Tag: summer

Late Summer at Giverny
Hannah Wilson

Road Trip Day 1 – Giverny and Rouen

6 Comments Travel

My best friend Natalie and I decided to take a quick 4-day road trip through France, more specifically, Normandy.  What follows is an account of the events, sights, and stories that took place.  This is just part 1, you can read day 2 here and day 3 HERE.

Day 1 technically began with an extremely early wake-up alarm, a bus ride, lengthy walk to the car rental office, and subsequent loss of direction.  Somehow, we ended up on the wrong motorway about 20 minutes into the trip, but with a bit of spontaneous redirection, we were able to get back on track.  It seemed this first mishap would set the tone for the rest of the trip, as we became lost – without fail – every single time we turned the car engine on.  More on that later…

Our first real stop (if you don’t count a McDonald’s egg McMuffin pitstop), was Giverny!  It was my second time there, and it was just as beautiful as the first.  Last time, it was early spring, the garden overflowing with multicolored tulips.  This time around, it was late summer, so the greenery was much taller, much more overgrown, and the dominant flower was the Dahlia.  Dahlias as big as your head, no joke.  Here I have inserted Natalie’s hand for reference.

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Hannah Wilson

Visual Diary: French Summer

Comments Diary, Versailles

How does one have a quintessential French summer?  The biggest requirement is to abandon all work and responsibilities and head for the beaches of Greece or the Côte d’Azure for the entirety of August – my version of a getaway will come later in the month.  What is also typically Parisian is attending an awesome music festival, and sipping cold rosé, which I also have not done yet, since I’m a hopeless home-body. What I have been doing, however, is enjoying the pleasant weather in the form of picnics, sunbathing, and lounging on the terrasse of bars and restaurants with friends.

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Hannah Wilson

Playing with Proportions

Comments Style

I was browsing through the last vestiges of the summer sale in Zara the other day, and came across these two pieces.  I fell in love with this skirt – its vintage cut and a bright-pastel, lilac color.  I feel quite ladylike in it, because it nips in so nicely at the waist.  Unfortunately, it’s made from a linen-like material, so wrinkles spread like wildfire, and I don’t own a clothing iron.  However, let’s all take a moment to celebrate the fact that the original price of this skirt was around 45, but I scored it for 17!!!!  And the little crop top?  1.99!  Good deals give me such a life-high!

I’m quite wary of crop tops because of my larger bust, although in theory they should be very helpful in terms of adding height to my short legs… it’s a catch-22.  I liked the idea of putting the crop top over a high-wasted skirt; it just feels easier and more fresh than tucking in a blouse.  I think this skirt runs the risk of looking very old-fashioned, so I was careful about how I styled it.  Maybe it’s not the MOST flattering outfit on my body, but I shouldn’t let things like my natural body shape deter me from wearing whatever the hell I want.  That’s a lesson I continually have to remind myself of, almost on a day-to-day basis.

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Hannah Wilson

Modern Florals

Comments Style

Florals never go out of style, especially because there’s infinite ways to create a floral pattern.  It can be more traditional and old fashioned, more tropical, or something else entirely. Florals can become modern if paired with a second pattern – like a grid, plaid, stripes, even polka dots. Of course, you don’t want to get too crazy, but as long as the patterns are contrasting enough, or one pattern takes the backseat, the pattern-mixing works.

Even though the pattern of this dress is uniform throughout, it still feels a little more modern to me, probably because of the interesting colour combinations but also because it almost looks abstract.    Here are some examples of modern floral prints I found on Lookbook.nu:  Here, here, and here.

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Hannah Wilson

The Tunic Dress

Comments Style

For many people, the sight of a tunic spurs on a series of question marks: Is this a shirt or a dress?  Can I get away with wearing this with bare legs?  Should I wear tights underneath? Or perhaps skinny jeans?

However, for me, possessing only 61 inches (155 cm) of height, a tunic can most definitely always be worn as a dress. The questions I ask myself are slightly different; having quite a large bust, my personal dilemma is: Should I belt this or leave it hanging straight?  Either accentuate breast size and risk looking top-heavy, or let it be a shapeless potato sack and risk looking like – a potato sack.  I can’t decide which variation I prefer, but for the purposes of this article, I went for the belt.

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Hannah Wilson

Wandering Wednesdays

Comments Paris, Wandering

I’m sure you all have been positively aching for some charming snapshots of Parisian streets, so I’ve hooked a sister (or bother) up!  :p  To be honest, this collection of photos didn’t actually require much “wandering” at all – they were all taken within a couple blocks of one another, on streets I’ve visited many times before.  But that doesn’t mean they’re familiar to you readers!

Odette is one of the cutest pastry shops in this city, so much so that it almost warrants the use of the term “adorbs,” but I won’t subject you to that kind of debauchery at this time.

As for the song above, it’s a classic from my high school days.  The song reminds me of summertime, so it was an obvious choice.

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