Two-Fer: Jammy Dress and Swooshy Living Area Tour

I delayed posting my Monday outfit in order to sneak in my special post for the next "Good Buy/Good-Bye Book" link-up, so you get two "fer" the price of one with this post. It's a two-fer! And a big one...you've been warned.

I couldn't wait to wear this fabulous jammy dress to work. 

As the dress has little bits of brown and peach in it, I chose to focus on the yellow aspects of those colours for my accessories. 

• Dress - Hallhuber, consignment; purchased here for $38.00
• Shirt - Yest; last seen here in February with blue bookends
• Shoes - Homers; first worn here (2nd outfit) in April with mustard and black
• Coat (below) - Club Monaco, thrifted; last seen here in May

Ah, I had to sink my hands into those generous pockets! 

The weather is also back to not being hot out, so I had to layer a shirt underneath it. 

I will admit that a plain white shirt is handy for times like this. 

It helps the dress feel less skimpy (I'm also wearing micro-fishnets). 

Isn't the dress fabric amazing? 

Look how the pattern is perfectly lined up down the back centre seam. Lada was in the office on Monday wearing her new-to-her dress that we'd found on the weekend, so we twirled for each other! Yay for showing off clothes! 

Masked up. 

My favourite part of this outfit is how the necklace layered under the shirt collar and over the dress, almost like a tie, but it's a bit hard to see in these pictures. 

I needed a light coat this morning, and I'm still feeling the love for this nice Club Monaco one. 

It's been a very good purchase for me over the past 4+ years. 

The stuff: 

Getting another wearing in of these shoes - no issues with them at all today. 

Amber bling: 

I love getting in a wearing of this amazing vintage jewelry. 

• Necklace - vintage 30s, gift from L, antique mall
• Earrings - vintage 30s, gift from L, antique mall
• Silver/crystal ring - Soul Flower
• Silver/onyx ring - Toccara, vintage fair

I'm determined to enjoy my remaining "days off" while I'm still working only 3 days a week. I dressed up for my Zoom call with Mom, of course. 

Swoosh-tastic! 

• Cardigan - no label, not tracked, thrifted
• Skirt - LA Hearts, thrifted; last seen here in July 2020 with this same cardigan
• Shoes - Prepare Guide, Fluevog; last worn here in April with lacy legs

I woke up feeling anxious. I struggle with change - my mind races with every possibility. It's exhausting and overwhelming at times. 

An outfit full of familiar, loved things helps. It feels like a hug. 

Plus, some of my worn things are gifts or came from my beloved people. 

A dose of extra-specialness is welcome. 

Showing my underlovelies, and my cleavage - oops! 

First wearing of my new black cotton petit-pants (purchased here for $5.99), and my orange full vintage slip. 

Feeling lazy about taking all the bling off for a picture. 

Loaded up in my armour. 

• Earrings - Charmaine's
• Big turquoise/silver ring - Karen's
• Small turquoise ring - local
• Dragon bangle - Lazy Susan's
• Silver hinged cuff - vintage, thrifted, Powell River
• Steel cuff - thrifted
• Necklace - Karen's
• Leather obi (not shown) - Bronsino (local), gift from L

Shoes: 

L also bought these for me, as an anniversary gift over a decade ago, even though he hates them. That's love for ya! 

House Tour! 

Well, not my whole house - I'm not that open! - but our living room/dining room area wall space, which has undergone some redecorating, following the rediscovery of my love for massive amounts of stuff at Christmas this past year. Prior to putting up my decorations for the first time in 10-15 years, I cleared away a lot of our clutter from our living area, and realized it did not reflect who we were now. We haven't really done a redo of this space for at least 10 years.  

I knew I wanted to rejig things and move stuff around, but it takes a lot of mental warm-up for me to enact a big change and to psych myself up for all that effort, especially in my home environment. However, as I've been making small purchases and getting around to doing a couple of projects over the last while, I'm now at place where I'm 80% done and okay with people seeing it. 

Welcome to my dining room area. We do not have a dining room table and chairs, as I don't enjoy cooking and we eat at our coffee table while we watch documentaries. What we DO like to do in this space is entertain friends, play boardgames and host parties. So we have a bar. 

"Excuse me while I lick my toes."

I cleared a lot of the odd booze off here into a cupboard (we rarely need that much vermouth), lit the upper section with the same battery-operated lights I used at the holidays, and made the chaos look a little bit more purposeful by creating little displays with some books by known drunkards. 

With the lights on - it's very pretty in the evening. 

I removed the two display shelves of painted figures in the hallway to the right and replaced them with some portraits that had been hiding in the library. 

I collect this amber glass - this is an ice container, but now holds all our random coins for rolling. 

A small bottle of honey/mead liqueur, and some poetry by Leonard Cohen and also by...

Me! 

I was published in Lust, Quills Annual Erotic Magazine in 2004, Volume I. The very first one! 

This young lady in her underwear is opposite my poem. The bookmark is a laminated party invitation from this era. 

It was sold in Chapters book store, fulfilling one of my personal goals of "Get Published." I'm happy to see Quill is still being published and they're now on Volume X of erotic poetry (link here, 'cause I love). 

I was also published in Write Away by Victoria Writers' Society (this edition was Summer 2003, but I was also in several other editions). I was a member, then Treasurer, then President - I also gave a talk and hosted a poetry workshop for them for a couple of years. 

"Present Poems" is a self-publication booklet of about 30 of my poems - I created the entire thing by hand (printing, stamped art and assembly), and produced 50 numbered copies, which I gave out to friends and family. Most of them didn't know I wrote poetry. 

*ahem* 

Here's one of our library gargoyles out resting on a stack of Hemingway. 

He gets the scotch and whisky. 

Some of our Charles Bukowski collection of poetry. 

There is a pair of verdigris metal candleholders, one on each side of the top shelf. 

Warning: Nightmare Fuel! 

This is Monkey, one of L's childhood treasures. He's patting the head of Mighty Cthulhu and his pet dinosaur. 

More Hemingway, another glass jar (this one holds odds and ends of wires and plugs for the stereo).

Those are turn-of-the-millennium pictures of Land I. The top picture is from our Sunglasses party, with Kelly and Nick. The bottom picture is us at the Glitz, Glam and Gaudy party c. 2001. L has a natural ginormous afro in both pictures. 

This corner by our galley kitchen got a refresh; the two pictures had been elsewhere. 

The Scottish one is called "Lochaber No More" and was a wedding gift from L's friends; the photograph is of Urquhart Castle in Inverness, taken by Karen and was a birthday gift to me. 

The top of this chest (which is filled with all the miniature figures I put away) is currently covered with L's birthday cards, but has been cleared to show some of our odds and ends. 

I am fond of elaborate dead clocks (I have three). The wooden fife/flute is British Royal Navy (I can play it); the harmonica was my Grandma J's (she of the copper jewelry). The lizard/book figurine was a Christmas gift from L many years ago. I bought the terra cotta pig in the early 90s for myself; the hand-painted fairy vase next to him was a wedding gift from our old neighbours Dave and Jess. 

We need to do an overhaul on the big bookshelf, as it's a bit of a mess right now. 

Eh, don't care, it's good enough. Moving on! 

This corner to the left of the big shelf got the Vampire Church, and the fairy light treatment too. I like how much the lights cheer me when I'm feeling low. 

The convex mirror was an antique fair find years ago; I painted the alleyway picture on the right (it used to be in the bathroom).

My current dining room. The benches will eventually be moved out onto the deck, and we'll put a chair and footstool in here for reading/chilling out. However, we've left the bench/pillow situation alone for the time being as a certain kitty has been rather furious about all the changes to "his" space. 

I like how the lights look around the window. Ahhhh. We replaced our curtains in here with these semi-sheer cream embroidered panels. 

After doing Kezzie's Blogger Art Gallery last summer, I found myself wanting to have some of those pieces out in our main living area, like my limited edition concrete gargoyle, Smaug. 

He's so special, he gets all the lights! That's L and I in the gargoyle frame above him (a wedding gift from Greg and Rosanna in 1997) - the picture is from 1996-ish. 

Further along that wall, the CD shelf that's now down the hall used to be in the middle here, and we moved the shorter carousel in its place. I've put a silver treasure chest and a photo of kitty Othello on top of it. On the table with the lamp is our Treasure Box (nine shelves of wonder!), another gargoyle and a vintage mug (the glass inside it broke, so now it has a candle). 

This is a much more purposeful arrangement of pictures on the wall. The large photo is by Karen; the three small ones next to it are the Winesday Women, Cat/Yvonne/Karen/me at a Fluevog event, and Nick and L. I added about 12 new photos overall. 

We moved my mom's picture down and put my drawing of the girl beside that. I like looking at her so she's over L's couch where I can see her. 

We added two gold sconces which had been gathering dust in the bedroom. 

Another one of my amber pieces - this is a vintage 60s decanter, as is the gold painted liqueur glass that belonged to my Grandma J. 

I love these little LED candles - they flicker and look very pretty at night. I have them all over the house and light them for company or when I need extra ambiance. 

I chose this clock as my 10th anniversary gift from my company. The two gold candleholders are wooden and are "lit" with two more LED candles. 

The burgundy embroidered curtains are black-out, and are alternated with the semi-sheer panels for our light requirements.

We get direct sun from about noon until it sets (at 9:30pm right now!), so we need to be able to keep the heat down, stop our stuff from fading, and be able to watch TV without glare. 

"But who's watching me? Blah blah, curtains..."

It's a really versatile and practical arrangement of window-coverings, plus we like the rich, warm colours. That's the stool that will be going in the "dining" room soon. 

This is our new TV stand/electric fireplace! We moved the TV out from the corner to this smaller display which I built back in January. 

All of L's stereo components are here, including a 5-CD changer and a turntable. We are all about the media. This is one of our dancing areas; the bench area is the other. 

We stacked three of the stereo components on the end, and then filled up the corner with fun things. The framed gold rubbing was made for L by Mom many years ago and the oval portrait is L's great-grandfather, I think. 

The gold shelf above the turntable has a boxed set of "The Lord of the Rings", plus some other Tolkien books, and figures (and an LED candle). My crystal vase on the floor is stuffed full of coloured fairy lights. Magical! 

You might have noticed Ls's vast CD collection. He has close to 3,000 if not more. Our house is always full of music, and I have been exposed to so many different bands and types of music over the years. I love it, although integrating the collection into our décor is somewhat challenging. 

The photo above this massive CD shelf is by Elaine. 

Vizzini, tell me how you feel about all of this. 

"I hate it." 

He's tried to get at that gold sconce and has pawed at the photos. 

This is the end of "my" couch, and Vizzini is giving me the full cold shoulder here. 

"Put it all back, or I'll never forgive you."

Not gonna happen, bud. Suck it up. 

This is L's view, with his ship painting in the middle. 

We both like having a lamp for reading too - we bought these second-hand last year. We often sit here with music on and read, with the cat sleeping on one of us. 

This is my favourite grouping, the Vampires. The photo on the left is from our Vampire Anniversary photoshoot (here) in 2020. I had to create a black backdrop for the oval frame (which is bigger than standard paper), then printed the biggest oval picture of us I could make. I think it turned out well. 

On the left is the other sconce (the two are across from each other in the room), with a copy of Dracula, a terra cotta tile of two skeletons (a birthday gift), and a crystal skull (thank you, Dan Ackroyd). 

I expanded our chaotic family photo mosaic by adding five new pictures to it. 

There's a pic of me and my brother, L and his brother, Mom at the Castle, our old kitty Inigo and a funny one of Vizzini. Yes, we still have a land-line phone! 

More CDs down the hallway, which I showed over the last week. There are still more than this! 

The black and white photos on the right are of me, twenty years ago (and yes, your eyes do not deceive you, I'm naked). I won an auction in a charity fundraiser and did a photoshoot at a local high-end Destrube Sudio (link about Rob here - I'm pretty sure he's retired). 

These are called "bodyscapes" and involved me holding positions on piles of black velvet cushions with high-contrast flash. The session was about an hour, and my best friend Janet was with me (I felt very comfortable, although the whole nudity thing was a Big Thing for me). There is only one touch-up, where a blanket covered a part of my leg - I wanted to be able to claim them as entirely me. I'm proud of them, but I'm sure you understand I don't want to share high-res close-ups. 

And...there you go - I hope you enjoyed my little tour of the wall-space in our living area. 

And now, I think I shall go do some tummy-rubbing and ask for Vizzini's forgiveness for all this sudden change. 

"Must we?"

Oh, that warm fur is irresistible. 

"Very well, Woman."

I hope your week is going well, my friends!