Too Darn Hot

It's too darn hot. Too darn hot. It's 40C here in the city and I have no air conditioning.  I wish I was at work but I'm currently at home dealing with the ongoing aftermath of the water that came into my apartment last Monday. The carpet cleaners just left and my apartment is drying out. Here's hoping I get my place back together quickly. I was finally starting to feel settled here after my couch arrived and then BLAMO...flood.

So here's what I wore yesterday in an attempt to keep cool.

July 15

Dress: Pretty Things Boutique (last worn here)
Shoes: Fluevog Teapots | ? (not sure the name of these)

This dress is cotton/linen so I was hoping it would be cool. By the time I got to work my hair was soaked with sweat as was the front of my dress. UGH!

You can see that my hair is a bit of a kinky mess.

I bought these shoes used from someone online. They are a wee bit big but they are very comfortable.

You can see here that there's a bit of room at the tip of the shoe. I'd rather my shoes be like this than to have my toes hang over the edge.

A coworker said that these shoes were much more sedate than my usual shoes. I guess that's true but they're still pretty.

On July 7 I wore a strapless dress to work. I kept my cardigan on for most of the day but near close of business I took it off. I walked past my coworker's cube and she thought I was naked so we took this nudie picture.

I can assure you I am fully clothed but it really does look like I'm streaking through the office.

SASSY!

Tardy

Last week I didn't seem to get much blogging done. I wish I could say I was totally busy but alas, I'm afraid I was just lazy. I'll try to get caught up here.

June 3rd

Dress: Ziliotto  on Queen Street
Shoes: Fluevog Prepare | Guide (last worn here)
Bracelet: Susana Erazo (bought at Ziliotto)

Saw this dress in the window of Ziliotto for a few days. I walk past the store twice a day - on my way to work, and on my way home. One day last week I decided to go in and try it on. I first tried the medium but I ended up going for the large since I wanted it to be a little less fitted and a little more drapey. The sales girl and the Queen St store is a treat. She remembered me from when I bought the grey skirt and the red leather cuff and she is very helpful.

The best parts of the dress, of course, are the pockets. Or the polka dots. Or the red colour.

Here's an outtake. I'm standing among the cube farm. The lighting is terrible and the location is pretty crap. Let's move on shall we?































June 4th

Last time I wore this dress I was considering getting rid of it. But obviously I packed it when I moved to Toronto.

Dress: from Reykjavik (last worn here)
Belt: Rudsak
Shoes: Aldo (last worn here)

This dress obviously works better belted. I popped into Rudsak on Queen Street last week and their leather belts were on sale so I picked up this obi. I almost bought a wider version but this one seemed to work best since it has a small slit in which to feed the tie.

So this belt has convinced me to keep this dress a little while longer.















June 6th

Cardigan: Pretty Thing Boutique
Jumpsuit: Lilith (last worn here)
Shoes: Marks and Spencer from Chosen Vintage on Queen Street

I may have finally found a replacement for this cardigan at Target on the weekend. I haven't chucked this out quite yet but hopefully I can after replacing it with the Target version.

I'm not sure what to do with this jumpsuit. I like it BUT going to the bathroom in a pain in the butt.

From the back it almost looks like a skirt but I have Lilith pants that make the same effect. Do I really need both? I'm not sure I could recover the cost of the jumpsuit through consignment so I might as well keep it.

The shoes?  I saw them in the window of a vintage store very close to my apartment.

Buttony! They had them marked as a size 8.5 but they fit me perfectly. I've worn them 3 days and each time they were extremely comfortable and resulted in no blisters.

Red

Suede

buttons

What else could I want????












June 10

I forgot to take photos on Friday but I wore this dress. I went to my parent's house for the weekend. I have officially been to my parent's house more in 2013 than I was in the last 2 years. Crazy!

Dress: anthropologie (last worn here)
Belt: Megan Mae 
Tights: Target
Shoes: Miz Mooz (last worn here)

This doesn't really work. These tights looked azure but they seem more purple here. I felt a little uncomfortable all day. This isn't my best combo.

It looks a litle better from the back.

I'm not happy with my hair right now. The salon where I had my hair done didn't feel right. Everyone had terrible hair! A new place opened on a street close to me so I'm thinking of trying them out.  Though my displeasure could be a result of the rain and humidity.

Here's my flair.

Bracelet: Susana Erazo from Ziliotto
Pin: given to me by a coworker making fun of the Mayor of Toronto Rob Ford
Necklace: Birthday Gift from a good friend

I LOVE this necklace. Love it! It reminds me of my dear sweet kitty Merlin. 

Yeah, Poppies

Tonight I made a new friend. It's name is "rubber mallet". It's a long boring story but suffice it to say, I ended up buying a mallet and making a crappy clothing rack my bitch. And the lesson learned today is "don't buy anything if it doesn't fasten together with screws or bolts" if you want it to stay together longer than 10 minutes. Also, don't expect a $20 clothing rack to hold an excessive amount of clothing.

Moving on!

A few months ago, eShakti asked me to participate on their customer panel where I would need to look at pictures of new designs and answer questions about them. I was pretty happy to do it and it was kind of fun. In return, they sent me $100 gift certificate.  Here's one of the dresses I got.

Cardigan: Pretty Things Boutique
Dress: eShakti
Shoes: Franco Sarto (last worn April 26)

It's just a plain shift dress but I liked the poppy embroidery and it has pockets. Pockets are happy making.

I took these photos in Boardroom 3B because my secret lunchroom seems to be being used more often. Nice map of Toronto behind me, eh?  The sticky notes have the first 3 digits of postal codes on them. Not sure why.

I'm wearing beige fishnets. My legs are still kind of bruised from moving boxes and furniture around my apartment so the fishnets provide a little bit of coverage without being too warm. I tend to bruise very easily. You just have to look at me harshly and I get a bruise. Oh, so sensitive.

I was in Ottawa yesterday with my new bosses so I didn't feel comfortable enough to take photos. I wore this dress, this jacket, and these shoes so you can image it for yourself.

Purple Cardigan

Day 3 of work and I'm a little bored. At my old job I had more responsibility and was more involved in all issues. Here my focus is quite narrow so I'm having trouble focusing on the few things that I have been given to do. I'm sure that things will be hectic soon enough so I'm not going to complain!

I might need to scope out a better place for my photos. This place has terrible lighting. For example. my cardigan is purple, not black. Even with adjusting levels and contrast I can't make it look purple. You'll have to take my word for it. I'll have to enlist the help of one of my coworkers who knows about this blog (Hi R!) and see if she can suggest a better locale.

Cardigan: Pretty Things Boutique
Dress: Desigual (last worn here)
Shoes: Fluevog Wonders | Ayers (last worn here)

I actually wore these shoes to work on Tuesday but I didn't get any blog photos. I've been walking to and from work each day which is about 45 minutes so my feet are killing me. These shoes are very comfortable so after walking in my flats I can put these on and be comfortable all day.

Most of the clothes I brought with me are jersey fabric which is easy to wash and if it wrinkles they fall out of the fabric easily just by hanging it up. Smart thinking!

Tomorrow is Friday and I'm meeting up with someone who a friend connected me with. We're going for Vietnamese food not far from where I'm living. I'm nervous but it should be fun. 

Same dress, new day

Sorry about the radio silence. I was in Toronto for 3 days and then I scooted down the road to visit my family for Easter. Had fun (aka, got drunk) hanging out with my sister and brother-in-law at an old favourite pub and then eating a lot at my parent's house. I don't think I went outside from Saturday-Monday. It's still cold here. C'mere spring! Luckly the forecast is for 10C tomorrow!

Yesterday was my first day of work and I didn't have a chance to find a new covert place to take my outfit photos but today I was told about a lunch room that no one uses so I was able to slip away and take a few snaps. Only one turned out so I'm going to have to refine my technique.

 Yes, I wore this dress in the last post. Cut me some slack! I only have a tiny wardrobe with me.

Cardigan: Pretty Things Boutique (worn a zillion times)
Dress: Smoking Lily (worn in the previous post)
Tights: American Apparel
Shoes: Miss L Fire

Uhhhh...these shoes might be newly acquired. I may have also bought some Fluevogs.

I didn't get a good photo of these shoes, just a crappy iPhone shot but they look like this. So totally adorkable.

I bought them at a shoe store on Queen Street that apparently has no name. There's no name on the window or above the store. It's not Balisi or Heel Boy. Yes, I have scoped them all out even though I'm going to have to be much more frugal than I was in Halifax.











Oh and I may walk by this place every day. Queen Street in Toronto is going to be the death of me. And Fluevog is opening another location in the Distillery District hopefully before International Fluevog Day/My Birthday.

Since this will be my "meaning of life, the universe and everything" birthday I will definitely be splurging and buying something on May 15th. 

I may have threatened to go to work wearing a bathrobe...










In other news, I may have an apartment but I'm not going to talk about that until I sign papers and exchange money but I'll tell you about an experience I had yesterday viewing an apartment.

I saw a listing on Craigslist and contacted the poster. She emailed me back saying that she could meet me between 7:30-8:30. I said that 7:30 would be best and asked for the exact address since people here just refer to locations by cross streets such as "Queen and Spadina" or "University and Dundas". She didn't reply so I walked (OMG so much walking my feet are a mess but I'm going to have a great butt shortly) to the general location which was an under construction high rise. At this point I should have turned around and walked back to my temporary apartment but I stuck it out. At 7:40 I called her and she apparently didn't see my email so she said she'd be 20 minutes. She arrived in a Mercedes wearing $1000 heels (which were gorgeous btw. And she was only like 22 years old) and we went up the elevator.

At the door, to the least expensive place ($1250+utilities) she discovered that the key wasn't in the envelope so back down the elevator we went. She found the key in her car so up we went again. The apartment was terrible. Just over 400 square feet with 1 teeny tiny closet. The kitchen/living room was about as big as my former office. Now I know that real estate is expensive here in TO but this was a ridiculous space. In the door bathroom, then a tiny bedroom, then a tiny kitchen/living space.

I said "Uh...this is tiny." and she proceeded to lecture me on the rental market in Toronto how it wasn't like in Halifax and it was expensive and space was at a premium and that this tiny piece of shit apartment was the only thing in my limited price range and that I should start looking in Scarborough or Mississauga.

I left feeling totally discouraged and as I walked home I started to think that I had made a terrible, terrible mistake.

As I said before, there's probably a happy ending but I'm going to save that until I have signed something....stay tuned!

Free sweater on the bus

Today was my last day of work. Nine years at the same job, nine years working with a bunch of the same people. It's been a very emotional day capping off a very emotional week. So draining.

You're probably be seeing a lot of this cardigan and dress since both will be accompanying me to Toronto. Most of my clothes have been packed for storage so I'm already sort of living out of a suitcase.

Cardigan: Pretty Things Boutique
Dress: Emily Ryan Ballerina Cut-out dress (last worn here)
Tights: ?
Shoes: Messeca (last worn here)

I was starting to wear through the soles of these shoes so I had the cobbler put rubber soles on them. So I've lengthened their lifespan and they are also much less slippery.

Today was my last trip to work on #BusNo5. One of the people that I sit with, knowing my love of skulls, brought me this cardigan. She had ordered something from ModCloth and they sent her this in error. Rather than having her return it they said she could keep it. She's a public librarian so she didn't think this would fly in her workplace so she gave it to meeeeeeee!  Free Cardigan! Free SKULLS!

HUGE SKULL on the back! Such generous people here. I bet no one on the subway in Toronto would give me a free cardigan.

Prove me wrong Toronto! Prove me WRONG!

Spring ahead

I'm not a fan of Daylight Saving Time. I think it's an outmoded model and we should abandon it. I also hate that people call it Daylight SavingS Time (pet peeve). Drives me buggy!

So since we're going to be losing an hour of our lives on Sunday morning, and I think the concept of artificially changing time is stupid, I think my cuckoo clock dress is appropriate. (Then again time itself is subjective so maybe it shouldn't matter what's on the clock. If you want to read a good book about time I recommend Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman.)

Cardigan: Pretty Things Boutique (worn multiple times)
Dress: Smoking Lily (last worn here)
Shoes: Fly London

At first this morning I put on a purple cardigan but I thought red might be an interesting choice. And I got to wear my new red shoes.

I like them a lot but I think that the wedge between the heel and the ball of the shoe appears to be an after thought. It doesn't bug me enough that I didn't buy them though.

What do you think of daylight saving time? Does it bother you enough to want to move to Saskatchewan or Indiana or another place where there's no time change?

Studded

I've found myself drawn to all the studded shoes that have been available over the last few months but I didn't really want to spend a whole lot of money on something that likely won't be in style for long. So yesterday I found these at Aldo and they were on sale for under $40 so I decided to buy them.

Dress: Pretty Things Boutique (last worn here)
T-shirt: Joe Fresh
Shoes: Aldo (these ones)

I guess just the red ones were on sale. I wonder why? Red is a perfectly good colour.

Plain, beige, red, comfortable. Not much really to say about this.

I was wearing interesting bling. I ordered this pin from etsy seller Vitamin G Designs. It's bigger than I thought it was going to be, which is a good thing. It's more of a statement.

It reminds of of my Mondrian dress.

I'm going to be off for a few day. Kisses!

Terminal tight blow out

Day 2 of having a perfectly wonderful pair of tights get a terminal run in them. It happening to this pair is extra hard to take.

Dress: Mode Merr via Pretty Things Boutique (last worn here)
Tights: Emilio Cavallini from Peek Brooklyn (last worn here)
Shoes: Fluevog Queen Transcendent Jody Elizabeth (last worn here)

I knew I shouldn't have worn these with the detail on the back. I'm pretty sure that's what led to the run that started in the foot.

CRAP!

And these don't seem to be available anymore. I'll have to try and use my google skills to try and track down another pair. I has a sad.

Luckily I used my gift card today to order new tights from Peek Brooklyn. I'll try to be less hard on the new pairs.

Sucker for stripes

Elle Fanning recently did a candy/sweets filled photo series for New York magazine. Of the photos, my favourite was this photo where she's wearing clothes from Thom Browne's Spring/Summer 2013 collection, which I thought was genius.

But then I'm a sucker for striped tights.

Today I wore a extremely toned down homage to this.

I came across more "witchy" than haute couture but I felt...rebellious. Funky.

Shoe pin: bought in Paris (last worn here)
Top: Anthropologie (last worn here)
Skirt: Pretty Things Boutique
Tights: ?
Shoes: Manolo Blahnik (last worn here)

See, not even close to Elle's outfit! I really need black and white striped tights.

This skirt is also way to big for me now so I guess I'm in the market for a new black pencil skirt.

Ok, time to eat dinner and then watch curling!

Avec mes lunettes

YAY! I'm back to working one job instead of two! YAY! It was extremely relaxing and grounding to focus on my own things. I hope the feeling lasts through the week.

The weather here has been crazy. Yesterday it was +7C and pouring rain. Today was -14C and we had blizzard like conditions in the morning. It's incredibly strange. To me, it seems to prove global climate change since our weather patterns are changing and becoming very unusual.

I wore my hipster glasses dress with decidedly unhipster shoes.

Cardigan: Pretty Things Boutique
Dress: Eva Franco (last worn here)
Shoes: Fluevog On Course | Portside (last worn here)

Since the new Acting Director started today I thought I'd wear my tallest shoes. Psychologically trying to make up for my "failings"? Maybe.  They also work pretty well with this dress.

Red heels of happiness.


































Speaking of happiness, these just showed up on the Fluevog website. GHU!!!

Stripey goodness

Today was my last day as "interim Acting Director" so I dressed the part. Oh no, I didn't.

Cardigan: Pretty Things Boutique
Dress: anthropologie
Belt: Le Chateau
Tights: Hue
Boots: Fluevog Radios | ARD (last worn here)

Last time I wore these tights was with almost the exact same outfit. Only difference is the dress. I wanted to wear the orange eShakti dress but it really needs to be ironed so I threw on this thing.

Not really feeling this.

Good enough for a Friday!

Have a good weekend everyone. In most parts of Canada, Monday is a holiday but not here. Poop!

If you can't beat them, go completely overboard

Ah Valentine's day.

As a married person, Valentine's Day was an annoyance. As a separated person, it's a pretty good reason to hit the bottle. Luckily, I have dumped all the alcohol out. Except for the beer I bought tonight at the mall. But that's another story.

Anticipating that today was going to be a difficult one, I decided to just go totally bonkers with the red clothing.

Look at me embracing the day that is named after Saint Valentine. Even making a cute heart with my hands.

Cardigan: Pretty Things Boutique
Dress: Eshakti (last worn here)
Tights: ?
Shoes: Franco Sarto (last worn here)

Red hair, red lips, red cardigan, red dress, red shoes. I had put on red tights but it was just too much. Even for me, who loves red.

and a red vintage slip!

And a pin with a skull on it. To demonstrate my true feelings about this day. o_O

Here's an outtake. I was trying to take the above photo when my coworker came into the kitchen. This is me covering my tracks and pretending that I wasn't doing anything. I like the look on my face.

I'm currently sitting on my couch, with my fireplace on, my cat at my side, waiting for my Swiss Chalet dinner to arrive. Including apple pie. I'm making the best of things.

My coworkers were so very good to me today. As difficult as things can often be at work, it's much easier to go in every day when you work with good people.

So good day to you Valentine's day. I said GOOD DAY!

I know who a square is...

I'm a little late with the blog today because for the first time in 12-18 months I went out to my knitting group. I stayed an hour because I had to run a few errands afterwards but hopefully I'll get back into the grove of going to hangout with mah knitters.

Cardigan: Pretty Things Boutique
Dress: Bitter Root Vintage on etsy (last worn here)
Fishnets: Sock it to Me (local store)
Shoes: Fluevog Wonders | Ayers (last worn here)

My coworker told me that I shouldn't wear a cardigan with this dress. I would normally agree but 1) it was cold and 2) I usually keep my ink covered at the office.  It does kind of hide it's fabulousness.

Look! I'm standing in a different pose! Like Wendy Brandes! She smiles more nicely than I do though.

Another one of my coworkers went a little gaga over my tights though a woman on my bus gave me the stink eye after wrinkling her nose at them. Poor woman doesn't have much fun in her life I'm guessing.

Two days down, two days left and then I'm off for 9 days. YAY!

Festive Red

My coworker asked me to bring these shoes to work so she could see them in person since she was considering buying them. I don't think she really needed any convincing since she said "yep, I'm gonna get them". I don't blame her.

Cardigan: Pretty Things Boutique
Shirt: Dynamite (last worn here)
Skirt: Chalet (last worn here)
Shoes: Fluevog Queen Transcendent Jody Elizabeth (last worn here) 

I wore a very similar outfit back in May but with a different grey top and blue shoes.  The red is much more festive for the holiday season.

I don't like this photo but I'm including it so you can see the heel on the shoe. Someone said to me today that they liked my shoes but they could never walk in them. I told them that they are surprisingly sturdy. And they are.

I still love this top. I'm surprised it hasn't been ruined yet due to cat claws or me catching it on things.

Back in August I renewed my Duran Duran Fan Club membership. Today my swag arrived. Early Christmas present?