pennies

I'm almost done packing, and it's still a bittersweet feeling, leaving home! I'm excited to go back to a big city and see my college friends and live by myself, but being home was really nice. I'll definitely miss my family and the people who know me so well.

After a last lunch with one of my friends (that sounds so sad, doesn't it!) I stopped by DSW to see if they had any nice black flat shoes as my favorite flats have pretty much kicked the bucket. I was pleased to find these extremely comfortable leather penny loafers on sale!

They're Anne Klein and soft and I am in love.

a soft throwback

Outfit details: leather jacket from Italy (Peruzzi), H&M top, Express jeans, covington wedges, Fossil bracelet

Well, after two weeks abroad and a week sick at home, I'm finally feeling just about 100% again! I'll post pictures from South America later this week.
It's finally started feeling a bit like fall here, so I decided on wearing these flare jeans with a loose t-shirt and my favorite leather jacket (to avoid feeling too shapeless!). Flare jeans always remind me of middle school (I lived in flares) and the 70s. Also decided to start wearing bracelets (I admit, I was tempted by the phrase "arm party" from The Man Repeller) and here's my new favorite from Fossil. The keyhole reminds me ever so much of Alice in Wonderland.
This is my last week of summer! Friday morn I return to Chicago, and I'm afraid my dad's awesome camera will stay here, so outfit photos, if possible once I start college, will be of considerably lower quality, alas. I'm not sure when my next update will be, hopefully not in the too distant future!

packing!

a very messy start, but it gets better.

 

Tomorrow I leave on vacation to Rio and Buenos Aires, so today I went about packing, and as promised here's a post on how I do it!

First things first, I take out anything I am remotely interested in bringing from my closet and put it out where I can see it. The mess you see above isn't even everything I ended up pulling out.

From there, I start by taking aside and packing all the necessary under clothes/camis/tanks/pajamas. Next, I find a few clothes that are either new or haven't been worn much recently and work on creating outfits around those.

Here are two I put together working with a sheer H&M white blouse and a mustard-yellow sweater from Forever 21:

After doing this and creating more outfits with other pieces, it's time to pack! This is my trusty suitcase that saw me to France and back:

 

I start out by folding everything neatly, while keeping outfits together, like so:

In the past, I'd have started packing by layering these down into the suitcase, but I've found a better option now. Rolling! I find it saves me a lot of space and keeps my clothes from wrinkling. Even the neatest fold can still sometimes leave a crease on delicate items, but rolling generally doesn't. Voila:

From here, all that's left is to put it into the suitcase! Here's my finished product:

One last tip that isn't clear from the pictures: rather than keeping delicate skirts/lace items (as seen above) as the top layer, I always put scarves on top. I fold big scarves up into squares and use them as a buffer between pretty clothes and nasty zippers that could catch on them.

Next post will be an airport-outfit post. Hope you've all had a good day!