Tag: 2018

September 1, 2018 – Fall Football (OOTD #363)

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Here we are, the first home game of the year!

It’s hard to believe that’s been a year since my very first home game at Notre Dame. I remember when I first wrote about that — how I wasn’t sure I’d enjoy it, and how I thought that the fanfare surrounding a football game was a little hard to comprehend.

And you know what? I still find it hard to comprehend. I wholeheartedly participate in the fanfare, but admittedly, I don’t truly understand it anymore than I did this time last year. No matter how many games I go to, how many iterations of “The Shirt” I buy, how many times I watch Rudy on the field — it’s still just a game of football to me.

They’re fun games of football, though. I sometimes resent how they take up literally an entire day, with the tailgating, band concerts, and parties on top of the already four-plus hour long game, but I go each time without fail. Except that one time I missed the USC game because I lost my ticket after a harrowing Greyhound bus ride, which apparently ended up being the best game of the year.

I’ll actually be missing another game this year too, but this time, intentionally. I’m going to see Fall Out Boy in Chicago with my friend Amanda, and I consider that more way important than going to see Notre Dame inevitably beat Ball State on a rainy day.

I’m getting ahead of myself, though — I’m supposed to be talking about the first home game.

It’s always a challenge to find an interesting way to wear “The Shirt,” which all students (and a good portion of fans) wear to the first home game of the year. The thing is, it’s just a generic shirt. Sometimes the print on it is cool (this year it wasn’t really), but in terms of the actual cut and fit of the Shirt itself…it’s a t-shirt. And if it’s hot out, like it was in early September, you don’t really want to do anything but wear it on its own with a pair of shorts.

I’m a fashion blogger, though, and I’m not about to just wear it with a pair of shorts. No, I had to add a scarf, a skirt, and thigh-high socks. I then of course proceeded to sweat all day and regret my commitment to fashion.

Notre Dame beat Michigan though, so maybe it was worth it. #MuckFichigan, amirite?

(No offense to the Michigan fans out there. I didn’t actually know we had a rivalry with Michigan until this game so…there’s no bad blood for me)

That’s about it for today. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one with more updates on my life at home at Notre Dame. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Bloglovin, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Top: Hammes Notre Dame Bookstore

Skirt: Abercrombie

August 30, 2018 – Denim-Denim-Denim (OOTD #361)

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Hey, here’s a joke: what does Mario wear?

Denim-denim-denim…denim-denim-denim…get it? Like the tune of the Level 1-2 underground theme?

It’s okay if you don’t get it; it’s a joke that’s better suited to being told aloud.

For some reason, my blog has been full of Mario references recently. I’m not sure if there’s any meaning that can be derived from that — apparently I’m just super into mushrooms and denim outfits right now.

I do have a Luigi costume hat somewhere in my closet back home that I got back in 2013 during a Year of Luigi promotional event. One of these days, I’ve got to actually incorporate it into a Halloween costume. I’ve got all of the individual pieces — the hat, the overalls, the boots — I just need to put them together. Oh, and maybe find a friend who’d be willing to play Mario. That might be the more difficult part.

Today’s pictures were taken inside Bond Hall, which is notable in that I’ve only ever done the outside of Bond before. It actually took a surprising amount of effort to get these shots. I felt like every few seconds, someone was walking down the steps and getting in my way. Or rather, I was getting in theirs.

If there’s an alternate reality where I don’t feel awkward posing for photos in public, I’d sure like to discover the portal to it. I’m definitely getting better, and I’ve come a far way from where I was this time last year, when I felt anxious literally every time I had to take pictures for my blog. I’m still not quite shameless yet, though.

At least, in regards to photography. I am shameless with my jokes. Hey, you wanna hear another Mario one?

What did the green mushroom say to Mario? Get a life!

Top: The LOFT

Jeans: American Eagle

Scarf: American Eagle

August 24, 2018 – Upon the Football Field (OOTD #357)

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Whoops, looks like I did that thing again where I accidentally posted my blogs out of order.

It’s a rare occurrence (sarcasm), but sometimes, I do make mistakes with this whole blogging thing — skipping posts, posting things out of order, not posting for days on end, etc. Thankfully, due to the fact that I am a 99.9% perfect creature, these mistakes are relatively rare. This just happens to be part of that .1% of times where I’m flawed.

Of course, I’m kidding — I make loads of mistakes with blogging. It’s a hobby of mine, not a profession, so I don’t feel the need to apply my normal perfectionistic eye to every post. My following is relatively small, so there’s no one there to see if I fail — which is just the right kind of low pressure environment that I love.

The tl;dr of it all — I posted August 26’s blog before August 24’s. Sue me.

August 24 was actually a pretty fun day. Classes had just begun, I wasn’t swimming in homework like I feel like I am now, and I could kind of just enjoy being on a college campus without the stress of actual college. It was the first Friday of the school year, and, as is tradition, there was a showing of the film Rudy on the football field.

I mostly just went for the opportunity to take photos on the football field. I mean, I’ve seen Rudy before — I even saw it last year as a part of the same Friday Flicks series. I can see Rudy whenever I want, but this is is the only time during the year where I’m actually able to walk out onto the football field. Honestly, maybe it’s just the rarity of the opportunity that makes it exciting for me. Otherwise, it’s just a football field.

Don’t let anyone know that I think it’s just a football field though — I don’t need the Notre Dame secret police catching me and getting me expelled. Rumor has it, Father Jenkins has ears everywhere.

That’s about it for today. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one with more updates on my life at home at Potre Lame. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Bloglovin, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Top: Target

Bralette: Aerie

Pants: American Eagle

August 26, 2018 – Just Right (OOTD #356)

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I never know when I buy clothes which pieces will get the most wear.

Apart from obvious staples, like leggings and jeans and plain tops that are worn on a weekly basis, a lot of my other clothes I buy without knowing how frequently I’ll be able to wear them. Obviously, I don’t buy things unless I know I will wear them for some reason eventually — no reason to go about acquiring clothes without purpose. But if I come to the conclusion that I like a piece, and that I will have the occasion to wear it, there’s no way for me to tell easily if I’ll feel inspired to wear it often or not. So I buy it knowing it will get use, but not knowing if that use will be frequent.

Some of my favorite pieces in my wardrobe, that I love for their artistic design, I actually don’t wear much. Take this jacket and this top for example — I haven’t worn an outfit with either one for months. Still, I love them and consider them among my favorites, so why don’t I wear them?

I guess it comes from the fear that if I wear something too much, I’ll come to be bored with it. Consequently, there ends up being a set of clothing that neither love nor hate that I nonetheless wear with great frequency — and that includes this plaid jacket.

I like this jacket, I really do. But I don’t love it — it’s kind of itchy, and it tends to get wrinkly  easily. Regardless, I find that I often end up wearing it a lot (relative to other things in my wardrobe) because it falls perfectly into that “indifferent” category. I’m not afraid I’ll get tired of it by wearing it a lot, and I’m not put off from wearing it because I don’t actually like it much.

To reference the classic piece of literature, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, it’s “just right.”

That’s about it for today. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one with more updates on my life at home at Potre Lame. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Bloglovin, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Jacket: Thrift

Top: Express (thrift)

Jeans: Abercrombie

Boots: Ralph Lauren

August 23, 2018 – The Bend of the South (OOTD #355)

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Look at me, a proper Southern Bender!

Yeah, not really. I don’t even know what the proper term is for the people of South Bend; I think the Notre Dame students call them “townies” but I don’t know what the actual South Bend residents think of that. I interact with few South Bend residents on campus, so I’m really not sure of their take on the “townie” rhetoric.

Regardless, you’ll be proud to hear — I made it back off campus again! A friend and I took an Uber to go to a Vietnamese market downtown. She specifically wanted some groceries, and I thought I’d go along just to walk around and see something other than the golden-tan brick of campus for a while.

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order in the court

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It was a welcome breath of fresh air. Being on campus all the time, I live in the same space as I work, which means that I feel compelled, no matter what time of day it is, to keep working. There’s no physical divide between “home” and “school” — they’re the same. In other words, I’m basically at school, doing school things, 24/7. The brief moments when I can escape school and do something that’s not only distinct from school in practice, but also spatially separate from school, are my favorite.

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alley-oop

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Since we were downtown, my friend and I decided to walk around a little and take some pictures. She’s also pretty into maintaining an aesthetically pleasing Instagram feed, so we work well together when we take pictures. It helps as well that we’re similar in height and body type, so I don’t have to worry about her looming over me and taking a dreaded high-angle shot that makes me look even shorter than I already am.

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that’s groovy, man

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As it turns out, South Bend has some cool locations for photos. It’s not as well-kept as Notre Dame’s buildings (excluding a few older ones, like Riley, that are just falling apart), but it’s a lot more diverse and interesting. I guess with economic depression, comes a lot of dilapidated buildings that fit an urban aesthetic well. Hooray for that?

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one with more updates on my life at Notre Dame! Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Top: Vintage (thrifted)

Skirt: Somewhere in Nepal

Monday Musings + Coffee – Long, Short Weekend

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Huh, somehow, I wound up doing another Musings + Coffee post on a Monday.

This weekend has been crazy, so you’ll have to excuse my lack of blogging. In the last 72 hours, I have experienced — in no particular order — a concert, a dead car battery, 24,000 steps worth of Chicago, and a missed mandatory class. Once I get to the OOTD posts from these last few days, I’ll go into more detail, but suffice to say, I’ve been busy.

Somehow, though, it seems I managed to fit in some flatlay photography for one of these posts. Keyword — some. This isn’t the most cohesive set of photos I’ve ever posted on this blog (save the first two, which are clearly from the same set of my bullet journal), but I like them all for their individual merits. And I did indeed get some really good photos this weekend; it’s just that they’re unrelated. I hope you can forgive me.

Apart from the bullet journal photos, I’ve also got this from picture from my plant class that I thought turned out really well. Our homework is to go out and collect and identify plant samples — how cool is that? It’s probably one of my favorite classes at the moment because it’s low-stress, it’s a subject that interests me, and it’s fun. Compare that to my Russian Lit class, which is high-stress, not interesting, and not much fun, and it’s easy to see how an outdoors botany class would speak to me for this semester.

Plus, I like plants. I’ll have to give you guys an update on my dorm plants soon — since I’m in a new dorm room this year, I guess you’ll have to see the updated configuration. We had some tragic losses (RIP my rose moss seedlings), but we’ve also had some new additions to the family.

The weekend concluded with this really lovely sunset over the Golden Dome, which I had the pleasure of watching out a library window. Sort-of. I wasn’t actually able to secure a coveted window seat myself to watch the whole thing, but I walked by the window multiple times so I could catch it — probably thoroughly annoying the person who was actually sitting by the window in the process.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Bloglovin, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Monday Musings + Coffee – Rebranding and September 2018 Bullet Journal Spread

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This is it — Saturday Musings + Coffee is no more!

I’ve come to the conclusion that I just can’t be trusted to keep up with consistent slice-of-life flatlay posts. Believe it or not, I find flatlay photography much more difficult than fashion photography. For me, at least, it takes a lot more effort to hunt down enough cutesy “little things,” and then a good clean background (there are surprisingly few white tables at Notre Dame) for a flatlay post than the effort to put on a cute outfit and get someone to take a picture of it. I’m going to put on clothes anyway, so it doesn’t take much more to take some photos of the outfit, but I have to go out of my way to do flatlay pictures. Believe me, my life is never as well-organized or simplistic as these photos portray.

But don’t worry — I’m not getting rid of the Musings + Coffee lifestyle posts. I don’t think I can keep up with weekly Saturday posts, but I do want to continue the spirit of them. That’s why today’s post is called “Monday Musings” — because it’s Monday, and I’ve decided I don’t want to be restricted to an arbitrary weekly blog post system that revolves around one day. From now on, I’ll do Musings + Coffee posts when I feel like it, regardless of the day of the week.

What a novel concept.

Speaking of novel concepts, happy September! I can’t believe August is already over — this time last month, I was still living in Kentucky with my parents and going to work in Frankfort. Now I’m back in school, and life moves at a completely different pace and rhythm.

As for September’s bullet journal spread, I decided to focus it around Notre Dame fall football (with some Charlie Brown characters thrown in for added flavor), since we’ve got three home games this month. Honestly, the constant football is kind-of exhausting. Love thee Notre Dame and stuff, but I’ll be pretty relieved when I can finally have a Saturday to rest and just do homework.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Bloglovin, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

August 20, 2018 – A Tropical Paradise (OOTD #352)

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Haha, just kidding. This is South Bend. It’s about as far from a tropical paradise as it gets. So even though my dress looks vaguely as though it could fit in in a sunny beach setting, it’s not South Bend where I’m going to find it.

For one, for a solid 60% of the year, it’s below freezing, and there’s probably snow on the ground. And when it’s not below freezing — like now, in the summer — it’s probably miserably hot and humid.

Take this day for example! It was cloudy but hot, and the humidity made going outside more like going for a swim. And indeed, it did end up raining for quite a bit, so even if I never got a real swim in, by the time I came back inside, I looked like I had.

Anyway, I found a new location for photos at Notre Dame — the Rockne athletic center, also known as the Rock. Most students don’t really bother going anymore now that the new gym has been built in the Duncan Student Center, so I didn’t have to worry much about foot traffic getting in the way of my photo shoot. It also helps that it’s sort of out of the way at the very end of South Quad.

I’m going to be trying my best to get photos this year that aren’t just rehashes of the same locations that I used for all of my photos last year — the door of South Dining Hall, the arches of Howard, the steps of Bond.  Hopefully, I may even get to do some photos in locations other than campus because hopefully, I’ll get off campus more often — now won’t that be wild!

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one with more updates on my life at Notre Dame! Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Dress: Unknown (gifted by a friend)

August 19, 2018 – Sophomore Superiority (OOTD #351)

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And so life at Notre Dame continues.

The freshman are all here, so campus is beginning to feel a bit more lively — though still not quite like home. I don’t know, there’s something about a bunch of teenagers in matching t-shirts being herded around by Welcome Weekend ambassadors that just prevents campus from really feeling normal yet. I feel like I’m at summer camp, but I’m not a camper, and I’m not a camp counselor — just someone who happens to be there at the same time.

I’ve spent my last few days here just chilling and catching up on my blog-writing, and honestly, it’s been really nice. Notre Dame’s a totally different beast when I’m not stressing out about schoolwork or football games or dorm parties. While I’m excited for football season to begin and for my friends to all get here, I’m also glad I have this time to relax.

It’s also kind-of nice to watch all the freshman running around from one Welcome Weekend activity to another, and be able to acknowledge with satisfaction how glad I am that that’s not me. If you read any of my Welcome Weekend blogs from last year, you’ll know — I wasn’t really a fan of the whole experience. They do their best to make it fun and as not-scary as possible, but it’s nonetheless an overwhelming experience.

It’s fine though, because I’ll never really have to do it again. This may sound silly, but it was with triumph that I wore this simple outfit — just a dress with a jacket — because it set me apart from all the freshmen in their matching dorm shirts suffering through Welcome Weekend. There’s uh…nothing like realizing how bad other people have it to make you feel better about yourself.

That’s about it for today. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one with more updates on my life at home in Kentucky. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Bloglovin, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Jacket: Anthropologie

Dress: Forever21

August 18, 2018 – Not Quite An Ivy League (OOTD #350)

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Day 374: the locals are getting suspicious. I believe they’re beginning to realize that i am not, in fact, a piece of ivy.

There’s nothing like sitting yourself down in a patch of ivy in the math building’s courtyard for the sake of your fashion blog. Thankfully, there were no classes going on, so I was at little risk of getting “caught” taking photos by myself, but it was still a little awkward, nonetheless.

If there’s anything this blog has taught me, it’s how to ignore how awkward it feels taking pictures in public. Here’s my secret: I just don’t think about it.

I know, that’s horrible advice — just don’t be nervous, and you won’t have anxiety! Just don’t be sad, and you won’t have depression! In this case, though, and probably this case only, it works for me. If I can ignore how uncomfortable I feel by focusing on acting like I’m confident and self-assured taking photos in public, I find that my actual anxiety lowers as a result.

But in general, what I like best is taking photos away from the curious (sometimes judgmental) glances of strangers. That’s why this ivy garden worked so well. It was just me and the plants, and as you know, I love me some plants. 

In an ideal world, humanity would have somehow developed a technology to make plants sentient, and I’d just have the plants take pictures for me instead of people. I guess if the plants were sentient then they could still be judgmental…I guess this plan’s a bit flawed.

That’s about it for today. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one with more updates on my life at home in Kentucky. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Bloglovin, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Sweater: thrifted

Top: thrifted

Shorts: Forever21