Momentous moment

Outfit: Dress: Gap
Shoes: Chelsea Crew via Urban Outfitters
Bracelets: Self made and Hawaii Airport
Ring: Self made
Bag: Jess LC

Hey look! My first (real) maxi!  Believe me, it's not the first one that I've tried on, but it is the first one that I felt reasonably suited me- and a lot of that is due to the glorious color and feel of the fabric.  I've still got plans to make a couple of long-skirted things, which would allow me to combine the things that I like about maxis without dealing with some of the things that make me leery of them (seriously, why do so many of them have those triangle tops? That is eeeevil).  I'm not sure how practical this baby is for work (or biking into work- I ended up knotting it at the bottom to avoid gear entanglement and sadness), but I'm looking forward to seeing how much I can do with this (mostly because I'm head over heels with the color.  And the fabric.  And the fact that it's long-as in long for a maxi, since I was able to buy this in a tall size).

Other things that I'm excited about?  It's something that I've been thinking about for awhile now, but after making up pieces to sell at my school's Art Show, I'm now gearing up to open an Etsy shop.  My first (and now that I think of it, my last) endeavor into selling jewelry was in elementary school (I made those totally rad daisy chain beaded bracelets), but I've been playing around with things people might want to wear for years, and I'm excited to be moving in this direction.  Most of the things that I've been working on lately are wire-wrapped jewelry (like the bracelet and ring I'm wearing above), which I couldn't have done without taking an excellent class by Alicia of Dismount Creative, and I've also been messing around with headbands and other accessories.  I'm a little nervous about putting my stuff out there and whether it will sell, but for now I remain cautiously optimistic.  Have you made a leap into the business of selling things that you make, or other endeavors of the self-employed nature?  Any advice?

A place in the sun

Outfit: Shirt: Anthropologie
Skirt: Self-made
Shoes: Jeffrey Campbell via Gilt
Belt: Anthropologie
Bag: Jess LC
Bracelet: Hawaii Airport

It'd be nice every so often to show up to pictures with my hair did, but after two go-rounds with the helmet (and ya know, the actually biking part) and work, it sometimes seems like taking pictures before work would be a better option-- but oh, the light that I'm sometimes lucky enough to get after work?  Trade-off totally worth it.  It doesn't hurt that bike commuting in the Houston summer is a pretty good excuse for not doing your hair :)

Party time

Outfit: Tiered Fronds dress from Anthropologie, Shoes and Cardigan from Target, Necklace from Modcloth

I know I wear a lot of dresses that I'd be fine wearing to a party, but man does this feel like a party dress to me.  Unfortunately, it wasn't really a party day, unless you count presenting at lab meeting and running around the lab all afternoon as a party (woooo! pipetting!).  But sometimes you need a pretty dress to make the day feel a little less long (until your shoes start hurting your feet, which to be fair were totally awesome up until the last hour of the day and I'd totally rec them, my feet just slide around a bit since they're a little too big aaand it's hard to find 9 1/2s).  In addition to the awesome-ness of wearing a dress that already mixes brown with black (although you can't see it as well in these pictures as I'd like, wearing this also made me feel like I was celebrating my general shape.  Just because Dress your best week(s) are over, I haven't stopped thinking about which parts of my body I'd like to celebrate, and I've gotta say that once I started thinking of body parts I take pride and pleasure in, it was easy to come up with more than 5.  I know that so often when I start itemizing my body,* it's easy to do so in a negative way- who know that the opposite could be true?  While there are things that I'd be okay changing about my body (teeth with no cavities, a body that's still physically capable of going up on pointe), there are so many things that I genuinely feel positive about, even though I have often (and I'm sure will often in the future) get frustrated about (hair, skin).  To see how other people felt about this subject, check out this wrap-up post on the Academichics.  One of my favorite posts from this challenge can be found here from Kate of the Interrobangs Anonymous (people, it involves a lab coat, which is awesome).


*The idea of itemizing my body reminds me of some poem we read in school in addition to that one scene in Twelfth Night- does this ring a bell with anyone else or am I just making this up?