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I’m doing a project for my summer class that involves Indonesia and my Indonesian friends were kind enough to request help from many of their friends. To my amazement, I’ve received emails from several people I’d never met, offering help. Fortunately for them I mostly needed pictures and didn’t pester them too much, but I wanted to share a really cool video one friend shared with me because I think she did an awesome job with it and it’s cool see get a peek into life over in Padang, Indonesia. Thanks for sharing your great work Lidia!

I can never seem to get this out at the end of each month so what the heck, why not just say 4th edition and get it out whenever? I’ll bet ya 20 bucks that you wouldn’t have even noticed had I mentioned it ; ). But anyway, you may be noticing a trend here that I tend to stick to reading a lot of the same blogs since many of these are faces you’ve seen in my last muses posts (here – 1, 2, 3). Well, quite frankly I’m completely unapologetic to not having new faces for ya! I certainly always mean to check out new blogs, but with my time constraints I tend to gravitate back to ones I already love and have a sense of a community with. And it makes me really happy to support sweet bloggers that also support me! So, here ya have it!

1) First of all, how perfect is Melinda’s amazing graphic in this super cool picture to start with?

2) Kristian’s photo locations never cease to amaze me. And I LOVE her simple & classy look here & that her aunt made the skirt!

3) Inge takes stunning photographs (amongst being generally awesome) & recently moved all the way to Canada from the Netherlands!

4) Jessi’s not often seen in jeans, but she looks amazing in ‘em here in a vintage blazer she bought from Hannah’s vintage shop!

5) Now, Marlen’s not generally a neturals gal (and I adore her use of bright colors and prints), but I LOVE her take on them here.

6) Katie has an absolutely stunning collective of pristine vintage items, and looks so classy in this vintage ensemble.

7) The whole internet has pretty much agreed that Marisa ALWAYS looks as cute as a button, but her baby bump in this Flock Together dress just tops it in my book.

8) Hannah did an amazing take of dressing down but still lookin’ super classy in Marlen’s skirt in another Flock Together swap.

9) Briana is a super talented seamstress and designer & made her cardi from a tablecloth & also makes SUCH CUTE baby dresses.

10) Jessica always looks so stylish and put together and always gives me inspiration on how I can look classier at work, so I was extra excited to see her rock The Mitla top from my shop a second time; in her post here! It’s always awesome to see a blogger I admire style up an item from my shop, but to see her remix it again was extra exciting (her 1st post was here in case you’re wondering)!

Hope you all have a fantastic weekend! I’m going to an exciting place tomorrow that I can’t wait to share about!

A few weekends ago Jonny and I had the privilege of joining my coworker and her husband for a day trip over to Kartchner Caverns in southern Arizona. It’s a really awesome site that was recently discovered and even more recently opened to the public. We learned about a lot of the history, but Wikipedia can tell you more accurately.

I know I just showed you basically this same picture above, but I was impressed with my gangster face and had to share another.

Outfit details: dress – found at a yard sale across the street the day before; hurrah! shoes- Targets (4? years old); hat/necklace: thrifted.

A  few weekends ago Jonny and I had the privilege of joining my coworker and her husband for a day trip over to Kartchner Caverns in southern Arizona. My mom had recently brought over a magazine clipping of the place and we’d all said that we wanted to visit it soon. One morning a few days before Memorial Day weekend I asked my coworkers if they had any fun plans for the long weekend, kind of just to make small talk, you know. Little did I suspect that one would say she was planning on visiting the caverns. And even littler did I know that in a split second I would be inviting Jonny and myself to tag along. But yep, that’s just what I did, and had a really fun time all getting to know each other better (aka the husbands getting to know everyone better). And, judging by their laughs sounding real and us all cracking jokes all day I’d say I wasn’t the only one glad I invited us to tag along.

And I suppose I should mention that the site was really impressive. It was definitely worth seeing! But you’ll have to suffice with pictures of the desert and pictures of the postcards we bought because pictures aren’t allowed in the cave and I don’t feel like giving you Google Images (someone almost knocked a kid over a three-story ledge while taking a picture so that was the end of that, I was told because I was nosy and asked, in case you’re also nosy and were wondering).

I posted this in our Flock Together Unexpected Colors Style challenge a bit ago, but decided I’d share some more pictures here since I made an outfit I wasn’t embarrassed to be seen in with my new one-piece and hand woven shawl and hat.




And most importantly, don’t stay in the sun more than a few minutes in Phoenix this time of year or you really could get heat stroke!

Outfit details: one-piece- Target online sale; sandals- thrifted (old); scarf (as skirt)- handwoven in Mexico; bracelet- in my shop here.

I know I have a couple unexpected color combos back in the blog archives somewhere, but for this style challenge I decided to make a brand new look for you all. And since it was getting up to 100 (and is even worse now) over here in sunny Phoenix, my creativity wasn’t quite at its peak and a swimsuit seemed like the only practical option. Since I’m a one-piece-gal anyway I went for a “pool party look,” and paired it with my woven scarf, bracelet, and straw hat, all handmade finds from when I lived in Mexico! And then I ran through the kiddie splash pad at the park down the street so I didn’t have a heat stroke. But anyway, you can see the other entries in our challenge here if you like, they’re all wearing real clothes!

I decided it would be fun to do a little recap of a few of my favorite outfits from last summer. I know it’s not technically summer yet, but just like Phoenix likes to pretend it’s still summer in Fall, she also likes to spread her heat rays onto us nice and early because booty shorts and bikinis are ASU’s number one selling points. Ok in all seriousness… no actually there’s no point in being serious because this is a post of a collection of pictures of me wearing different outfits so anyway, here ya have it!

Here and find woven bracelet here / Here

Here and find woven bracelet here/ Here

Here / Here and woven belt in my shop

Here / Here

Here / Here and woven belt in my shop

Here / Here

Here (and top found here) / Here

And one of the coolest things we saw in Hawaii in this post

Last summer was pretty awesome with all our travels (you can click on the links below to see a few : ) and apparently I really liked the color pink and jean shorts last summer; and simplicity. Simplicity for summer in Phoenix is key. Lightweight clothing with minimal accessories but one of my woven belts or bracelets were my go-to’s last summer and are again this summer as well.

What are some of your go-to’s this summer or favorite looks you’re hoping to rock? I’d love to hear and check out your links if you have any favorites. Hope you all enjoy your upcoming weekends!

Here ya have it, the moment you’ve all been waiting for… around town in New York City! Ok I’m kidding obviously, but here’s an assortment of around the big city. And that’s it! Our last, foggy-eyed, free stand-by flight-trip. At least for some time because I should tell you all that they loved Jonny at the airline for the obvious reasons (he’s super friendly and helpful to everyone and being adorable probably never hurts either) and also worked extremely hard there so anyway now I got sidetracked…

I wanted to tell you that you can totally find cheap, non-fast food dining in NYC, hence the picture of me in front of an embarrassingly amazingly huge plate of french fries. We happened upon a little local chicken grill place that was cheaper than it would’ve been in Phoenix, gave us enough food for dinner as well, and a free coffee instead of soda and oh so many delicious fries (although the last two might’ve been because Jonny ordered in Spanish and like usual, took a few minutes to chat with the people because he’s from Latin America).

The police car seemed just like the movies so we had to take a picture and the apartment below reminded Jonny of the apartments in TV shows.

The Guggenheim, which we did not visit because it was expensive.

Can anyone tell me what was up with these things? We also saw a few nitrogen tank pumping into the street… which seemed a tad dangerous to be left unattended. Any locals know what was up?

If you’ve been to New York City, what are some of your favorite sites to see or things to do? I’ve loved hearing how many of you have also enjoyed visiting some of the places we saw. We did miss the Eiffel tower (I didn’t want to pay that much just for a view) and the Statue of Liberty, which was closed but we would’ve had to book far earlier in advance anyway, but overall I’m really happy how much we saw in such a short trip!

Hey again; just stopping in with some more pictures of Central Park! This was our last day in New York City, when we decided to cut through the entire park to get to the Natural History Museum (seen here). The route online showed that it would take only ten minutes longer to walk through the park than to take the subway because of connections, so off walking we went. Of course we took longer for some photo ops and to see the mini castle, but it was certainly worth it and now I have another pseudo outfit post for you all!

Yup, I totally wear camouflage ; ). And yes, I was too cold to take my jacket off even though other people were in t-shirts.

Outfit details: dress- secondhand via Plato’s Closet; sunnies- free; rain boots- Spain 5+ years ago; tights- Target; bracelet- my non-profit shop.

We hadn’t had time to venture much into the park prior to this, just the outskirts, so we were happy for the chance to see so much green! I know, maybe this is normal where you all live, but for us it was insanely green and amazing to see many huge trees, lush grass, and of course blooming flowers all together.

To my pleasant surprise it seems that many of you didn’t just not think my Natural History Museum posts were weird, but you actually enjoyed them. Perfect for me since my plan was to show you The Metropolitan Museum of Art (aka “The Met”) today. Basically, by the time my New York City posts are over (in a few days, I’m not that bad at drawing things on!), I’ll have shown you everywhere we visited in the city.

The armor on the left was the emperor’s.

Even though our trip was a little haphazard in not making it onto a flight until 1am, which caused us to lose our planned Saturday morning site-seeing, I still feel like we got to see all the major highlights. But anyway, back to the museum; this was the other museum Jonny has always wanted to visit. His 8th grade art history class gave him a love of Egyptian sculptures and drawings, so he was really excited about seeing this part of the museum. And, since I don’t recall a single thing from classes in 8th grade, I chatted with an old high school friend while we strolled around looking at everything in not quite as much detail. It was a wonderful day being able to meet up with an old friend after several years and see such a cool place. New York City definitely has done an amazing job with its museums, and I love how they’ve made them accessible to everyone by donation-only entrance fees.

This is kind of a blooper media clip because 1) I sound entirely goofy (I swear I don’t really talk like this, I was just trying to butter Ole up with a high pitch that cats supposedly like so he’d do his “trick” and 2) Well, it’s only ten seconds long so you can see why. This is the blooper version of the little clip I posted here.

And finally, I wanted to send a huge thank you to you all for your support in Ole’s passing. I still get really sad about it at times, but I won’t sop about it more on here. But I do truly appreciate all of your kind words and support. That was one of my most-commented posts ever, and it really meant a lot that so many of you would take the time out of your busy lives to write such kind things. It really helped, especially since many of our friends live in other states/countries; thank you all!

Oh, and you can see that outfit here if you were wondering!

This might very well be the most random thing I’ve ever posted on here, but I thought this part of the Natural History Museum was pretty cool! I mean, I guess I was more impressed by the dinosaur skeletons and such since that’s not something you can see every day (well, unless you’re Kristian and can go visit actual fossils, as she told me in her comment to yesterday’s post!).

These animal recreations were kind of like going to the zoo. But you know when you go to the zoo and you just find the animals sleeping or so far away you can’t even see them and you have to remind yourself that they’re actual creatures not street performers there to entertain you? Well, that’s what was so cool about this exhibit! I’m sure you know that Jonny and I are huge nature lovers, so thoroughly we enjoyed seeing so many different types of animals so close up to see their sizes, colors, and features (especially the more exotic-to-us ones like the huge water buffalo!). And yes, this is just a fraction of the pictures of these animals on my camera (ahem: Jonny). Now if only we wouldn’t have had to leave to catch our flight back home! There was so much more to see in this museum, like the Biodiversity Hall, that we didn’t even get a glimpse of.

Here’s a bit more of our trip to New York City, specifically the Natural History Museum! I mainly went along because Jonny has always wanted to see this museum; he’d seen many documentaries on these fossils throughout his childhood (funny since he grew up in Venezuela and I grew up in the U.S. and had hardly seen any). However, I was pleasantly surprised and found everything really interesting. It’s just incredible to think about what the earth was like before us humans came along don’t ya think?

Even the subway stop was awesome!

Well, that’s all for today, I started a summer class and work has been extra crazy since we’ve been back from our trip so I’ll have to chat more later : ).

Alright, here ya have it, finally some pictures from our trip to the big apple a few weekends ago! And most importantly, the last trip of an era. Yes, that’s right, my lovebird’s internship with an airline has ended and with it have ended free standby flights. So here’s a bit from the city, first our favorite part – Central park and a pseudo outfit post.

And here’s my favorite picture I’ve taken in a long time. I totally zoomed in a lot and pretended I was just pointing the camera all around when I thought he noticed, but he and his cigar and dog were just too picturesque not to photo-stalk, or at least I thought.

Outfit details: dress- secondhand (via Plato’s Closet); bag & sunnies- free from those random campus freebies; tights & shoes- Target/H&M a year ago; watch – corn resin watch c/o Sprout watches; woven bracelet – my shop here.

After having lived in Caracas and Mexico City (you can see about Venezuela in general here and Mexico City here if you’re curious), I no longer see myself living in a huge city for several reasons I won’t get into now, but we certainly haven’t crossed New York City off our list of residences if an amazing opportunity were to come about. And either way, it was awesome to finally visit the city we’ve seen in so many movies throughout the years!

Hey everyone, I’m posting over on Flock Together today wearing Erica’s adorable mustard dress. Stop on over and say hi!

Just a silly, few second video we made at the natural history museum. We emailed it to my mom so our intent was to be as cheesy as possible. It was pretty fun : ). I’ll be sharing more of our little New York trip this week, so stay turned!

Hey there! Is it still non-sleeping hours over there for you? Well if so you should go enter my pal Lisa’s giveaway here for a super cute one-piece! I’m a bit late to the game because I didn’t have a Pinterest and didn’t really want to go into that rabbit hole but well ok, it was easy to create so now I wish I’d have sooner to share this giveaway news with you all. But you have til midnight AZ time which is probably a few hours later your time so check it out : ).

And if it’s too late by the time you see this at least I got to share Lisa looking like a swimsuit model and her super cute graphic design skills.

I’ve haven’t been in the mood to blog for a bit, but I thought it was time to share the news about Ole for those that didn’t know, and share some happy memories of him. It was impossible to hold the tears back as I got this post ready; it still feels like just a few days ago that we lost our dear little Ole (pronounced “ollie” after oleanders I should add). It was though, two weeks when I got the call from Jonny. I rushed out of my office around lunchtime and biked dangerously fast to the vet. Ole had been attacked by two neighbor dogs who had escaped their backyard (the cable guy didn’t properly secure the gate after leaving). It never occurred to me on my bike ride over there that we’d never have little Ole run up to greet us again.

I know it would have been tragic to lose Ole in any way, but it’s especially tragic because there are so many “if onlys” involved – if only the cable guy would’ve closed the gate, if only the neighbor would’ve checked the gate behind him, if only Ole would’ve been inside (Jonny had already put him safe and sound inside for the day and someone else let him out). But obviously nothing can be changed and in the end the moral of the story is that kitties absolutely aren’t safe outside.

So here’s a little collage to remember our happy memories with dear Ole. How Jonny would let him outside right after 10pm when I’d text him that I was biking home from night class so Ole would see me coming home and run behind me on my bike to say “hi,” how he’d run up to strangers even walking their dogs to say “hi,” and acted the same the few times we took him to the park. How he was such a chubby kitty and would always sit on the coffee table in hopes of getting a taste. How he’d let you pick him up and make him dance around a few a few minutes until he got sick of it, all while keeping the grumpiest face ever. And of course how he “helped” us with homework and kept Jonny less stressed during finals and how sweet he was in the mornings, laying in bed with us or on our heads.

It’s never easy to lose a pet friend I know, but I think it’s even harder for us since we only adopted Ole last summer (here) and he was only four years old. I had many plans for him, including attempting to train him to walk on a leash and a few other little commands to see if he could become a visitor kitty to childrens’ hospitals or homes. He was the ultimate social cat. He loved hanging out with people, other cats, and even most other dogs. He even had a neighbor kitty friend we’d sometimes see him play wrestling with. Lila is scared of all other cats, but she loved Ole.

As I’m sure you can tell by this post and so many others I’ve included him in this past year, Ole became such a dear part of our family in such a short time. I always had a cat growing up but had never loved one like I loved little Ole (and still love little Lila). Jonny never liked cats much before we adopted them, and he especially loved Ole, as did many of our loved ones who would stop over. Clearly we’re still heartbroken and are still finding it hard to not be sad when we unlock the door every evening and his big chubby face isn’t there waiting for us. Ole was a sweet, puppy-like cat (although a bit moodier ; ) kitty who left our lives far too soon.

Anna! If you guys thought I was scamming you to get more followers by now I wouldn’t blame you, but thank you all who entered my two year blog anniversary giveaway! And sorry for my delay; things really were a lot to manage with my day job and wrapping up year one of grad school. Anna, you should see an email from me right around now.

I put the names into Excel (so they were numbered) and then used random.org to generate a number. Hopefully that’s how you’re supposed to do one of these things. Thanks so much everyone who entered, thanks for following along here on the blog, and for supporting my non-profit shop!

Outfit details: bracelet, necklace (gift- story here) & dress- handmade in Mexico; felt hat- thrifted; boots- vintage (Ebay); hand woven belt (my e-shop here).

If you follow me on Instagram/Twitter you’ll have heard the sad news about our little Ole, so needless to say I haven’t really been in the mood to do a post since then. But since I already had this one ready, here it is: for this outfit I went with the same version of the one I wore way back here. I was trying to do some layering to make a different version of this skirt of a dress but that was proving complicated so why fix what’s not broken right? This skirt from a little market in Mexico doubles perfectly as a dress and I always love a woven belt for some extra originality, so on it went with combat boots (which I always think completely change the look) and my bright blue felt hat!

Also, after all the spring blossoms, I wanted to share what the real desert spring looks like. This is in a nearby park and should be more like how the scenery looks everywhere than how our backyard looks, which I mention because I keep thinking of how Kristian commented on this post that she was surprised to see so much green. I forget that if you’re not from here you wouldn’t know the sad truth… most landscape in the Phoenix area is ridiculously wasteful of water in order to be insanely green (and by ridiculously wasteful and insanely green I really mean it! I bike by sprinklers on the same patch of lawns every single morning and they are like psychedelic green). But our rental place is in an old neighborhood where we are fortunate to have irrigation, so I don’t feel bad about wasting the grey water and we get to enjoy a sometimes green lawn and a crazy little jungle yard.

(And a huge thanks to Jen for making both graphics! : )