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Posts Tagged ‘ shopping ’

some things look better inside of the store.

Listening to: K-OS — FlyPaper

…But not these things! Sometimes it upsets me when I realize how fun I find mindless consumerism. But then I think, “Ooh, stuff!” and stop worrying about it. I am deep.

For example, I spent the past three days trying really hard to spend three dollars on a milkshake, but the place was never open when I wanted some milky caloric goodness. Finally, thanks to a scheduling fluke (as in, how I spent most of this morning leaving really short classes), I finally got my Oreo milkshake. Now, I understand that it doesn’t seem that interesting once typed into blog post format, but, trust me, earlier this morning that milkshake was of vital importance to my existence.

But, of course, that is far from the most important thing I purchased today. No, that would be the Dec/Jan 2011 issue of Pop’Africana, which is a fashion/art/culture magazine for the African diaspora and, quite frankly, needs to come out more often. I was incredibly lucky that I found and was able to order it today, seeing as the pre-order deadline for the latest issue is midnight. Here’s a sample of work from the editor, Oroma Elewa:

Sick, no?

Also, as I’d sorta-promised earlier, an outfit. The lighting in my room was surprisingly not-ugly this morning, so I snapped a photo after breakfast:

2011: 01/19
CATEGORY: fashion
news.
photography
3 comments

’cause that’s my fun-day.

Listening to: Vampire Weekend — Horchata

It’s Sunday again! Which means procrastination today and school (read: more procrastination) tomorrow. Last night I forced myself to crawl out of my room and went to the boys varsity basketball game; we won 70-something to 40-something, which was nice and kind of exciting. Then we had s’mores outside, and later while I was reading in my room, I realized that half a graham cracker had lodged itself in the folds of my scarf. What was more strange about that was that I’d eaten every graham cracker I’d taken out of the box. Also last night I spent about half an hour on babynamesworld.com, looking at hundreds upon hundreds of terrible French boy-names. I finally had to relieve one of its last syllable to come up with “Calix”, which I think is a suitably badass name for the character it now describes, even though it starts with Blé’s least favorite letter. (But really? “Kalix”?…Ohwaitnevermind.)

Just under an hour ago, my independent study adviser took me and my neighbor to the bookstore in town, and my neighbor was awesomely kind enough to lend me $17 so that I could buy Murakami’s The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, which I can’t wait to start reading, but The Elegance of the Hedgehog is just too good to put down right now. And I just vacuumed my first time in a month or so (I know, ewww), so now I’m feeling all clean and zen and ready to go and do yoga.

2011: 01/16
CATEGORY: misc.
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a boulangerie for your literate soul.

Listening to: Modest Mouse — March Into The Sea

I will tell you now that I take notebooks very seriously. I take them so seriously, in fact, that I know brands; my favorites are Iquelrius and Moleskine and occasionally Paperchase (though I find their lines rather wide for my tiny handwriting). I will walk into Barnes & Noble or the local art boutique not with the intention of finding a new book or spiffy art markers, but with the aim of purchasing a new home for my stories. I will admit now to having shelled out up to $17 for that *perfect* notebook. So you can probably imagine my joy when, while out shopping the other day, I stumbled upon (well, I’ll admit having gazed longingly across the street at it for several months prior) the papeterie nota bene* and found myself wondering why I’d never been to a notebook/stationery boutique before. I even bought a new notebook:

And yes, I already know what I’m going to write in it. Except that I’m back at school now, so I won’t be able to lurk at nota bene* for another month at least….

Curse small town America.

2011: 01/03
CATEGORY: misc.
writings.
2 comments

friday foofaraw 19/11/2010: an apology for my procrastination that I’ll write… tomorrow.

Listening to: Blue October — Hate Me

Not that you should — hate me, that is. I’m just reeeealy busy and sort of lack dedication with regularity-type things, or something like that. In case you hadn’t noticed, the friday foofaraw feature kind of died. Well, maybe not died, per se, but it certainly crawled into a hole and went into hibernation for a long while. And for that, I’m sorry. The main problems with being consistent with it were the facts that I’m in schoolio and all and have tons of homework, and also because I often ended up sharing all of my cool interwebsy stuff the day I found it, aka not on Friday.

I’m leaving for (American) Thanksgiving break tomorrow, so I’ll probably have tons of time to procrastinate/ write/ play the Sims 3 Late Night/ finish reading Dark Divine and L’appel du sang, which I obviously haven’t finished yet. But until then, watch some stunt cats on infoMania’s viral video film school while I daydream about watching the new Harry Potter movie.

And! Also! My awesome Threadless t-shirt has officially been shipped. So hopefully it’ll be there by the time I get back!

…see what I did there?

2010: 11/19
CATEGORY: friday foofaraw.
1 comment

a teerific set of punny things.

Listening to: Tegan & Sara — Speak Slow

Halloooo out there! I realize that I didn’t post a Friday Foofaraw last week, and for that I apologize. I’m really bad at regularity like that.

But, anywho. With the end of soccer season came dance team tryouts, which so far have been… rigorous. And yesterday my English prof (yes, the one who heads the class where everyone thinks I’m a kidney-snatching killer) referred to sociopaths as “Anwa’s type of guys,” drawing upon me the ire of the males in my class and causing me to refer to the dictionary definition of

mor·ti·fi·ca·tion

–noun

a feeling of humiliation or shame, as through some injury to one’s pride or self-respect.

But as I was collecting the shards of my self-esteem on the interwebs, I happened to stumble across Threadless, which in case you didn’t know is the most amazing website to ever offer “the best t-shirts in the world”. I spent at least an hour perusing the site before deciding to do a boarding-school and order clothes online, but it wasn’t really doing a boarding-school because 1) I didn’t order the same thing in five different colors, and it wasn’t really “trendy”, and 2) I had it shipped to Middle of Nowhere, Midwest, where I will be returning this Saturday to see Blé and such. And speaking of the Midwest, U.S of A, both of Threadless’s stores are located in Chicago, which is the Somewhere in the Middle of Nowhere. This is the t-shirt that I ordered — it’s quite spiffy and I was glad that I snagged it before it went out of stock:

I was going to get the Communist Party shirt, too, but I could only order one and I’m so cool that I already have a Communist t-shirt. I’ve got to show it to you sometime — it’s my and Blé’s “how to upset border crossing” outfit.

2010: 11/16
CATEGORY: fashion
misc.
3 comments

anwa goes shopping and displays the innards of her bag, or this might’ve been a trend once.

Listening to: Mates of State — My Only Offer

It’s depressing to think that Sunday is almost over already, even though the day is technically one hour longer thanks to daylight savings time. This Friday I went to see a play when I probably should’ve been doing homework for Saturday classes; today I went to town and decided to share the fruits of that labor with you in this haul photo/ “what’s in my purse” post.

So, exactly what is in my purse/ what did I buy? Well, let me tell you:

1. Vintage vest.

My shopping buddy and I went thrift-whoring at the local thrift-and-vintage store, and I managed to snag this sweet vintage vest for less that twenty bucks. In case you were wondering, it does not fit in my purse, but somehow it magically fit over my bust.

2. My cellphone.

Which I almost lost about three times in the two hours I was out. I’m pretty sure I almost accidentally used it to pay at the art store.

3. My pencil.

I, honest to goodness, own only one pencil (well, only one mechanical pencil). And I’m always almost losing it. The other day I stuck it on the rim of my knee-high boots and spent the next period and a half looking for it until I remembered where it was.

4. Bigelow Co. Mocha Mint Lipstick.

I usually have a tube of lipstick on my person. Either it’s this one, my brown Burt’s Bees, or my dark red Revlon.

5. My Moleskine.

Otherwise known as my baby. ‘Nuff said.

6. My iPod.

Whose earphones I’ve replaced about three times this year. First they were white, then they were from the McGill bookstore, then they were blue, and now they’re green. One day I hope to upgrade them to an epic pair of Skullcandy Aviators.

7. 0.5mm Sakura Micron pen.

I bought this today on my second trip to the art store, because I was dumb and left all of my Faber Castell pens at home. Since I’ve given up on journaling, I’m going to try and go back to drawing.

8. White Galaxy Marker paint marker.

Also bought on my second trip to the art store, once I realized that I had enough money to buy two pens. As before, I left my white marker (which really didn’t work that well, anyway) back home.

9. Doublemint gum.

My bread and butter. I have about eight packs of these sitting in my desk drawer at the moment.

10. My new sketchbook.

I’d really wanted to find one of those limited edition Moleskine Pac-man notebooks on my first trip to the art store, but a) I did not have $30 to spend on a sketchbook, and b) they didn’t have them, anyway, and the only other Moleskine sketchbooks they carried had pages far too big for my poor procrastinate-y self to ever ink and color in. So I snagged this one instead, for under $10.

11. The CBOQO.

For those of you who don’t remember, that stands for the Communist Bag Of Questionable Origin. I bought four new buttons for it at the thrift store today; the first one says “Sarcasm: Now served daily,” the second says, “I ♥ Cats. It’s people I can’t stand,” the third says, “Patience is such a waste of time,” and the last says, “Does it bother you that I’m always right?” I buy way too many buttons.

Not pictured here: my Nikon D3000 and it’s lens cap, which I was using to photograph the rest of this crap. Also, the delicious mocha almond ice cream + espresso beverage I consumed at the local creamery. And I can’t wait to wear that vest tomorrow, even though I might need to disinfect it first.

2010: 11/07
CATEGORY: misc.
1 comment

my magazines are far more fashion-forward than your air-mail hunter boots.

Listening to: Flyleaf — Fully Alive

Don’t you love getting mail? I definitely do — it’s one of the small joys of boarding school, knowing that someone cares enough (or lets you use their credit card enough) to send you a package. Mostly girls here order Hunter boots in all colors of the rainbow, oversized J Crew sweaters, and floral dresses from Forever21; some international students buy food they can’t get Stateside; I don’t order anything, because I am broke. Which, in retrospect, kind of saddens me — there’s nowhere to shop for clothes here, and as winter nears I’ve been feeling like I need a bit of a wardrobe update. The girl you see in the photo above (who is now one of the about three people on campus who are willing to model for me, so props to her) has the most amazing clothes ever, and it always makes me think, “Well, I don’t think that I could pull off anything as flamboyant as that fur-elbowed blazer, but maybe a new plain black sweater would be nice….”

Anyway. Back to the point, which was: mail. I was super excited today because I got a package in the mail, and inside, along with medicine and enough gum to last me until December, was the October issue of Nylon and… the 90th anniversary issue of Vogue Paris.

To say that I’m ecstatic would be a major understatement. I haven’t even touched the Vogue yet, in part because I’m saving the best for last and in part because it’s HUGE. But I know what I’m going to be doing this Sunday (other than playing the Sims for several mindless hours, of course).

In other news, I think that I might have, erm, misplaced the camera shoe of the tripod I was borrowing from the photo lab. Whoops….

2010: 11/04
CATEGORY: fashion
news.
4 comments

some things are just too delicious for… ah, is that a crêpe?

Listening to: Ladytron — Versus

Sometimes it really rocks being the only one in my photography class. For example: Today, instead of having class, my teacher and I took a trip into town so that I could take my color film to the awkwardly-houred camera store. I’d been taking a roll a day over the weekend (trying to document my life in Lomo), so the three rolls plus a CD (which will be ready tomorrow! yay!) ended up costing me around forty dollars. That left me with nine dollars, which I was supposed to use to pay back a friend, with which to buy lunch.

On the way to my coffeeshop of choice, I stopped by the candy store with the sole purpose of wasting money on another button for my CBOQO (Communist Bag of Questionable Origin, in case any of you don’t remember). This is the one I got:

We’d met barely five minutes prior, but the salesguy laughed when he saw it and said, “That seems just like you!” Which was strangely not-strange — I suppose I’m just that good at conveying a lot about myself in a very short period of time.

At the coffeeshop I realized that I’d wasted a bit too much money, so I had to cancel my order of coffee halfway through. But the people there were really nice, so I got a small mocha on the house. By way of food, I ordered what they call the “Chocolate Chimp Crêpe”, which is Nutella and bananas and 105% delicious. It was so good that I devoted a whole post to it.

I was halfway through eating it (it was very messy, since it was all melty and Nutella-y and the pieces of chocolate and hazelnut-covered banana kept falling out) when it dawned on me that, hey, I should totes record it on fake film! So there you have it, dear readers: The Most Delicious Crêpe to be Bought In The Middle of Nowhere and Consumed by Anwa.

2010: 10/19
CATEGORY: misc.
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scoring some purchases.

Listening to: Hey Monday — I Don’t Wanna Dance

This past weekend has been unusually busy. My soccer team had our first game of the season on Friday; we won 6-3. During my short stint in goal, I rolled over my hand and jammed my fingers — the index and middle finger of my left hand are now taped together, which, in case you couldn’t tell, makes typing…rather…difficult. And because such a minor injury is rather debilitating to a goalie, I spent our game on Sunday (we lost 7-0… it was painful) keeping the bench nice and toasty. But, considering the score at the end of that game, I was kind of glad that I wasn’t the one in goal.

But today we had a mall trip, so a handful of us piled into a van and drove up to Albany. I went into an H&M for the first time in my life (I know! How can someone claim to pretend to blog about fashion without shopping there?) and got a probably-too-short-for-dress-code dress, a dark-lavender shirt, a plain black belt and the oh-so-chic plain striped t-shirt which everyone on lookbook.nu seems to be wearing, along with their floral skirts and oversized hipster glasses.

Now, however, I have to stalk the interwebs to find more of other people’s portraits for my current photo assignment. Hopefully my teacher will approve of the photos I’ve chosen, since to him everything with a hint of styling is “a fashion photo, not a portrait.” Ah, well. They’re supposed to be my favorites, not his.

2010: 09/26
CATEGORY: fashion
misc.
5 comments

les choses belles.

Listening to:

I dunno if it’s a manifestation of my second-week-of-school homesickness, but lately I’ve been wanting new French books and music. (Which in turn makes me feel kinda dumb, because my spoken French is shit compared to the other Montréalers — or just the Montréalers, depending on whether or not I count — here.) I really want to get the Pony Pony Run Run album You Need Pony Pony Run Run, and whilst browsing the Renaud-Bray website, I realized that I’m about eleven episodes behind on the (k) series. I can’t wait until next month, when I can go to an *actual* bookstore and buy my books, my CD, and also the two t-shirts I’ve been coveting:

But that’s not for another month. Now, I have way too much stuff to do, like my homework (gah!) and day-logging (I’m keeping a log of everything notable that happens every day this school year for Blé — it’s not a diary, more of just a record) and writing and finding some way to appease my photography teacher, who I know would find some reason not to like my photos even if I were Cecil freakin’ Beaton.

2010: 09/21
CATEGORY: misc.
1 comment

yeah, we went there.