Tag: football

March 7, 2019 – Out of My League (OOTD #467)

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I’m not really a baseball hat person, but I’m willing to reconsider.

For one, I’ve never played baseball in my entire life. No, I’m not kidding — I’ve just literally never played it, not even in gym class.

Softball, sure — once or twice in high school P.E. Kickball, absolutely — all through elementary, middle, and high school. I actually twisted my ankle once playing kickball, and I hate it now for it. But baseball, with an actual baseball and a baseball bat and a full team — nope.

I imagine though that a lot of women are in the same place as me. Girls typically play on softball teams, and it’s softball that’s taught in gym class. Baseball is a sport you really have to seek out. Given how much specific equipment is needed for a game, at least in comparison to other games that kids like to play, like basketball or soccer, for me growing up, baseball was a rare game to see played outside of actual Little League teams.

And you know what? I really don’t regret it. I don’t feel like I missed out on anything in my childhood or my experience of American culture by having not played baseball. I played softball once or twice, and I hated that (nothing ever happens! You spend the majority of your time either sitting in the dugout or standing in the outfield!), so I can’t imagine that baseball would truly be any different.

So I feel kind of fake whenever I wear a baseball hat, which is funny, because I don’t have the same experience when I wear a football jersey or a military jacket. Baseball hats feel somehow different though, and I’m not sure why.

This isn’t even my own baseball hat. It’s my friend, Lan Anh’s. Ironically, she never wears baseball hats either, despite owning many. Perhaps she shares my baseball hat complex.

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 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: Lan Anh’s closet

Hat: Also Lan Anh’s closet (thanks Lan Anh)

Jeans: J. Crew (thrifted, Clothes Mentor)

December 9, 2018 – Playoffs and Pray-offs (OOTD #420)

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It’s not playoffs time yet, but it’s time to get ready.

I actually won’t even be in the country for the playoff game that Notre Dame’s in — I think I’ll be in Qatar, or otherwise traveling from Qatar to France. Since I won’t be in town to go to the game or to even watch it at home, I figured I’d get my Notre Dame spirit out of my system early.

I was also tired, and finals were about to begin, so I was perhaps hoping that by wearing the garb of the Notre Dame gods, I would earn their favor. Who cares about a playoff when you can have a pray-off, am I right?

Listen, I like Notre Dame football, but I don’t follow it that closely. I don’t know what are odds are to make it to the National Championship, but I’m not getting my hopes up.

So in case we lose horribly in the next few days and my Notre Dame spirit turns out to be for naught, I can at least say that this is just a Christmas outfit — it is Christmas Eve the day I’m writing this, after all. I’m actually sitting in the Munich airport waiting to head to Qatar right now.

So Merry Christmas Eve to you! I’ve actually already celebrated Christmas with the family because I knew I would be out of town for Christmas day, but I hope you’re having a good time celebrating the holidays on a normal schedule like a normal person. Eat some good non-airport food 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 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!

Sweater: Notre Dame bookstore

Skirt: Forever21

September 29, 2018 – Washing Machine Queen (OOTD #384)

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This may be the most discordant collection of locations I’ve ever included in a blog.

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washing machine queen

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First up, we’ve got some photos from the laundry room. That’s right: I posed with a washing machine for my fashion blog.

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go irish, beat laundry

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I’ve seen some Instagrammers get some really cool shots in laundromats, so I thought I’d give it a shot. Turns out, the laundry room in my dorm has some really flattering lighting. Who’d have thought?

Fun fact: the washing machine I’m sitting on here was actually running while I was doing these photos, meaning it was vibrating underneath me as I sat on it. That was a little weird. I’ve never had my fashion photograph backgrounds vibrate before.

After the washing machine photos, I have a few with this blue gate by the architecture building. How did I wind up at a blue gate by the architecture building? I saw it as I happened to go by, and I thought it’d make for a good background. I don’t know. Sometimes you just gotta jump on the good backgrounds, even if you’ve already gotten pictures for the day.

What’s next? Well, it was game day, so it was on to the game. I was a little concerned that I hadn’t gotten any game-related photos in my game outfit, so I decided to get even more photos outside of the stadium. Did I need them? No. Did I get them anyway?

Well…yes.

The moral of the story is that there was no point to me getting so many photos today because I wasn’t able to use them all, and I now I have a lot of photos on my phone that  I don’t know what to do with. As much as I like getting varied backgrounds for my OOTD pics, sometimes, the varied backgrounds don’t connect. And that makes for a rather disjointed blog post.

But on the plus side, I found two cool locations — the laundry room and the blue gate by the architecture building — that could potentially make for good backgrounds for future blog posts. So I suppose it wasn’t a total waste.

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!

Jacket: Chaps (thrifted)

Top: Notre Dame bookstore

Pants: vinage (thrifted)

September 15, 2018 – Football in a Baseball Jersey (OOTD #376)

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Not only have I got on a baseball jersey, but also a baseball hat — clearly, I don’t know my sports.

At least I got the team right. I love the Votre Père Complacent Scottish. Can’t for the life of me figure out why their logo is an interlocking ND, though….

This baseball top is once again an example of me getting something for cheaper by shopping in the children’s section of a store. It’s a little embarrassing, but I save money, so…I consider myself a winner here.

Notre Dame game day fashion is always fun for me. I like themed outfits, if you haven’t been able to tell, and so I like the challenge of trying to come up with new, creative ways to wear Notre Dame colors and logos. A lot of people just wear a generic t-shirt and jeans, but a lot of people also put in some legitimate effort to come up with some cool outfits.

It’s very different from Southern football games I’ve been to, where everyone dresses up, but in the same way they’d dress up for a day at the races or for Easter brunch. People here dress up too, don’t get me wrong, but it’s a casual dressed-up. The kind of dressed-up where you’re still in casual attire, but creative and fun casual attire.

Like I said, I love the challenge of it. How do I make myself stand out from a crowd of people all wearing the same blue, gold, and green colors?

Honestly, Notre Dame should just hurry up and hire me as their brand ambassador. I’m already clearly competent at distinguishing different sports uniforms. I’ll just show up to basketball games dressed for hockey and golf tournaments dressed for football, and I’m sure someone — Father Jenkins, the Leprechaun, maybe Touchdown Jesus himself — will notice.

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!

Baseball tee: Notre Dame bookstore

Top: H&M

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 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

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!

January 31, 2018 – Maroon Moron (OOTD #215)

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I like maroon, and I personally consider myself to be a moron…so Maroon Moron? That works, right? It’s too bad I’m not a Mormon too. And that it’s not the morning. Then we could’ve had a truly alliterative title.

Okay, so maybe it’s not the cleverest blog title I’ve ever come up with. But I do this every day, so I’m kind of bound to have some misses every once in a while. It’s got to beat “petal to the metal,” which was so out there that no one even understood it.

I’m presently sitting in my dorm room’s common area watching the Super Bowl, which, presently, is going pretty well for the Eagles. I think it’s because I have my old McNabb jersey on. It’s a lucky charm that hasn’t failed me yet.

This is my first Super Bowl away from home, which if it weren’t for the Eagles playing, wouldn’t be a big deal. But seeing as the Eagles are the favorite team of my family, and seeing as my parents always put on a good Super Bowl party, and seeing as this is the first time I’ve ever actually seen them play in the Super Bowl, it’s a little more unfortunate. My dorm room’s common area is fine, and their store-bought chicken tenders were edible, but it’s nothing on my living room and my mother’s Hawaiian roll sandwiches.

I haven’t much gotten to see the commercials so far, as the people who are watching the game with me are pretty noisy, but the few I have seen have been pretty funny. I liked the one that had Morgan Freeman and Peter Dinklage rap battling each other. I don’t know what on earth the commercial was for, but the imagery at least was funny.

Welp, I think I ought to go back to watching the game. There’s a really vocal Patriots fan behind me who just groaned, so something must have happened good for us.

Fly, Eagles Fly!

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one! 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!

Sweater: Abercrombie

Skirt: Forever21

Scarf: My mom’s closet (don’t tell)

Saturday Musings + Coffee – Go Iggles

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Actually, it’s tea. Blueberry pomegranate açaí tea, to be exact. I didn’t really feel like coffee today, but I knew I still needed some pictures with me and a mug for this post, so I made some tea instead.

These last few nights, I’ve been hard at work playing with my hair. You know how I was discussing getting tired of my new short, brown hair a few weeks back? That sensation never really left. It’s annoying to style, I have to put more effort into making my makeup and outfits look feminine, and it’s beginning to grow out, which in itself, is not problematic, as I want to get my hair long again, but it’s growing out in a kind-of awkward way.

So when Influenster offered me my first VoxBox with some Clairol hair color products to review, I jumped on the chance. A haircut likely won’t solve my woes, but perhaps a new, more exciting color than light brown will. Keep an eye out for a review of said products on this blog coming soon!

In other news, I’m getting temporarily kicked out of my dorm room tonight so one of my roommates can have some “friends over.” Normally, that might thoroughly annoy me, but seeing as I’ve spent pretty much all day cooped up in my room distractedly doing homework, it should actually be nice to be forced to go outside for a little. I’m thinking of headed to the haunted art building, Riley, to finish up my still life. Then, when my roommate’s party is over, I’ll come back and play with my hair some more.

In other other news, the Super Bowl is tomorrow! For the first time in my lifetime, my Philadelphia Eagles are actually playing, so I’m fairly excited. My dorm is having a watch party with typical game day food, which, while not as good as my mother’s Super Bowl party cooking, should still be a nice change from dining hall food. That’s part of the reason why I’ve been so eager to get my work done tonight rather than tomorrow – I want to give the television my full attention when the Eagles win their first Super Bowl!

Go Iggles!

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one! 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!

Saturday Musings + Coffee – Philadelphia Feelings

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I like…have no legitimate reason for that blog title…it just kind of came into my head to the tune of Elton John’s “Philadelphia Freedom” (fun song, by the way), and I thought I’d go for it.

I didn’t even intend originally for this blog to have a Philadelphia Eagles mug in it – I had wanted to go with my dad’s Notre Dame mug, in recognition of ND’s final regular season game tonight against Stanford. But that mug was dirty – I guess he used it this morning – so I thought I’d go for another one of my favorite football teams.

The Eagles are a team I’ve grown up rooting for, although it’s not one I have any particular connection to myself. I’ve never lived in Philly, I don’t know any of the players – all I know is that my parents like them, and so I do too.

In fairness, I never grew up in a place that cared much for professional football, so the only way it was ever a part of my life was through my parents – thus, it makes sense that I would root for the same team as they do. Kentucky is much more interested in college sports, and so I’ve developed an interest in those (have you seen how many times I talk about Notre Dame on this blog?), but as it comes to professional sports, all I know is the Eagles.

And until I move to a city and make friends who are all interested in professional sports, I think that’s the way it’ll stay. Which, for now, given the Eagles’ record as the best in the nation, is a great thing! Maybe I’ll finally see them in the Super Bowl.

Anyway, here’s a picture of my dog. That has nothing to do with coffee, or Saturdays, or the Eagles, but I like her and I thought I’d include her at the end here.