The Hell That Is Moving

I’ve had a pretty unexciting week, being 100% occupied with moving and setting up our new house. But I did snap a few shots of the chaos around here as it unfolded. Stay tuned for the "after" photos!

Weekend Reads 

• Lifetime, perhaps my all-time favourite television network (nothing powers down my brain quite like a couple hours of Lifetime, television for idiots), is making an unauthorized behind-the-scenes movie about Saved By the Bell. I’d predict that someone was going to get sued but I’m not sure how relevant Saved By the Bell actually still is.
  
  
• I love me some Orange is the New Black – and I especially enjoyed this story about the various books that are popping up around Litchfield this season.
  
  
• Shakespearan costumes!!!! Really, really lavish ones!!!!!
  
  
• More of my guilty pleasure, celebrities read mean tweets!
  
  
• I haven’t quite gotten out of the habit of reading Connecticut newspapers yet, even though I no longer live there, but that’s how I stumbled across this story about Anderson Cooper’s new house in Litchfield. This house is insane!
  
  
• Okay. This is infuriating. Seriously. What the hell is wrong with people (and let’s be clear, by “people” I mean self-professed men’s rights activists)?

Dinner Date

There’s a restaurant here in Edmonton called The Next Act Pub that has, I swear to Satan, the best veggie burger I’ve ever had in my life. This thing is so good that a friend and I have a standing dinner date there at least once a month and we always tell each other that we’ll try something new on the menu and it seriously never happens. It always ends in a double veggie burger order. Anyways, this is what I wore to our most recent dinner date.

tunic: Simons / pants: Zara / shoes: Target / watch: Kenneth Cole / bracelets: Aldo / ring: xo Veronika

Can the Moving End and the Decorating Start?

I’m right in the midst of moving (actually today is moving day!) and so I find myself using my bits of down time (and by that I mean that I pretend I have some urgent work emails to deal with so that I stop lifting boxes for 15 minutes) to hunt online for decorative items that I want to acquire for the new house.

And that’s how I came across this amazing online store, Z Gallerie, which is FULL of things I’ve convinced myself I have to have. Here are a few of my favorites (and, bonus, they’re all pretty affordable). Someone save me from myself.

Weekend Reading:

• Researchers believe they’ve found the grave of Vlad the Impaler (aka Dracula) in Italy. 

• I absolutely love Giger’s work – so this was enjoyable to read, especially the last couple of quotes from Giger at the end. 

• My addiction to Buzzfeed’s inane but hilarious lists continues.

• From Elle, “Why Can’t a Smart Woman Love Fashion?” This is a great read you guys! 

• This sounds like a stunningly amazing collection of art, books, and decorative objects – and also just a fascinating story.

Scalloped

This tank top sat in the back of my closet for a long time and I think in the last two years I’ve probably only worn it once or twice. I’ve thought about purging it a few times but something always stops me…I think it’s the scalloped edge on the lace overlay – it’s just too cute to get rid of.

tank top: ModCloth / jeans: Kensie / shoes: Urban Outfitters / necklace: from my mother

Movement

Now that things are all squared away with our house, I’m knee-deep in making preparations to actually move. I’ve moved about 6 times in the last 8 years (which included two giant pain in the ass moves from Edmonton to Connecticut and back again (thanks a lot, grad school) and I absolutely hate it. Hate it. It’s going to be a long month.

jacket: Target / dress: Zara / shoes: Target / purse: Zara / leggings: American Apparel, thrifted via Value Village / sunglasses: Aldo

Avian

This week on All the Frills I’m featuring my favourite necklace, this lovely (and vaguely creepy) golden bird skull number by Monserat de Lucca that I picked up via Shopbop several years ago. I’ve seen a lot of similar necklaces over the years but I love the design and make of this one – the skull is actually fairly weighted but still looks delicate and the chain is a lengthy one so it sits fairly low.

Do you have any favoured pieces of jewelry that you keep returning to again and again?

Weekend Reading:

• This story on homes for unwed mothers in Ireland in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is fascinating and sad.
  
• Turns out Nazis are a) grammar Nazis and b) have a poor awareness of the English language.
  
• A video of people using a 3-D printer to recreate Henry VIII’s crown. Obviously I love this – the Tudors are my historical specialty!
  
• The top ten royal emeralds.
  
• When I read this Buzzfeed list of yearbook quotes I lost it laughing aloud on public transit. It was the cure for a long, aggravating day at work.
  
• Remember Jem? I was all about Jem when I was a kid. You guys, she was truly outrageous!
  
• Welcome to the future of fashion – or so they thought in the 1930s.
  
• Harvard has confirmed a book in its rare books collection is, in fact, contained within a human skin binding. That’s called anthropodermic bibliopegy (now you know).
  
• Sometimes fashion kills folks. Even in the Victorian age. 

Celebratory!

Most of the items in my closet are black or some other dark colour so I’ve taken to referring to this brightly patterned dress from ModCloth as my “celebratory dress” – and I was wearing it recently in a celebratory mood because we officially signed all the remaining house-related paperwork with our lawyer and are now officially homeowners!

dress: ModCloth / leggings: Target / shoes: Aldo

Moving

A day at work in my recent awesome thrift score from Value Village – these amazing boots! I snapped these the day before I packed up the bookshelf behind me in preparation for our impending move...which I am sort of shocked is happening in a week. Seriously, where does the time go?

boots: Geox via Value Village / skirt: Banana Republic via Value Village / shirt: c/o OASAP / purse: Zara / necklace: F21

All the Frills: The Boots

On a recent excursion to one of my favourite local second hand stores, Value Village (Savers, as I knew it in Connecticut), I scored these amazing boots for under $25. They look they’ve never been worn – the treads are perfect.

When I tried them on in the store they felt a little tight but I decided to get them anyways (I figured I’d just be careful not to wear them on days when I know I’d be doing a lot of standing and walking for long periods) but I wore them recently for an afternoon of grocery shopping and errand running (so a lot of standing and walking) and was pleasantly surprised to discover that the fit is actually pretty brilliant. I love it when things work out like that.

Weekend Reading:

This broad cross-section of people posed with all the food they eat in a typical day – this is fascinating. 

Amazing!!!! Why can’t my house look like this?

Wow. This NYC cabbie seems like a real delight.

Yeah, Maleficent is awesome. I am beyond excited for this movie.

Maleficent is my absolute favourite fairytale character ever. Ever. Did I ever tell you about the time I lovingly crafted a Maleficent Halloween costume? You can check that out here.

There’s a Golden Girls drinking game. Hold my calls for the weekend and you can thank me for being a friend and passing this on come Monday.

The best thing to happen to the art world since that Da Vinvi guy is what this artist has done with her cat.

Saturdays Are For Strolling

Now that summer is here, Edmonton’s City Market on 104 Street has opened for the season and I’ve been taking advantage of the lovely weather to head down there on weekends and spend some time perusing (well, on this particular day I had to swing by my office on Saturday morning to get caught up on a few things, which is where I took these photos, but then it was off to the Market). I’ve dubbed this midi dress my “Saturdays are for strolling” dress. Ridiculous, I know. But I’m basically a pretty ridiculous person.

dress: Winners / sweatshirt: Winners / boots: Target / purse: Zara / glasses: Clearly Contacts

Ceremonial

Sometimes I forget I own this polka dot dress – patterns and colours like this are not usually what I gravitate to and I do always feel a bit out of my comfort zone when I wear this dress. But it is a really cute frock and I wore it to one of the ceremonies I attended when I graduated from Yale (so it has a story to it). Actually, I wore it to an awards ceremony where I was presented with the Hans Gatzke prize for the best doctoral dissertation in European history the day before I formally received my PhD. You gotta love clothes with a narrative element!

dress: H&M / tights: Target / boots: ASOS / cardigan: Urban Outfitters