Category Archives: OOTD: Outfit of the Day

Personal Style

A Gold Dress and Golden Opportunities

Posted in OOTD: Outfit of the Day, Teen Lifestyle by

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It’s been a while since I’ve last spoken to you all and kept you updated on what’s been going on in my life so I’m going to take this post to cover just that. I can’t say that too much has changed but there are a couple things worth mentioning.

In late July I started my first job working as a cashier working at a local pizza place. I loved it when I first started working and I’m still loving it now. I’ve always been the kind of girl who preferred to be doing work over sitting at home doing nothing productive (although I’ve admittedly slept in till noon all this thanksgiving break; been a while since I’ve been able to do so). Through the time I’ve been working I’ve become really close friends with all of the other teenagers that work there and it can be a lot of fun since my job has a pretty laid back attitude about it.Another positive side is that most nights I do pretty well in tips on top of my usual pay. The only true downside to my job would be cleaning the bathrooms, you won’t believe some of the horror stories I’ve experienced trying to get those stalls looking nice. Don’t worry though, I’ll spare you some of those stories so I won’t strip you of your goodnight’s sleep. All in all though, it has been an amazing experience and I wouldn’t give that or the people I’ve met up for anything.

School wise not much has changed. I’m still taking honors and AP classes as well as my usual show choir class. I will say that some of my AP classes have been obstacles at times but none have been a greater obstacle than taking on a leadership position in show choir. I’ll just leave it at it’s hard being at the top no matter what method of leadership you use because it’ll never agree with everyone. I’ve had a hard time accepting that because I like to make sure that everyone is happy but I’ve come to find that that won’t always be the case. I still love the class, don’t get me wrong. I can never give up singing and dancing no matter how hard it gets, it’s just something that truly appeals to me and makes me happy. It’s hard to tell me that you would pass up the ability to perform to an 80’s hits medley if you were given the chance.

I’m going to stop rambling about my personal life now and tell you a bit about my homecoming outfit because it’s too good to not tell. I found everything I needed (really just the shoes and the dress) in one shopping day. My mom pulled out this gold dress out of the clearance section at Charlotte Russe and we both pretty much died instantly at the sight of the dress. We had multiple options in our head already but we decided to get the dress anyways because it said it was only $15, I wasn’t about to leave it for that price. When we went to check out the lady had told us it was marked down further to $5.90! I’m sorry but this was basically a steal! Our next priority then became searching for shoes in which we found a nice pair of gold heals at the JCPenny clearance section for $15. What I’m basically saying is yes, I did get a dress and shoes for homecoming for less than $25. I’m not gonna lie, I was a happy girl that day. Not only did I save a lot of money, but I felt like I was walking down the red carpet everywhere I went while at homecoming (it was far from the red carpet, it was more like a sweaty gym but you get where I’m coming from). In all I had an amazing night of just dancing and singing “Wrecking Ball” at the top of my lungs with my friends and ending the night with a sleepover that consisted of watching Legally Blonde and Clueless. Definitely a night to remember, now I just gotta wait for Prom to come around!

 

Teen Fashion Blog: Celebrating Wolves

Posted in OOTD: Outfit of the Day, Teen Lifestyle, Uncategorized by

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teen fashion cropped top high waisted pants cardigansandnecklaces.com

teen fashion cropped top high waisted pants cardigansandnecklaces.com

I am pretty excited to say that this week will definitely be an eventful, but good week. Today is the two year anniversary since Cardigans and Necklaces was officially created. I’m ready to begin adding a second year worth of content to the blog! Another year of creating pretty outfits sounds pretty great if you ask me!

Another thing I’m pretty siked about is starting a brand new semester of school tomorrow. Last year I had an accelerated pre-calculus block class that I was not very fond of, but this semester I won’t have it any longer! I’m ready to meet new teachers and make new friends in my classes. This semester I will be taking a block physics class and a block Spanish 3. I’m not big on physics since it’s a mix between math and science (not my favorite subjects), but I’m ready to give it my best.

For those of you who don’t personally know me, I am probably the biggest Teen Wolf geek there is around. I mean, who else would binge watch all five seasons of the show in four days or learn all of the ages and heights of the actors in the show? Okay, I may have quite a bit of an addiction for the show going… but I promise you I’m not crazy (that’s a lie, I’m pretty crazy). All I can say is that a girl needs her fix of super attractive mythical creatures with crazy cool butt kicking abilities. Tomorrow season 5b of Teen Wolf starts and let’s just say that I may have cried a few tears of excitement this morning, #FanGirlAlert.

Speaking of my quirkiness, we all have learned from the past that I can be quite the mixaholic. A Mixaholic is a person who loves to mix and match different patterns and colors together quite a lot to the point where loved ones worry for the person’s well being and wonder if they will ever give up this addiction. Well for you loved ones, the answer is a big no, I will forever play around with patterns. The outfit above is a perfect example of my mixaholia (that might not be a word). A floral purple crop top with a grey and blue striped cardigan is quite a pattern mix but it definitely works. Since I’m not big with exposing too much skin, I always try to pair up crop tops with high waisted bottoms (in this case a high waisted blush pink pant). Since I already had so much going on in the top I kept the shoes and pants a light neutral color. The buttons in the pants were a rose gold color so I made sure to tie in rose gold earrings. Other than that, the outfit required little jewelry and looked pretty great. Remember young grasshoppers, sometimes less is more.

Teen Fashion: Bohemian Glitz Outfit

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Recently for Chorus I had to go to graduation and sing as part of a mandatory assignment. I wasn’t too happy that I had to stay till around nine at night on the last day of school but then it resulted on a shopping trip to get the outfit we had to wear. My chorus teacher asked that we wear either khaki pants and a white shirt or we go with a nice simple white dress. We were aloud to wear any shoes and accessories we wanted so that allowed me to have fun and play with making an outfit. I always hear about how hard the hunt for a perfect white dress can be but I was able to find my dress within one day after looking in two stores that didn’t have the dress for me. Almost my entire outfit came from Rue 21, the shoes came from Marshalls. I was kind of glad that singing at graduation resulted in me getting an absolutely beautiful dress which is also perfect for this amazing upcoming summer.

When you look at this outfit you may not see much bohemian because of the jewelry. The dress alone is sort of Bohemian because of the flower print lace and because of how it flows. It’s loose and free and if I paired it up with a dream catcher necklace or a head band that ran across my forehead you would be able to see the bohemian. Instead of going that route I went with a more glitzy side because I love my shiny things. I went with this necklace because it was long and brought in a lot of attention to the top of the dress and kind of added a surprising element since people wouldn’t really expect to take a dress such as this one in that sort of direction. The earrings match the necklace perfectly but what I love about them is how they look like they are floating and not connected to my ear! The bracelets had to have some white incorporated into them because then it would be too much gold. I did the same thing with adding white to the shoes because it added more attention to the outfit and jewelry rather than the feet and it didn’t over power the outfit with more gold. These shoes were very comfortable for having a small heel on them. I was able to walk around all day without feeling any foot pain! I was able to look glitzy with a dash of bohemian without walking around as if I was a new born horse trying to stand up for the first time.

Under the Sea Costume

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About a year ago I did a post showing everyone my outfit for my first spring concert in high school. We danced/sang to “Anything Goes” and “Thoroughly Modern Millie” and I got the chance to dress up as a flapper but add some of my personal style at the same time. Well this year I got another shot to sing, dance, and create a lovely outfit that goes along with the theme. I was super excited when my chorus teacher told me that this year’s theme was Disney! Disney literally made up my childhood and still makes up a lot of the things I watch. I mean if we want to be technical, I would say that 79.9% of the movies I watch are Disney movies. Mrs. Rhoades assigned our class the Little Mermaid Medley. When I was smaller Ariel used to be my favorite princess. Since I was born an island girl, I came to become very fond of the beach and all I wanted to do was turn into a mermaid so I would never have to leave the ocean and so I could befriend some friendly dolphins. I would watch the Little Mermaid and wish that one day I would turn into one too. I had a fish named Elizabeth and I would like to think that she once swam with Ariel and then became my pet.

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Being able to get to sing the Little Mermaid Medley was super exciting for me because it brought back some memories from my childhood and all the times I used to do karaoke to my Little Mermaid CD. So naturally I knew most of the lyrics already by heart and was ready to start dancing and shaking my little fish tail. Those few weeks of singing and dancing were some of the funnest times I’ve had in chorus because everyone had energy and everyone was happy. We all were super ready to get on stage and show everyone the little fish within us all. I will admit that I had fun getting to show a little bit of sass while dancing and singing along to “Under The Sea.”

There were so many different songs performed by the groups and it was like we brought Disney World into our own high school. We had groups singing “When you wish upon a star”, a Beauty and the Beast Medley, a Tarzan medley, a Hercules Medley, an Aladdin Medley, a Hunchback Of Notre Dame Medley, a small Lion King Medley, a Mulan solo, a Pocahontas solo, a Princess and the Frog solo, and a Sleeping beauty solo. In the end the seniors came back dressed in their caps and gowns to close the show. They sang “I can go the distance” from Hercules and it literally pulled at the audience’s hearts. I was doing okay until I looked over and I saw some of the girls crying on stage while holding hands and the guys hugging each other during the song. I’m not even ashamed to say that I cried like a baby and I will really miss the seniors especially since I’m friends with a few of them and look up to them as singers.

As good as the girls did singing the Little Mermaid, I would have to say that the Hunchback of Notre Dame medley had us beat! They were so good that my mom even told me that it sounded like it belonged on Broadway. The voices were so powerful and angelic! They were so good that I would look down at my arm and I could see goose bumps. I would definitely say that this Spring Concert was the best concert we’ve had so far and I am looking forward to many more.

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I should probably stop ranting about the show and get to talking more about the outfit. Our teacher told us that we had to dress as if we’re from under water if we’re playing the role of a fish or mermaid. As you may see in some of the pictures there are girls dressed as sailors, but this is all for the purpose of Fathoms Below which involved prince Eric and his crew. I knew a lot of the girls would be focused on dressing up as mermaids or little fish so I went a whole different direction… I decided to be a coral! Yes, it sounds like I’m playing the tree part in a play but I thought it would be fun to dress bright! I found this beautiful dress online that would flow as I danced and was super comfortable. The head band and the cuff my mom and I worked on. The cuff was quite simple, all we did was find a cheap cuff bracelet, glittered a sea shell, and glued it to the bracelet. The head piece was much more complicated than the cuff. What we did was we took a cheap head band from Charming Charlie’s and tore off the black stones, then we took a kitchen sponge and tore it apart to make the base of the head band which is the blue shiny part under the gold embellishments (cool right?!). Then we took a sea shell necklace from the clearance section of Charming Charlies and took out all the charms which included anchors, shells, and star fish.We glued the little charms onto the head band and noticed we had excess space. So we then took gold sequins that we bought at the dollar store and glued them down so they looked like gold fish scales on a blue fish. I absolutely love this head piece and I have my creative mother to thank for such a gorgeous idea. In the end, I looked like a piece of bright coral with a beautiful rare golden fish swimming above me. I would have to say that this outfit was my favorite compared to the flapper outfit because I love bright colors and shiny things! Also it was a lot of fun dancing in the dress because it would float at every movement and it looked so pretty when I would spin. Maybe it’s not so bad playing the tree…well I mean coral.

Teen Fashion: Denim Weather

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DSC_3038_1Something that has really sparked my attention lately is how many endless creations can be done using denim. I love how there can be different shades and how they can come either in pant, shirt, or even shoe form! Last year I got these denim shoes and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve played around with them. Something else I love about denim is that they can go with just about anything. You can even do denim on denim as long as you play with it right. I looked into how the weather is going to be this week in Georgia and it ranges from sixty degrees to eighty degrees. You can never really tell how hot or cool it’s going to be so I thought back to this outfit. It will sure be convenient for the week because the skirt will keep you cool but the vest will keep you warm depending on the temperature. Something else I would like to point out in this outfit is pattern play. I always hear about people who are afraid to mix patterns such as polka dots and plaid but as you can see in this outfit it truly can work out as long as you do it right. I think it’s always best to push some boundaries and mix it up a little. Sometimes when you experiment with clothes a little you can end up with something super stylish and fun.

Inspiration Monday: Oxidation

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Inspiration Monday: Oxidation
Inspiration Monday: Oxidation by Cardigans and Necklaces
I know what some of you guys may be thinking, “Hey she’s still alive! She didn’t get wiped off existence!” To further elaborate on that, I am still alive and yes I still exist. I’ll tell you guys what, 10th grade has sure been a step up from 9th and the pressure has been real. I’ve had so much work recently to try and focus on and it’s been difficult to try and create posts while keeping up my grades. I hit my second semester of 10th grade and time is flying by for me. It feels like just yesterday I was planning my outfit for the first day of school! I totally see what adults mean by saying that us teenagers grow up so fast. I even feel as if I’m growing up too fast, I really wish I could stop time and enjoy the now a bit better.
So to start off my first post in a good while I thought there would be no way better than with an Inspiration Monday! I’ve decided to use a picture of rust because I found this picture while doing some chemistry homework (we’re learning about chemical properties, such as oxidation). I thought the picture had this cool texture to it and I thought it would be fun to play around with metallic colors some more. Some of my favorite pieces would have to be the sneakers because they look absolutely stylish and you can style it in so many different ways! I also love the purse because of how well the texture of it matches the picture given.
Hopefully I will be able to start getting more posts in now that I don’t have an essay due a week because of my lit class, but I’m not complaining. I will confess to that class being my favorite class I’ve ever had and my lit teacher being the best teacher I ever had.

Teen Fashion: Let’s Go To The Movies Ally!

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About a month ago I was invited by my friends to go out to the movies in order to celebrate both my birthday and another friend of mine who also shared a birthday in August. We decided that we all wanted to see Guardians of the Galaxy because a lot of kids at my school were talking about how amazing it was. I was super pumped because I always love going to the movies to hang out with my friends. To be completely honest I don’t care for watching the actual movie, I enjoy being able to talk to my friends and I really enjoy movie theater popcorn! Is it just me or does anyone else have an obsession for movie theater popcorn? One of my friends gave me a ride to the movies and it was super fun chilling with them in the car… and we may or may not have sung along to fancy while we were in the car. There are two different movie theaters near where I live and on our ride to the movies, my friend’s grandma accidentally took us to the wrong one. Good thing we left early, because that gave us enough time to drive to the other one and get their on time. One minute later and we would have been late. When we got there we immediately ran out of the car because we saw how long the lines were and we had ten minutes to get tickets before the movie started. Standing in line was pretty cool because the rest of my friends were already there so we just talked about what was new since not all of us went to the same school. After we got our tickets we ran to the popcorn and drink station to fill up our buckets and cups. When I went to go get my usual slushy, (which was a mixture of cherry and coke) they ran out of both flavors! I was sort of upset because I don’t get my slushy fixing unless I go to the movies. So what was I forced to do? I had to get the blue raspberry flavor! How inhumane is that! The world must have been ending! Well that’s what I thought before I tried it. It actually turned out to taste pretty good, not as good as my cherry coke mixture though. Turns out my friends and I know how to hustle when it comes to having ten minutes to get everything together because we made it just seconds before the movie started.

Now it’s time for a movie review!!! I give the movie 3.5 stars out of 5. Now this is pretty good on my rating scale because in order to get 5 stars you gotta be a top notch movie. What I liked about the movie was that it had pretty much everything you could ask for. You’ve go a bit of romance thrown in, scenes that pull at the heart strings, comedy, and tons of action! Now I’m a girl who prefers to see a good battle before a mush love story. If the fight is done well and the action is very engaging then count me in! This movie had a good amount of action and I also enjoyed a lot the funny tidbits that they threw in to keep the audience engaged. After watching that movie my friends and I kept saying “we are groot.” For the sake of spoilers I’ll make sure not to tell you the reason for why we continue to say to this day but it’s pretty cute. I also give credit to the soundtrack that they used! I love 80’s music and that pretty much makes up the soundtrack that is used. I will also admit that I am guilty of singing along to a couple of the songs, but hey! I couldn’t help it, I had to!

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I decided to wear a dress to the movies because I knew that we were going to be taking plenty of group pictures. Now I will admit that it’s and odd choice in order to go watch a marvel movie, but there are no laws against it so YOLO! Yes, I am aware that I am the only teenager left on this planet who still uses yolo. No, I don’t care that I’m the only teenager left because I like how it sounds. Now the dress I wore has a tie-dyed sort of look to it. I usually don’t like tie-dyed clothing but I liked how cool it looked with the blue. I also liked how the back was cut out in a v cut. My favorite part of the dress is how flowy it is! I love twirling in it so much because I get to look at the skirt fly up and spin around. I can’t spin too much though because it’ll fly way up too much… that wouldn’t be good at all, quite embarrassing actually. To add some more flare to the dress, I added a white belt with silver circles on it. I know, the pattern play is quite on point if you ask me. The jewelry I kept pretty simple. Some stud crystal earrings, a simple silver chain necklace, and a cuff with white and silver. My shoes were white sandals. This outfit may look a little simple but it also looks very stylish and you can wear it for many other occasions other than to go to the movies. Say you want to walk around town, go on a date, or attend a nice family gathering, this outfit is perfect for those reasons and more.

Teen Fashion: BETA Induction: Beautiful, Elegant, Tasteful, and Authentic Outift

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So I know it’s been a while but… I GOT INTO THE BETA CLUB!!!. When I first got the letter I was way excited and humbled because only a selected few get chosen. I wasn’t exactly sure what it was (I know, what rock do I live under), but I’ve always heard about how great it is for college applications so I knew this was going to be a great opportunity for me. I read the long and somewhat boring letter to find out more about the club but the gist of it is that it is an educational youth organization that encourages academic achievement, character, leadership, and service so it requires students to do work around the community. You earn points based on the service you do and for how long you do it. I was pumped when I heard about this because I’ve wanted to do community service for a while now but I’ve never seemed to get around to it. The best part is that I’m doing community service with some of my other friends so we get to be able to share these experiences with each other. They give you a certain amount of points that you must withhold in order to stay in the club as well as keeping up a 3.5 average or higher.  When you sign up for BETA, you are given the option to attend the induction. At the BETA induction they talk about what you do in the club, a bit about its history, who are the officers, we pledged to stay pure (ok, that is not what we pledged), and induct new members into the club (I know, it sounds like a huge snooze fest). We had a dress code to go by, which they basically described to us as:  “dress as you would if your grandmother was going to church”. To them that meant no jeans, t-shirts, tennis shoes, and any other informal wear of the sort. Wouldn’t have been easier to just say casual elegant?

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Before the induction ceremony started my mom and I went through the halls of the school and took some pictures of the outfit. I also caught up with a few of my friends that I had not talked to since school started because we no longer have classes together. There were over 170 new sophomores being inducted that night and it was a long process. Trying to line up 170 chatty teenagers in alphabetical order was difficult and no one seemed to want to pay attention to the poor teacher who kept yelling over us to get our attention. I will say that he was not the man for the job, most of the students were taller than him and to top it all of he was sick, so yelling was difficult for him. They should have had some of the cheerleaders bring out their megaphones and allow the man to use it. The induction process was longer than I expected and it got sort of boring, then finally they started pinning kids and giving out certificates. Of course as the socially awkward person I am I went out there walking as if I was the tin man from the Wizard of Oz and needed oil in my joints. I thought I did completely fine just walking and smiling, in fact in my head the walk went down as if I was walking a catwalk or something… and then I saw my mom’s pictures. I wasn’t really smiling, and my walking was stiff and all over the place! But what can I say, at least my outfit looked good and took some attention away from my actions or at least I hope it did.

teen fashion blog beta club ootd

teen fashion blog beta club ootd

What I wore was a navy blue dress that had an open back which was covered with lace. I also wore a pearl necklace that had different subtle colors such as a pearl white, light grey, and a soft gold. The bracelet was pearl white as well as my earrings. My shoes were a nude color and brown to go along with the necklace. I made sure to keep the outfit more on the simple side because it was a semi formal event and I didn’t want to wear a color that wasn’t appropriate for the setting. The dress was very comfortable, especially since we were there for more than two hours. I started looking around at what some of the other girls were wearing and I saw a lot of the same things. I saw a lot of maxi and skater dresses paired up with long over sized cover ups. I also saw a lot of girls wearing sandals, I understand it’s still hot outside but this is a semi formal event people! I don’t know about you but when I think semi formal, sandals are definitely not the first thing that comes to mind. Yep! I’m up to a good start this year.

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Loved the back of the dress!

The Purse that Traveled the World

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purse flea market find teen fashion blog 80's

purse flea market find teen fashion blog 80's

Every once in a while when the weather is nice outside and I have a craving for tacos, (there is a Mexican food truck there with yummy tacos and tortas) I will go to the flea market with my parents.  My mom and dad have creative minds and love to build, refurbish, and create things, so a visit to the flea market allows them to treasure hunt, let their imagination go, and bounce ideas off each other (like the show Flea Market Flip). I have to admit I don’t get too involved when it comes to their projects, but do enjoy looking at the clothes racks and accessories. In the past I have been able to buy things, like a super cute Halloween fairy costume for $5.00, so I never know what I can find. A girl is ALWAYS hopeful.

This past Sunday as my mom looked for crystal (one of her favorite things to look for), I spotted laying down on a box this awesome purse. I could not believe what my eyes were seeing! It was instant attraction! I imagined Carrie Bradshaw in one of the episodes of The Carrie Diaries strolling around Manhattan with it. And then it hit me, “No! What has my mom done to me?”.  All the memories of the past summer came rolling down on me as I remembered the never ending art lectures from my mom. I realized the attraction was coming from an even deeper place. The purse reminded me of art pieces I had studied, it reminded me of Mondrian’s work. The 2013 summer of art appreciation had changed me forever!!!

As I held on to the purse I let my imagination go. In a matter of minutes I thought of the purse’s story and its previous owners. I thought of the era: “the 80’s? It looks like it but I’m not sure”. I imagined the outfits that I could create with it. I imagined a really pale brunette top model in an all white background and clothing admiring the purse. The purse had finally made it to the cover of Vogue. I thought of how awesome it would be to be able to own something that nobody else would have or maybe even feel confident enough to wear. Yep! That was not me, I was certainly confident enough to wear it everywhere. Why not? And then the doubt, really are you going to wear it? Or is it too bright?

I convinced myself it was probably more money than I could afford at the time for a purse that I really didn’t need it, but I decided to ask for the price anyway. I was now way too curious to know how much value would somebody else give to a purse that had clearly been around the world and owned by celebrities and eccentrics alike (at least in my imagination).  As I braced myself to hear the lady spell out the exorbitant price… she said: “3 dollars”. What??? Lady!!! You clearly don’t know what you are talking about! She probably was, but I didn’t want her to devalue my find, to devalue the connection that I now had with it. So I replied to her: “Ok, thank you”. I put the purse down and walked away.

I left her booth, confident that I had done the right thing. I didn’t needed the purse anyway. All of a sudden I heard my inner voice talking to me: “You don’t like it? The price is really good for something so different!”. It was not my inner voice anymore, it was my mom. She then proceeded to give me great advice: “If you like it but don’t need it offer her $2.00, if she accepts you leave with a great bargain, if she says no you were going to leave it anyway. Win-win.”  In a second she had shared a very important lesson, a lesson I will never forget, a lesson about the power of asking. You’ll never know what you can get if you don’t ask. The rest is history, the very nice lady agreed to give it to me for $2.00 and I came home with a purse to play with!

Do you have dreams like these when you go shopping or is it just the delusions of an utterly hormonal and dramatic teenager? 🙂