built in obi belt detailing. It makes the design more interesting than a plain blue dress.

Unfortunately, I don't really fill out the chest in this very well. The curse of the small of chest.

This sweater is too big, even after I washed it and put it in the dryer, which I would normally never do to a wool sweater. (I can feel my knitting friends cringing.)




These shoes don't really match but I don't care because they're awesome! Pucci shoes for $80.00 is a bit of a steal.


The print on the fabric part of the shoes is pretty subtle on the outside but is still distinguishable as "Pucci-esque". It's repeated inside the shoe but it's not like that's ever on display to the public. It's like my own little secret!






And today is the start of a 4-day weekend for me. Being a bureaucrat I get Monday off so I'm kicking up my heels in excitement. WHOOT!


Easter marks the ending of a long winter without statutory holidays. Hopefully it will warm up soon!