Outfit of the Week: Starla Student

Dress: Red Light Vintage

Photos: Lady Leila

Starla Student wishes there was a perfume that smelled like a worn book (she often rubs old pages on her wrist, trying to soak up the heavenly scent of the words of Baudelaire and May Alcott through osmosis). She is quiet, hiding behind her stoic, majestic ivy-covered walls. Her favorite sound is the peck DING schweep THWACK of her typewriter. The buzz of coffee whirs the back of her eyes, but she drinks it black and strong anyway. The poetry of Patti Smith and Robert Frost slide down her throat like liquid gold. She thumbs through Sol LeWitt's autobiography until she dreams of inanimate objects and ghosts of family members. She gets lost in papers, book reviews, lecture notes, and stress sometimes builds in a knot at the base of her neck. She'll go about her routine, her scurry from class to class, and hearing her worn leather boots click on the red brick sidewalks, and holding close her books like a protective shield and a marker of her identity.

Outfit of the Week: Gwendolyn Gold

Dress: Red Light Vintage

Photographs: Lady Leila

Gwendolyn Gold dreams in metallics. Her voice tastes like pennies in your mouth, her skin is cold to the touch. She builds a strong exterior around her, a sterling silver fortress where she dwells alone, laying cold crystals over her eyes to help her sleep. But the heat of bodies makes her melt. When she is in love, she bends and twists and becomes malleable. She emerges from the fire something shiny, beautiful and new.

My Walk to Work

I am very lucky to be able to walk to work every day. Here are some of the beautiful images and scenes I get to pass by.

Yes, that says, "Fuck Work", a sentiment I'm not partial to.

Outfit of the Week: Bella Bride

Dress: Red Light Vintage

Photos: Lady Leila

Bella Bride does not celebrate wedding days, she celebrates wedding years. She celebrates the union of the light and the dark on the Solstice, the marriage of the honeybee and the flower, the coupling of the fallen leaf to the ground. She herself is married to the world, to the roaring waves and the stoic mountains. Every day is a celebration, a toast to the happy couple, a first dance, a toss of the bouquet, a promise made and a promise kept.

Note: Should I ever choose to get married, this will be my actual wedding dress. I have no qualms about purchasing a wedding dress without a wedding date. When I saw it, I fell in love, and knew I wouldn't come across another one like it. However, paired with belt, hat, and kitten heels, it would make for a nice tea dress, don't you think?

Another note: I was featured on the blog Fashion Stuff! A girl approached me while at work, saying she was working on a project for school about Seattle street fashion. I love that she features high fashion as well as the fashion around her on her blog, and she was so very sweet and flattering!

Gifts of the New Year

I decided to have a low-key New Year's Eve this year, prepare my space and my body for 2010. So I cleaned my apartment, did my laundry, flipped my mattress, and made myself

A pink bath

And golden soup.

I am really and truly blessed and grateful for all the gifts in my life, not just physical objects, but people and places that are around me. Sometimes, however, a small little something really touches me in an unexpected way, and my first impulse is to cry. Happy tears, of course.


The above is the ring my late grandmother used to wear. Each stone is the birthstone for her four grandchildren. I am the eldest, and the first aquamarine stone on the left is mine. My grandmother passed at the age of 59, and her last grandchild's stone was never set in. My parents presented it to me as a birthday present.


This was an unexpected present I received in a very public place. I was thus moved to tears in public, which I'm used to, but the public hasn't quite become comfortable with it yet.


My roommate presented me with tickets to Sasquatch Festival 2010! We went last year for the first time, and now swear by it. Three days of no showering, dust coating the roof of your mouth, random midnight soccer games and music, music, music. We are more prepared this year, to say the least, and hopefully will be bringing friends!

For the new year, my word is "craft", which can be used in many different contexts. I wish to craft the person I want to be, I wish to craft my home and lifestyle, and to literally use my hands and craft things (namely storylines and blog posts). I'm very excited to enter this new year, this new decade, lessons in tow and hands and heart at the ready.

EDIT: As I was walking home from work last night, a man in a long brown trench coat with a dark chocolate voice said "Blessed new year to you," as he passed me by. I think it will be a blessed new year.