Tag: indiana

March 28, 2019 – Welcome to the Sixties (OOTD #484)

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Hey, remember when these blogs actually somewhat aligned with the real calendar date? Me neither.

So I’ve sort-of fallen behind. I hope you (and by you, I mean all three regular readers I suppose I have) don’t mind. I do actually really like to have a little bit of space in between the actual day the blog is supposed to be about and the date of that blog’s publication, but  three months is a little ridiculous; even I can admit that.

Regarding March 28’s outfit, though — it’s one of my favorites from March. I mean, I like the majority of my outfits — hence bothering to keep a fashion blog at all — but I’m particularly proud of this one.

Ever since I bought this retro disco dress at a vintage shop in Chicago, I’ve struggled to figure out how to wear it in new and interesting ways. It’s a great dress, don’t get me wrong — I love how blatantly 60s it is, it’s practically something I could have purchased at a Halloween shop with a Brigitte Bardot wig. However, that also poses problems — how do I wear it without looking like I purchased it at a Halloween shop?

It’s not exactly a dress I can throw a denim jacket over. It’s a deceptively simple dress; there’s very little to its design, but because of its bold pattern that immediately dates it to the 1960s, I have to be careful with how I accessorize it. Anything that seems more modern than the 60s, such as a denim jacket, would look silly when paired with it.

I thought this sweater was a good compromise. It’s got something of a vintage vibe to it as well, no?

I love this sweater — I honestly probably wear it way too much. For a cheap Forever21 purchase, it’s certainly lasted me a long time. It also happens to be my new favorite color to wear — yellow. Seems like a double-win 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

Dress: A vintage shop in Chicago

Sweater: Forever21

 

 

March 25, 2019 – Twirly (OOTD #481)

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There’s no shortage of stained glass at Notre Dame — but there is a shortage of stained glass that’s in a place where I can take pictures of it.

For one, a lot of it is in high places, where I can’t reach to stand to take a picture with it. For another, it’s usually inside a church or chapel — and there seems to be something weird to me about taking a picture in a place of worship, even if it’s completely empty and I’m the only one there. I have used an ND chapel for pictures once before on this blog, but to be honest, I still don’t know how I feel about it.

I don’t, however, have any issue taking photos outside of churches or other places of worship — just check out this Buddhist temple in Nepal, this mosque in Qatar, or this church in England that have all been featured on my blog. The ND basilica has shown up here once or twice as well. The architecture of these places of worship is meant to be admired — and as long as I keep my fashion photography on the outside, where no table-flipping Jesus can get mad at me for turning a church into a marketplace, I feel okay with myself.

And so that’s where these photos come from — the outside of a chapel within one of Notre Dame’s buildings. It’s not the most stunning chapel on campus, nor is it the most stunning exterior architecture or stained glass, but you have to admit that it goes nicely with my outfit.

I even figured I’d give the dress a bit of a twirl, which I almost never do because of a) how difficult it can be to get a good shot and b) how ridiculous it looks to passers-by. I’m already stood outside of a chapel in a classroom building taking pictures of my outfit — I don’t need to look any sillier.

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

Dress: Francesca’s

Bralette: Aerie

March 23, 2019 – Branding (OOTD #479)

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I’ve discussed this before, but color can be rather hard to come by at Notre Dame.

Our buildings are pretty much all the same tan-gold brick — which is still very pretty and really gives the campus a sense of cohesion, however, it makes for rather dull backgrounds in fashion photography. Most of the year, the scenery is pretty colorless too — especially in the winter, when campus is covered in snow 65% of the time.

And naturally, the majority of classroom buildings are on the plain side as well. That’s not a huge complaint of mine — I don’t need a rainbow mural adorning every single wall — but when it comes to trying to find interesting and diverse backgrounds for my blog pictures, it can sometimes be a challenge. I’ve used everything from bathroom walls to stairwells to

And now, a new background enters the scene — this large colored poster from the student government office.

The student government office has turned into one of my favorite places to study on campus because I can usually guarantee that it’ll be empty. When there are no meetings in session, the space normally sits vacant — making it a great place to set up shop and get work done. There’s even free coffee from the Keurig.

There’s also this poster, which I’ve been eyeing for quite some time to use as a background for an OOTD post. My only hesitation has been just how student government-centric it is — my blog isn’t an advertising space for other organizations (unless they’re paying me, and even so, that’s usually reserved for Instagram posts), and I don’t really like to feature logos prominently unless it’s something specific to fashion.

But it was cute and colorful, and I thought — why not? I’m not against Notre Dame’s student government, and I am technically a part of it (albeit a very small one). It’s a small price to pay in order to get a colorful background in early spring at Notre Dame on my Instagram feed for once.

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: Vintage (thrifted)

Dress: Thrifted

March 21, 2019 – Empty Buildings (OOTD #477)

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I’ve got a fascination with abandoned buildings.

As many people do — I’m not trying to claim that that’s a unique feature of mine. I love following urban exploration photographers on Instagram and subreddits like r/AbandonedPorn.

In reality, though, I’ve visited very few abandoned places in my life, mostly out of the concern for the legality of trespassing and the potential of meeting unfriendly junkies. I went to my old elementary school once with a friend, but that’s it. I’d like to actually visit some of these cool places I see online, but I also don’t want to die/get arrested, you know?

As it turns out, though, Notre Dame has (at least for now) an abandoned building of its own. Or rather, it’s not really very abandoned — it’s in a pretty central location on campus and it’ll likely be repurposed and functioning again by the start of the next academic year. I suppose empty is the better word.

It’s the old architecture building, which, since the beginning of the spring term 2019, has been out of commission. They recently opened up a brand new architecture building (which I literally visited for the first time just a few days prior), and so the old one has been sitting empty for a month or two. I think they’re in the process of moving some office buildings in, but at the time of me taking these pictures, it was pretty much vacant.

Honestly, I’d love to see it turned into a new building for the art and design students. I’ve discussed the dilapidated art building extensively here, and while I do believe the state of dilapidation adds to the charm, Notre Dame could really use to offer its studio art students a nicer space. The design building, West Lake Hall, is honestly worse. It’s way off at the edge of campus, and most people believe it’s a maintenance building for storing lawn mowers. Not really a good image for the design department.

You’d think that the old architecture building, which is already set up with studio spaces, would be an excellent place to move the A/AH/D (art, art history, and design) department, but I guess Notre Dame has other plans.

Anyway, Father Jenkins — or anyone in ND administration — if you happen to be reading this, you know what my ideas are.

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!

Dress: Vintage (thrifted, Brick Lane Market)

Jacket: Thrifted (Goodwill)

March 2, 2019 – Markets and Mixups (#463)

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It’s been nearly a year since I last went to the South Bend Farmers’ Market.

It’s honestly one of my favorite places to go in South Bend. I mean, farmers’ markets in general are cool, and though I don’t have a lot of other ones that I’ve been to to compare it to, but I think the South Bend Farmers’ Market is something special. For one, it has its own little building by the river, and so vendors are able to actually have permanent booths and displays year-round.

It also feels more like a flea market more than a farmers’ market — and that’s a good thing! I like flea markets. There are vendors who sell more than just produce — they have vintage books, houseplants, homemade jewelry, and eclectic goods of that nature. It’s my favorite kind of market (excepting, perhaps, a vintage market or an art fair).

Unfortunately, I don’t get to go often. It’s not really within walking or biking distance to campus (and let’s be honest — campus is basically the only thing in walking distance to campus), and so I only ever go when someone else drives me. It was Dads’ Weekend for my dorm, and so one of my friends’ dads offered to take anyone who wanted to go to the market one Saturday morning. Of course, I jumped on the opportunity. Any chance I get to leave campus (especially with an adult who will pay for my food), I take.

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Now, I don’t really feel any deep resentment for what I’m about to describe next — I’m sure my friend’s dad didn’t mean to do it. Granted, I don’t think people typically mean to do it, unless they’re purposefully trying to be assholes, but I haven’t really had to deal with that since my 9th grade Civics teacher, who was all kinds of problematic anyway. Nonetheless, it gets under my skin.

While we were loitering around, waiting for my friend to finish looking at a display of organic tea, he asked me how I liked Vietnam.

In case anyone here doesn’t know, I’m not from Vietnam. I’m from China, actually but my other Asian roommate, Lan Anh, is Vietnamese. He’d confused the two of us, something that seems to happen quite often. You can see Lan Anh in this batch of pictures, so you can decide if we really look a like or not, but I’m of the opinion that we don’t. Not enough to justify people constantly confusing us.

For one, she has dark hair and mine is bleach blonde. Like, you’d think that would make things easy for people. How many blonde Asians do you see a day?

What made the difference for me with my friend’s dad — why I’m perturbed but not really with him directly — was how apologetic he was afterwards. I could tell he felt badly, and that he recognized why his mistaking me for Lan Anh implied more than just that he was bad with names. I mind that he confused us, of course — I’m really tired of the all Asians look the same thing — but I appreciate that he was able to acknowledge his mistake. That’s all I want out of people . It’s okay if someone confuses Asian faces or names once or twice — we’re a minority, and people will be less attuned to facial differences if they don’t see us much — but I hope that they make an effort to do better afterwards. There are people I’ve known who have never bothered with that second step — with doing better after they make the initial mistake — and that’s what’s discouraging.

On a side note, I saw Pete Buttigieg and his husband at the breakfast café we went to. I didn’t go up and say hi because I didn’t want to bother him, but it’s cool to see a presidential candidate out and about living life like a normal person.

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: Forever21

Jacket: Hollister

Skirt: J. Crew (thrifted)

Saturday Musings – March 2019 Bullet Journal Spread!

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One of my favorite things about sharing my bullet journal spreads on this blog is that I don’t have to come up with a creative blog titles — I can just announce that I’m writing about my bullet journal spread and be done with it.

Anyway, this blog will be about my March spread. Please don’t pay attention to how this is being posted on March 30, also known as the second-to-last day of the month.

As I see it, though, people can still be inspired by my bullet journal drawings regardless of when in the month it is — it’s not like I’m a bullet journal influencer, so I don’t see any reason to post my spreads at any particular time. Besides, I’m new to bullet journaling myself, so I don’t see myself as anything worth copying at the moment. In fact, I’m still copying the layouts of some of my favorite artists, like AmandaRachLee.

I’m kind-of surprised with myself for managing to keep up with bullet journaling for so long (that is, if you ignore the three-month hiatus I took from October-December where I basically didn’t write/draw anything at all). I really like it as a way to force myself to draw a little every day — since I’m not in art classes really anymore, it’s a great way to try to exercise my skills.

I honestly wish I had more time to devote to it, though — I sometimes find that I end up rushing through a design/spread because I know I have limited time each day realistically to work on my journal. I wish I could do elaborate, time-intensive, and detailed drawings each month, but they usually end up pretty simplistic.

And simplistic isn’t a bad thing! But a lot of my artwork in the past was very detail-oriented, and there’s nothing really I’m doing right now to practice that kind of artwork. It’s looking like I’ll have a month at home in between my various travels, so maybe that’s something I’ll work on then.

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!

Bullet Journal Supplies (with Amazon links)

Bullet journal: The Scribbles that Matter Pro, A5, 

Pens: Pilot Frixion 

Markers: Prismacolor Brush Tip  and Copic Brush Tip

 

Tuesday Musings – February 2019 Bullet Journal Spread!

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Hey look, I know I’m late — but at least this post is getting done before the end of the month.

Believe it or not, I actually finished the spread for this month at a decent time this month. I can’t tell you exactly when I finished the cover page, but it was toward the beginning of the month.

So why did it take me so long to share my designs on my blog? In truth, I just didn’t have a chance to do the photography. I also hadn’t finalized some fo the doodles for my calendar portion (like what you see under February 22 and 16, and I didn’t want to post pictures of my designs until I’d included those extra little drawings.

I like the spread I did for February, though I kind-of wish it were a little more representative of what February in South Bend is really like — that’s to say, while I like the flowers I drew, flowers aren’t exactly something I saw once this entire month. I saw a lot snow, that’s for sure. Unfortunately, snow is a little harder to draw, and not nearly as colorful.

And so I think the February spread represented more my hopes for what the month would be like, rather than my expectations. I mean, you’ll notice, I also included lots of Valentines Day-themed drawings, and it’s not like I actually did anything exciting for Valentines Day (more on that in the February 14 blog).

The winter is definitely wearing thin. At the time of writing this blog, it’s February 26, and I’m about a week and a half out from spring break. “Spring break” — that should imply that spring is around the corner, right? Not here. It’s still definitively winter here in beautiful Northern Indiana. I think it made it all the way up to 30 degrees Fahrenheit today — so basically, it was a scorcher.

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!

Bullet Journal Supplies (with Amazon links)

Bullet journal: The Scribbles that Matter Pro, A5, 

Pens: Pilot Frixion 

Markers: Prismacolor Brush Tip

 

January 21, 2019 – Unintentional Minion (OOTD #441)

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I’ll admit it — I thought the Minions from Despicable Me were cool when they first came out.

It’s a little hard to explain, but I’ve got this vague memory of being about 14 years old, scrolling through Pinterest at the height of the Minion craze, probably listening to Happy by Pharell Williams or whatever as cool back in 2013, and thinking that a Minion costume would be cute for Halloween. This was, of course, before I realized that I wasn’t cool enough for Halloween parties, and that I likely wouldn’t have the opportunity to wear a Halloween costume again until I was a junior in high school and actually had friends.

This was also, of course, before I realized how annoying Minions were.

Despicable Me was a good movie, and the Minions were cute side characters. Because that’s what they were meant to be — side characters — and not the obnoxious, Facebook meme-fueling evidence of how out-of-touch corporate America is with young people that the Minions have become. Illumination took something that was cute and funny and killed it by putting it everywhere. Minions were cute when you could buy little yellow Tic-Tacs shaped like them in 2013. They were not cute when they received their own feature-length movie in 2015.

So anyway, that’s all to say that I really didn’t mean to dress like a Minion here. In fact, I didn’t even realize how much like a Minion I looked until one of my friends pointed to me at lunch and said “you look like a Minion!”

To be honest, I was going more for an Arthur the Aardvark vibe with the blue and yellow, but as soon as my friend brought up the Minion comparison, I knew they were right. I looked just like the Minion costumes I saw all those years ago on Pinterest, from the denim dress to the yellow sweater down to the combat boots.

So what can you do when it’s 12 noon on a Monday, you have two more classes still to go, and you look like a Minion?

You own it, and then write a blog post about it later.

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: Forever21 (thrifted)

Dress: Vintage (thrifted)

Saturday Musings – January 2019 Bullet Journal Spread

Published on by lensembledujour4 Comments

Today, I realized something that should have been obvious — “bujo” stands for “bullet journaling.

I’ve been seeing the bujo tag on Instagram, Pinterest, and Tumblr for ages to represent images of visually appealing, artistic, and cutesy journal pages. I’ve also been seeing bullet journals all over — which ultimately influenced my decision to purchase one for myself and try to get into it. However, of all of my years of consciously knowing that “bujo” and “bullet journaling” were aesthetic journal trends, I never realized that they were the same thing. Bujo = BUllet JOurnal. Shouldn’t that have even obvious?

In other news, you’ll notice that I’ve brought my Saturday Musings series back! I haven’t done one of these posts since mid-September. I initially took a break because I just felt like I didn’t have any new inspiration for posts — they were getting repetitive, just shots of my coffee and my laptop over and over again. I started the series to give me a break and take the pressure off from the OOTD posts, and yet, I found that the Saturday Musings posts were just putting pressure on me to produce flatly-style pictures even when I had no new ideas.

But now that I’ve gotten into bullet journaling (sort-of — I did kind of fall behind in November and December), I have a new source of inspiration for what I can show off in these Saturday Musings posts. So I’m brining it back — but I’m taking the pressure off of myself to do a post like this every week, and to do them only on Saturdays. Now, these “musings” style posts will come whenever I feel the inspiration for them — be that on a Saturday or no.

Anyway, I finally got around to doing a January bullet journal spread, and so I thought I’d  share it with you today. With all of the traveling I did at the end of 2018/beginning of 2019, I thought this image of the globe would be fitting. But then, of course, after the traveling was all over, it was time to return to university, so I combined the travel imagery with some study inspiration in the form of books. I guess you could say the general theme for the January spread is studying through cultural immersion.

Or maybe there’s no overarching theme — just some aesthetically-pleasing doodles and colors combined into a calendar spread. Going with the theme of minimal commitment and pressure that I’m adopting with my blog, I’m also not putting strict definitions or rules about what my bullet journal has to be. It’ll be whatever it ends up being.

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!

Bullet Journal Supplies (with Amazon links)

Bullet journal: The Scribbles that Matter Pro, A5, 

Pens: Pilot Frixion 

Markers: Prismacolor Brush Tip

December 15, 2018 – Rerouted (OOTD #423)

Published on by lensembledujour3 Comments

Welp, that didn’t’t go as planned.

My semester had ended, I’d finished up all of my finals, and I thought I knew for certain what all of my grades were going to be. There shouldn’t have been anything else left to worry about — everything was supposed to be set for me to make it home by 7PM on Saturday night.

So why then did I not make it back until 10AM the following morning?

That’s an excellent question, and one I’m still asking myself. See, I was supposed to have two flights — one from Chicago Midway at 10AM to Atlanta, and another from Atlanta to Lexington at 5PM that would have gotten me home by early evening. Why not just one direct flight from Chicago to Lexington? Because money, that’s why — I basically always fly as cheaply as possible.

Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea this time, however, because after I made it to Atlanta, all of my troubles began. I shouldn’t have been surprised because I hate the Atlanta airport — the last time I was there, I got trapped for two days after a bad storm in the Southwest trapped the entire airport full of people, meaning that Amanda and I, as two sorry idiots who flew standby, were stuck there until two spots finally opened up for a flight to Lexington. This time, I made it out of Atlanta alive and on time, but my flight didn’t reach my destination. Instead, it got rerouted to Indianapolis 15 miles away from our destination.

Apparently, the runway lights were out or something. I don’t manage airports, so I can’t claim to know how everything works, but it strikes me that that’s not an issue that you should allow to happen. Anyway, my flight couldn’t land, and so they flew us all to Indianapolis at 10PM at night, three hours after we were supposed to have landed in Kentucky.

In Indianapolis, they made us sit there for an hour before they finally decided to cancel the flight, at which point, they shoved us all into the airport with some hotel vouchers. Unfortunately, the troubles didn’t end there.

They put us in a (crappy) hotel about 10 miles away from the airport. I felt so badly for the hotel staff — they clearly were not prepared for an airplane-load of people to show up at 10PM at night. They only had one shuttle, and the shuttle could only take 10 people at a time, which sucked for the airplane full of people who were stuck waiting out in the cold as the shuttle made the 30 minute trip back and forth from the airport to the hotel. Then, of course, when I finally made it to the hotel at about 11PM at night, the poor lone person standing there at the desk was still struggling to make it through the line of people waiting to get rooms.

I don’t think I made it up to my room until about midnight — and at that point, I only had five hours until it was time to get up again and catch the shuttle to get back to the airport for my 7:30AM flight. Resigned to my sad fate, I took some pictures of my outfit (because I figured this was too good of a story to not give it a proper blog post treatment — and also because I liked this outfit), and got a few hours of shut-eye before dragging myself back to the airport.

Thankfully, though, our flight departed on time, and I finally made it back home. It was over 12 hours later than I was supposed to be — and basically 24 hours after I departed from school on Saturday morning. Can you believe that? It took me 24 hours to make it from Chicago to Lexington, which, by plane, should have taken two hours — four if you count the bus ride from campus to Midway.

I don’t think it was my worst travel debacle, but it’s up there. Maybe #2, after the other Atlanta tragedy that I mentioned earlier. I do love to fly, don’t get me wrong — but I don’t love it when I get stranded at airports and bus stops and creepy hotels for 12 hours at a time.

That’s about it for today. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one with more updates on my life as a world traveler. 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: Thrifted

Sweater: Thrifted

Shirt: J.Crew

Dress: American Eagle