in the low light

everything thrifted except for the joe fresh tights
I'm gonna play catch-up here, in point form:

1. I think this is a new favourite sweater. It's so soft and cozy and the little floral details on the peter pan collar are too perfect. I haven't been thrifting a lot lately but today I found this sweater, the bag, and a button-up shirt with a Liberty of London print.

2. Christmas happened, and I got a sewing machine! I'm really excited to finally take up the hems on a few dresses and skirts I've been hanging on to. And to make some things I can't seem to find, like a perfect full black skirt.

3. My time is consumed with watching The Hills lately. I hated on it when it was on originally but I didn't even know, I didn't even KNOW. I adore Lauren and Whitney, can't handle Spencer at all and I have hearteyes for Justin Bobby.

4. I turn 24 in a week and I'm excited, in a bittersweet kind of way. Not so much because it's my birthday, but because it marks the end of the holidays and all the celebrations surrounding them! December has been fun but it's been a little wild, I'll be glad to settle into the new year quietly.

one year of outfit pictures

My first year of regularly blogging my outfits is coming to a close! These were my personal faves from each month. I have a lot of sappy happy feelings about blogging on any day, but looking through these again reminded me of how much fun it was to go scouting for locations in the woods and finding ways to play with the light. This blog of mine might be a weird hobby but it sure is fun.


january


february


march


april


may


june


july


august


september


october


november


december

the season

dress: vintage | cardigan: gap | boots: thrifted | tights: joe fresh | belt: thrifted

There are jobs that slow down during the holidays and ones that get busier, and mine is one of the latter. For the past couple years I've stumbled through not being quite prepared for Christmas, and finding it sneaking up on me, but I think I'm finally hitting my stride with being able to pull it all together. The key is to do all my shopping on the walk home from work, and to make sure the dishes I make for potlucks will freeze well. And always, always have an emergency ugly sweater on hand.


If you're well-prepared, you'll have more time for the oddly stress-relieving practice of wrapping presents nicely. This is what I brought to my family's gift exchange (where I wore the outfit in this post)

jiggly horrors

I scanned and uploaded these a couple weeks ago and promptly forgot to make a post with them. These are from the 1967 Better Homes and Gardens salad cookbook. Barely anything in this book resembles what I would consider a salad today. If it isn't meticulously assembled in a complicated pattern, it is suspended in a shimmering, quivering block of gelatin. I would not make any of them.










If for some reason you want the recipes to anything you've seen here,

don't look at me

sweater: madewell | skirt: thrifted | boots: thrifted | tights: joe fresh | belt: thrifted
I really like this outfit actually but my lunchtime just not working for me. I couldn't find anything I needed and I was being so clumsy and it was not helping my already irrationally angry mood!! I look like such a pissed off baby in all the other photos I took because I AM ONE. wah.

french girl

shirt: joe fresh (thrifted) | skirt: thrifted | belt: thrifted | boots: thrifted
wow WOW I can't believe I didn't think to shut the bathroom door. Ugh. anyway...

I am thinking very hard about getting rid of a lot of my clothes and only hanging on to the things I dearly love, and then starting over again with pieces that are more well-built and higher quality. Whether it's something I pine over for months until I buy it, or a lucky thrift find. Everything should be held up to the same standard.

This is stemming from a couple points of inspiration. This, and then this article from 1982 (!) and this post by Kallie. I feel like I'm overflowing with clothing I just sort-of like, that I thought would fill a gap because one or two details were right, even though the rest was all wrong. I just gave away some of these things - mostly polyester button-ups with interesting collars or prints. I thought I liked them, but in reality I was never wearing them because the polyester would make me feel so gross if I wore it to the office all day, and the sleeves wouldn't roll up the way I wanted to because they didn't have the right cuffs. So if I don't wear them, what's the point of ever having them in the first place? It's a waste of space, and money! Even though they were only a couple of bucks each at a thrift store. I have lots of favourite clothes, but all of my clothes should be my favourites.

(eerily, when I got back to work after taking these photos one of my shirt buttons fell off and I had to hold it shut with a paperclip all day. I do want a black and white gingham shirt, but maybe second-hand fast fashion is not the proper avenue for that.)

earrings, haircut, cat

dress: asos | earrings: milk & amber | velvet hairbow: joe fresh kids
My friend Katharine recently started blogging about fashion, vintage and thrifting in Charlottetown. It's so nice to have another PEI blogger in the mix! She's also started a vintage store, Milk & Amber, for her finds. I love these teak candlesticks, this vintage YSL scarf and this colourblocked pastel belt


I also got a haircut, finally, from the always wonderful Erin Gillespie. Some time in the last six months, my hair stopped curling. I don't know how or why that would happen! I'm not mad at all because I've never had tame hair in my life, but I needed a new cut to work with the new texture. It's wavy here but I assure you those are artificial curls, my hair will not do that on its own anymore.

portions for foxes

speckled sweater: thrifted | peter pan collar blouse: thrifted
skirt: modcloth | shoes: thrifted | rose pin: thrifted
Ohhhh sweaters over collars, my favourite thing about cold weather. This sweater and blouse are two recent thrifts I didn't think about wearing together when I got them, but they work nicely together.

Thinking about different ways to show off my layers on my sleeves. I'm tired of cuffing my blouses over my sweaters because it usually results in a stretched-out mess. I'm kind of imitating a Joe Fresh promotional image I saw, with a buttoned cuff peeking out from under a sweater... but of course I can't find that image anymore, whoops.


I also thrifted a coat. All my wintery coats are flashy in some way and I wanted something more understated. This is just a plain boring black coat with a hood. It's relatively new and came with horrible, horrible plastic buttons. It seems like most new clothes I find have the WORST quality buttons. Luckily, after spending a couple dollars on some new buttons from Fabricville I don't have to worry about them anymore. This coat actually has an invisible placket so you can't even see them when I'm all bundled up, but I like knowing they're there.

ghost pale

top: gap | skirt: thrifted | shoes: thrifted | belt: thrifted
I got incredibly lazy last week and didn't blog once. I'm blaming it on a combination of daylight savings time and mercury retrograde. The darkness keeps me from taking photos after work, and it's starting to get too cold for outdoor photos anyway. Honestly, I'm going to miss it! I was so nervous to take photos outside in semi-public at first, and I did it about 2 or 3 times before I was happy enough with the results to actually post them. As time went on I stopped caring so much if someone saw me and started to actually have fun. I learned a lot about my camera and lighting this summer and definitely wouldn't have made that progress if I didn't have this blog as an excuse to take photos all the time.

This outfit is so standard for me but I took photos of it at lunchtime today anyway to get back in the habit. I've worn this skirt so many times on this blog, usually with different black and white tops, and many many more times off the blog. It's probably safe to call it a favourite. I was ready to pack it away for the winter because I thought it looked kinda matronly and weird with tights, but oddly enough adding my witchiest pair of shoes seemed to help.

brown bass

everything thrifted but the tights (joe fresh)

These shoes are a happy recent thrift. I love short heels like this, they always make me feel a little more put together but I don't trip over myself in them like I do with higher heels. Also these are by Bass, which is always nice to find.


Also, when I have my coat and hat on today (the same ones from yesterday) I am dressed head to toe in shades of BROWN. I used to be against brown clothing for some bizarre reason but I've really warmed up to it lately. Brown. How about it.

cold weather coat

everything thriftedI bought this coat back in the spring, juuuust when it was warm enough to pack up all my winter gear for the season. I've secretly been wishing for cold weather so I could finally wear it and this when I heard the weather update on the radio and heard that temperatures all over PEI were hovering around freezing, I knew it was time to bust it out. I actually saw snow on some cars that had commuted into town from the country this morning!

I went on a little thrifing trip with some girlfriends on the weekend and found this doily-collar blouse in Montague. I also got an absolutely TERRIBLE salad cookbook from the mid-60s, which was when molded gelatin salads peaked in popularity. I remember seeing jello salads at potlucks growing up and as disgusting as I always thought they looked they have NOTHING on the salads in this book. I think I'll scan some and share them here because they really need to be seen to be believed.

i don't know about you.

dress: asos | boots: winners | denim jacket: thrifted | tights and socks: joe fresh | grey beret: thrifted | rose pin: thrifted | nail colour: joe fresh "sunshine"
I wore these boots today thinking we'd get some rain from the outskirts of Hurricane Sandy but it was totally dry all day. OOPS. They're so cute though, I don't care.

my quick and dirty bjork costume

I've loved Bjork's music for years, but even before that I loved her infamous swan dress at the 2001 Academy Awards. She topped the worst dressed lists that year but (IMO) that dress has stood the test of time and paved the way for Katy Perry, Lady Gaga and Nicki Minaj to wear weirdo crap on various red carpets


I've wanted to do this as a costume for years and finally decided to tackle it for this Halloween. Unfortunately I wasn't able to devote as much time to it as I would have liked, but I'm still pretty happy with how it turned out. Lots of people said I did a great job with it and some actually asked me where I BOUGHT IT (wtf!!) so I'm pleased.


The swan neck is a thrifted tube sock, stuffed with the other sock from the pair and a slip. I cut the beak from felt and hot-glued it to the sock (and burned myself in the process). The skirt section is a borrowed crinoline, and I tied strips of tulle in various lengths and widths to a piece of elastic to go over it. I used about 1 and a half white boas for the feather sections. All I did was pin it to the swan sock and tie it and loop it over itself a bunch of times, and I tucked the ends through the elastic of my skirt to cover up all the bare elastic and knots. I also safety-pinned like CRAZY all over the place to hold it together. Oh, and I sprayed glitter all over my hair and self at the party I went to! It was really subtle and nice. My only real regret is that my top isn't skin-coloured. I did buy a beige t-shirt but it looked too baggy and weird and casual as part of the dress.

anyway, tl;dr I was Bjork for Halloween which I'd wanted to do for years and it was fun.



* the nice high quality photos in this post are by aimee power. thank you!!