The High Line

 The other day Jeremiah and I explored ventured out of our neighborhood and explored the High Line. I had visited back in December, so it was fun to point out some of the different art installations and views as we walked along. I really love how this old train trestle was re-purposed into a park and that all of these city views are now accessible to everyone.

My new Pour La Victoire bag has been inspiring an all blue mood lately and I've been wearing the color head to toe (I need to get a closeup of the bag soon!)

Happy Friday!

credits - dress & shoes, target | bag, pour la victoire | sweater, banana republic.

photos of me by Jeremiah.

Bloomin'

I mentioned a few posts back that I still have quite a few outfit photos from Georgia, and I'm trying to make my way through them. This dress used to be about five inches longer, but I had it altered so I'd wear it more during the summer. It's made of some polyester/manmade material and now at a shorter length, it breathes a bit better. 

I took these photos on my university's North Campus, on a day when everyone seemed to be out with a photographer to take graduation photos. I originally wanted to take photos at the chapel, but when the hordes never died down, I resorted to the administration building, which tries to be cool in its historical-ness with engravings of author names, but actually has 'Shakespeare' misspelled above its doorway. 

credits - dress, vintage, thrifted | shoes, target. 

And now for something completely different

This Memorial Day weekend was pretty laidback -- now that I'm settled into the city, Jeremiah and I have been spending our time exploring our neighborhood, eating at different kinds of restaurants and looking for new furniture for our home. I have a few more days before I start work so I'm trying to make the most of my time setting up our apartment. Jeremiah's been living here for almost a year, but now with the rest of our stuff in the apartment it's like a completely different space and we're trying to accommodate with extra storage. I cut down the amount of my belongings before the move (including about two-thirds of my wardrobe, which included some beautiful but hardly-worn vintage dresses. Ughhh, will I regret that later?), but it's still been like shoving an elephant into a mousehole. I'll probably have it figured out soon, but until then I'll be scouring craigslist and design blogs for ideas.

So our neighborhood -- I love Hell's Kitchen. It's close to everything in midtown without it actually feeling like we live super close to all the madding crowds. And there's so much history, too -- a lot of the architecture is late 1800s/early 1900s and I like finding new details in the stones and woodwork. I love this arched doorway -- it's the exterior for the New Dramatists building. Some of the theaters in this neighborhood have really intricate facades, and I love the idea of old churches being repurposed for theaters and other types of organizations. 

This J. Crew dress is outside of my typical preferences, but I love the neutral geometric print. Jeremiah hasn't taken my outfit photos in a really long time, and we're still getting used to each other. I'm still trying to figure out a way where I can do most of my photography on my own. I'm just not used to being near other people when I do photography!

This is the first post in about three years where I haven't put used 'athens' as a tag -- that was kind of exciting and weird. But mostly exciting.

credits - dress, j. crew | sweater, banana republic | bag, pour la victoire | shoes, target | hourglass necklace, gift. 
pictures by Jeremiah.

Curdled skies

I'm all settled now in New York and it's funny how blogging just falls by the wayside. In the last couple weeks, I've graduated from my program, said goodbye to everyone in Georgia and then drove a Uhaul up to New York (Jeremiah may have helped quite a bit with that last one). 

In addition, I got a job as well! I'll be working for a media agency in the city and I start in a couple weeks. I'm super excited about the next few stages in my life.

I have quite a few outfit photos left from Georgia so I'll be sharing those over the coming days. This yellow vintage dress is one that sat in my closet for years until I decided to recently alter five inches off the length (as part of a graduation gift to myself, I took a few vintage dresses to get altered). Forgive the amount of photos here -- the clouds were so pretty that day I took photos that it was hard to edit down on this location. 

credits - dress, vintage, thrifted | shoes, target | jacket, aeropostale, thrifted | bag, stone mountain, thrifted. 

Home

I graduate from my master's program tomorrow, and in three days I'll be moving to New York City. My  fingers and body ache as I type this and ignore the packing tape and boxes currently strewn about in the living room. But I'm at a place where I'm really happy anyways, despite the scattered mess of moving my entire life.

That is a strange sentence to type: In three days, I will be moving to New York City. That's essentially been my dream since I was 11, ever since I started watching "Felicity" and "Friends" regularly and daydreamed about cityscapes and sidewalks. Since I chickened out from applying to NYU and Columbia because I couldn't deal with the remote possibility that they -- and by extension, the city, my city -- would reject me. It has been a dream that hit its fever pitch when I interned up there for three months in undergrad. And solidified this year, when Jeremiah moved up there and started building a home for us.

In three days, I will be ticking off my life dream.

I haven't really discussed much of my personal life on the blog this year. Part of it is because my blog has become a little more public, as I've opened up to more people in my program about it and have mentioned it in job interviews and things like that. 

Part of it is also that it has been a really hard year, being separated cross-country from Jeremiah. Our marriage was thrust into long distance very quickly when he moved up to New York, and I've been living down here, just finishing up school and work. On good days, the distance was my friend -- I could keep my head down, work on everything I needed to professionally without feeling pressure to come home at a reasonable hour. Personal projects (like building my online portfolio, learning to cook, writing spec scripts, hanging out with some of the best people ever) got done. And even small things like picking out my own groceries or taking the car wherever I wanted without consulting another person was a nice relief. And then there were the bad days -- being separated for months at a time, hating everything about living down in Georgia and feeling very stuck and lonely. 

I've mentioned before that I've essentially lived in the air space between New York and Georgia this year, as I've flown between the two every other month to visit Jeremiah and put all my dominoes together for a possible career and life up there. It's been weird, adjusting to figure out "home" -- having two residences but not feeling like I belonged at either of them. 

But.

None of that matters today.

Because today I'm picking up Jeremiah from the airport, and we'll be living together permanently in the same city. In three days I'll be trading my beloved car for public transit, and rural landscapes for skyscrapers.

I've learned a lot from Georgia in the last 17 years. I'll always have a soft spot for this state -- all of its beautiful, haunting and even twisted parts -- and the wonderful people here who I am fortunate enough to call family and friends.

In four days, I will be moving living in New York. And then I'll have to find a new life dream. 

Get lost

Happy Friday! Hope you have a chance to get lost this weekend (in the nicest, most adventure-est way possible). 

This photo is from one of my weekend trips to the covered bridge -- I really am going to miss that place!

Turquoise sky

Just a recent outfit that I've worn so many times this semester for different presentations. I love the abstract design against the landscapes. 

The bracelet is a recent vintage find -- it's very similar to my cougar bracelet that I still need to get repaired. Until then, it's a good replacement.

Forgive the brevity -- I'm in finals week! My final finals week ever.

credits - dress and shoes, target | blouse, banana republic | bracelet, vintage, finder's keepers.

Dizzy up the girl

I've mentioned my frustrations with photography many times on this blog. A new camera takes time getting used to, and whenever I nail the right composition, focus, lighting and pose, all the hours of effort and sweat feel worth it. 

But what about those mistakes? I've been poring over my Dropbox lately, and have come across a small collection of soft-focus self-portraits. Normally these would get deleted, but for some reason, I like them now. They skew reality and give off a hazy point-of-view, which is often how I feel whenever I take photos in the morning -- bleary-eyed and half-asleep.

The title of this post is from my favorite Goo Goo Dolls album -- it seemed appropriate for these blurry versions of myself.

And it was all yellow

I have spent a lot of time at this lake lately. Whenever I get free time from work or class, I just find myself driving those back roads to the park, through farm land and past dilapidated farms. It's like nothing can really, truly reach me when I'm there. 

I've been wanting to wear this outfit all spring, and actually envisioned the floral wreath to go with this dress. Yellow used to be my favorite color as a child, and I've been seeking it out to match my current landscapes. I had some difficulties taking photos on this dock -- the outer section floats and doesn't have a foundation, so I had to be super careful with my movements to prevent my camera from falling into the water!

credits - dress, target | shoes, talbots | hair wreath, diy.