Tag: october

October 21, 2017 – You Had a Bad Day (OOTD #141)

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You’re taking one down…The Meilin of these photos did not have a fun day.

You might not have guessed that from the way I’m smiling here – I look rather cheery, don’t I? That’s because I was about to go eat a Five Guys burger and fries, and I love that restaurant. Saturday was also the last day of my cheat week, so that burger was going to be the last ones I’d have for a while.

I was also happy because I had just found a really cute place to take my OOTD photos, despite being far from home and not knowing where I was. Finding a good background for your OOTD photos is kind of a tossup when you’re on the road – sometimes, you can find some really nice restaurants with beautiful flowers and colorful exteriors, and sometimes, there’s nothing but the dirty brick wall of a Taco Bell. this time, I was lucky, as there was a spa with these really pretty lion decorations just around the corner from the restaurant we were stopping at.

Unfortunately, my day went rather downhill after my burger and fries. In these photos, I  was in the process of heading back to school, and I was about a third of the way there. This first third simply involved sitting in a car, writing my Saturday Musings + Coffee post, and dreaming about how exciting the ND vs USC was going to be when I finally arrived on campus. More on that travesty later.

The last two thirds of the journey involved sitting on the Greyhound bus and waiting for it to pull into the South Bend airport. If you’ve never taken a Greyhound, let me tell you – they are uncomfortable, some of the people are sketchy, and it takes forever to get where you want to go. But they’re cheap and they get you there, and that’s ultimately what matters.

Finally, after having sat in my parents’ car, the bus, and an Uber for a combined length of about eight hours of travel, I finally made it back to campus. I lugged my two giant suitcases back to my dorm, touched up my makeup, and prepared to head out to the stadium.

BUT ALAS, it was not meant to be, for, as I was just about to go out the door, I realized that I couldn’t find the email with my tickets. I searched my Gmail, my computer’s email app, and my phone’s email app using every combination of the words “football” and “tickets” possible, but to no avail. After about 30 minutes of searching and bitterly listening to the cheers of the people who were actually there in the stadium, I gave up, and decided to spend my evening putting away the clothes I had packed.

Thankfully, a few days later, I was able to get my remaining tickets re-emailed to me from the ND tickets office, so I’ll still be able to go to the rest of the games this season. Still, I’m kinda bitter I missed this particular game – apparently it was a really good one.

Ah well, next time.

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!

Jacket: Forever21

Sweater: American Eagle

Boots: LL Bean

Jeans: Hollister

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

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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)

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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?

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!

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)

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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.

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!

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)

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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.

Ah well. I’ll call it “artsy” and we can pretend this is all intentional, right?

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)

Scarf: Altar’d State

Saturday Musings + Coffee – On the Road Again

Published on by lensembledujour4 Comments

I like, actually don’t know a single lyric to that entire song except for what I wrote in the title – “on the road again.”

It something a tired and delirious Amanda would sing in the Atlanta airport any time we had to run from one terminal to another in an attempt to make it onto a plane from the standby list. I was too tired and delirious myself to question it – I’m not even sure it was a real song, now that I think of it, maybe she was just expressing her frustrations through song.

Welp, I’m frustrated and on the road again, so it struck me as a sensible blog title. Frustrated? I don’t know if that’s quite the right word…it’s more like, mildly annoyed. See, I’ve got another Greyhound bus to take today, and I was not so much a fan of the last one I had to take, and this time, I don’t even have home to look forward to at the end of the road.

Granted, I do have the Notre Dame game against the University of Southern California to look forward to, and that’ll be neat, but it’s much more exciting for me to get to sleep in my own bed than to get to stand for three hours in a football stadium with a bunch of *not at all intoxicated* college kids.

So you’ll have to pardon my particularly unglamorous coffee lifestyle photos today – it was a particularly unglamorous morning.

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

October 14, 2017 – Looking Like a USC Fan (OOTD #136)

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Obviously, I’m not.

Why do I make that sound like it’s obvious? Well, because Notre Dame is playing USC (as in Southern California, not South Carolina – as my father just recently informed me) tomorrow, and despite how little my pea brain knows about football, I do rather hope that ND succeeds.

You can bet that tomorrow I’ll be wearing blue and gold (and maybe some green?) rather than maroon and yellow.

In fact, I’m so passionate about Notre Dame’s success in this game that I’m going to be headed back to school on another Greyhound bus for another five hours of fun so that I can make it to the game. I’ll miss out on the tailgating and the pregame photos, but I don’t mind – I have yet to have a tailgating experience that’s I’d call “fun.” I guess I haven’t had enough alcohol yet.

I am definitely excited for the game though. I hope I make it on time – my bus gets into South Bend at 6:15, and the game starts at 7:30. It’ll be an interesting hour and fifteen minutes, trying to get from the South Bend airport to my dorm room to drop off my bags to the stadium to find my friends, but the alternative was to have arrived a day earlier, and I was not about to sleep in my crappy dorm room bunk bed for any extra days than I had to.

Sleeping in my bed has been the greatest part about being home. Eating a crap ton of junk food and my mother’s cooking and not exercising at all has been lovely too. Having my parents to drive me around places (since I’m not allowed to have a car on campus) was also great – it meant I could go to craft fairs like this one I’m so cheerily posing in front of in these photos.

I’m going to miss home. Thankfully, this time, it’s only four weeks of school before I get to be home again for Thanksgiving. I can already taste the turkey.

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: Forever21

Pants: the LOFT

October 13, 2017 – Friday the 13th (OOTD #135)

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**spOoKy vibes**

It’s not even a spooky outfit here – I left my glittery spider tights and my ghost socks at home – but it was a spooky day.

What made it spooky, you ask? I took a Greyhound from South Bend to Dayton, Ohio, and that was quite creepy. Not necessarily the worst experience of my life, but um…far from great.

I’m no stranger to public transport, but I’m no connoisseur either – I am, you’ll remember, from Kentucky, and we don’t exactly have any subways or trains here. Plenty of horses, but sadly, you can’t just hop onto one of those and ride off to the mall.

Thus, pretty much all of the transport you do in KY is by car, which, for me, a car-less individual who is a pretty lousy driver at any rate, is far from ideal. I do believe Lexington has a public bus system, but I’ve yet to meet anyone who’s actually used it.

The entirety of my experience riding public buses comes from the school bus, which I suffered on regularly from age 11 to age 17, a bus or two from North Jersey into NYC, and a tour bus in Beijing. A Greyhound was an entirely new experience for me – all I’d heard about them came from Billy Joel’s lyric “taking a Greyhound / on the Hudson River Line” in “New York State of Mind,” and the La La Land lyric “I left him at a Greyhound station / west of Santa Fe” from “Another Day of Sun.”

And how was the experience? Ehhhh…it might have been better if the driver weren’t the rudest person I’d met in my life (though I can’t blame him, a job as a Greyhound driver must suck), and if I’d not sat next to an extremely obese woman for the first leg of the journey (though I can’t blame her either, it’s not her fault I chose to sit next her), but all in all – it was alright. I napped. I watched Treehouse of Horror episodes. I looked at memes on Twitter. It was pretty dull and the only sketchy thing that happened was that one time that the bus driver threatened to kick this one guy off the bus for…reasons? I don’t really know actually; I was pretty engrossed in Treehouse of Horror VI.

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!

Jacket sweater shrug thing: Forever21

Top: H&M

Bralette: Aerie

Jeans; Abercrombie

October 12, 2017 – Photos Taken Seconds Before Disaster (OOTD #134)

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Number 12 will shock you!

Actually, I don’t think I even have 12 photos for this blog. It was a fairly simple day in terms of fashion photography. You want to know why?

Look back at that first photo again. Notice anything strange about it? Like, a cracked door, perhaps?

Yes, once again, in the middle of my OOTD photo shoot, someone came along and hit me with a door. This time, I heard the door beginning to open before it was too late, so I was able to jump out of the way, but it was awkward nonetheless. The person exiting the building always gives me this look of utter confusion when they see me, a kind of ‘’why were you leaning against this door I was trying to use? Why does that person have a camera?’’

That’s part of the reason why I always wear my sunglasses when I’m doing my photos – that way, I don’t have to make eye contact with the people who are confused and or judging me for staging a fashion show in the middle of public property. And if I don’t have to make eye contact, then they’re not there! #hatershades

That strategy works with all other problems as well – a messy room, undone homework, split ends – if I don’t look at them, they don’t exist. It’s the adult version of Peek-a-Boo.

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

October 11, 2017 – Candy Apple Red (OOTD #133)

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You know what I haven’t had yet this season? A good caramel apple.

Okay, so admittedly, that wasn’t the smoothest transition from a blog title to the actual blog that I’ve ever written, but I tried. I thought my outfit looked like it was candy apple red, and I thought about how I liked caramel apples, which are sort of like candy apples, so I thought I would smash them together.

Anyway, caramel apples! They’re wonderful and there are none to be had at the Notre Dame dining halls, neither at North or South. I thought maybe I’d be able to get one when I went to the apple orchard a few weeks back, but alas – no caramel apples. Not even a candy apple.

In my sorrow, I decided to create an outfit out of my desire for an apple smothered in caramel and chopped nuts. Or rather, I created an outfit Wednesday morning out of the fact that I was rushing off to Theology class and I had very little time to put anything together, and then I decided to title this blog out of my desire for an apple smothered in caramel and chopped nuts.

It’s okay though, because my dad and I are headed out tomorrow (at the time of my writing this, I’m on fall break, so I’m presently at home even though my OOTD photos are from while I was still at school) to a pumpkin patch where I know they sell good caramel apples. You readers won’t get to see that post for another week, likely, since these posts are on a delay, but no worries – you’ll see it eventually.

I’m so excited to get and carve pumpkins. Since I was a kid, my father and I have been carving pumpkins together, and each year, we try to do something more and more elaborate. Last year, I did a large pumpkin being eaten my smaller pumpkins, the year before, I did a pumpkin with an exposed brain, and the year before, I did a pumpkin with a split skull.

I haven’t yet decided what I’m going to do with my pumpkin – guess that’s what I ought to do now.

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!

Top: Vintage (thrifted)

Skirt: Forever21

Jacket: Vintage (thrifted)