thrift shopping in the upper east side.

Today I had to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a field trip, so I decided to make a round to the Upper East Side Goodwill, because I've been wanting to visit for months. Before moving to New York, I had always wondered if the clothes would be any different in thrift shops if they were donated in the Upper east and west side. Just the front of the shop gave me a pretty good first impression. It looked a little bit different than all the other Goodwills I've been to.
The inside isn't really much different than most other Goodwills. There are still some parts that are kind of grimy, especially the fitting room.

The difference is that it's true. That the price for clothes are a little bit more expensive. And big brands are everywhere. Really. There are still the Target items, of course. A pair of shoes from Target were $15. They would have been half that price at the Goodwill back at home. Brands like Steve Madden and Nine West and Stuart Weitzman and BCBG are $25.

In this location, they have their boutique items and regular items. Boutique items are more expensive, but it's not hard for me to find something I really love. I found a beautiful printed silk dress from Tracy Reese, which would have retailed for over $400, for just $25. Definitely a markdown. It looked really new too. I would have leaped to buy it, but it was three sizes too big, and chances are I would just have it hanging in my closet if it's not my size.

I was in the shop for a pretty long time; definitely past an hour. And I hadn't even looked through everything. The shop is pretty small, but I found several things that I wanted to try on. After trying on piles and piles of clothes, I narrowed down to three pieces.
The left one is the expensive one; a $60 Coach coat. The middle one is $20 Esprit, and the right is $8 J. Jill. I'm not kidding when I say brands everywhere. There is the occasional designer piece, too. I'm still a little sad about the Tracy Reese dress. It would have been smart to take a picture.
That's the end of my thrifting trip. There were a few other instances where I've gone thrift shopping since I got here, but I haven't written about them. I was in the 23rd street area where a lot of the thrift stores are, and went to the Goodwill, Salvation Army, and Housing Works there. Because of limited time, I was only in Housing Works for five minutes. My friend went to check prices, though and it's not very cheap, it seems. I'll have to go back to see. The interiors are very nice, though. It's not the usual grimy thrift shop feel. In the five minutes I was there, I bought a tea pot that was missing a lid which I decided to use as a vase for my newly dried flowers.
I've been getting a lot of acne since school started. It's not going away until I get enough sleep and stop stressing, which wont happen until winter break. I an so looking forward to breaks.

Back to the museum, I was supposed to meet my class there at 10am this morning, but because of slight miscalculation on my part, and all the trains that were under construction today (everything, pretty much), I arrived at the museum past 11. I don't think I found my class until around 11:30. Just being able to find them was pretty lucky.
I didn't want to stay around to long when there were so many people and the Costume Institute doesn't have an exhibit, so I'd only been around for an hour.

I did visit the gift shop, though. There are some nice things, but nothing is cheap. I found a bookmark that I wanted to buy as a present to my friend, but for the bookmark alone was $17.

There was also a shirt that I was digging. It's a cityscape photo style shirt, made of cotton and spandex. This t-shirt is $55 if I remember correctly.

Their selection of handkerchiefs are so nice. There are two sides of handkerchiefs. My friend bought me one for my birthday last month, and I've been wearing it pretty frequently recently. It's the one that I'm wearing on my head in the picture with my vase.
While leaving the Met, I dropped a piece of paper, and a guard was trying to call me, and he seemed pretty confused. He called, "lady...sir!" like he couldn't decide if I were male or female. I don't know how many times this has happened. I don't find myself to be all that masculine.

I'm in the workroom tonight, working on homework. Hopefully I can get something done, at least.

Love, Kaia

happy halloweentimes, you guys.

I hadn't been planning to dress up for Halloween, but then I ordered a kigurumi and planned on wearing it if it got sent in on time. In the morning, I wore my Rilakkuma kigurumi to class. There weren't that many people who dressed up to class today, actually. It seems that most people save it for the parties. Danielle on the left is over a foot taller than me.
This is the kigurumi that I bought from Comic Con. I had a few people ask me where it was from today, and a few people who asked me what animal it is, and a lot of d'awwww.uguu blurry photo. I don't know how to focus on my digital SLR. It just doesn't cooperate with me.

At noon when I checked my mail, there was nothing there waiting for me. When I went back at 4 in the afternoon, I got a slip to claim a package. What good timing.
It was my Gachapin kigu. This thing sheds like crazy. It's very soft and warm, though. I'd always wanted to get a dslr so that I could get legit jumping shots. But somehow I'd never gotten to taking any. The studio was empty when I was working today so I took the opportunity to take some pictures. This one was the only decent jumping shot.

I've been up for a while doing homework. Starting to finally get sleepy. I noticed that the sun rises a lot later now. It's already 6:37 and it's still completely dark outside. Sunrise used to be at 6:15 not that long ago.The big things I was working on were the felting project, sewing pants, and my essay. Yaaay pants. Sewing isn't something I'm that good at. Some places aren't lining up nicely.

And sleepiness hits!
I spent my Halloween doing homework.

Love, Kaia

salt is kind of analogous to hair accessories.

I was eating broccoli for lunch today and it didn't taste all that good so I added salt. All of a sudden it tastes so many times better.

Recently I've been really wanting to get a haircut. The back of my hair was getting unmanageable and the front is overgrown. The plan was to go last week, but I didn't have time so my trip was postponed to today.
Hair salons make me feel a little uncomfortable, actually. I never really know what to say or what to ask or any of that. I've never had a stylist that I felt really comfortable with, so I'm still pretty awkward. I went to Shine Salon in Brooklyn Chinatown to get a haircut, after reading reviews saying the price is affordable and the cuts are pretty good. I'd actually looked up and found the salon(s) that I wanted to go to before even moving.
The location isn't hard to find; it's only a short walk from the subway station. I freaked out a little bit when I didn't see it right away when I got to where I thought it was. I was on the wrong side of the street.

Since it's Chinatown, I'd hoped that the stylists there would be able to speak mandarin, because I feel more comfortable being able to communicate in mandarin. They spoke to me cantonese instead of mandarin, so communicating was a little more difficult because I'm not familiar with the language. I found out from my stylist, Raymond, while he was cutting my hair that all the stylists can understand mandarin, but don't speak it.

For my haircut this time, I asked for something like a helmet bob, with clean, straight bangs. Something like what I already had except shorter in the back and more tidy.
Raymond gave me the nice clean cut that I asked for. With the wash and massage, and then the extra wait from other customers, my cut took about an hour. It's the same cut I had when I started my blog, just a little bit shorter. In about a month's time, it should look pretty similar.

I wanted to dye my hair too while I was at it, but I didn't know how I should ask, and how much it would be, or how much time it would take. Fortunately I didnt because since it's cash only, I dont think I would have had enough money to pay for a dye job. After the wash, massage, cut, and tip, I paid $22. I'd never been to a salon myself before, so I didn't understand how paying worked. When I paid the total, the lady at the counter asked me where the tip was. So I paid that too, but looking at her expression, I'm guessing my tip was unsatisfactory. Woops.

On my way back, I passed by a shop with cute decor and it was instinctual to go in. I'm generally not very spendy, but something about getting haircuts makes me really want to buy hair accessories. I bought a hat-scarf and a cute hairclip that I forgot to take pictures up. Maybe I'll make a purchases post soon.

I've been wearing the scarf I bought ever since I bought it. I'm not usually this happy about purchases! It's so soft and nice and warm that I don't want to take it off.
It has bear ears and button eyes!! Makes me feel a little better for not having been able to afford the polka dot neck warmer bear hat at Peace Now San Francisco last winter. Actually I'm still kind of hung up about that.

This is my third post this month! So terribly few! Gosh that makes me really sad because I had a whole bunch of outfits that I wanted to post and didn't get to take pictures of because class starts in the morning and goes on until the evening, so the sun is down by the time I have time to take pictures. And I have events that I want to blog about. I'm part of Teen Vogue Fashion U's class of 2011; graduated last week!

And Kinokuniya shipped in both the November and December issue of KERA, which I bought both of. I'd like to write about those too. And I don't think I ever got to my wishlist post last month. Or this month, for that matter!

And I didn't write about my birthday!
Gosh, this has been a busy, busy month.
So is next month, for that matter.
Steppin up my game...

Love, Kaia

weekends are made for relaxing.

It feels like on weekends I have to work extra hard on homework, which really sucks because that's all I do all day every day on weekdays. But for the most part, I work on homework all through weekends. That's what I've been doing, at least. But last week I decided that I really needed a break so over the weekend, I did some cookhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifing, had some friends over, and went to Comic Con.

Now I'm more tired than ever.
Tee from NYCC, jacket from H&M, pants from Zara, Converse

I got this shirt when I was at Comic Con this Sunday. It's a print of Star Wars storm troopers. I bought a few shirts while I was there. Comic Con was fun. I did a little reflection kind of thing on my tumblr.

Oh and now these shoes I'm wearing. I needed new shoes because my old Converse are reaching five years old and the number of holes and rips are increasing fast.

Black leather Converse from Michael K in Chinatown/Soho area. They have a pretty good selection of casual shoes. Big section for Converse styles and colorways that I've never seen before,which is kind of cool.
Yeah, back to work.

Love, Kaia

a much delayed post.

Prize winners from my anniversary giveaway were chosen today! It should have been done ages ago, buy it'd been delayed for weeks. I cut out slips of paper and wrote names on them and put them in two separate bowls for the two giveaways and drew names from each of them.
Names that were drawn! Winners have been contacted. Congratulations~ I gotta get shipping supplies, and prizes should go out later this month.

Ohph! Forgot, I'm wearing a sweater I got on my most recent thrifting trip. I haven't wrote about that yet. Time will come! Time will come! I need more time in a day, I really do. I hadn't had sleep for three days, and yesterday I had been planning to go to the studios to do some homework, but I was also really sick so I went back to my dorm with the intention of going to sleep after I eat dinner. But being the student I am, I started to do sketching homework for next week, and felt like I couldn't go to sleep until I finished that.

This month is so busy! It's just one event after another, one quiz, one project after another, and then BAM! Midterms. So much fun. I'm dying.

Still sick today, but I think yesterday was the worst of it. I should be on my way to getting better. I....need to go to the studio to do homework. Debating whether I want to go now or in the evening.

Love, Kaia