How Many Times.

This pin is my best friend. He is my little fox friend, and he hangs out with me on adventures and not-adventures. I suppose it's not very interesting to keep posting the same bits and bobs over and over, but it's a bit more honest in terms of chronicling a personal style. I don't want to say my little fox is my favorite one, because I don't want the others to feel bad about it, but I usually reach for him before anyone else. And are you sick of this scarf yet, or the chambray? 

Pin: Vintage, Bag: fieldguided 43rd parallel tote, Everything else: J. Crew throughout the years

This is also pretty typical of a non-blog outfit outfit. The kind I end up in on days when I don't feel like dressing up, but it feels wrong to throw on a pair of jeans and shirt by themselves. I've also found that I'm really interested in this vaguely borrowed-from-the-boys kind of outfit. The sad thing is that soon we'll all be swathed up in coats and things, but for now the weather is nice enough that a good blazer works wonders.

Pictures taken by John M.

Belated Birthday.

Oops! Once again, I forgot that my blog had a birthday! On the 14th All This Happiness turned four years old! It's a really weird feeling! Thank you all for reading, and for commenting, and for everything, it is such a delight to share with everyone and to get to know you!

Various posts are pending, but since all lately I get all dressed up and end up looking like this:

they'll have to wait until I can come up with something else!

love,

kater

Tweed Forever and Ever Amen.

In the interest of last post's topic, here is a silly shot we ended up with today:

In it, I am attempting to Wingardium Leviosa myself (my wand is cleverly hidden in my skirt folds so that I don't break the International Statute of Secrecy. Don't worry, Muggles can't read this!).

More importantly, this outfit features two things I've been meaning to post about for ages and ages. First, the dress is one I captured last summer on a day that had such luck as I have not been able to capture since. The funny thing is that even though I wear this dress to death and beyond, this is the first time I've really shown it! It's home-made, and the hem is slightly longer on the left side than the right (maybe, I can't remember, it might be the other way around) but who really notices that sort of thing anyway? It might be the most versatile dress I own--something about that particular shade of red makes it kind of perfect for autumn and summer all at once. 

Dress: Vintage, Blazers: J. Crew Fall 2011/Gap Winter 2009, Belt: J. Crew, Bag: Vintage, Tights: J. Crew, Shoes: Steve Madden

Seriously, I use the tuck pretty much every day now while I wait for significant growth. 

The other thing is tweed blazers. I have two, now, after searching for years and years. The first is one that's been on here several times, but honestly it's getting a little sad and I've had to fix the buttons 4 or 5 times. Thankfully, I found another tweed blazer so that I may live my dream of being Remus Lupin everyday. 

But the thing about me is that on a regular day I wear about 3 outfits. Or, I wear the same outfit but move bits of it around so that it looks slightly different, and tweak it throughout the day. My car is basically my portable closet. I generally have some kind of back-up hidden about my person at any given time, be it a shirt or scarf, or a different dress rolled up and stuffed in a tote. 

In the morning I wore the old blazer and a t-shirt with the dress, along with a brown belt. After work I switched blazers, lost the t-shirt (it was a bit warmer than I expected) and used a belt I acquired while working, which is the outfit you see above.

But then I was a little bit over that blazer, as it is slightly different from the first, and I went back to the original (this is sounding complicated, and really, if you're even reading this at all, you deserve all kinds of internet hugs) and belted it with the new belt instead of the old one, so that by the time I arrived at Barnes and Noble to eat a cupcake and read magazines I had transformed into the following:

My hair also came down, for no particular reason, but that, in a way, is a day in the life of Tweed Girl.

Pictures by John M.

The Awkward Days, a Brief Post.

Outfit posts are strange. These days this little blog is really mostly about just that, and it's fine, although eventually I'd like to get myself in gear and post about other things. I really like having this chronicling of what I wear, but also, outfit pictures are hard. I still feel weird when people are around, but a lot of the best spots to take pictures are where people are. And sometimes I don't know what to do with myself. What do I do with my hands? Are my legs alright? What if my feet are in an odd position, my sleeves are rolled funny, what if my mouth is open (again), if I look too miserable? Sometimes it just works, and others, I just feel weird and awkward and scrap the post altogether. 

So in the interest of not doing that, I've only got one picture I feel like using for this post. Someday I'll find some interesting ways of standing, but for now it's the standard!

Dress: H&M, Boots: Nine West circa 2007, Tights: J. Crew, Bag: fieldguided, Pin: Vintage

I've wanted a cream 60s-looking shift dress with sleeves for my entire life. But so does everyone else, so the vintage ones are few and far between (around here anyway) and when I do find one it'll wipe out my little wallet. But then this beauty popped up in H&M. I didn't snap it up right away because, you know, I'm a bit of a snob and I thought well I could find something real vintage. Except I've been looking for I don't know, ten years, and haven't found one yet. And it was $34, why not? The lining is a bit annoying, it hangs longer than the dress itself, but I can always detach it and wear my own slip or hem the silly thing. 

Plus my hair feels the wrong length, I forgot how to walk in heels like this, and I can't tell if I need a jacket or not. But I'll get over it, it's just a feeling, really!

Pictures by John M.