Junkyard Wonders

Junkyard Wonders

uyguguygu   06.00   Comment  

How many of you have ever read the book The Junkyard Wonders by Patricia Polacco? It's one of my favorite children's books. I had the pleasure of using the book in a reading unit I taught this year and the kids really loved this book in particular. The premise of the book comes from Patricia Polacco's own childhood and is about a little girl who ends up in a special education classroom with an exceptional teacher who was able to inspire the students to create and learn through creating.

I have to make a confession - until yesterday I've never been in a junkyard before but I've read about my fair share of them. Many of you who know us well know that my husband, J.R. is restoring a vintage Porsche and auto salvage yards have become his "thing" in this process. He found out a Porsche of a similar model had been dropped off and was there to be (for lack of a better term...) cannibalized. He wanted to head over straight after church and I wasn't opposed to going along to look around, having never been to one. I also bargained for a shopping trip to my favorite grocery store on that side of town and a trip to my favorite Indian Food Restaurant and he was more than happy to throw that in after inspecting the car at the salvage yard.

Clearly, my shoes were not very practical but I know why Kate Middleton wears L.K. Bennett frequently for appearances - this pair is made for walking! I liked how out of place I looked among the rows of cars and since I had my camera in my car and was able to get a few outfit photos there. The light was pretty much perfect - all those cars act like foil reflectors!

We didn't find the part for the Porsche we were looking for - someone had gotten their first and had taken the entire circuit system out but we were able to pull a few things for our primary car including a quarter panel to replace the dented one from an incident with a dear up in Estes Park many summers ago.

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I'm wearing the Pansy Corset Trench Coat by Anthropologie, which is no longer available but can be found on ebay using this search.  I'm also wearing Madewell Skinny Skinny jeans (like always...sorry...it's pretty much the only cut I wear right now), L.K. Bennett Sledge Pumps, and a Hurley T-Shirt I borrowed from my husband's closet (Similar color in a woman's cut here...on sale, too!). The belt is from Calvin Klein. 

Modern/Vintage

Modern/Vintage

uyguguygu   05.00   Comment  

I have an extensive closet - I don't think this is any secret. I only rarely get rid of things and I hang onto my clothes for years...decades, even. My style roots are in vintage and I used to wear almost exclusively vintage or vintage style clothing. (Oh my goodness! I was able to make every single word in that sentence a link to a different post featuring vintage clothing and I only looked through half the blog! wow!) Dresses, petticoats, house coats, vintage inspired shoes and jewelry reigned for years. I started wearing vintage in middle school and wore it throughout my early and mid twenties and I've collected a large amount of clothing from various eras ranging from the 1850s to the present. As I've gotten older my taste has evolved and I'm not wearing as much vintage. This is partly because I've taken a more preservationist stance on my originals, but also because my tastes of changed and what is practical and useful for me is different now than what it used to be.

Recently I was standing in my closet thumbing through my suits and blazers and I realized that I had a lot of pieces that just never make it out into daylight that are perfectly sturdy and wearable. I think this is a conundrum for many of us who have left our vintage phase. We can't really part with these one of a kind pieces but we don't really want to wear them, either. My initial solution was Acid Free Boxes but even that couldn't store everything, only the oldest and most fragile or most valuable.

I realized that, given a little thought, it'd be perfectly fine to mix some of my very vintage pieces into my daily wear. So, I did what any other person with too many clothes and not enough ideas did: I played dress up. I pulled out a dozen or so sturdy pieces of vintage clothing out and started trying them on over what I had worn to work that day to see how they would mix and match. Suits got separated, dresses got modern blazers over the top to liven them up, handbags were turned into clutches by turning the handles inside, skirts were given modern shoes and at the end of it all I had a few ideas. 

For date night this week I decided to pull out a vintage clutch from the 1960's and the top of a suit from the mid 1940's that I bought in high school. Both of them are sturdy (the clutch actually was deadstock and had tags on it!) and I wasn't worried about potentially damaging something irreplacable. I paired this uniquely structured blazer with a basic t-shirt, Madewell skinny skinny jeans, and a pair of updated patent pumps from L.K. Bennett. I matched the red clutch to a red bracelet my friend had brought me from Spain and  off we went! 

Do any of you have this type of vintage conundrum? How are you handling it?

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I'm wearing a vintage blazer and carrying a vintage clutch. The bracelet is a small gift ("Petite Cadeau" - My foreign language phrase of the day!) from a friend's trip to Spain. The Pearls are also vintage. The t-shirt is from Caslon (similar cut here - can't find the same color!). The jeans are Madewell's Skinny Skinny cut. The shoes are from L.K. Bennett.

Rooftops

Rooftops

uyguguygu   07.00   Comment  

Is it strange to have a favorite parking garage? I guess it doesn't really matter if it is or not because I do have one here. From the roof of the parking garage I can look out over the city all the way to the mountains, and I'm surrounded by the rooftops of the buildings around it. It's rarely open so I don't normally park there but sometimes when I'm parked in the floors below I'll climb the staircase to the roof of it and just look out over the sprawl of the city and peek at the glorious Rocky Mountains. 

The mountains, are in a way, like the sea: Omnipresent but ever changing. They change with the weather, the snow fall, the sunshine. They are green for a brief minute in the spring, covered in snow that reflects the orange and purple and blue of the sky all winter, and sometimes they are invisible from the roof, covered in clouds. 

Today was clear, and I could see the mountains in all of their glory. The roof of the garage was closed so I took the steps up and had it all to myself. It was also very, very windy and my camera was almost knocked over by the wind while getting these shots, too! 

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The jacket was kindly given to me by the folks over at T B Dress. The shirt is vintage. I'm wearing an assortment of vintage pins on the jacket and Michael Michaud earrings were a gift from my fabulous in-laws. The jeans are j.crew's matchstick cut. The shoes are by L.K. Bennett. The flannel purse is from Talbots.