Dressed like sunshine

It's been raining all week long (not kidding, the forecast icon for 6 solid days = rainy cloud or lightning cloud.) Can you tell I don't really have the ability to watch tv in my place? My weather info mainly comes from the icons on my laptop dashboard widget. This year is going to be the least amount of times I've ridden my bike to work! So I'm dressing extra cheery to try to make up for it. It's not working.

Cardigan - hand-me-down from a friend (no tags)

Bangles - thrifted, garage sales, etc

Dress - c/o eShakti

Sandals - thrifted Candies

I'm embroiled in some frustrating stuffffff right now so I'm going to keep it short today and go take my bad fuckin' attitude somewhere else. Toodles! 

Batty

I always feel like a bat when I wear this blouse. I could fly away at any time!

Blouse - Romeo & Juliet Couture

Watch - thrifted Star Trek

Jeans - Earnest Sewn

Sandals - Target

Thanks everyone for the support on talking about a few wedding things here. I'll probably start a page up on the tabs at the top to compile everything as I'm planning so I can see what's done and what I still need to figure out. In the meantime, I'm emailing every venue in town and it's frustrating. So many of them won't send me concrete prices or tell me if they're available for the date we want. They just email back, "I'd love to meet with you and give you a tour!" Um, if we can't afford it or the place is booked every weekend, we don't want a tour. Don't waste your time and mine! I have four jobs right now so I'm not exactly swimming in spare time to look at venues. Grrrrrr! Also, one venue had an online form to fill out to get info and here's a screenshot of my captcha thing:

Um, yeah. Tell me how you really feel!

Duluth has a lake. (It's Superior.)

Jean jacket - thrifted Target, DIY back by me

Dress - thrifted vintage

Belt - thrifted vintage Frye

Wedges - Franco Sarto

The back...

I spent the long holiday weekend in Duluth, MN (about a 2.5 hour drive.) My friend John is a consultant and thus basically lives in hotels so we used some of his reward points to get a suite for the weekend. It was super fun! It's hard to show you much of the weekend without showing you any photos of my friends faces but here we go! 

Lake Superior...

We ran into these guys at a lighthouse... apparently they were in town for some sort of gaming convention...

But things took a turn for the worse...

We drank too many beers (and visited Canal Park Brewing Company...)

The next day we saw a giant chicken so we stopped to do some Arrested Development chicken dances...

And we went to the Split Rock Lighthouse...

And Gooseberry Falls...

 Where I turned into a vandal...

And then we ate some award winning pies...

It was so much fun and a perfect little mini-vacation!

No monogrammed M&Ms

Boo, it's so cold here again. Like, wearing gloves and socks and a big puffy vest to bike to work cold. Buuut it's a holiday weekend so I'm excited! I have the whole weekend and Monday off from all my jobs! Woo!

Necklace - Blend Creations

Shirt - J.Crew outlet

Jeans - Gap

Sandals - thrifted Candies

My trusty functioning hex wrench necklace... for any on-the-go bike repairs!

Well, the big news is, Nate and I are going to try to get married this October rather than next October. So we've got less than 5 months but I think we can do it. I want it to be pretty simple, so it should be fine. I just gotta find a venue. I've emailed a million (ok, about fifteen) and all of them were booked except two. We looked at one yesterday, which sounded awesome but it was just too small and divided up to work. I don't want people in three different rooms, especially since we're only having like 120 guests! The other venue I've seen from my photo boothing days, but Nate hasn't so we're gonna go look at it next week. 

Is it annoying if I talk about wedding stuff on here? I could start a different little off-shoot blog (tentatively titled Future Mr. FutureLint) but I shouldn't have too much to post about the wedding on here. A few little tidbits here and there but like I said, we're keeping it simple. 

Dot, dot, dot

Glasses - thrifted vintage American Optical, lenses replaced

Oxford - thrifted vintage aileen

Belt - thrifted

Jeans - Gap

Sandals - thrifted Nine West

I've had this shirt for less than a year and I love it, plus it's super comfortable! Polka dots are one of those things (along with stripes and florals) that people mention being "in" and I'm like "???" They're such a basic staple of a print, I don't think they can ever go "out."

Although, I've yet to be brave/crazy enough to wear this shirt with the matching maxi skirt that came with it. No one needs to wear that many polka-dots... Not even me.

Bad, bad blogger

I know, as a blogger, I'm supposed to hate/avoid the flash. But I don't. I use it every day cause it's dark in my condo at 6:30am and I have no time/desire to take this whole operation outdoors. Rebel, rebel. As a blogger, I should also hate flip flops and wear heels 24/7 but instead I wore flip flops to work today. Rule breaking. Blog rule breaking, not dress code breaking. My school does not care.

Necklace - J.Crew outlet

Bangles - thrifted, flea markets, etc

Shirt - thrifted little boys Cherokee

Jeans - Paul & Joe for Target

Sandals - Target

Lots of detail shots for you today... including this one of my butt owls.

Flash vs. no flash... this necklace looks so different depending on the lighting. It's awesome IRL but frustrating to photograph!

Weird lucite arm action... Ok, maybe all clear things are difficult to convey in photos...

It's too bad I'm not rocking some stripper heels with a clear plastic platform to go with all my clear accessories today. 

But I hate the phrase "LOL"

I had a major giggle fit in public today when my bus was approaching my stop because it hit a huge puddle in the road. I agree, that is not funny, in and of itself. But...

On Sunday, Nate and I were driving up to my place from Art-A-Whirl and we saw a car hit this huge, long puddle in the road because it had been pouring rain all day and it made such a big, satisfying splash. So we did the only logical thing, which was to drive down the street, turn around, and hit the puddle really fast. It sprayed the sidewalk so awesomely and I was like "Where's a rollerblader when you need one?" because it would be hilarious to splash a rollerblader, trust me. So when I saw the bus splashing toward the bus stop today, I thought of Nate and I making a point of hitting it and it just made me laugh. Out loud. At a bus stop full of quiet strangers.

Blouse - vintage via ebay

Cropped pants - Target

Shoes - Chinese Laundry

I get random giggle attacks all the time. It's a good thing I'm not on SNL or a sitcom, I'd break constantly. Last October, Nate and I were at a thrift store looking for a jumpsuit to turn into a Ghostbusters costume for him and he found me hysterically laughing alone in one of the aisles. Knowing I'm in public and thus shouldn't laugh out loud alone makes me have to laugh even more. He asked why I was laughing and it took a solid five minutes for me to compose myself enough to tell him that it was because I started thinking of how funny the word "hindquarters" is. That's it. And once I said the word again to tell him why I was laughing, I lost my shit for another 5 minutes. I still laugh when I think about it. It's a problem!

Who, me?

Thanks everyone for all the congrats on the last post! It's weird, other than my birthday (which doesn't really count because everyone has one every year) I've never really been the center of a big hubbub. My boss at the golf club screamed and hugged me and told everyone she encountered about it all day long. And people are stopping by my office at school to say congrats and see the ring. It's weird! I know it's a big deal, as I only plan on getting married once, but it doesn't seem like that big of a deal to me. I mean, we're still the same. We were always going to get married eventually, it's just officially official now.

Necklace - my mom found it for me it at a garage sale

Polo - from when I was a bev cart girl at a golf course

Belt - thrifted newstock Target

Skirt - thrifted Willi Smith

Sandals - thrifted Candies

Ugh, I have no idea where to start with this whole wedding thing. I mean, ok, a date and a venue are where to start but I really don't want to go into debt over a friggin' party and we want to buy a house (which may be difficult as my condo is now worth like $50,000 less than what I paid for it at the height of the real estate bubble.) Nate runs a non-profit group home and I work at a public school so neither of us makes any money... hmm, maybe city hall is the way to go. We'll see!

Ms. Olson if you're nasty

Scarf - thrifted vintage

Shirt - www.futurelint.etsy.com

Pants - Target

Sandals - Target

Hmm, you can't really see it in that first photo, so here's a few more...

Yep, Nate and I? It's happening. As Michael Bluth would say, "You gotta lock that down." Nate asked me to marry him and I replied, "Duh, babe." A couple months ago he had asked me to email him some rings I liked to get an idea of what I wanted. I sent a few and then sent him this one and said it was perfect. So he bought it (and tricked me by buying it under a different dude's name on etsy so I thought it sold to someone else and I was sad!) It's from 1900, it's platinum (cause I'm allergic to gold), and it's in the shape of a hexagon because Nate and I kinda fell in love at a bar/music venue named Hexagon Bar. So that's that.

P.S. This is the outfit I accidentally got engaged in. I put it on after work last night because I didn't want to play basketball with my special needs buddy in a dress. I wore it over to Nate's house after that, so I figured I better wear it today to document how I looked like a scrub when we got engaged. Which is kinda perfect for us, we're not fancy.

Old-timey

This dress always reminds me of circus tents and those old fashioned striped bathing suits...

Glasses - thrifted vintage, lenses

Chambray shirt - thrifted newstock Target

Dress - Target clearance

Sandals - Steve Madden

Today's outfit was ideal for biking. Usually I have to chuck my heels in my work bag and add/remove extra layers but today was perfect! I was warm enough with the chambray since it was only 50 this morning but I can take it off later when I bike home and it's 80, these sandals are flat and attached to my feet, and this dress has enough volume in the skirt to allow for easy pedaling! I just threw some capri length bike/yoga/workout/whatever pants on under it and I was good to go! Woo! Then I whipped by a perfectly glassy lake this morning so I stopped to show you: 

Scout

Shirt - thrifted vintage Boy Scouts

Skirt - vintage via www.stephaniegeisler.etsy.com

Wedges - Franco Sarto

Over the weekend Nate and I went out of town to Mankato, MN (about an hour and fifteen minutes away.) His friends Blake and Dee moved back from Vermont recently and are staying with his parents while they find jobs and somewhere to live in Minneapolis. It was Blake's 30th birthday so we went to visit. His parents bought an old farm house years ago and have been fixing it up and it was awesome! Seriously, so cool. Oh hey, tin ceiling and artist's studio (his dad is a painter/professor) of my dreams.

We also had one very out-of-control bonfire (see the old Christmas tree in there?) Ridiculously fun!

Love, love, love

I figured I was bombarding you with enough photos yesterday for the 5 year post, so here's yesterday's outfit...

Cardigan - thrifted vintage (no tags)

Dress - vintage Alfred Shaheen

Shoes - thrifted Candies

And today's... it's supposed to be like 93 degrees today, out of nowhere!

Oxford - thrifted vintage Tom Boy of California

Belt - thrifted vintage Frye

Skirt - vintage via www.pangs.etsy.com

Shoes - DSW (there's no brand info on them! it's insane!)

Today is an amazing day in MN history... the MN Senate passed the freedom to marry for same-sex couples yesterday. And the MN Governor is set to sign it into law today! Woo!

images from mnunited.org, hrc.org, advocate.com