notre dame – Page 15 – L'ensemble du jour

Saturday Musings + Coffee – Back At It and August 2018 Bullet Journal Spread

Published on August 18, 2018December 15, 2020 by lensembledujour2 Comments

Hoo boy, it’s been a long time since I’ve written one of these!

It’s not that these Saturday Musings posts are that hard to write, but the photography for them is a little more challenging, admittedly, than an OOTD post. I don’t want my flatlays to get repetitive, so I don’t want to keep using the same objects and backgrounds over and over again. But I only have so many objects that I can sit atop a white sheet and make them look cute, you know?

I do have new spread in my bullet journal to show off though, so I figured that was some solid content deserving of a post.

It took me a ridiculous number of hours to get this month’s spread looking like it does. Why did August take so much longer than usual? Well…because I never finished July.

A solid chunk of July for me was spent in Nepal, which meant a solid chunk of July was spent doing things like talking about religion and modernity and finding ancient temples and not doodling in my journal. I’m committed enough to my bullet journal that I want it to be pretty and complete, but not committed enough that I want to designate time necessarily every day in order to write in it so it can be pretty and complete. As a result, I often wind up having to fill in days and events that have already passed, which I guess you could argue defeats the purpose of even using it as a planner.

Okay, so maybe my bullet journal is more of a log of past events than a planner of future ones. Whatever, I’m going to make it look cute and aesthetic either way.

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!

July 28, 2018 – High on High Bridge (OOTD #337)

Published on August 15, 2018 by lensembledujourLeave a comment

Look at me, back at it with the Kentucky adventures!

Today’s blog sees Amanda and me in another small Kentucky town, wandering around and trying to find something to do. We had had plans with another friend, but he canceled on us last second, and we had to go figure out what we would do without him. We had already gotten dressed and made ourselves look cute, so we had to actually go out.

We’d had some friends post some pictures at this park called High Bridge in Kentucky, so we decided to pop over there and give it a go. This is what we found.

The daredevil in me wanted to go out and climb onto the bridge and try to get cute pictures, but the practical human being in me who still fears death held me back. When I go, I want to go with flying colors, and I feel like “died while trying to get a good picture for the ‘Gram” would not look good on my death certificate.

Having exhausted the photography opportunities at High Bridge, we decided to drive back to Lexington — but not before happening upon another photography opportunity.

Honestly, I can’t even remember what prompted us to stop in this field. I think it was something about a sign that indicated there was a historical site somewhere down the gravel road. At any rate, we never made it far enough to find whatever historical site there was — we did find this field though, and this pretty sunset.

I’m a sucker for a good field, I don’t know — there’s just something alluring about a big open space under the sky. It’s the most stereotypically Kentucky sight out there, but I like it nonetheless. I complain about Kentucky a lot, but I think I complain about Indiana more. I’ll miss Lexington when I’m back in South Bend.

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!

Top: H&M

Jacket: Thrifted

Jeans: American Eagle (thrifted)

May 11, 2018 – Love Thee, Notre Dame (OOTD #281)

Published on May 28, 2018May 28, 2018 by lensembledujourLeave a comment

That’s it! I’m done with this year of school!

It was overall, a good year. I made friends, I got decent grades, I wasn’t consumed by some kind of illness, and that’s honestly all I could ask for. I hesitate to call it “the best year of my life,” or anything ridiculously positive like that, but I think I could definitely say freshman year of college was way better than any year of high school.

I wasn’t sure if I was really going to like it at Notre Dame — whether the classes would be too difficult, whether I’d be able to find my way around, whether I’d end up failing out and coming home after my first semester — but I did like it. I didn’t like all of it — I didn’t like all of my professors, and I didn’t like having to be vegetarian on Fridays during Lent — but on the whole, everything was mostly good.

On Friday, my last day, pretty much all I had to do was hand in my final Philosophy paper and pack up and get out. I did have a few loose ends to tie up though as well.

I baked some vegan cookies and gave them out to all of my friends who’d done pictures for me at some time during the year as a means of thanking them for always being willing to help me out. I went to Starbucks and spent the last of my Flex Dollars on some mugs. I went to the bookstore and returned my rental textbooks. Basically, anything I should have done a week previously but didn’t because I was stressing out about my finals, I did on the last day.

Packing was no fun, but at least I had my parents to come help. I got a portion of it finished up on Thursday night, but I still had the majority to finish up on Saturday. The car was very full when we were done, but we did manage to get everything secured in there — including my plants! They all came home with me, and are doing just fine.

Oh! And I did my photos in the hall of the Main Building. That’s not a place I ever really am during a normal day, so it’s never a place I have the opportunity to do pictures. Since my parents were there, I was able to ask them to come in for the special location, since they wanted to see around campus anyway and I knew I wasn’t inconveniencing them.

But that’s it for Notre Dame posts until August! It was a good year, and I’m very glad I was still able to keep up my blog even with school. I hope you enjoyed reading about my life as much as I enjoyed writing about it. I’m glad to get a break, though. Having a chill(ish) summer at home will be good 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!

Shirt: thrifted

Jeans: Hot Topic (thrifted)

May 8, 2018 – Not Oscar de la Renta, Sadly (OOTD #280)

Published on May 25, 2018 by lensembledujour2 Comments

Get it? Because Oscar de la Renta is an expensive designer and my shirt says “Oscar?”

In my last post about this shirt about a year ago, I talked about its origins and the reasons why I owned a work shirt that labeled me as Oscar of S.B Cox Demolition and Construction Services, even though I don’t know anyone named Oscar and I am (obviously) not Oscar myself. If you’d like to read more about that, definitely go check that out.

These photos were, believe it or not, taken at 3:50AM in the morning. I think I look quite decent for so early, though.

The story here is that I was working on a paper late at night in the library after having had a late start that morning (or rather…a late start in the afternoon. Pretty sure I didn’t start doing anything productive until like 3PM ). As often happens with me, I fell asleep while working, and only woke up from my uncomfortable slumber at a 9th floor library desk at 3:00AM.

I’ve done this a few times before, and it’s really not my favorite. I have nothing against working late at the library, but sleeping at the desks is awful. It’s definitely not something I ever do intentionally.

Normally, I would have taken waking up with a back ache on the ninth floor of the library in the middle of the night as a cue to head home, but I still looked cute from the day, so I decided to stop by the art building and do some pictures really quickly first.

I was pretty tired at the point, so I didn’t hang around any longer like I usually do. It was cold, I was sleepy, and I had an exam the next morning (don’t worry — it was an easy one, so staying up late didn’t hurt me much). Hooray for good study habits!

Shirt and skirt: thrifted

May 7, 2018 – On The First Day of Finals (OOTD #280)

Published on May 24, 2018November 18, 2019 by lensembledujour5 Comments

My university gave to me…a week full of anxiety!

I hope I haven’t used that as an opening/blog title before. I know I definitely used it as a caption last year around Christmastime at winter finals, but I don’t think I’ve used it in a real blog. Apologies if I have.

Anyway, these shots are from the first day of finals week for spring semester, and I must say — this set was definitely worse than last. Last semester, I had a nice balance of papers and exams, and the only major term paper I had was due before finals even began, so I had plenty of time to prepare and even relax a little before dipping for the semester.

Not so much this time — I had plenty of stuff due before finals week, and then even more due during finals week. It was no fun.

I may look sunny and cheery here, but I definitely was not on that Monday. I had nothing due that day, and no exams to sit for, but an obscene amount of work to do. I spent all day in the basement of the student center, which is about as soul sucking as any location at ND is.

Add on the fact that everyone there was also preparing for finals, and it was even more soul sucking than usual.

I ended up hanging out in the basement for 9 hours. I am never doing that again. I was with a friend, so I kind of felt pressured to sit there in that booth for hour after hour, but like I said, it was awful. I like to move around a lot while I work and take breaks to stretch my legs, but I pretty much just sat there the whole time. I got some good work done, but it honestly wasn’t worth the headache.

#neveragain

jacket: Ralph Lauren

Top: H&M

Shorts: H&M

May 6, 2018 – Notre Dome (OOTD #279)

Published on May 23, 2018August 14, 2019 by lensembledujour5 Comments

More Dome pics!

What’s Notre Dame without the Dome, anyway? Are you even a Notre Dame student if you don’t take an obscene amount of photos in front of Main Building?

I think just about every ND student gets these same shots of their friends and them in front of the Golden Dome at some point. It’s a pretty standard shot; I’m pretty sure a month (maybe even a week) doesn’t go by where I don’t come across some Dome pictures on my feed from some friend or some friend of a friend.

For as many pretty buildings as there are on Notre Dame’s campus, you’d think people would get a little more creative with their cute friend Instagram pics — but they don’t. It’s the Dome or nothing.

I guess my friends and I are no different then — so here are my Dome pics (well, the second set). Call me generic.

I did get some fun shots inside of the math building though in front of this globe, which I
never knew existed because I never went into the math building once because I never had to take a math class (hooray for getting a 5 on AP Calculus!).

Apparently I should have gone into the math building though, because it has this super cool globe room (I have no idea what the architectural term would be for this room — like, a big open foyer with a tall ceiling but in the middle of the building? Is there a word for that?). Apparently all of my friends had seen it already (because they had classes in the math building and so they passed a lot), but like I said, I’d never seen it before.

I got excited to see something new, at any rate, which made me think — how many other cool rooms are there throughout campus that I just haven’t seen because I haven’t had a reason to go into them? I guess that’s a mystery to solve over my next three years.

In the meantime, though, it’s good to be at the end of the school year. Those unseen buildings and rooms shall have to be explored another time.

Anyway, 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!

Shirt: Zara

Dress: American Eagle

May 2, 2018 – Suddenly Spring (OOTD #278)

Published on May 21, 2018 by lensembledujourLeave a comment

I had expressed back in mid April when the temperatures in South Bend were still hitting freezing (freezing! In April!) that I was afraid I might completely miss the spring flowers at Notre Dame, but thankfully, I was wrong!

I’ve never seen foliage come back to life so quickly! Back in Kentucky, the coming of spring is a slow process — first, you have a couple of warm days in early March to get you excited; then, the first trees begin showing buds; then, finally, the home/garden stores start opening up their greenhouse sections and you know that spring is in full swing. The whole process takes about a month.

In South Bend, though, spring came in about a week. One week, it was cold, rainy, and freezing; the next, the flowers were blooming and we were hitting 60 consistently.

It’s been a jarring transition, but one I don’t wholly mind making. I loved winter in South Bend, even with the cold and the snow, but I’m glad it’s still over. I want my winter to end in mid-March (you know, the whole “in like a lion” proverb), not mid-April.

To celebrate the start of spring (and the last full day of classes!), I wore my springiest outfit. It reminded me of something Southern and preppy, like what I might wear back in Kentucky. There’s not a lot of Southern prep going on at Notre Dame, for better or for worse. While it’s not my favorite style ever, I don’t mind it every now and again.

Dress: Lilly Pulitzer

Shirt: Altar’d State

May 1, 2018 – Pop Punkish (OOTD #277)

Published on May 18, 2018May 18, 2018 by lensembledujourLeave a comment

One of these days, I’m going to accidentally miscount these OOTD numbers and I’ll never notice because I never check.

I love fashion because I can go from feminine and soft one day to punkish the next. I don’t really have any claim to the title of a real punk person, but I like the aesthetic.

I’m pop punk, if you will — an easily digestible and more mainstream version of the real culture.

For as much as I like my punkish fashion and my pop punk music, I’ve never really gotten into a real punk scene. Maybe it’s because there really wasn’t one in Kentucky — and there certainly isn’t one at Catholic School ™. If I was ever to shave my half of my head and participate properly in the punk renewal of the 2010s, I’d probably have to move to London where I’d feel less alone about it.

Besides, I have no tattoos. Can you really be punk without tattoos covering at least one of your appendages?

I can’t imagine having a sleeve of tattoos at Notre Dame. Not that it’s against a dress code or anything — there is none — but I would certainly be alone in that fashion statement. I’ve complained about this before, but Notre Dame students are about as vanilla as it gets, which is interesting, given how much money a lot of their families have. If they wanted to dress more interestingly, they certainly have the resources to do so, but you don’t really see anyone flaunting it in that way.

High school fashion is, in my opinion, still where it’s at. You get a nice mix of neon-haired emo kids along with the Lilly Pulitzer-wearing preps (did I just say “prep” to designate a culture? Is this 2006 MySpace?). It’s a good, diverse environment for creative expression.

Of course, most people still just wear yoga pants and sweaters everyday…but I can’t blame them. The diversity of cultures in public school (at least in mine) was nice, but that was about it. My school was also freezing 99% of the time, and you never knew which teachers were going to be sticklers about dress code, so dressing up wasn’t always the most practical option.

Top: River Island

Pink top: Forever21

Skirt:

Boots: Doc Marten

April 30, 2018 – Spring Is Sprung (OOTD #276)

Published on May 16, 2018May 17, 2018 by lensembledujour4 Comments

Pardon the week-long hiatus, but it looks like I’m back now!

It was a long long finals season, but it’s finally all over now. I’m back in Kentucky, which is nice for now (the 90 degree weather isn’t but home is), and I’ll be here for most of the summer.

The great part is that now that school’s over, I don’t have any homework to keep me busy 24/7! I’ll have a job, sure, but once I clock out, I’m out, unlike classes, which never really end.

For as exhausting as my freshman year was, it also was a lot of fun. I mean, I didn’t drop out and I didn’t end up transferring to a different school, so I consider that a success. I didn’t fail any classes either — something I had been mentally preparing myself for the entire time but I never really had to worry about it. Granted, I didn’t have to take any classes that people often fail, like Organic Chemistry or Calculus (I served my time with those classes in high school and it was miserable enough), but I’m pleased with myself anyway.

It’ll be nice, I think, to not be a freshman anymore. I have some friends who are bemoaning not being the youngest ones on campus anymore because you lose some of the sympathy, but I’m glad for it. As a freshman, you’re always doing dumb things that make you stand out but that you don’t realize you’re doing until you’re a senior.

I know I definitely did some of those dumb things — I mean, every one did. That’s what being a freshman is about.

Like I said, though, I’m excited to finally get to be a sophomore and get a little seniority going. Sophomore year is also when I get to start working a little more closely with my major, which is great. No offense to my university requirement classes like Microbes and Man or Elementary Astronomy, but they weren’t really my cup of tea. Doesn’t look like I’m switching my major any time soon.

Top: unknown

Skirt: Hollister

April 28, 2018 – Chi-Town Chinatown (OOTD #275)

Published on May 6, 2018May 6, 2018 by lensembledujour2 Comments

Guys look! I finally made it into Chicago!

I can’t believe I’ve been at Notre Dame all year, basically an hour and a half away from the third largest city in the US, and it’s taken me eight months to finally go.

There’s a train station about fifteen minutes away from campus that could get me into the city easily, but getting off of campus is a huge hassle without a car. Heck, it would probably even be a hassle with a car. The Notre Dame bubble has not diminished at all since I’ve been here.

I actually had an opportunity to go to Chicago way back in December with a friend of mine who was going to see the Nutcracker with her Russian literature class. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, I didn’t feel like I could take the time out of my day to go at the time (which I know now is a dumb excuse — there’s always time to go do fun things and ignore your responsibilities), so I missed out.

This time, though, when I heard that the Taiwanese Student Association was planning a Chinatown trip, I made sure I had room in my schedule to go. I lost a little extra sleep that weekend doing homework at late hours, but it was totally worth it.

What surprised me most about the Chicago Chinatown was how different it was from the New York version — while New York’s Chinatown is pretty much a gimmicky tourist destination, Chicago’s is a real diaspora neighborhood. The stores sold real Chinese food and products and not just the knockoff Rolexes you see in New York. It felt so much more welcoming and so much less sinister.

It was also fun because I got to interact with some people I never had before. None of my friends were able to go, so I ended up hanging out with some juniors and seniors, who were pretty cool and didn’t at all seem to mind that I was just a freshman. They were some of the first upperclassmen I’ve been able to interact with beyond surface level all year, so that was neat.

My favorite part of the whole trip was probably getting to purchase this money plant tree. As you probably know by now, I love plants, so getting new ones is fun. She actually sadly toppled over just today after a strong gust of wind from an open window pushed her off the window sill, causing several of her branches to break. I used a chopstick as a makeshift splint, so hopefully the branches will scar over and heal.

Oh well. For now, enjoy these photos of me and my pre-topple plant.

Since we all had work to do back home, we decided to make the hour and a half long drive back in time for dinner. I’d actually stayed up pretty late the night before, so I ended up napping almost all of the way back, which was great. By six when we arrived on campus, I was refreshed and ready to pull an all-nighter making up for all the work I had neglected due to being gone all day.

All night I worked though, I didn’t regret my decision to go. It was some of the best fun I’ve had all year, definitely worth the lost sleep and sanity.

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!

Jacket: thrifted

Turtleneck: thrifted

Leggings: The LOFT (