quietly pirouetting in on silvery-toed slippers of snow♥

My goodness, tomorrow is the last day of January! This month has been wonderful. It's stayed full of snow&beauty. I cannot recall ever loving January so much! For me, Rachel, I really established a personal style...well, more discovered I suppose and it's funny, I've grown to be more interested in clothes and fashion design just in this month. I always knew what I loved but now I've definitely figured out what I love&want to wear, what decor I like, and what I don't. And, I've been taking lots of artistic photos&keeping up sketching and watercolour painting.

We spend practically every weekend together! This past Friday we went to the mall, enjoyed coffee at Starbucks, magazines&books at Barnes and Noble, swooned over Banana Republic's beautiful clothing (we like J.Crew better, but there's not a big difference), and also went to H&M--an affordable version of J.Crew! ♥

On Friday, Rachel purchased this beautiful salmon top with puffed silk sleeves and layers (see above), and we both fell in love with some Oxford shoes at Forever 21. Erika just recently purchased four sale items from Urban Outfitters including the pants&cardigan she's wearing! How fantastic? Rachel's sketched out what she plans to buy for her wardrobe this Summer and we're both scheming of ways to earn money to buy clothes (being teens, we're broke! hahaha).

However, while dreaming of Spring&Summer clothes and the wonderful times&memories that time of year will bring, we are enjoying Winter. The cosiness of being inside, looking over Spring fashion magazines (Toast, J.Crew, Anthropologie), enjoying a cup of cocoa, warming by the fire&sketching, and taking such an abundance of times indoors to look at inspirational blogs such as:

Paper Tissue

{Wit+Delight}

Color Collective

We've lately both expanded our scope for photography a bit, if only slightly, but it's a working progress and we look forward to expanding and getting better at it as this year unfolds. I feel that self-taught photographers are more genuine than trained ones. However, we wouldn't mind going to university for a minor in photography someday.  

And we know it's been a bit since Deathly Hallows part 1 was released (and blew our minds&was incredibly amazing) but Rachel has gradually bit by bit been working on a post with pictures from the midnight showing of it, we hope you don't mind that it's a bit late! Planning to post it in a couple weeks since we have some other posts to do. :) And in case you were wondering, the current countdown to part 2 is 173 days!!!!! AH! We can't even handle our excitement, but we also don't want it to come because then it'll be over♥♥ However our love&passion for Potter will never ever end!

We hope your month has been as magical and brilliant as ours! We wanted to thank those of you who commented on that last post for those sweet comments that absolutely made us smile&completely made our day. ♥ We always look forward to the comments you leave!

Now, some links to brighten the start of your week. 

Irene Suchocki, a self-taught photographer (note: look at "fine art" section for beautiful photos).

Of course, we're swooning over Steven Alan's Spring Lookbook.

Absolutely in love with J.Crew's Hollywood photo shoot. All the pictures are so classy--they totally captured a sophisticated glamour still flickering in Hollywood. 

~

If you love some inspiration, like we do, for a Spring/Summer wardrobe be sure to check out J.Crew's new Spring arrivals--prepare to love it all! :)

And lastly, a song to listen to that will surely make you smile:

Sufjan Steven's All Delighted People. If you're only going to listen to some of it, then definitely listen to 8:14-9:44. It is utterly beautiful&blissful...our hearts swoon when we hear it. The flutes and the orchestra! So gorgeous. :) 

Cheers! ♥♥

xoxoxo-

Erika&Rachel

winter inspiration♥

beautiful winter has arrived and brought with it beautiful snow, shimmering like diamonds. as each intricate snowflake falls we take notice in the beauty of God's creation. how fascinating and lovely snow is!

this post is the start of a seasonally annual post we shall do. once spring comes round we'll share with you more inspirational photos, clothing on our wish list, and some of our recent photography--all reflective of the season. 

winter fashion is wonderful and we love layering and using glamorous textures and colours. however, we will admit that spring fashion has been on our mind since all the designers and stores have been releasing their spring/summer collections. we've sketched out our clothing wish lists for spring&summer and can't wait to start creating our spring/summer wardrobe once april comes round. 

the snow is falling steadily outside the window and we're preparing for a winter photos shoot, our ideas swimming with picture ideas!

Warby Parker Miles glasses

so, we both absolutely positively want glasses however, we both have fantastic eyesight and are discouraged that we may never find the need to buy prescription glasses. last year rachel discovered warby parker--this sleek, awesome&fair-priced online glasses store. rachel's sister has glasses and was looking for new frames so she sent in to get the free trial of four pairs for five days. and then it happened, rachel tried on the Miles....and now has discovered "her" pair of glasses. once summer comes round we plan to buy fake glasses that resemble these, we feel that they are such a good accessory that we wouldn't be lame! 

Pleasantly precocious top Tiered peterpan blouse

the pleasantly precocious top from modcloth is currently on erika's wish list for winter, the simplicity&daintiness is wonderful...peter pan collars essentially define daintiness! and as for rachel she is absolutely loving the tiered peterpan blouse from topshop. the layers are amazing and the dainty collar and brilliant colour are pretty fantastic!

Modcloth Blogroll dress

and both of us are completely swooning over this modcloth blogroll dress! it is absolutely adorable. we dream of wearing it with plain oxford shoes&adorable stockings. however, it is quite unfortunate that modcloth is sold out! ah, well, one can dream. :) 

we spent last night together taking photos (see photo above and all below) for an hour, blogging, talking&laughing, and officially signing our harry potter film wizardry books, which we each received for Christmas, with rachel's hogwarts quill. it was brilliant! 

rachel's room was oh so cosy with artistic trinkets everywhere, feathers and leaves lying about, and white Christmas lights draped over her shelf, shimmering with a glow. 

we stayed up last night till nearly 4 in the morning talking and reminiscing of the amazing and absolutely blissful Summer last year, and the generally brilliant whole year. we read particular entries from one another's journals aloud loving hearing of the wonderful times we shared. 

we cannot wait to see what this year holds for us, but trust that it will be wonderful! as far as this year has been going along it has been brilliant. good memories have been made (if only 22 days into this year), good pictures have been taken, and beautiful snow has stayed like an icing over a cake! 

hope your weekend is magical, loves!♥

xoxoxo,

-Erika&Rachel

"couldn't get much better, do you wanna dance?"

new year's eve! oh how glamorous and fun it is. erika came over about an hour before the party and we both went into my room to do our hair, make-up, get dressed in glamorous holiday attire, & spray on some new secret wonderland perfume! (a gift from our mum's) i love that the Christmas decorations are still up because Christmas lights give off the best lighting and everything, all the windows and bookshelves, is draped in beautiful garlands (or at least at my house!)

erika had bought her shimmering holiday shoes on black friday and i had bought mine that very day when my mum and i went shopping! i was so excited to wear them. and nothing says holiday party shoes like velvet bows:) 

all of our friends started to arrive and it immediately got loud with talk&laughter. the island countertop was spilling with snacks, including shrimp cocktail, and bright desserts, set upon an antique Christmas tablecloth.

we gathered round in the living room at about eleven, cranked up some vampire weekend, played apples to apples, and mafia! our friend dan narrated which was hilarious and our other friend joey did the background music...which made us all pretty much die laughing. 

one thing i absolutely had to do on this special night was take my first bite of my chocolate frog! though i went to the wonderful harry potter theme park in late october, the chocolate frog purchased at lovely honeydukes was still just as fresh. i had been waiting for a grand occasion to open it and new year's even seemed like the right night to me!

it was absolutely delicious! they have definitely succeeded in producing a delicious chocolate frog. which is as it should be since it's anticipated to be this fabulous&wonderful thing! it was exquisite, completely scrumptious and brought back blissful memories of my day at the wizarding world of harry potter. 

soon it was 5 minutes until midnight. it was so surreal and everyone was blowing on these horn things, it was so loud! and oh so much fun. my mum filled the wine glasses with sparkling grape juice, ready for a toast once midnight came round. erika&i kept telling each other how amazing the changing into midnight is...it holds a complete new year ahead of you, that we are confident will be incredible...even better than last year (because that always happens!) which is hard to imagine. 

i adore these two photos! i love how the one on the left shows us yelling the last ten seconds and then....then, oh golly it was epic....our friend joey surprised us right at midnight and ran down our living room stairs playing my dad's old trombone. it was epic and such a fantastic start to 2011!

essentially, this is one of my favourite photos of the night. it definitely captures the epicness of our friends! i love that joey is playing the trombone and erika and i are hugging like mad with those hilarious things in our mouths! and we reminded each other in the next few minutes while the excitement for the new year was still utterly present that this was the year for the end of harry potter! we can't believe it♥

um yes, as you can tell...us&our friends for sure know how to party and have a good time! after we'd blown on our little horns for about twenty minutes, my dad had shot the gun off outside with us all plugging our ears on the front porch and freezing, we came inside and had a lovely toast and then it was dance time...which would continue for about 2-3 more hours! 

we danced to everything! my brother hooked up his itouch so essentially we had an unlimited amount of music. the roots, passion pit, the bird and the bee, skrillex, some funk, and a selection of other artists, it was brilliant. we were partying hard as you can see! erika&i had a grand time dancing and collaborating moves together and grooving down.

and this...this my loves shows how happy we look when we are dancing and listening to vampire weekend! it was brilliant. vampire weekend is our favourite. 

the night was fantastic and better than ever! being surrounded by fantastic people we love definitely helped. and, again i say, we all know how to have a party! 

i hope you had a wonderful new year's eve&that this year of 2011 holds the most magical of events for you.♥

as for us, we plan to take a summer art course, perhaps travel to new york city for the deathly hallows part 2 premiere (we so, so, so, so HOPE we can go!) and meet the amazing cast, save for new cameras, we plan to go together and visit the wizarding world of harry potter at the end of the year, see vampire weekend live when they tour and last and certainly not least, the release of harry potter and the deathly hallows. the end of an era, worldwide phenomenon, and the thing we practically love most!

with lots of love as always,

-Erika&Rachel