12 By 2012

Playing: No Man is an Island-Jack's Mannequin
Reading: The Laughing Man by JD Salinger
I decided to take part in the 12 by 2010 project by Hello, Friend because I figured that if I posted the things I need to do on my blog, there's more of a push for me to do it because I know that you'll know. If you take part in this, let me know!

bold = finished!
italic = in progress

1. Update my closet and clean out all the junk I haven't used in years and the clothes I probably won't wear again.
2. Go to Christmas mass. Every year my family says we'll go and then we never make it on time.
3. Write short stories about my friends for their Christmas presents.
4. Write more letters to my friends and answer their snail mail faster.
5. Start going through all the recipes I've wanted to try and make them!
6. Go to the desert to take photos with my friend, Sophie.
7. Watch My Week With Marylin with Jackie. There are so many films I've wanted to see and I never got a chance to see them, but I will not be missing this film. I refuse to miss this movie. (Edit-It's rated R, so my mum and Jackie's mum won't let us go!)
8. Go to LA more and all the events that go on.
9. I will try to make my outfits more complicated and fashion forward. I must up my high heel pain tolerance and my going down the stairs in heels ability.
10. Finish reading the pile of books on my night table.
11. Get more interesting blog posts out to my readers and get more followers!
12. Raise my grades in all my subjects because it can't hurt, right?

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Hope you all have a great meal and a wonderful day! What are you thankful for?

(Last Edited on December 26, 2011-I realized that some of these will never be completely completed because they're about improving something, not actually finishing something.)

Halloween

Playing: Quelqu'un m'a dit-Carla Bruni
Reading: A Perfect Day For Bananafish by JD Salinger (I've been obsessing over Salinger's short stories.)
Happy belated Halloween! I know this is super late, since it's been almost a month. Believe it or not, I've been inundated with schoolwork lately, so I just don't have the time to blog that much. I'm going go to try to do a whole bunch of drafts today, since I finished my homework early today. This year Halloween was very different from most years because it was so last minute. It was literally the night before me calling Sophie and asking her if I could join. Haha, it turned out great though after I finished all my homework.

At 9:00 PM on October 30th, my dad literally came in with a pumpkin and was like, "LET'S DO THIS!" Since I had a late start the next day, I was able to stay up and carve it. I decided to go for a simple pumpkin  inspired by the entrance to the Tim Burton art exhibit. However I realized that without paint it would be hard to get all of the lines and designs right, so I simplified it majorly.

Heh heh, I wore my costume to school the next day because Sophie told me too and when I first showed up to Algebra, a whole bunch of us were in costumes and we were greeted by our teacher asking us, "Aren't you too old to be dressing up for Halloween?" All of us were in shock and told her that of course, we aren't too old and that she should cancel our homework for that night. Then when I got to the rest of my classes, I thought everyone would be dressed up and barely anyone was, so I was teased a bunch. When we got to PE, I had no idea how to store my wig and wig cap, so I hung them up neatly. Does anyone know how to store a wig, so that it won't tangle a bunch? Right now I have it hanging on my staircase.

Finally nighttime came and I ran over to Sophie's place to meet her and Austin. Then we waited for Adam and Aadil. I was super excited to see Aadil (pictured above) because I hadn't seen him in almost a year. He let Sophie and me dress him up as a cat surgeon. You can't see his kitty ears in this photo though. I'm not super close to Austin and I just met Adam, so I felt too awkward to ask them, if I could put photos of them on my blog, so you won't be seeing any for now.

Once all of us got together, Sophie's dad took some group photos of us together using his fancy camera and we ran off to act like little kids. Sophie is dressed as minun and her boyfriend, Austin, went as plusle! How adorable, right? I liked how all of our costumes were homemade that night or put together with clothes we all owned already. I wish I could put a photo of Adam up here because he had the best costume. He was a gentleman cowboy. Haha, it was awesome. As you can see, people decorated their houses and in one neighborhood, there were these huge spiderwebs stretching across the street.

I was actually dressed as Coraline that night and I know my hair is wrong. (I bought the wig before I figured out what I was going as. All I knew was I wanted a wig, so I grabbed a cheap one and then decided on Coraline.) This costume was literally created on the day before Halloween. I pinned a bunch of stars onto a black sweater in my attempt to look like this. Then we added glow sticks to Aadil's glasses and I became Lady Gaga for a second or two. (By the way, don't you like how Aadil is smizing in this photo?) We just sat down and joked around with each other after we were done trick-or-treating. While I was playing around with my wig, I remembered how much I liked having super long hair and I decided I want straight across bangs. The only problem I have with getting blunt bangs is that people at school will call me fobby or think I'm a fob, when I'm not. Since I'm Asian, blunt bangs are considered fobby, while on a white girl, it's considered indie. What the heck? I'm fully American, but I don't look it, so I can't get blunt bangs without being called a fob. Lame, right?

How was your Halloween?

By the way, follow me on tumblr!

"Baby Is It Real Or Just a Sign, It's Summertime"

Playing: Restless Dream-Jack's Mannequin
Reading: "Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allan Poe
I'm trying to clean out all the photos on my computer and organize them, so I figured I might as well do a bunch of posts of all the random things I've been up to. I have so many snaps from summer that I've been wanting to put up on my blog, but I couldn't come up with a a cohesive post, so now I'm just going to do summertime posts.

At the beginning of summer, I went to Chelcee's birthday party, where we went swimming and had a bonfire. Chelcee always has the best birthdays because she invites so many of her friends and she always has so much good food. We pretty much just bum around swimming, playing volleyball, and doing whatever we feel like.  We were supposed to bring our homework to burn, but most of us forgot or didn't know we were supposed to, so we just burned Chelcee and Tanya's homework.

When my mum's laptop broke, I went off to Best Buy to the Geek Squad team to get it fixed. It was taking forever, so I roamed around the store and got some cheap CDs and earphones. Unfortunately, these Hello Kitty earphones are really uncomfortable and the quality is rubbish. The We the Kings CD is pretty good, but not as good as the first two and the Warped Tour CD I bought because it was so cheap and they had a Hellogoodbye song on it.

Over summer, my brother wanted to go to Koreatown in LA for lunch, so we grabbed lunch, but then we saw the Barney's New York Warehouse Sale at the Los Angeles Convention Center. We had no idea that it was going on, but we were so excited! Unfortunately, most of the stuff there was too expensive and the more affordable stuff was more affordable for a reason. A lot of the stuff that wasn't extremely expensive were the items that were damaged or were unbelievably large/small. Since I'm super small, I thought I lucked out because there were tons of size twos! The only problem was a lot of the stuff has holes in them, so I left with nothing. My dad was the only one that lucked out that day.

Down at Santa Monica Pier, there's this one pelican that's always there. You can get real close to it, but it'll never budge. You can literally put your hand an inch away from it before it'll fly away. Some people like to feed it french fries.

My dad and I were thinking about buying more kois for our koi pond, so we went down to our favorite koi store to look at their selections for that summer, but we couldn't find any that we absolutely loved. However, I do like how baby kois will rush up to nibble at your finger, if you dip your finger in the water. I think it's so adorable. Haha, my adult kois will only come up to me, if I have shrimp in my hands now. One day, I should introduce you to all of my pets!

Do you have any pets?

By the way, the lyrics from my title are from "Summer Time" by The Click Five.

Project Runway Finale

Playing: Safe and Sound-Kyosuke Himuro Feat. Gerard Way
Reading: Talking to Girls About Duran Duran by Rob Sheffield
The Project Runway Finale was very disappointing and I'm questioning myself as to why I watch Project Runway. Three out of the four seasons that I have watched have ended in my disappointment with who has won. The only person that has won, where I believe he completely deserved it, was Seth Aaron and I still completely stick to my original opinion that Mondo Guerra deserved to win. This season angered me the most because I purposely skipped my school's homecoming game thinking to myself, "Joshua or Viktor is definitely going to win and that will be really satisfying to see Anya go home!" on the bright side, at least I went to the water polo game that day to watch my friend from another school play.

Viktor Luna's collection showcased his perfect tailoring and his good taste. I  think in terms of what I would want to spend my money on, this was the collection is the winner. I can see myself wanting almost all of the pieces in the collection.The prints totally remind me of Alexander McQueen S/S 2010 and I loved how he edited the photos he took of Mexico to create these beautiful prints. I don't think it's fair how the judges criticized him for making so many black and sheer pieces. They told him to put in a plain black outfit for the white jacket. Then Michael Kors said sheer is used as a shock factor, not for multiple outfits, but I have seen many designers like Valentino and Alexander Wang do multiple sheer outfits in one collection. I also truly believe that in terms of long term success, Viktor has the best chance of moving himself in the same direction as Christian Siriano. To see the rest of his collection and where I got the above photos from, click here. Viktor also has a blog, which you should check out.

Joshua McKinley definitely has some amazing ideas and he's full of them. He knows how to push the envelope and how to create new and exciting looks. Overall, I felt his show was the most innovative and I loved his use of plastic because it's something I can see Christopher Kane doing. His collection was unconventional, but also something that I can see people buying and wanting. I love the blazer in the first photo and I would definitely wear that. In terms of having the ideas, Joshua has them and he can make them happen. The one thing the judges kept on saying is, "This is a design competition, not a sewing competition." Well, both Viktor and Joshua can sew and they have the ideas! Since I couldn't find any good photos to showcase the whole collection, I used the one from this website.

 

 Even though Anya won, I truly don't think she has the best collection. I agree that her dresses looked nice, except for the 4th one in the collage, which looks like a potato sack, but they all look the same. All of them had that insanely deep v-neck that isn't realistic for anyone to wear unless their name is Paris Hilton. I live in Southern CA and I've never seen people wear clothing like this. The other thing that bothered me a lot about her winning is the fact that in the past, other contestants have lost for showing the same thing at fashion week as they have shown the whole season and Anya has shown what she calls "a consistent point of view" and the judges never saw anything wrong with her showing the same Caribbean thing again and again. Also, do you really believe that Anya can translate to F/W? Real designers have to do both S/S and F/W, but this whole Caribbean look doesn't work in the fall, winter, or even in the city. Let me end my rant with a few concluding sentences because I won't want to leave you hanging or anything...Overall, I don't think Anya deserved it compared to Joshua or Viktor, who can sew and have the ideas. Also, no one wears Anya's clothes and I don't think she's all that creative. She sews what the same look as the clothes she buys for herself. It just isn't fair. Even though you probably don't want to see her whole collection because it's so repetitive, I'm gonna link it anyways, since I got  the photos from here too.

Who designed your favorite collection?

PS I'm so lame for choosing a TV show over homecoming. And I know that I used tons of run on sentences in this post and that it's pretty long. Also, I purposely didn't show Kimberly's collection because her collection didn't add anything to this post. To avoid copyright issues and all that, let me say this, I don't own the images and I have linked the source of where I've gotten them from. However, I did put the first and last collages together.