Christmas 2016

Oh my goodness it's been a while since I've posted on here! If you're following my Instagram account @lesoleilchic, you'll notice that I occasionally post outfit pictures on there even though I haven't been posting on the blog. I am happy to say, though, that I've officially completed my first year of grad school! It's kept me very busy all year long and I finally have a somewhat extended break (5 weeks!) until the next semester begins in mid-January. It all passed by so fast. So much has happened in the past year, but I'm thankful to be where I am and I'm looking forward to what 2017 has in store.

This year for Christmas I am wearing the Renee Green Alpine dress from Lindy Bop with my Red Varah Heels from BAIT Footwear. Thankfully I got these pictures a week ago because it's been raining hard here these past few days! Which is pretty much the extent of our winter in Southern California. I just love the festive print of this dress, and how cute is the matching cropped jacket that it came with? I've really been loving the prints on Lindy Bop dresses lately.

Dress: Lindy Bop (different cut)

Heels: BAIT Footwear

Belt: Sidecca

Necklace: Forever 21

Bag and Bracelet: Kate Spade

Underskirt: Pinup Girl Clothing

Christmas is my favorite holiday of the year, a season of joy, love, and time with family. But besides the festive lights, decorations, gift-giving, and warm cozy feelings, Christmas stands for so much more; we celebrate Jesus' birth! How amazing is it that God loved us so much that He became man, came to this broken world as Jesus Christ, and died to save us from sin? I can't imagine a greater love than that!

I hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas!

"For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." Isaiah 9:6

Winter Wonderland @ Mammoth Lakes, CA

We took a spontaneous trip to Mammoth Lakes this past weekend and when I found out a few feet of fluffy snow was awaiting us, I knew I had to pack my Bernie winter dress. I was a little hesitant at first since I wasn’t sure if the weather would be too cold for a dress (even for a few minutes to snap some pics), but I packed it anyway knowing it may be my only chance for beautiful scenery that matched my dress. Thankfully, the weather ended up being sunny and perfect! It wasn’t cold at all, but my feet did get a little cold since I almost fell a few times trying to balance in the snow. Packing this outfit (dress, petticoat, shoes) took up almost half of my luggage space, but it was so worth it. The backdrop was just beautiful! I wore the dress with my Sammy Snow Dog Erstwilder brooch and cream heels from Modcloth.

Outfit Details:

Dress: Bernie Dexter
Brooch: Erstwilder

Cardigan: Sidecca

Petticoat: Leg Avenue
Tights: Unique Vintage
Shoes: Modcloth

I’m officially in week 5 of Semester 1 of my occupational therapy master's program. It’s going great so far; I'm enjoying all my classes. Going back to school after working for 3 years has definitely been a huge adjustment, but I’m happy to be transitioning from a research-oriented job to a more clinical one. The program is about 2.5 years and, God willing, I'll be graduating in May 2018. I’m excited to see what God has in store for me as I start this new chapter :).

Valentine's Day is coming up! Does anyone have plans? My boyfriend and I just celebrated our 6 year dating anniversary and because it always falls so close to V-day, we don’t usually do anything big. But it’s a great excuse to dress up of course! I'm not sure what I'll be wearing yet, but I'm certain there will be lots of red and hearts involved :).

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. 1 Corinthians 13:13

An Apple A Day...

It's good to be back! After my last post, I went on an un-announced haitus from posting on here (I HAVE been posting somewhat regularly on my Instagram and Style Gallery accounts, though!). So, what have I been up to these past few months? Well, in a nutshell, work and classes. We've had some major holidays like Valentine's Day and Easter in the past few months so there's been family gatherings, church events, and friends/boyfriend outings mixed in there. For the most part I've been balancing two classes, two part-time jobs, and volunteering once a week. It's been pretty manageable actually; I think what drains me the most is the commute! I live about 20 miles from West Los Angeles, where I work. It not so bad distance-wise, it's the frequent stop-and-go traffic that makes it a little daunting sometimes. So a lot of my day is spent driving. Thankfully my playlist of Christian music makes the drive more enjoyable :).

I have a back-log of photos that I'll be sharing over the next few weeks! I want to start with an outfit I wore back in February for Valentine's Day and also a few days ago on Monday. I didn't have my usual Monday class since it was spring break this week (and Edwin took the day off from work) so we spent it together with lunch and a relaxing visit to a local park. It was a much needed break! 

Below is the outfit from Valentine's Day:

This dress was my third Bernie Dexter purchase in the Veronique cut. I've mentioned before how much I love this cut, and the print on this one was way too lovely to pass up (which BD print isn't lovely?!). It features a valley/forest scene with a running stream and cute details like a boat, bridge, and even a tiny squirrel! And, how cute is this apple bag by Nila Anthony? I'd been looking for a new red purse for a while now, and when I came across this one I knew I had to have it. It's red, so it goes with so many outfits! And I always get compliments on it :).

These last two pictures were taken this past Monday. My outfit is generally the same as above, except I wore a woven sunhat and my blue BAIT Ida heels instead of hair flowers and red pumps.

 Outfit Details:

Dress: Bernie Dexter (different cut)

Cardigan: ModCloth

Purse: Nila Anthony via Unique Vintage (on sale!)

Red pumps: Aldo // Blue Spectators: BAIT Footwear (similar)

Hair flowers: Hand-made // Sunhat: ModCloth

I hope everyone has been doing well! I can't wait to catch up on my reading list this weekend and see what you've been up to :).

Poppies at the Getty

It's been a while since I last posted; things have been so crazy lately with school, work, and errands that never seem to end! This past weekend however was really nice because I got to spend some time with my boyfriend, Edwin. He lives and works in San Diego so I don't see him during the week, but he usually drives up to Los Angeles every other weekend (or he tries to) and those are always my favorite weekends. Sometimes I'll drive down there myself for the weekend. And so with all these backs and forths in the past year, we have managed to avoid missing each other too terribly :).

On Saturday we visited the Getty Center which is a museum in west LA that showcases art, architecture, and a beautiful outdoors area/garden. And the best part is that it's free (with the exception of parking). We spent most of our time outdoors relaxing in the grass with some snacks and champagne. It was perfect weather and we really enjoyed our time there! I wore a beautiful poppy print dress from Bernie Dexter, a dress I'd been looking ages for until I finally found one in my size from a Swap & Trade group on Pin Up Girl's website called Pin Up Girl Style. I was planning on wearing gold glitter pumps to match my gold belt but it wasn't practical since we were going to be walking around a lot. So I wore my green BAIT Ida's instead :). I hope you enjoy the photos!

Outfit Details:

Dress: Bernie Dexter (same print, different cut)

Belt & Headband: Sidecca

Petticoat: Knee Length, Leg Avenue

Shoes: BAIT Footwear (similar here)

(Getting Back Into) Oil Painting!

Hi there, and happy Wednesday! I'm into my second week of school now. I'm taking a human anatomy course as well as working full-time so things have been crazy, but so far I think I'm managing okay. We had our first test yesterday and I think I did pretty well so I rewarded myself afterwards by none other than writing this blog post :). Instead of an outfit post, today I decided to share some of my paintings from my childhood as well as two that I have recently done (after finally motivating myself to get back into it).

So where my love for painting began. When I was a kid about 8 years old, my mom enrolled my sister and me in private art classes. My teacher was awesome; she would come over to our home for lessons and over the years she became more of a friend than a teacher. I ended up having her as my teacher until I started middle school (I hadn't seen her since then until recently, when we reconnected after more than 10 years!). She was really good with exposing us to a lot of different types of art; water colors, oil paints, sculpture, pointillism, scratchboard-- we always had something new to look forward to. She was (and still is) big on allowing kids to express themselves through art. After a few basic pointers, she would allow us to create art in the way we wanted to without too many "rules", and personally that's what made art classes so fun for us. During those years, I took a special interest in painting with oil colors, for some reason it was my favorite out of all the other art projects we did.

Here are a few of my favorite oil paintings that I painted when I was about 11 years old (with some help from my teacher too, of course!). My favorite themes have always been animals and nature, especially birds. My sister and I grew up with pet lovebirds so my fascination with drawing them might come from there :). I used photographs from the 5th volume - Animals - of the Children's Encyclopedia Series Childcraft as a reference for all three paintings. I read that volume so many times as a kid, it was my favorite one of the whole set!

May 2001

Sometime in summer of 2001, I painted this to give to my pediatric
orthopedics doctor as a thank-you gift but never got a chance to give to her :(.

February 2001... more birds!

It'd been over 10 years since I had picked up a paintbrush, until a few months ago. To be honest, I've wanted to get back into painting on my own for a long time (after I stopped art classes, I stopped painting too). I would see paintings in hallways of friends' homes or on hospital floors during my volunteer shifts and would start thinking about the details of the scene, or I would feel inspired from the painting's theme to paint something similar. However I was never motivated to get started myself and I think a part of it had to do with a sense of insecurity; I feared I wouldn't be able to paint the "right" way or my paintings wouldn't come out the way I imagined, after all it had been so long and I never took any classes as an adult.

But in the past year I started to think to myself, if not now, when? If I don't try it, I'll never know what I can come up with. When my parents got me a gift card to the local Swain's Art Store for my birthday last year, I finally got the push I needed, and one day in February I was on my way there to buy painting supplies. I had the essentials in mind and silly me thought it would be a quick trip, but when I got there I was overwhelmed! As a kid my teacher would always have all the necessary supplies ready for us, so I'd been naive to the sheer variety. Student grade vs. professional grade paints, choosing between different brands, brushes made from different types of fibers, brushes with different shapes. I ended up spending a few hours at the store researching on my phone to find materials that would be both cost-effective and of good quality for a beginner like me. I walked out with around ten tubes of different colored oil paints, a variety of different sized brushes, thinner solution, disposable palate paper, an easel, and of course a canvas. 

Once I got home, I was so excited I started right away. Here is the painting from that weekend. I definitely would need to take classes or buy some books to learn actual techniques but my intentions right now are purely painting for leisure. I guess this is a start! As you can tell, I STILL love to paint nature and animals, and yes... more birds! (I painted these by looking at real photographs I found online for reference.)

This second one I painted recently, during the Labor Day Weekend a few weeks ago. I'm not too happy with it but I had fun. I learned a few things to keep in mind for next time, like adding some ripple effects in the water and maybe fixing the shadows a bit. It's funny because at first I had painted a sailboat but then I thought, nope! Need to paint those birds again! Seriously though, I need to move on to something else. Something on land maybe, like a giraffe or a cheetah.

Unfortunately I don't have too much time these days to paint often, as much as I'd love to, but when I do I'll be sure to post about it :). Thanks for reading my post! Oh and- if you live in the Southern California area, here's more information on my former art teacher's classes- she teaches all ages! Also, check out her very own paintings and sculptures, she is super talented!