a personal style blog by Lauren Pfieffer

Wednesday, September 30, 2015

A Trip to Nostalgia.

Apple Shirt: Thrifted.
Skirt: c/o OASAP.

Hi there

I went home this past weekend to take my little sister to the apple orchards in my town! I can't believe she had never been because going to the orchards have been one of my absolute favorite fall past times since I was a little girl. There's something just so nostalgic about it. I love how home-y picking apples on this family owned farm in the middle of Ohio feels. Small families with little ones towing tiny tots in red wooden wagons and a register that only takes cash. Acres of apple trees sprouting red, yellow, and green delicacies that are so satisfying to pluck off the highest branch. The mouth watering inducing smell of apple donuts upon entering the humble wooden barn selling an array of popcorns, ciders, and seasonal squashes...all of it makes brilliant, bright images before my eyes looking just as it did more than 15 years ago in faded and overexposed film photos sitting in a box at my parent's house. 

My sister had a blast, climbing the trees like a small money to satisfy her wish to find "the biggest and ripest and best apples." We giggled and gorged ourselves on one too many of those delicious apple donuts; enough to make us feel nauseous for the rest of the day (but worth it). 

I love these photos and I love the memory of this day and I love my little sister. All very much.

With much love, Lauren.
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Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Life's Rhythm.


My days have been busy lately but I find contentment in the steady rhythm of my life in the hazy days of September. Sometimes monotony can be mindless but I've found comfort in it in this season of my life I'm in. There is a part of me savoring the last bits of university life before I'm thrust into what most people call "the real world" (but isn't it all real?), of course, these are broken up by moments of reckless eagerness to be in the next stage of my life. But for now I enjoy these things:

Waking up in my bed amassed in a tangle of white sheets, admittingly that are coffee stained where I've carelessly sipped one too many steaming cups in bed (my grandmother told me not to get white; she was right as always). A drip here, a drip there...they make me smile at my inescapable character fall of clumsiness. 

I love how even on the most rushed mornings, which let's point out that's most, I adore the calmness of morning. It's newness of possibility astounds me and leaves me with a heart heavy hopeful. Sweet morning air wafting in from my open window as I can hear the birds rejoicing with me in a new day. I stretch my arms high above my shoulders as my nightgown rises up in compliance. Crossed legs and a cup of steaming coffee at my desk to do my makeup, with the melodious familiarity of Ed Sheeran playing softly through my iphone to be my first companion to the day.

I'm usually stumbling out the door with my headphones half in one ear and dropping my keys on the ground with a clamoring thud to wake up all of my hung over neighbors to their dismay early in the morning. My walk to classes each morning is one I look forward to; to just be in my mind as I traverse across a campus of picturesque sidewalk trails and towering trees. Looping in and out and all around oblivious students also immersed in their own world. I always study them without them knowing because they fascinate me. I wonder about them. How if I asked them a series of questions about their life how similar or dissimilar it would be to mine. How tragic or how woefully complacent. I want to invite them out for a cup of coffee.

My classes interest me this semester. They're filled with things that are important. Which wills me on to learn more and actually fill myself up with knowledge and seek it instead of rejecting it. Things like journalism and ethics and the globe and the environment and people and emotions and impact. It all feels real and potent to my life. But I do daydream, of course. I love to let my mind roam to people I can't tell you about because I want to keep them in my mind to replay over and over again selfishly. Keeping them in my mind sometimes make it feel as if they're not real; but I know they are. I know they happened and I know I won't ever forget.

Work never really feels like work and I think that's perhaps one of the first times in my life that that's happened with the slew of jobs I've had since I learned to drive my red 2006 VW beetle at 16 years old in high school. I love to make coffee. I love to interact with people. Don't you think it's strange that a person who hates people loves them? I hate people because I am an introvert and I cannot fight my innate nature to be alone. But there is this part of me, that loves to love people. I find them so fascinating, so riveting I can't stop wanting to know more and open them up page by page as if I was reading the most enthralling novel ever. I think what coffee drink a person orders says a lot about them. It's been an honor to be able to have regulars and make drinks with love and give a kind smile that causes a face to illuminate. I was able to make a heart in a cappuccino today with the foam. I considered it one of my greatest accomplishments yet.

By evening when I get off I am usually smelling strongly of espresso and my cheap $1 eyeliner from wal-mart has made its way to settle underneath my lower lashline. I'm always content though and just like the walk away from my apartment in the morning, the walk back to it is a pleasure. I think and I reflect and sometimes I smile to myself because it's been a good day. It really has. And I know tomorrow will hold the same. Unlocking my stubborn apartment door and hearing the satisfying thud of my backpack hit the floor and the weight relieved off my tired shoulders is the start of my evenings. The favorite time of my days.

It's my time, and perhaps that's why I love evenings so much. I am so selfish but I love to be alone. I bask in every minute of my aloneness as I'm able to finally unwind and let go and just be. Usually I take drawn out baths in my janky tub that doesn't have a stopper and read some classic novel I'm trying to get a grasp on (but I'm usually not intelligent enough or deep enough to understand what the hell the point is). It's worth a good try. I love to lean back into the steaming water and let the short wisps of my hair float around my face, curling inward and outward as I stare up at the popcorn ceiling this fine establishment of an apartment complex decided to implement. Evening tea time is my favorite time. I carefully select a mug from my vast array of thrifted oddities. One that says "love me, I'm irish" although I have not a hint of irish blood in me, or the one with a 1960's John F. Kennedy beaming at me with his handsome, devilish face. It's always a Bigelow mint tea bag that I place in my mug after heating up the water for just two minutes. I like to let the tea bag sit in there, although everyone tells me you aren't supposed to do that. I don't know why I do it. But I do it anyways. And I just love to sip it carefully as to not scald myself and it makes even the most boring textbook I must read for class interesting, or it inspires musings into my journal with the clarity I can usually never seem to find.

I turn all the lights out in my apartment as it falls silent. It's not quite cold enough for the heat to be turned on (but it's getting there), and so I leave my window open every night. The breeze I feel in the morning is always matched beautifully at night. I enjoy laying there at the end of the day in the dark and thinking things over and relaxing knowing that tomorrow these complacencies I have developed in my life for now will come again. And I enjoy every moment of them, because there will come a time when new complacencies will take their place. 

With much love, Lauren.

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Wednesday, September 23, 2015

The Inbetween.

Dress, Hat: c/o OASAP.
Sandals: c/o Boohoo.
Necklace: c/o SparkleBox.

Everyone thinks I'm crazy. And I can't blame them really. Maybe a few years from now I will look back with jaded remorse and see in hindsight that I really was crazy and that I should have listened to everyone else. Or maybe, and this is what I really hope, I'll be the one who gets to smile triumphantly back at those people in defiance, in pure glee, and say "I was right. This was right for me."

I want to move back to New York. I mean, I really, really do. When my eyelids flutter open into the brilliant morning sunlight cascading through my blinds it's the first thing I think about; and usually as I drift away to the monotonous clicking of my ceiling fan into the final day's rest it's the last thing I think about. I'll think about it as I drum my pencil mindlessly against the desk while I sit in hot and sticky classrooms learning about apparel in the global economy or my much less favored geography course. I'll think about it as I walk through campus on the pathways with giant trees towering over me with their leaves just beginning to gently fall down as the autumnal equinox takes over today. And then I think about it every time I make a cafe mocha or a latte or a smoothie or a cappuccino at my barista job. Because I think, "making this drink is going to get me there. I'm going to get there."

I'm going to get there. I don't care if the housing market is less than 1% free. I don't care if it's the most cut throat industry where competing for jobs is like competing for the world cup. I don't care that I'll be a broke college graduate with the foreboding of student loans as my six months after I graduate creeps up. I can say I don't care, I don't care, I don't care about all these things....and in a way, I don't. But in another way I do so much. Because as much as they are realities I want to overcome, to defeat, to stand victoriously over...they are realities I cannot brush off nonchalantly. They terrify me because they stand in the way of my dream and my need to get back to this city where I never, ever in a million years imagined I would be. 

I want to remain positive, to remain confident that I can find a job before I graduate that pays well enough to let me live in a half way decent place and make it without starving. I want to be able to stare those people in the eye who smirk at me and say, "you think you can do it? you really think you can?" and say 

"yes. I will. I did. And I'll continue to."

Some days seem hopeless. I look at my situation and I just don't know. I look at the prices of apartments and my heart sinks. I'll think about the connections and credentials it takes to find a fashion job in New York City. And then I think about what it means to pay all my bills and be completely on my own; maybe only seeing my family a few times a year. And I don't know if I can do it.

And then. I remember standing on the Brooklyn Bridge looking back at the City and being awestruck by its beauty. Truly, breathless with love. And knowing, (that feeling when you just know, with all your heart, soul, and mind) that that is where you belong. And I think back to that moment, all the time. And I want to relive it every day for the rest of my life, over and over again knowing I am where I belong. That my soul will finally find rest in where it resides.

Maybe this next time someone looks at me with doubt I'll be able to look at them with confidence and say, and mean it

"Yes, I'm going to move to New York."

With much love, Lauren.
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Monday, September 14, 2015

Say You'll Remember Me.

Entire outfit thrifted.


i will wade out
   till my thighs are steeped
in burning flowers
I will take
the sun in my mouth
and leap into the ripe air
  Alive
    with closed eyes
to dash against darkness

e.e. cummings

With much love, Lauren.
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Saturday, September 12, 2015

60's Queen.

Polka Dot Shirt: Aeropostale.
Red Trench: Forever21.
Houndstooth Skirt, Clip Earrings: Thrifted.
Knee Socks: H&M.
Black Patent Heels: Payless.

Hello everyone

Since chopping off all my hair I have LOVED doing 1960's inspired looks with it. The September issue of Marie Claire with Miley Cyrus definitely are the vibes I'm going for lately. Black and white graphics with pops of red; slicked back hair with the ends flicked out; bold clip on earrings; strong brows with a flick of a cat eye; fitted shapes versus fit and flare. It's so strange how much a hair cut can inspire you. It's not changing WHO you are...I am still the same Lauren. I still have the same stances on things, the same thoughts, the same likes and dislikes...but I feel different somehow. I'm not quite sure how chopping off all your hair does that exactly, but it does. I haven't felt so "me" beauty wise in a long time. I know it's too early to say quite yet, but I feel like I won't go back to long hair for years now. Only time will tell though, but for now I am incredibly satisfied with short little crop. x

I've since had two days of work at my barista job since I last talked to you all and I am so pleased to say I love it! I was anxious about whether or not I would fancy it as much as I thought I would...but making drinks and conversing with strangers, exchanging friendly smiles, seems like something I wished I had been doing all these years. I think working at a coffee shop is actually a perfect job for an introvert. It helps you practice your speaking skills and your wit. If you're like me, I tend to get flustered and tongue tied in small talk with people and it has me scared and anxious for the next time. But with being a barista, you're constantly having to chat with strangers all day and, well, if you mess up once it's not a big deal. There's always the next person in line to practice with! You cannot be afraid when being a barista. It simply will not work out. It takes being unafraid after making that conversational stumble to try again with the next individual. I just love to make people happy--as corny as that sounds. But being a barista allows me to do that. It could mean just putting a little bit of extra whipped cream on top of someone's hot chocolate, or telling them that they look lovely today. It's in my hand's to turn someone's day completely around. And I just adore that. To take such as menial as a task of making someone's coffee can actually shape someone's day, attitude, or life. I feel lucky to have this job. x

With much love, Lauren. 
 
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Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Back 2 School.


Checkered Dress, Flannel: H&M in Italy.
Brogues, Necklace, Earrings: Thrifted.

Hello everyone!

Well, I am back at Kent State University for my final year of college! Man, so hard to believe I'm a senior in the fashion merchandising major...I remember dreaming in high school about someday studying fashion and getting to work in the industry, and look at where I am! Only one year left

It's been a good school year so far with a mix of old and new. I'm back in the same apartment I had last year which is comforting to have a place that's felt like "home" for awhile now. My classes are fairly based on my minor this semester, which is fashion media. So, I'm taking a multimedia course and a visual design communications course. For my major I'm in global apparel in the economy which is a class discussing the apparel industry and its affect worldwide economies and industries. I'm also in a computer applications and data class for my major where I learn in depth about how to work Excel! Working at Cosmo gave me an inside look at the real, working industry and I saw that excel is used a ton in fashion. So, if you're looking to enter into the industry in the next few years, definitely develop your excel capabilities! It will be an amazing asset and skill to have/put on a resume. 

A new thing thrown into my school mix this year will be a job! I am super excited to have gotten a barista job at the campus coffee shop, Jazzman's, in the student center. It's always been quite a dream of mine to be a barista because I have a passion for coffee. Looking forward to learning the ins and outs of making different drinks and cultivating a skill for coffee making. I'm also excited to just meet all sorts of interesting people on campus. As an introvert, I won't necessarily go up to others and strike up a conversation. So, working as a barista I feel will force me (in a healthy way) to converse with people and create new friendships. My first day is tomorrow, so I'll have to let you all know how it goes soon! x

With much love,

Lauren.
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