lexington – Page 9 – L'ensemble du jour

December 26, 2017 – Liminal Space (OOTD #186)

Published on December 27, 2017December 27, 2017 by lensembledujour8 Comments

The time between the end of Christmas and New Year’s Eve is a liminal space.

Do we even exist here? Is life progressing between December 26-31, or are we simply in limbo? What even is time?

I don’t know the answer to those rhetorical questions; my point is just that December 26-31 is a really weird time when nothing’s really happening and life is trying to continue like normal but failing wildly. I think we’re all still recovering from our food comas from Christmas.

So what better to do during liminal space, the time between what was and what’s next, than change up my hair? Again…

This is the second (arguably third) major haircut of 2017, and if you ask me, the most drastic. I don’t know if I’ve ever had such short hair before; not even as a kid. I’m pretty sure I had that bob with bangs that every preschooler had, and I hated it so much that as soon as my mother let me grow my hair out, I did. And I kept it that way until a few months ago when I decided to cut it short and dye it grey.

And then, a few days ago, I decided to cut it even shorter and go back to brunette. It’s not quite my natural color, but it’s closer than it’s been for years, since I dyed it blonde when I was 17. The bleached bits were just starting to look really awful, so I had to do it for the health of my hair. I have always wanted a pixie cut as well.

I might still dye it darker, but for now, I’m keeping it how it is. Besides, if I do end up changing it, as long as I do it before liminal space is over, it’ll be like it never happened, right?

Sweater: Thrifted

Jacket: Forever21

December 24, 2017 – Festive Fashion (OOTD #184)

Published on December 25, 2017 by lensembledujour5 Comments

Christmas Outfits Challenge 2017: Day 14

Merry Christmas Eve!

It’s still valid to say “merry” to Christmas Eve, right? I know Christmas Eve isn’t typically as festive as Christmas, but it still warrants a solid “merry,” yeah?

Christmas Eve doesn’t really entail anything very exciting for me and my family – for example, today, we did some last-minute shopping, I wrapped the last of my gifts, and I signed some Christmas cards. I know some people who get all dressed up, and party with all of their extended family, but I don’t know the last time I had a Christmas Eve that I like…actually had to go out and do anything significant?

I like it this way though, don’t get me wrong! Christmas Eve is a relaxing day for me, and I’m always down for a relaxing day.

As fashions go, you may have noticed that I’m once again wearing my green Slytherin scarf. I don’t know about you, but to me, the Harry Potter films – in particular, the first, third, and fourth ones – have a definite Christmas vibe to them, no? The first one’s got that awesome Great Hall Christmas scene of Harry’s first Christmas at Hogwarts, the third one’s got some really lovely snow scenes in Hogsmeade, and the fourth one has the Yule Ball (though to be honest….that’s about all the fourth film’s got going for it, in my opinion).

Plus, green is a nice Christmas color, and this is the only green scarf I own, so…

If you’re looking for my true pick for best unconventional Christmas film, it’s got to be the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I’m pretty sure it’s just because I first watched the films (and read the books!) during the Christmas season of my freshman year of high school. Those are some great films. The Hobbit’s (the films, at least) got nothing on the original trilogy.

Anyway, I should probably be heading to bed soon. Don’t want to sleep in too late and miss out on Christmas, amirite?

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: Forever21

Skirt: Forever21

Saturday Musings + Coffee – Merry Christmas Eve Eve

Published on December 24, 2017 by lensembledujour2 Comments

Happy almost-Christmas!

It’s two days until Christmas, and things are finally beginning to look like it at my household. I’ve baked some cookies, a cake, we put up our tree, my dad and I put up our outdoor lights – we’ve got just about all of the traditional Christmas stuff done.

I’ve still got quite a bit of wrapping to do, and even a few more gifts to buy, but I’m not too concerned. The gifts I need to buy aren’t due until after Christmas, and the wrapping can be done later tonight while I watch some Christmas specials on television.

It’s weird not being in school – I at once seem to have so much to do and nothing to do at all. For example, I stayed in bed until like 1PM today, like a proper lazy teenager, but after I finally got up, my dad and I managed to get some legitimate work done on the outdoor decorations. I’ll probably stay up late again tonight – I’ve got some Christmas cards to sign and address, the wrapping to do, and maybe even some blogging – and then wake up late tomorrow.

Meanwhile, I’ve been trying to make it through the most recent Harry Potter book – The Cursed Child. I don’t know, does it even count as a book? Is it even officially canon? I actually bought it like, a year ago, but I only made it about halfway through the first act before I gave up on how contrived and corny the plot seemed.

I’m coming across much of the same issue now, trying to read it again – the plot does seem a little silly, and the characters are, for lack of a better term, out-of-character. Maybe it would’ve been better had I seen the actual stage play.

Have any of you read Cursed Child yet? What do you think? Feel free to leave me a comment below.

December 15, 2017 – A Long Day (OOTD #183)

Published on December 22, 2017 by lensembledujour1 Comment

Christmas Outfits Challenge 2017: Day 13

Fun fact: by the time these photos were taken at about 4 in the afternoon on December 15, I had been up for over 24 hours.

Well, nearly. See, it all started at 6 AM, December 14. Why was I up that early, you ask? I had my final final, that morning at 8 AM, and I wanted to get up early enough so that I could relax (sort of), have some coffee, and get ready before I made the ten minute walk to the building where my exam was held.

This was the final I was most worried about too – Theology. I had an A in the class, but I needed an 87 on the final to keep that grade, so I needed to make sure I actually did well. Thankfully, the exam went well (well enough… I forgot to memorize the quotes I was supposed to by Nestorius and Cyril, but…y’know – you can’t win them all), and by 10 AM, I was finished with my first semester of college.

Then, I managed to sneak in an hour-long nap in my room before my roommates came in and we had to clean up our dorm before we left.

After that…well, I didn’t do much. I really had no reason to be awake – I had a bit of remaining work to do, I guess, and some blogging to work on, but I probably should’ve napped so I could be up in time for my 4 AM bus to Midway Airport.

Should’ve. Instead, I stayed up all night with some of my friends were also waiting to catch buses to catch plains that Saturday after classes ended. It was kind-of a weird night…

Anyway, I wound up on that 4AM bus with only one hour of sleep under my belt. I managed to get another hour of sleep whilst on that 4AM bus, and by 6AM-ish, I was sitting at my gate at Midway Airport. My plane, though, didn’t leave until 9AM, so I just kind-of sat there bleary-eyed for three hours watching the people go by and thinking about how I wanted to nap but I didn’t really want to in the middle of an airport.

Time-skip ahead a few hours, and I was standing in front of my grandmother’s house in Louisville at 4PM taking my photos with only three hours of sleep over the course of 34 hours – one hour after my Theo final, one hour on the 4AM bus to Midway, and one hour on the plane from Chicago to Louisville.

It’s great being home though, and it’s great being done with my first semester of school. It was worth a very long day of being awake.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one with more updates on my life as an idiot college student. 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!

Jacket: H&M

Shirt: Forever21

Turtleneck: The LOFT

Pants: American Eagle

Boots: LL Bean

November 23, 2017 – Thanksgiving Thriving (OOTD #166)

Published on November 28, 2017December 9, 2018 by lensembledujour1 Comment

Happy Thanksgiving!

Oh wait, you mean to tell me that Thanksgiving’s passed?

Yes, as I’ve discussed before, my blogs are on a few days’ delay (the delay varies quite a bit depending on if I’ve kept up with posting and if I’ve photographed my outfit every day or if I’ve skipped a few), which is all fine and dandy until a holiday rolls around and I don’t have an appropriate holiday-themed outfit to post on said holiday.

So here’s my Thanksgiving outfit, even though Thanksgiving was nearly a week ago and I have not relevant Thanksgiving-related things to say since I discussed my Thanksgiving thoughts on actual Thanksgiving.

It’s funny – the day before Thanksgiving, I stayed up fairly late hanging out with some friends, so on the morning of Thanksgiving, I slept in pretty late, like, until noon. I missed both the parade and the dog show, which was a little bit unfortunate, but I don’t usually watch those closely anyway so it wasn’t a big deal. Anyway, I woke up at noon to my dad telling that I needed to get downstairs because my grandmother was already in and everyone was getting ready for dinner, so I had very little time to pick out an appropriate festive outfit.

But despite these tremendous obstacles, I think I still managed to put together a pretty decent Thanksgiving-ready outfit. The skirt is reminiscent of both fall and Christmas, with a nondescript pattern of what might be fall leaves or Christmas poinsettia petals, and the sweater is just loose enough that I could eat basically whatever I wanted without feeling uncomfortable.

I think I’ll use this anecdote the next time an interviewer asks me about overcoming adversity.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one with more updates on my life here 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!

Sweater: Unknown (thrifted)

Skirt: Vintage: (thrifted)

(Huh…my entire outfit was thrifted here. I didn’t even realize that until just now when I wrote where they were from. Interesting)

Saturday Musings + Coffee – Philadelphia Feelings

Published on November 25, 2017 by lensembledujour2 Comments

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.

October 20, 2017 – Last Day of Fall Break (OOTD #140)

Published on October 25, 2017 by lensembledujour2 Comments

Fall break went too fast.

I guess all breaks go quickly, but this one seems to be particularly speedy. I guess it was because I was so busy – carving pumpkins, going shopping, catching up with my friends, and studying for some exams that are due after break is over. It was a good busy though, except for the maybe the studying part. That was significantly less fun.

I spent most of Friday lazing around in my pajamas – in fact, I spend most of any day over fall break when I didn’t have any reason not go outside in my pajamas. I also didn’t once exercise, and I took every opportunity I was offered to eat junk food. Ramen, pasta, french fries – you name it, and I probably felt no need to deny myself it.

I like to think I’m usually a pretty healthy person, so I decided to take a few cheat days during the holiday. Or…okay, it was more like a cheat week. It was probably bad, and I probably should’ve have done it with such vigor but I had fun.

So what was so special about Friday that I decided to put real clothes on?

A Goodwill trip, that’s what! I love Goodwill because I love hunting for thrift clothes, so I never pass up on an opportunity to go out to one. My mother hates Goodwill – she thinks it’s dirty and disorganized – but my father and I love it. Or at least, I love it. I think my dad just loves me.

I didn’t find anything too exciting there – I was hoping for something retro and 90s trendy, like what they sell at Urban Outfitters for $100, but n such luck. I did find a cute tank top, though, which was pretty cool.

Afterwards, my parents and I went out to dinner at a barbecue place, and I cried a little on the inside because I still had to finish packing all of my crap to return to Notre Dame. With the exception of that packing bit, it was a very nice last day of fall break in Lexington.

Poncho: Altar’d State

Boots: Target

October 19, 2017 – My Inner Emo Kid (OOTD #139)

Published on October 24, 2017 by lensembledujour9 Comments

How many times have I described myself as something of an emo kid, here on this blog?

Plenty, it seems. And the thing is, I’m not even a proper emo kid – not at least, in the sense that emo kids existed in the early 2000s. I don’t even know if the “emo” subculture exists anymore; I’m pretty sure they were replaced by hipsters as the predominant “alternative” crowd sometime around 2012-2013.

When emo kids were a thing – say, back in 2006 – I was just eight years old, and Hot Topic was the scariest store in the mall to me. It played loud music, had scary masks in the window at Halloween, and had dim lighting that made the entrance look more like the entrance to a dungeon than a clothing store.

It wasn’t until I was about 14 that I actually started listening to some of the music that they played in Hot Topic and experimenting with an “edgier” dark style. It started with Fall Out Boy and some black sweaters, eventually evolving into My Chemical Romance and leather jackets, and finally, Bring Me the Horizon and Doc Martens. I never had a full-on emo phase – no fringe haircuts, studded belts, or rawr XD text messages (at least, when I was 14…I probably experimented with a “rawr XD” or an “lol so randomz” message when I was 11) – but I did like to dress in all-black every once in a while.

The decision to dye my hair blonde when I was 17 actually came, in some part, from my love of My Chemical Romance music. I wanted to look like Gerard Way circa the Black Parade era (and also Elsa). I instead wound up with an orangey honey color – I didn’t wind up with truly white hair until about a year later, and even then, it was impossible to maintain, haha.

So impossible, that I decided the other day to chop it off. The ends were just looking too scraggly and awful – just have a look at my last blog with blonde hair if you don’t believe me. And since I was chopping it off, I figured I would go for another change while I was at it – dying it grey.

The dye I used, if you’re curious, is the Ion Semi-Permanent color in Titanium. It was quite easy, actually: all I did was whip up a 1:1 mixture of conditioner and dye and then paint it on my already bleached hair. I didn’t add any more bleach to my hair than what was already there, since I didn’t want to damage it further, so I’ve still got my black roots.

So, with my newly grey hair and my outfit that made me look like a Hot Topic model (well, a short Hot Topic model), I went out to a nice dinner at an Italian restaurant with my family to celebrate my birthday. In actuality, my birthday’s not until November 1, but since I’m going to be back at school by then, my family wanted to celebrate it early.

I’m not sure exactly what my grandmother thought about going to lunch with her grey-haired, Doc Martens-wearing teenage granddaughter, but I don’t think she minded too much. And if she did, well it’s because *whiny voice* she just doesn’t understand, right?

Dress: Forever21

Jacket: Forever21

Boots: Doc Marten

Also, if you’re curious about how my father’s and my pumpkin display from this year turned out, here it is!

October 17, 2017 – The Most October Day (OOTD #138)

Published on October 23, 2017October 23, 2017 by lensembledujour9 Comments

This is it folks: the day I finally got to do all of the stereotypical American fall things I’ve been prattling on about for the last month.

Last year, my senior year of high school, my father and I went out to a local orchard for an afternoon to pick pumpkins. As it turned out, we didn’t pick any pumpkins – by the time we went, I guess it was too late into the season and all of the good pumpkins were gone – but we did have a lot of fun wandering around, picking apples, and going through the corn maze.

Thus, being a sap for anything nostalgic, even if it’s only from a year ago, I requested that, when I went back for fall break, my father and I go back to the same orchard.

It was a rather different experience this time, though – we went on a Tuesday, when all of the Fayette County schools were still in session and all of the kids were stuck in classrooms doing work (heh, suckers), whereas last year, we went on a weekend, when it was super busy and crawling with children. Thus, it was pretty nice to be there when it was fairly quiet – I got to climb up on the jungle gym since there were no kids there, which was pretty sweet, and there was no line for the hay ride out to the pumpkin patch or the corn maze, which was also pretty sweet.

The best part of any farm adventure, in my opinion, is eating a caramel apple. I rambled on about my love of caramel apples for a while in a blog from a few days ago, so I’m not going to do that here, but allow me to say: a caramel apple from a farm is the best caramel apple you can get.

Also, if you don’t eat your caramel apples with nuts, I don’t know what you are (unless you have a peanut allergy – then it’s acceptable).

I don’t necessarily know how Kentucky farms compare to farms in Idaho or New York (or really anywhere else in the US, or the world), but if I had to make an overarching generalization based on little evidence and/or experience, I would have to say that Kentucky farms are the best in the world. There are hills, for one, which I know you don’t get in some parts of the Midwest (South Bend Indiana, I’m looking at you), and chances are, if you’re heading out to a farm in Kentucky in October, it’s probably still warm enough to go without a jacket.

I must say though – latitudes further North do have better leaf colors in October. I do suppose that would be one gripe about my farm adventure, that there wasn’t much color in the trees other than green and a touch of brown. It’s really odd, coming back to Kentucky after having been in Indiana, as the weather is so different, despite only being one state over.

This year, my father and I did manage to find some decently-sized, attractive, and carvable pumpkins at the orchard, so I will be sure to show you guys what our Jack-o-Lanterns turn out looking like as soon as we get them done. We also found some apples, a bale of hay, an abandoned flag football belt, and the joy of…something, I don’t know, I was trying to come up with a charming and insightful, but I’m not good at that. All I can do is point to my own inadequacies and hope people laugh.

Vest: Altar’d State

Sweater: Target

Shirt: American Eagle

Boots: LL Bean

October 16, 2017 – In Which Meilin Forgets When The Sun Goes Down (OOTD #137)

Published on October 22, 2017 by lensembledujourLeave a comment

I’ve discussed this so many times already, but allow me to say it again, in case you missed it: lighting really makes the photo.

Over the summer, I was in the habit of taking my fashion photos after dinner, around 7:00pm or so. At 7, the sun was just beginning to set, making for some lovely golden natural light for my photos.

And now that I’m in school, I’m in the habit of taking my fashion photos around lunchtime, maybe noon or so, due to the convenience of asking the friends I eat lunch with “hey, would you mind to take pictures of my outfit real quick before you head to class?” At noon, I don’t quite get the beautiful fading light, but, since it’s usually overcast in South Bend, I don’t have to worry about weird shadows.

So over fall break, I was back home again, and, since I don’t think anything through, I just figured I could do my pictures around 7:00pm after dinner, just as I was doing in the summer, and get the same golden light effect.

Not so much.

To my surprise, when I looked out the window as my family was beginning to clean up from dinner, the sun was completely down. I had forgotten that it’s late October, and by late October in Kentucky, it’s getting fairly dark fairly fast.

Flash photography to the rescue.

Of sorts. Flash photography didn’t quite solve my problems, and my photos from Monday suffered from having to be taken in the dark. I got some taken outside with the flash on, some taken by a garage light, and some taken indoors. It’s not the best work I’ve ever done, but hey, tomorrow’s another day. At least I got this nice selfie with my mom.