Rare Guests

Snow is a rare guest here in the Puget Sound area - it's usually us Seattleites who go on special trips to visit the snow which is only a couple of hours away in either the Cascades on the East side or the Olympic mountains on the West. It is the mountains which hug us from both East and West that protect us from the extreme weather conditions. It's not common to have  snow on the ground here by the sea, but we usually have a day or two every year when we get the white dust in our yard. My parents though don't recall any snow when they stayed with us during the winter two years ago. You'd think that being from Siberia, we must love snow and miss it, yes? Nope, not in this household at least. But I have to admit it looks really pretty, it changes everything and adds light to dark months.

I asked Justin to photograph our snowy front yard when we woke up in the morning, before it all melted or got blown away by the strong wind, another rare visitor here.

This is one of the black and white outfits I had in mind for Share-in-Style last week, but got so enchanted with my new dress that I simply couldn't bring myself to wear anything else. (You'll see the dress again soon, I promise, there is no escape.)

How lovely vintage glass looks against the fur collar, another combination I can't resist playing with, finding more and more outfits where they both look at home. We also had fun playing with red and green in these photos, from berries and my nails and lips to holly tree leaves, glass jewelry and my eyes... I love black and white, it's a powerful, dramatic and artistic combination, even nature agrees - look at the bare bark and branches, or a barren land against the snowy background. And yet, I almost always want to add a touch of bright color to my black and white outfits, and again nature agrees - look at the wintry evergreen trees and bright red berries, and sometime even flowers like the purple azalea started budding and blooming during the unusually warm first part of November.

I wanted to share something else with all of you today. Joni of the blog Artful Closet posted Around The World in 20 Blogs a little while back, a wonderful collection of links where among the personal style bloggers from different corners of our planet, you can find wonderful street style blogs from a few different countries (India, Israel, Argentina) which made me think of the Oldushka, a street style blog from Russia which is in a way similar to the well known Advanced Style, and in other ways is very different. The author of Oldushka, Igor Gavar, is from Omsk, a city in Siberia, and his focus is on exploring the style of people of high age as he puts it, living in Russia. Via photos and interviews, he introduces his readers to life in modern Russia, showing us the society as it is today. It is an intimate, heartwarming, at times uplifting, at times sad, very sincere work of journalistic art - a blog that changes our perception and awareness about age, style and the contemporary history of my home country. Oldushka is written in the Russian language, but just like in my blog, you can opt for any world language to translate (look for the Translate button on the right side).

source: Oldushka (what a brilliant name!)

 I wore for my freezing, windy photo shoot today:

Ruana - Chico's (old, sale)

Jeans - Lane Bryant (current)

Faux fur collar from Michael Kors sweater (old)

Boots (waterproof leather!) - Aquatalia via Nordstrom (last year)

Vintage clip-on earrings

Ring - Chico's (last year, sale)

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Sharing with Visible Monday for a special edition - see you at Patti's!