dear mr rabbit: 2013

basics, brilliant lighting and bicycles

Top - Kmart, necklace - eBay, skirt - made by me, shoes & bag - thrifted. Also wearing seamed tights by Leg Avenue.

First of all, can we just talk about how amazing Eli is for capturing the beautiful light in these photos??!?! I didn't have to do any editing at all, I am just so impressed!!

Anyway! Yesterday Eli, my sister and I went and spoiled ourselves with lunch at our favourite local cafe. Well, actually, we were supposed to be meeting a friend there for coffee who was unable to make it in the end, so we turned it into a bit of a family feast instead!

My sister gave me this top recently as we were both clearing out our wardrobes (it is very convenient living with your sister who is also the same size as you!), and as soon as she did I knew it would look perfect in this simple red-white-black combo.

As I've been trying to streamline my wardrobe I've been reading a lot of articles about finding your 'basics' and I'd say this look is 95% made up of things I would consider basic - a simple pencil skirt (in red, which I consider pretty much a neutral colour), striped black and white top with a flattering neckline and my go-to black low-heeled shoes. Oh, and red lipstick of course!

After our lunch date we headed home and Eli and I spent some time out in the sun riding our bicycles along our street. This called for a slight wardrobe change as it is rather difficult to ride in a pencil skirt! So some little shorts from American Apparel were in order.. but I kept the seamed tights :)

Hello!!!

I'm finally back from my trip (well, technically I've been back for 2 weeks now..) and I finally have a moment to organise myself and get back to this blog!

Sorry for the total silence there.. one of the big things I learnt while overseas is that travelling and blogging is HARD! Particularly when you are on a river cruise in Vietnam drinking cocktails and there is no wi-fi *sob* haha.

I've really wanted to post sooner, but that too has been hard due to a) every single person I know now wants to catch up with me, b) I have no job or money so I haven't really been going anywhere and c) I've realised I really dislike about 85% of the clothes in my wardrobe and have been basically living in my pj's since I got home.

That makes outfit posts a little difficult.

I did, however, put some clothes on yesterday and leave the house to go and see a lovely new friend of mine whom I met at the Vintage Society meet up I went to just before we left. As someone who has always had a severe (SEVERE) lack of girlfriends it is just SO nice to have met a person and just clicked with them.. this is a very rare occurrence!

Anyway, with regards to my wardrobe, I'm on a bit of a warpath to fix it up, starting with a huge purge (the piles.. oh my god), planning a list of basics which I will mostly have to make myself or thrift since I'm on rather limited funds, and then moving on to making some more lovely vintage-inspired pieces to flesh it out again!

So, in the coming months expect to be bombarded with sewing-related posts, and I will also try to make an effort to leave the house at least once a week wearing something half-decent.

I also have lots of holiday photos.. but I'm not sure whether to share them all in a huge post, if at all. Possibly just a few pics here and there? Let me know what you prefer!

Cardigan - Myer, blouse - Dangerfield, skirt - made by me, shoes - Golden Ponies

Bits and pieces..

I didn't get a lot of photos in Chicago really.. Probably because we spent a lot of time in our apartment due to the cold and, well, we wanted to relax a bit!

We saw Brian Wilson in Milwaukee! So good :)

Epic Pizza-Pie!

Guess who's excited for 18 hours on a train?!?

Gorgeous West Virginia scenery made it worth it.

Malt shakes. I'm obsessed.

We're currently in New York, so much more to come!!

Chicccccago!

That's the sound of my teeth chattering.. It's really cold here!!

I'm happy I get to bust out my coat after carting around with me for almost two months, but wow, I forgot what cold is like!

I bought these American Apparel Disco Pants yesterday, I had been deliberating about them for almost a year back home but the price and the thought that they'd look terrible on me held me back.

They are however about $50 cheaper here so I gave them a try and they are surprisingly comfy and flattering.. I usually feel super self conscious in tight fitting pants but these are totally fine!

Everything else is thrifted.

Too cold. That's enough.

Back in our cosy warm studio, I was having a good hair day despite the winnnnd doing its very best to mess it up!

Nashville

So the other day we were in Nashville, TN.

It was a really cool place, we explored the different neighbourhoods, ate delicious pizza and of course visited a couple of vintage stores!

I finally picked up some seamed tights (not stockings, sadly, but I have no way of wearing them at the moment anyway) from one of the stores we visited which also had a pretty great range of modern, vintage-inspired accessories.

Everything vintage/thrifted except for Leg Avenue tights.

Eli was very happy to find a sports coat, shirt, suspenders and bowtie, all 1960's (sports coat obviously not pictured).

Unfortunately I've been getting pretty distracted by things and forgetting to take photos of what we've been doing.. Oops!

Louisville, KY

Not too many photos/words today..

Vintage 1950's cardigan and (finally!) seamed tights by Leg Avenue.

Everything thrifted.

New/old trousers from the Salvos! They are my perfect autumn trousers!

Atlanta

Atlanta was so much fun!

The first day there we had lunch with the lovely Amy of A Loo's Closet which was awesome!

*car park selfie!*

We didn't do all that much for the rest of the first day, so the next day we did EVERYTHING!

We went to the Georgia Aquarium, which is home to the largest aquarium in the world.

I touched a stingray and a shark! Eep!

There were so many cute animals there. I loved the penguins, turtles and otters (which I couldn't get a photo of because they move SO fast!)

Wearing a new shirt from Rag-O-Rama in Atlanta, everything else thrifted.

Next we visited the Atlanta Underground, which was interesting/odd..

And finally, after a lot of deliberation, we decided to do the Coca-Cola World thing.. The girl at the ticket booth stuffed something up so we only had to pay for one ticket though.. Woo!

The last part of the exhibition is a room where you can try over 60 Coca-cola brand drinks from all over the world. My favourite ones were probably the Asian and European drinks.. We even tried the infamous Beverly drink from Italy and immediately knew we had tasted it somewhere before.. After trying it about 5 times (and laughing at everyone's expressions of disgust as they tried it themselves), we realised it tastes just like Bitters like you would have in a lemon, lime and bitters drink, just not sweet.

With that mystery solved we collected our souvenir Coke's and left.

Even though we were full of sugar and bubbles, we had to stop at The Varsity, which was recommended to us by Amy. I'm so glad we did, it's quite the experience!