P&PS

Drums of Autumn by Diana Gabaldon My Rating 5 out of 5 stars “And when my body shall cease, my soul will still be yours, Claire? I swear by my hope of heaven, I will not be parted from you." The wind stirred the leaves of the chestnut trees nearby, and the scents of late summer rose up rich around us; pine and grass and strawberries, sun-warmed stone and cool water, and the sharp, musky smell of his body next to mine. "Nothing is lost, Sassenach; only changed." "That's the first law of thermodynamics," I said, wiping my nose. "No," he said. "That's faith.”  I know I'm skipping ahead a bit, but Drums of Autumn is my most recent read in the series.  While there won't be any spoilers for the book itself, if you haven't read the previous books, I would skip this review until you've finished (every last page) of Voyager . Like with Voyager , we see huge shifts in the character development and story lines...

Recently I move a lot of my stuff around to get rid of some of the furniture I'm not using.  While this means everything is in chaos it's got me thinking about what I would like things to look like, not specifically now, since this feels like too much of a transient place, but at some point in the future.   While I hadn't intended to I used a similar (and very abbreviated) form of the process I used to revamp my wardrobe .  Unlike with my wardrobe I knew right away what sorts of textures and colors I preferred.  I love wood, baskets and woven things in general, knit textures, leather, suede, ceramic and stone.  I like earth tones, leaning toward white and the greyer pastels, although I have an incredible soft spot for dark furniture particularly wood.  I also have pretty strong opinions about what accent colors work where.  Red is for the kitchen, mustard for main living spaces, and sea foam or any other soft blue green for the bathroom. I li...

I’m headed out first thing tomorrow to spend a long weekend in Boston with my family. I’ve slowly been making progress with my wardrobe an am happy to announce it took me about five minutes to decide what to pack. It’s not the most exciting capsule wardrobe, it’s pretty uniform, but I wanted to share it for a couple of reasons. First, this is the first time it’s really hit me how nice it is to have a concept of uniforms and to have a capsule wardrobe to accommodate this. Second, I’ve been wanting to start documenting the clothes I pack because it makes it easier to pack later for similar longer trips since seeing what I packed will hopefully remind me of what did and didn’t work. I’m expecting some rain and then some colder weather on Sunday and Monday. I’m packing assuming I won’t need to worry about covering up because of the sun which is a nice change from this summer, but it also means I’m not packing any long sleeved shirts when maybe I should. I am, however, packing th...

I think this will be the last of my posts scripted based off of the Colette Patterns Wardrobe Architect series .  They have several other exercises and posts, but I've sort of been combining those in my updates as I go along. Having said that, let's jump right in: this week accessories. The longer I take part in this project, the more I pay attention to my own style, the more I realize functionality and practicality are very important to me, perhaps more important than anything else.  Yes looking nice is important, but I would rather walk around in a half dozen mismatched layers and feel warm rather than wear a cute t-shirt and shorts when it's 50 degrees out.  The longer I continue this project, the more I realize that the whole point of curating a wardrobe is to make sure I have enough compatible items to make whatever practically necessary outfit I need that day.  Yes, I picked the color scheme I did to keep things simple and streamlined, but I picked the pieces...

I wasn't originally going to go through and write anything up for week 8 since I don't normally bother much with hair or makeup, but I figured it's always fun to see how things change so here it is. Hair I like my hair red.  Period.  I like having long hair because I can do fun things with it.  The thing is I never do anything with it outside of special occasions.  I could chop it off, but I feel that would be a waste of the whole hennaing/head smelling amazing experience.  Instead, I spend a lot of time with my hair in messy buns, sock buns, ponytails, and the occasional gibson roll.  In the summer I do braid my hair once in awhile (so I can wear a hat) but it's always the standard braid, nothing fancy. I cut my own hair so the layers and shaping in the front varies, but there's always bangs, straight cut and usually a little on the long side. Makeup In theory I like makeup.  I like flawless skin more than the rest of it, but I don't mind playi...