la vie bohème

earrings - handmade by Carie of Pretty Little Mountains, won in giveaway / chambray shirt - Banana Republic, thrifted / purse - Athens tourist shop / belt - vintage, thrifted / skirt - altered from a dress, UO / Berber bracelet - gift from Tunisia / sneakers - Target / polish - Rimmel #310, Sunset Orange 

After a blessedly uneventful travel day yesterday, we are now happily settled into our new, Bohemian (har har) home - Prague! While our long stay in Berlin was wonderful, allowing us the luxury of time to explore the city and even begin to feel like quasi-locals, there is still a definite thrill that comes with arriving in a new country, with a new currency and language, new sights to see, and in this case, perhaps even a few new beers to sample down by the riverfront.

When deciding what to wear to explore a new city, generally the first thing I pick out is a pair of shoes. It's essential to wear something comfortable enough for a lot of walking, and since today's forecast called for rain, I went with these reasonably quick-drying canvas sneakers. I didn't quite know what to pair them with at first - I tend to wear them most often with skinny jeans, but with the cooler temperatures of the last week I've grown a little weary of pants, and the high humidity of the morning seemed to call for something lighter - but then I remembered this outfit of Jen's that I pinned ages ago, and immediately reached for my chambray shirt and a bright coral skirt. Looking at it now, it's funny just how faithfully I recreated the details of her outfit, right down to the cross-body bag and the silver bracelets.

rained out

sweater - H&M / t-shirt - Target / jeans - UO / ring - H&M / shoes - Target

...or in, I should say. Those of you familiar with Berlin will immediately recognize that this is not Berlin. Today was a thoroughly enjoyable rainy, indoors, laundromat-going, chili-making, documentary-watching (NOVA & History Channel specials on Venice) and book-reading (finally finished Eating Animals, started Atonement) kind of day, and in all that we completely failed to take any outfit pictures. Fortunately, I'd worn the exact same thing (save swapping the gray tee for a pink one and the ring for my watch) a little over a month ago on a day trip to Ghent, so my rainy day outfit needn't go wholly undocumented. I love this sweater for days like this, it's perfectly soft and cozy, and I can skip any kind of makeup or accessories and just let my sequins do the work.

decisions

striped shirt - H&M  / tote - Forever 21 / belt - vintage, thrifted / shorts - vintage, thrifted & hemmed / watch - Arkonaplatz flea market, Berlin / sneakers - Target 

Ladies (and - gentlemen? Fairly doubtful.), you are witnessing an historic event: I am wearing my hair down. Longtime readers may recall that I posted photos with my hair down once before, in my milkmaid braids tutorial, but this is the first time I've actually worn it down in public in almost a year and a half. In that time, I've been working on growing out a pixie cut, and I've been wearing my hair up every day while waiting for it to get long enough for a cut I'd actually like.

Well, it's time. I am so bored with my buns and braids and I think it's finally just long enough for a proper haircut, so I thought I'd give having it down a little test run - and I need your advice! I've got a Pinterest board full of potential cuts, but I haven't found the perfect one yet (and, shockingly, Chris is already tired of talking about my haircuts)- something that looks good both blown-out and wavy, that works with bangs, and that will flatter a fairly round face. Anyone have any suggestions?

festive

sunglasses - Nasty Gal / necklace - vintage, Park Slope flea market / tote - giveaway at German convention / striped dress - Old Navy / ring - Amsterdam shop / sneakers - Target

Happy 4th of July! Even though we're in Germany at the moment, I couldn't resist putting together this little red, white & blue outfit in honor of the holiday - now if only we could find some fireworks!

Please don't let the sunglasses and bare legs fool you though - it was cold and overcast for the better part of our 4th, and I spent our entire day out (at the zoo!) with my jacket bundled up tightly, shivering and cursing myself for not wearing something warmer. I actually wore tights yesterday, and probably should have again today but I just couldn't stomach the idea of tights on the 4th of July! Fortunately the sun came out and it warmed up a little right at the end of the day, just in time for us to take these photos in a little sculpture park on the way home.

hero worship

earrings - Anthropologie / purse - Athens tourist shop / cardigan - Ann Taylor / henley tank - Target / wide-leg jeans - Gap / ring - Amsterdam shop / shoes - Target  

Yesterday was another long, rainy (why are they always rainy?) moving day, complete with tram strikes in Amsterdam, delays due to hail-damaged train tracks, and exploring a whole new bizarrely-stocked apartment kitchen ('Ooh, this time our only knife is... a cheese knife! And we only have dessert-sized plates! Awesome!'), but after all that, we're now all moved in to our new home for the week - Cologne!

Our first order of business today was to pay a visit to the Kolumba Museum, an art museum built by Peter Zumthor (my absolute favorite architect) on the archeological site and ruins of a Roman house turned medieval church. The new museum building manages to incorporate those ruins (and a 1950s chapel) into a single, elegant brick volume. The gallery interiors are incredibly spare, but a close look reveals numerous bespoke details that give Zumthor's minimalism its characteristic richness. (Have I mentioned how bummed I am that we probably won't be making it to Vals on this trip?)

Unfortunately, while Zumthor's building managed to bring a multitude of disparate elements into a single, cohesive whole (I mean, just look at that second photo - dude can pattern-mix!), I can't say I quite managed to do the same with this outfit. This is sort of what happens when I wake up with something to wear in mind, then look at the weather forecast and second-guess that first instinct - I wind up in something a little odd and undercooked. I love the print of this sweater, and the way it looks with the olive color of this tank, but I think the proportion of the cardigan looks a bit off paired with these wide leg jeans. Of course, in retrospect I now know exactly what I wish I'd worn to visit my first Zumthor project in person (mixed patterns in neutral monochrome, all the way), but I suppose you can't plan everything.

face it

scarf - import shop in Copenhagen / necklace - vintage, Brooklyn flea market / blazer - vintage, thrifted  / tote - Forever 21 / striped shirt - H&M / overdyed skinnies - Zara / sneakers - Target

Well, we're once again canalside - this time in Amsterdam! We took the bus from Brussels yesterday (more like a series of buses, with a long, unexpected visit to Antwerp en route), and we've since been walking all over the city, taking in the whole chaotic mix of charming neighborhoods and trashy tourist-traps and doing our very best not to get run down by texting cyclists. While we don't have much of a kitchen (at the end of this trip, I may be writing a cookbook on one-pan, no-utensils hot-plate dinners), our skylight-illuminated shed off a back courtyard might be the most charming place we've stayed yet, and our neighborhood is fantastic.

Along with exploring our new city, over the next week I'll be participating in Dress Your Best Week, the brainchild of the ladies over at academichic. The concept is simple, and yet can have such an impact on how you feel - rather than dressing to hide your less favorite parts of your body, to participate in Dress Your Best, all you have to do is think of a part of yourself that you love and build an outfit that highlights it. I know that so many women (myself among them) struggle with body-positivity, and it's all too easy to let the way you dress be dictated by body-insecurity, so DYB is a great way to shake up the way you see yourself. To learn more about Dress Your Best, and to find other bloggers who are participating, please check out this post at academichic.

Of course, all that being said, I hadn't exactly counted on Low Country weather when I made my list of favorite body parts - it's tough to rock a pair of shorts, or a collarbone-baring deep v-neck top when the temperature rarely tops 63 and the wind won't die down! So today I was forced to just go for it and celebrate one of my favorite (even if I feel a little silly saying so) parts - my face. It's been with me my entire life (and completely unchanged - just top with blond curls and you have me at age two), and I think it is the one part of my body that I have never wished to change. I love my brows, my dark blue eyes, my incredibly forgiving skin, the dot under my right eye, and the front tooth I chipped on a microphone at drama camp. More than any other part of me, my face feels like me - so today I circled it with a bold orange scarf, kept the rest of my outfit simple, and let my face be the star.

unruly

sunglasses - Nasty Gal / necklace - Forever 21 / jacket - Forever 21 / tote - Forever 21 / silk shirt - vintage, thrifted / overdyed skinnies - Zara / sneakers - Target

I really wanted to post these pictures yesterday, but the last minute scrambling of another international move got in the way - honestly, you'd think I'd be better at planning those by this point! Of course I'm now completely exhausted from the moving day from hell (honestly, I'm a very non-confrontational person, but I came this close to physical violence today - but more on that another time) and have a rapidly dying laptop battery with no hopes of a quick recharge (when you plug in your adapter and it emits visible sparks and pops back out of the outlet with a crack, that's a bad thing, right?), so I'm afraid this will have to be a little short and sweet.

I wore this outfit on a day trip to Bruges over the weekend; since I knew we'd be doing a great deal of walking (and having become accustomed to the highly variable Belgian weather), I opted for lightweight layers, a tote bag big enough for a few umbrellas, and comfortable sneakers. We managed to avoid getting rained on until the very end of our walk back to the train station, but the breeze was pretty stiff all day - I had a hard time finding any photos in which my shirt hadn't blown up or my bangs weren't flying around like crazy. I loved the color of this blouse with my jacket and necklace, and it kept my outfit easy without leaving me feeling sloppy or underdressed. Naturally, I managed to get a little teeny ketchup stain on the hem while sharing some frieten with Chris, but I've chosen to just think of it as a distinctly Flemish souvenir.

new look

earrings - Berber handcraft, gift from Tunisia / purse - Athens tourist shop / dress (worn as top) - H&M / bracelet - Berber handcraft, gift from Tunisia / watch - La Mer / wide leg jeans - Banana Republic / shoes - Toms

I know Saturday night seems a rather inauspicious time to be blogging, but I'm afraid it can't be helped. I missed my regular post yesterday, because I was busy working hard.... redesigning my blog! That's right, pop on over from your RSS readers and check it out, because things are looking awfully fancy around here. (And then promptly pop back to your RSS readers and forget all about it, I know I would.) I've been wanting to redesign my layout for some time now - while I liked the minimalism of my old layout, it started to seem a bit dry to me (and, dare I say it, stale?), and didn't offer the kind of simple functionality I wanted. I pushed up my sleeves, found a base template I liked, and started working; I designed a header, custom buttons, modified my CSS, and got everything looking just stellar. And then I tried to install my Disqus commenting system, and things got real ugly. I fretted, I tweaked, and I Googled 'til I was blue in the face, but there was nothing to be done - I had to either give up on Disqus, or give up on my pretty, pretty layout.

So I scrapped it, and made a better one! And I am really happy with it - while it's certainly nothing fancy code-wise, I love the new look and think it will give me a lot of flexibility. There are a lot of new features you guys should check out, but my favorite is definitely my new on the map page - it shows everywhere we've been so far in our travels, along with handy links to my posts from each country. And, like my in the bag page, I'll be updating the map periodically as we keep visiting new places.

These photos are from the crazy 48 hours last week when Chris and I got Museum Passes - on our second day, we visited Sainte Chapelle, climbed (and, er, fell down) the towers at Notre Dame, stopped by the Insitut du Monde Arabe, and spent a few hours at the Centre Pompidou. Suffice to say, by the end of the day we were beat - particularly those of us who'd slid down some stairs that morning. Since I knew I'd be spending the entire day on my feet, I went for the always comfortable Toms and wide leg jeans combo, and decided to try wearing my new printed tunic dress tucked in as a top. I ended up quite liking the blousy silhouette - but it turns out it is way harder to neatly tuck in a dress in a public restroom stall than it is in front of the mirror in your apartment!