Friday, October 28, 2011

Here are the outfits

As promised, I went through my collection of work clothes to make inventory of  possible outfits. Upfront, here is a picture of many of the items I currently own together in one picture:
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As you can see, so far I have lots of black and gray clothes, but not that much white or blueish items. Either way, the collection of skirts, dresses, shoes, blouses and shirts already provides for a whole bunch of outfits.
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Here are a few examples of outfits I can create from the items above:
First, three outfits using the gray knee-long skirt.
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Now, an outfit using my black dress:
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Finally, two outfits utilizing my black knee-long skirt:
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Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Raiding the Basement

I went into my family`s basement the other day and found a few pieces of furniture that are no longer used and which I will be able to take to our new apartment.

First of all, there is my old desk, which is made of solid wood and still in great condition:

Since every piece of furniture is parked in between a whole bunch of other things it was a bit difficult to get adequate pictures. Either way, here is my old desk. It has 3 drawers on the left and a door with deep storage on the right.


Since it is solid wood, I might stain the desk. However, since it is so old, I also might as well paint it and give it some pretty new knobs. At this point everything is still undecided but I will keep you posted once I update the piece.

Another item I will be able to bring to our apartment for free is the old table from the breakfast nook - also a solid wood piece:

As you can see, the table has beat up legs and had to suffer through a flooded basement a few year back. Other than that I plan to achieve a two-toned effect with table. The top will be stained dark and nice rustic-looking and the legs will go off-white. I plan to find parson´s chairs at a good price for these and I already found a few sites online which offer decent prices on quality chairs.

Finally I also took pictures of old dining chairs which I might work on as an alternative. I am not too sure yet if I want these or not but maybe you can give me your opinion whether they are worth the effort of recovering the seats:

We´ll see. They kind of look hard to take apart so I am not sure to start the recovering. But it just might be worth a try.

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Dressing up for Work

Just about to start a new job here in Germany, I have been playing around with ideas for filling up my work wardrobe. The thought of having to buy a whole bunch of new outfits left me nervous, as I didn`t bring too many items with me from the United States (due to my previous job´s dress code, I had nothing but black items and I didn`t want to waste important suitcase space with all of those black suits).

I started searching around on youtube for tips on how to create a wardrobe with many outfits and low upfront cost. After watching many videos I stumbled upon this one which seems to be an excellent start:


For those of you who can´t watch the video, here is a short explanation:

1) Select 4 colors, each of which can be combined with all of the other 3 (e.g. Black, Gray, White, Red)
2) You need 5 tops in the selected colors
3) You need 4 bottoms in the selected colors
4) You need 1 good jacket (blazer)
5) Additionally: Black Pumps and a Trench Coat

Now, you will be able to basically combine any of the tops with any of the bottoms, either with or without the blazer jacket.

Great! That works for me. Since I love to wear teal and blues, I created a moodboard with clothes in the color scheme Black - Beige - White - Teal:


I have to admit I chose more than 10 items, but I can already see how verstile a wardrobe like this would be. Most of the bottoms can be combined with any of the tops and shoes. There won´t be much of a problem when finding something to wear to work because everything works together.

Here are a few possible combinations drawn fromt the board above:

The white shirt can be tugged into the skirt and worn with or without the jacket. Pumps and a cute purse complete the outfit.

Here I combined a black skirt, with matching pumps and blazer. To add some color, I matched the basic items with a colorful blue shirt and teal purse.





Last weekend I spent some time going through my own pile of clothes to take invetory. I realized quickly that I have a few gray items but nothing in beige, so I didtched the beige and decided instead on this scheme:

Black - Light Gray - White - Teal/Blue

On yesterdays trip to the mall, I found some great items following my new color scheme and tomorrow morning I will work on creating a few outfits with the things I already own.

Stay tuned ...

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Bye bye summer!

We had beautiful weather in Germany the last couple of weeks, and everybody wanted to spend as much time outside as possible.
This included several bicycle tours and visits to the ice cream place.

On Saturday we went to the close-by "Möhnesee", which is a relatively large lake in the area with beautiful bike-ways along the water.


It was just the right temeperature to ride our bikes and the tour was just fun.

One of the many spots we had a break and took pictures.

Towards the end of our 20 km bike ride we crossed one of the bridges that spans accross the lake and found this:


Can you see the locks that are all over the protective fence?


Another close-up:

People attached those locks with their names engraved on them. These locks were all over the protective fence and I thought this was a very cute idea. Instead of writing stuff with pens all over the beautiful brick-tower, people got creative and added this fun little detail to the bridge.

Imagine going back every once in a while and searching for "your" lock!

Anyhow, welcome to fall, apple pies, cooler temperatures, fallen leaves, and the return of hot chocolate. I am so excited!