DRESS IT UP, DRESS IT DOWN

I started something of a project this fall as I noticed that I own many summer dresses, party dresses, fancy dresses...All in all: I own a lot of dresses. But I also realized I actually have quite few day dresses for colder seasons; the project being to rationalize my wardrobe. (well slightly at least, you can't be too rational when it comes to dresses).

First of all - get rid of things I never use (hence my other blog - a very slow project), second - collect a set of practical, pretty and versatile dresses, suitable for everyday wear; dresses that's easy to dress up as well as dress down. Basically you of course could dress any gown down but it is also a question of weather one want's to wear (as in wear out) that silk dress on a basic Tuesday or not.

Now I know for some ladies such a thing as a day dress does not exist as any dress will feel and appear fancy enough, if one is not used to wearing them, but for me (as well as most of you know I guess) that's not the case.

So far only half of my project has been successful as it seems to take a some time to reduce my wardrobe (it's moving forward though, I will put up some more things for auctioning soon), but I have managed (surprise surprise) to collect some dresses that will go for almost whenever, wherever; the cherry dress being one of them for example, the brown one another.

And here's a third!

Easily dressed up by wearing thinner stockings, matching the shoes, adding only a few but fancy accessories, making a nice do.


The outfit dressed down - thicker stockings, basic cardigan, less fancy accessories, less fancy hair.

(The dress is ModCloth and it's the smallest Large I've ever worn. Must have been designed by real tiny people.)

FRIDAY RAINBOW IN THE HARBOR

It has been raining here so mcuch lately that it apparently has to rain even when the sun is shining. But at least you get pretty rainbows that way. (And apparently the divers who are fixing the dock from underneath should've found a big bunch of gold.)

JUST BECAUSE IT'S RAINING IT DOESN'T MEAN YOU CAN'T WEAR FLOWERS IN YOUR HAIR

An easy way to make a 'do is to pull your curled hair back in some sections and use decorated combs to make it all stay in place. My cherry combs are made by darling Rascal.

PRETTY THINGS

Even though I am trying to reduce the amount of stuff I consume and gather upon me around my home and even though I in the end acatually wear quite few accessories - apart from scarves and hair such - I do love those pretty things one can decorate oneself with. If not always to wear, just to look at and admire.

Last year I wrote about soft packages. This year Santa can bring me some small and slightly harder ones.


A few of the pretty thigs to be found online from some talented readers of mine:
-Lovely knitted headbands and pom pom shoe clips from Frollein von Sofa
-Delicious rose shaped ring from Morado on Etsy
-Feathered and bowed cluthces from LouLou Bontemps.
The bicycle necklace is from ModCloth.

IT'S GETTING DARKER BUT AT LEAST IT'S NOT THAT COLD.

Well hello global warming! I'm wearng my September jacket in November.

I've stumbled across warm weather in blogs lately as it seems to be especially warm for the season everywhere. But where bloggers in the norther part of the US blog about sunshine in something that almost resembles a very late indian summer and middle European girls enjoy nice warm autumn days at + 15 C, a mild November over here means +7 and rain. Sunshine or not, it gets dark a bit over 15 o'clock here already. And it will get darker for one moth still. Yey.

Everything I'm wearing is vintage except for the shoes (which btw are much comfier by now :)

SUNDAY EVENING SOFTNESS AND SUCH

CHERRY DRESS

Today I crawled out of bed to go to my father's birthday lunch and now I'm making myself ready to go and perform at Club Wanted, as well as to check out the bands and our guest star for the night; Mimi de Frou Frou.

I'm being smart and bit lazy in the same time and will wear the same dress for both occasions, only change to darker lips, lighter stockings and red heels and let the locks out for the evening. I had my hair pin curled under the beret the wole day so I'm about to open up some huge locks now. (I figured a beret works better to wear to a restaurant than the scarf I normally roll around my head to keep my curls in place. I wear a beret that's big and loose enough to fit standing pin curls on the top of the head, although they do get a bit flat of course :)

My cherry dress is as comfy as it's lovely and it's from Big Beautiful Barbara Brown.

SWEET TEETH

The mail man dropped something very nice through the mail drop this morning; my Milk Toof book I had ordered not that long ago but almost forgot about already! Which of course made me very happy since I've been in love with these small theeth a long time.
Oh ♥









If some of you are not familiar with My Milk Toof yet, I suggest you take your time and browse trough the whole site. You'll love it! It's the sweetest blog I know. The book is sold out by now though, but I'm happy I was there in time to get myself a copy.

SOUP

I'm sick at home with a flu and alone so today there's no dressing up. Instead I'm making soup - a broccoli and lentil soup that I once tried out from scratch and turned out surprisingly good and has worked well ever since.

You'll need green lentils, broccoli, cooking cream and spices of your own preference. I've started to freak out over natrium glutamate so I'm not adding any stock cubes for taste, rather some garlic and bits of chopped onion, gourmet salt, pepper and a hint of chili. I prefer to use ecological vegetable cooking cream since it's additive free. I'm trying to be more concious about these things (and every now and then I actually succeed to be).

First, rinse about half a coffee cup of lentils and place them in cold water with the onions (or stock cube) and heat up.



Add the rinsed and slightly chopped broccoli when the lentils have gone soft. I actually use quite little water; it heats up faster and rather steams the broccoli than cooks it, that saves more vitamins. And no need to pour the boiling water away either. Cook under a lid until the broccoli is soft.



Add about one cup of cooking cream. Heat up and use a mixer/blender to mash it into a smooth puree.



Sprinkle on some pepper and whatever else you feel like, chopped herbs or such, and serve!

Since I'm slightly obsessed with not having a too monotonic colour sheme on my plate I have my green soup with a tomato sandwhich (on roasted rye bread with tahini) and some pineapple juice (which I normally only have for breakfast but hey, I'm ill). And mango sorbet for dessert. (Not so bad being sick in some aspects no :)

And believe it or not, my little carnivore Lulu enjoyed what was let of the soup. Who would've thought!

THE HAIR ORCHID

Hairdo #5:


Some weekends ago my youngest sister V popped by my harbor salon to get her hair and make up done for a student ball (in other words, I took a break from the loadig and turned my office in to a temporary studio ).

My sister is not in to vintage but her long gown had a 30's cut and vibe to it so I made her something timeless but still slightly inspired from that era; a orchid shaped bun on one side of the head and the hair in front laid into and S-shaped curl resembling a marcel wave.

You can do this in six rather easy steps:

1) Part your hair on the side of your head. If your hair is damp start in good time by separating the front section of hair and comb the rest into a ponytail or such at the side of your head. Add some gel or serum, depending on what you prefer, to the front and pin it into a S-shaped wave along the side of your head. Wait for it to dry. If you start off with dry hair you'll just make the curl with an iron and pin it when the rest is done.

2) Add some mousse and curl the edges of you hair.

3) Comb your hair to the side and fasten it into a ponytail just behind your ear. If you had your front section pinned wet carefully loosen the lower pins to make the ponytail sleek to the other side.

4) Part the ponytail in three sections; two smaller ones on top and one big at the bottom. Roll them around two fingers, the upper ones upwards and the lower one downwards, fasten them with a couple of pins inside the rolls. Try to hide the pins as well as you can but be careful not to make the roll loose or frizzy while you do so. Spray.

5) Secure the curl in front; if you started out with damp hair it should stay in shape pretty well; you can remove the pins but keep/add one to the bottom of the curl to secure it. If you curled it with an iron, re-shape it a bit against your head and pin it in place. In both cases, press the curl gently towards your head and spray.

6) Add an orchid (or some other flower or decoration, a feathered pin perhaps?) in the middle of the bun to cover up the snood of the ponytail possibly showing in between. I used a synthetic flower without any hairpin attached to it, that I just stuck in the bun. I secured it with one pin I tucked in from the inside of one of the rolls.

Then just on with your heels and (fake-)fur boa and head for the ball!

FRIDAY 13th : THE LOVING DEAD

Eddi & I at the Halloween Horror Cabaret by Atelieri O.Haapala (who says they will do one more gig still, November 28th! Keep your eyers open... ).

I'm wearing the long velvet 1930's evening gown that I picked up at my ederly relative some time ago.

(If you're in the mood for some zombielesque check this :)

PALE NOVEMBER LIGHT / BROWN POLKA DOT DRESS

Dress - Big Beautiful Barbara Brown

WELL WELL

Well well indeed, since here's something you don't see every day -in fact, only once before in this blog- I'm wearing trousers!
(And I have my hair parted in the middle, not on one side. That's pretty rare too).

This -the trouser thing, not the hair- is mostly due to dresses and skirt in general being invincible in comfort as well as to an incapability of finding a pair of high waisted trousers that are small enough around the waist and wide enough around the hip, without making my legs look like a pair of barn doors (that's a saying my mom uses. I have no idea weather it's an official one or not :) Those facts makes online shopping a pretty risky business and something I haven't dared trying yet although I've seen some pretty nice pairs out there on the internet by now. This pair however was a find at H&M last year and is pretty ok, at least great for when I go Lindy Hopping!)

Strawberry wrap around shirt - Big Beautiful Barbara Brown

SOULSAVER'S CLOSER / JO JO IN THE STARS

This one is beautiful and sad.


Please watch the whole story and it's ending here.

(The song is by Soulsavers. If you want a bit more meat on the bones listen to the ones with Mark Lanegan and Mike Patton. And who wouldn't want that on a grey and gloomy Sunday like this.)

THE LAZY THRIFTER GOT LUCKY

Here's some of the things I picked up a couple of weekends ago at this elderly relative of mine.
About a fifth of it. (Yes, this is now the brag-blog.)

A 1950's suit (the pencil skirt being exactly my size, what luck!), leather gloves, hat and bag. Well the bag is actually from Hoochie Mama Jane, I traded some of the gloves I got for it.


An early sixties satin coctail gown, a beaded evening bag with gemstone fastening and long gloves.

The thing is, I went back there the other day for some more. She called me (or actually my grandmother, who called me, but that's details schmetails) that she still and some shoes and accessories she wanted to get rid off. The lazy thrifter gets lucky indeed.

Unfortunately the shoes were too big but I brought them to Hoochie Mama Jane. I'll bring some vintage dresses there in the near future too and Irja has a lot of other nice stuff there already so why not pop by!

VINTAGE STUDS

As time has gone by I have become less and less interested in fashion and trends, not to mentioned influenced by them. But of course I notice trends and such, and studs have been seen a lot lately (did it start with Carries studded belt in the SATC movie?), perhaps it's still really in, or perhaps the biggest boom is over by now, but anyway; behold, they had studs in the 1930 already! And not just shoes or bags but a studded dress!

Even though some of the studded stuff may be delicious per se I haven't really found it my thing but this one I could wear!


Lanvin from 1935. (Scanned from a book of mine).

STEP BY STEP...

I guess most of you younger readers will be speared the immediate association of adding "ooh baby..." to the headline. Hehe. (Needless to say, I was never a girl to like those kinds of bands btw.) Well anyway, the dress is Trashy Diva and the slip vintage (one of many things I picked up last weekend), the rest from here and there.

STAGE REHEARSAL

Weekend show days are filled with to-do's : Roll the hair pack the bag do the base-make up, go to location road all stuff in have sound check walk trough numbers get something to eat do make up wait perform change fast for next number showtime again change fast and so on, have a drink afterwards maybe dance a little stuff all your things in bag (wonder why everything takes more place now afterwards than before) road out again go home. Weekday shows are the same except you have to fit in work in the beginning too. Not that glamourous actually.

But it's fun anyway. A whole lot of fun!

Photos above are some 'behind the scenes' photos by my fellow Itty Bitty Lola Mancehgo took from the stage rehearsal of a recent show (going through my No No No number and being silly in general), ending with a bonus pic of me and Vera De Vil's behinds going into tandem Charleston. Burlesque is not all glamour no.

(Hehe).

EDDY AND THE LIGHTNINGS

You know I love rautalanka and suomi beat. This time my Soft Sunday song is a little bit less soft: Shut up! As bonus you get this great video of, eh, Finnish metal workers in the sixties or so.