And the winner of the Romwe black lace shirt giveaway is...

Thank you so much to everyone who entered the Romwe giveaway! The higher powers, also known as the random number generators, decided that the person who gets to strut around in this black lace back t-shirt is Laura of Fêtes vos yeux. Congratulations, dear! Hope it fits perfectly.

To all of you who didn't win this time - two more giveaways will be announced these following weeks, and if I may say so myself, they're pretty darn awesome!

And, of course, a million thanks to Romwe.com for sponsoring this giveaway.

Back at the office!

Today I'm back at the office, back to work, back in business! I have such a wonderful feeling inside, I don't know, its like that "today is the first day of the rest of your life" cliché has taken over my brain, filling me up with silly optimism. That's rare for me, to say the least, so I'm doing my best to savor it!

I mean... I started the work day by making a to do-list, the way I always do, and I'm actually crossing things off of it. I'm Getting Things Done! Few things are more satisfying to me than that feeling.

Before going home tonight, I'm heading to the gym to work out. That's quite the big deal for me, and an important part in my Project this fall: the Project to Turn Myself into a Happier and Healthier Person.

What I need to do to make this happen:

* Stress less. I've quit many of my job assignments, to go back to school (I'm taking a course in Creative Writing at the university - the first real class is tomorrow!) and to focus of my own writing projects. Now it's up to me to find a balance between work, school and my own writing (and the blog, of course!) that doesn't make me walk around with that constant and unsettling feeling of almost not making it. I have a habit of taking on more and more things until I simply can't take it anymore and get very, very sick for a long time. That's my body's way of letting me know that I've gone too far and that it's refusing to cooperating with me if I'm not going to treat it right. But that's not going to happen this fall. I won't let it. Health has to come first.


* Don't skip meals (and no, brownies does NOT count as a meal). I have terrible problems eating by myself, which means that when I'm alone, I basically live off of cookies, icecream, sandwiches and candy (oh, and breakfast, I always eat breakfast). Well, this stupidity is going to stop. Right now. I'm aware that I will get sick if I don't provide my poor body with the right nutrition, and from now on, I'm going to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner every day, and these meals are going to consist of food. The dishes can be extremely simple - I'm not expecting to become a contestant in Top Chef - as long as they fall into the category "normal food". (Note: this has nothing to do with losing weight. The opposite, actually. I'm sure I would feel better in every way if I managed to gain a few pounds.)

* Become much more active. The horrible truth is that I basically never move. At all. I walk down to the car, I get in, I drive where I'm going, I get out. Then I get back in the car, drive home, walk the 10 seconds back to the house. I tell myself I need to go for walks, and I do. About twice a month. Now, my plan is to go to yoga once a week - I love yoga, and the studio is located in the same house as my office, to I have no excuse not to go! - go to the gym once a week, and try to take a walk once a week. More than that and I know I'll just feel like it's too much and go back to doing nothing. Baby steps, you know. Again: I'm not trying to lose weight. I'm tired of having constant back pains, of panting and wheezing like I've just run a marathon every time I have to climb a flight of stairs, of having no energy whatsoever. I'm still young and I shouldn't allow my body to become that of an old woman.

* Seizing the day. Yeah, yeah, the World Championship of Clichés is being held right here in this post, I know. But come on, give me a break. We could all benefit from trying harder to appreciate all the good things in our lives, to be grateful for what we've got. I will never, ever stop grieving what I've lost, but all I can do is whatever I can to keep it from ruining my life. Giving up and drowning is my sorrows is not what Fanny would have wanted, and it's definitely not what I want for myself. There's beauty all around and I will try my best to see it, even if it means I'll have to staple my lids to my brows to keep my eyes open.

In the last issue of Sofis mode, I have a column that was actually inspired by this post. I know, it sounds so conceited to say that I was "inspired" by one of my own blog posts - of course that's not what I mean. I just got the idea for the column when I was writing that specific post, that's all.

And for the blogger feature, I had the pleasure of interviewing the adorable Kani Cao of K is for Kani! She is such a sweet and clever girl, and her style is the perfect mix between sophisticated vintage and young, fresh, colorful and trendy. If you haven't yet checked out her blog, you most definitely should!

NOTE: THIS IS NOT ME SINGING! I LOVE SINGING, I JUST CAN'T DO IT. OR, OF COURSE I CAN. IT JUST SOUNDS LIKE CRAP. 

Let's end this post with a video of my dear, dear friend Zoey of MakeShiftModel singing a beautiful song with her mindblowingly angelic voice. Yeah, I am blown away by the fact that one person can be so full of amazing talents (and be incredibly stunning on top of it all), and my heart is simply overflowing with love and admiration for her! And just thinking that I would never have had the opportunity to get to know Zoey if I hadn't started this blog... "Meeting" all of you amazing people online these past three months are by far the best thing that's happened to me in a long, long time.

Now: lunch!

Because life has been insane, but... today has been okay.

I got to spend this beautiful weekend hanging out with my darling sister Amanda! She's starting art school tomorrow and is terribly nervous - so, I decided that two days in the countryside with long walks, thai food, kitty cuddling and a billion episodes of Freaks and Geeks was exactly what she needed.

We brought the camera with us on our walk this afternoon, and ended up taking an insane amount of photos.

Ripped black jeans, Hudson Jeans. White t-shirt, Lindex. My new, aaaaamaaaazing leather jacket, Sofifi. Black boots, Nilson. Lipstick, "Are you red-dy" by Maybelline.

(Photos by Amanda.)

Believe me - I will be wearing this leather jacket over and over and over 'til you beg me to take it off and wear something else for a change! I've actually never owned a quality leather jacket before, only 50 dollar leather imitation ones from H&M and other budget chains.

The feeling of putting this on is so different from any other, and I can't wrap my head around how warm it is! It reminds me of being a kid, shivering in the cold, having your dad put his jacket over your shoulders and feeling the heat spreading throughout your body. (Not that I know if that ever happened to me. It might only have been in my imagination. Either way, that's what this jacket reminds me of.)

When Amanda came to my house yesterday, she was wearing a silk shirt and a pair of satin shorts - very pretty, but maybe not perfect for long walks in crisp autumn air with the occasional showers. I quickly dressed her up in one of my many ridiculously comfortable outfits - baggy navy pants and black blazer from Monki and a striped sweater from Lindex (the Converse sneakers are her own). Oh, and one of my boyfriend Ronnie's news boy caps to top it off.

(When I told Ronnie I was trying to make Amanda look like someone who lives out in the countryside, he looked at me with eyes brimful of scepticism and asked "have you seen anyone out here wearing an outfit like that?". Uhm, well, at least this is what people out in the country are wearing in my head.)

We befriended two pretty horses and seven million flies.

And the cutest kitten, but he/she ran away when I took out my camera. How could someone so adorable be camera shy? You can't even see how lovely the face is; white, with a big, dark grey nose.

Told you we took a whole bunch of photos! Hopefully you didn't get too bored... We sure had a good time taking all those pictures, it felt almost like you guys were there with us on our walk!

A fall makeover in my go-to outfit.

T-shirt and Levi's denim cutoffs, Urban Outfitters. Leopard print tights, H&M. Black Everest platform boots, Jeffrey Campbell/Nelly.com.

(Photos by me.)

When I found these Levi's cutoffs hidden in the back of a shelf at Urban Outfitters in New York, I instantly knew that they were meant for me. There was only one pair, and without even trying them on, I could tell that they would fit perfectly. (OK, I did try them on, of course. I mean, just to be sure. Hmm.) I honestly have to stop myself each morning when I get dressed, or I would wear them every single day!

This is their fourth appearance on the blog - I wore them here, here and here - and since they're pretty much the corner stone of my wardrobe at the moment, it seemed quite appropriate that they got to be in my new header.

Yeah, I decided it was time to give the blog a bit of a fall makeover. I feel like right now I need less bright and peachy cheerfulness, and more calm, blue softness. Other than that, everything's just like it's always been - I'm even laying on the same spot in my garden as in the last header, still wearing light blue denim shorts, a splash of leopard print and with Jeffrey Campbells on my feet! If it ain't broke, why fix it, right?

And speaking of items I could wear daily if I didn't remind myself that I actually do own other pieces of clothing: ah, leopard print tights, how I adore thee! I have no idea how many pairs I actually own, but it has to be somewhere around ten, because at the moment there's a pair thrown in each and every corner of our extremely messy house. A lot of them are ripped and torn from being worn way too many times, but I don't care (I tell myself it's, eh, "punk"). So, obviously they had to be in the new header, as well. (Three outfits with leopard-clad legs: worn with orange wedges, sequins and black and white brogues, and my favorite black dress.)

And if you haven't already noticed that I have a very unhealthy obsession with Jeffrey Campbell shoes, well, I do. I'm going to have to open a JC museum one day - then I'll have an almost decent excuse for owning way, way, way too many pairs. 

Haha, now I made it sound like I styled an outfit specifically to make a new header! And maybe I did, subconsciously? Can't rule it out! Or - more likely - it's only natural it turned out like that, since this could easily be called my "go-to outfit" these days. Comfortable clothes for hanging out at home, not nearly as comfortable shoes to keep myself from being too bored with they way I look when I leave the house.

But right now, I'm putting on a pair of flat boots and I'm off to yoga class!

About bright red hair and style "experiments".

Found this polaroid from my late teens the other day and thought I'd share!

This is definitely the one of the many hair colors I've tried that I miss the most. After about a year, I got seriously tired of having to dye it every other week - the color simply refused to stay in my hair! - and went back to black. (I had black hair most of the time between the ages 15 and 25, though I did try purple, blonde, orange and every shade of brown. Now I haven't dyed it for years and have no artifical color left in it - though I sometimes think about going a little bit darker.)

But gooosh, did I love the bright red! I always walked around in a thrifted blue jacket that I adored because it looked just like the one Kim Kelly wears in Freaks and Geeks, and I thought the clash between the flaming red and the blue was suuuuper fabulous. I probably still would.

If there's one thing I'm jealous of when it comes to teenagers of today, it's all the possibilities of digital photography. I got my first digital compact camera when I was 20 - it sucked so hard it was ridiculous and I was oh so grateful if I could even make out what (or who) was in the photos. This means that the few photos I have from my teens are mostly ones like this one above: polaroids from when the photographers I worked with checked the lighting before starting to shoot and that I managed to steal when noone was looking. Still, they say nothing about my (lack of) style - trust me, I would never have worn something this sheer, floral and romantic when I was a teenager. I was more into... ummm... okay, come to think of it, maybe I should thank the higher powers that my horribly confused teens were very seldom captured on camera!

Oh, and I'm so tired of all the "how to become a successful fashion blogger"-tips that say "you should end every post with a questions to your readers, that will make them much more active and loyal because they feel like they're contributing". That just makes me think "screw this, I'm not a puppet!" every time I see a blogger end a post with a question - and it sort of makes me not wanting to ask you things at the end of the posts. I want you to know that I think you're awesome and that I love hearing your thoughts and opinions even if I don't constantly ask you what you did this weekend or what color your nails are at the moment! But, I really do have a question, and it's not because I want you to become more loyal, but because I'm truly curious:

Have you guys gone through any phases, style-wise, that you wish had been captured in photos - or maybe that you wish hadn't? Tell me tell me tell me! 

(And maybe, if I feel like giving you all a good laugh one day, I could actually try to dig up proof of some of my own teenage "style experiments"! Not that it stops the moment I turn 20, gosh no, I can howl hysterically at photos that were taken only a few years back. Just like I know that in a couple of years,  I'll be on the floor laughing 'til my stomach hurts at some of the outfits I think look totally fierce right now. Who cares, that's what makes fashion fun!)

It's Giveaway Time! Black Lace Back Top from Romwe.

Last week I ordered this t-shirt with lace details from online shop Romwe.com, and as it turns out, Annabel of Romwe wants to send one of these to one of my readers as well!

All you have to do to have a chance to get your hands on this oversized cuteness is this:
1) Make sure you're a follower of my blog on google friend connect and have liked my page on Facebook.
2) Follow Romwe on Tumblr, here... (if you use Tumblr, that is)
3) ...and like them on Facebook, here.
4) Comment on this post and tell me you entered, and leave your e-mail so I can contact you if you win!

This giveaway is, of course, open to readers from all over the world. The winner will be announced on Wednesday the 31st - you're free to enter until then.


I know I can't wait to wear mine with a high-waisted skirt, boots and my new (faux) sheepskin jacket!