Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Those Wild Harajuku Girls of Japan!







Harajuku fashion is something that absolutely intrigues and delights me! I'm not saying that I would ever dress in anything Harajuku (at least not where anyone knows me!), but I love the creativity, the colors and the costumes of the wild Harajuku girls.

If you are not familiar with Harajuku fashion, here is a little run down for you. Harajuku fashion originates in the Harajuku Station district of Tokyo, Japan. The area is a fashion capital of the world renowned for unique street fashion. Dressing up used to take place every Sunday, but now girls gather in this area every day of the week to show off their unique and sometimes bizarre sense of style! There are several genres of Harajuku...the term "Kawaii" comes from a popular phrase that means something cute or pretty. The girls sporting this style dress in lots of pink, ruffles, and they use feminine accessories such as hair bands, Hello Kitty pieces and little stuffed animals. The look here is ultra cute and innocent. The term "Lolita Fashion" combines the clothing of a Victorian princess and ripped Gothic fashion. Ganguro is a style that is supposed to emulate the average American teenager. This look is what Westerners would call a "California Girl" with bleached hair, fake fingernails and eyelashes and very tanned skin.

Another really popular style of Harajuku is called "cosplay" which is short for costume role playing. Girls dress up as their favorite cartoon character or a character from a band, movie, game or anime. Punk style is one more style that is gender-neutral where boys and girls dress in plaid and sport lots of zippers, dark colors and chains.

Harajuku fashion has influenced numerous fashion designers from around the world. If you are familiar with Gwen Stefani and her music, you will recognize the silent Harajuku girls that surround her on tour. Gwen also has a line of fragrance called Harajuku Girls with adorable "girl" perfume bottles dressed in different Harajuku fashions. Whether you love it or hate it or just really don't get it, you have to admit that Harajuku style is unique, colorful and really, a whole lot of fun! One day I'd love to travel to Japan and see the girls of Harajuku myself! Here's hoping! (*_*) ~Stacy~

Friday, March 12, 2010

Our New Flooring ~ It's About Time!







At long last are the promised pictures of our new flooring that we installed just before Christmas! Yes, it took awhile! These pictures were taken for my Mom so don't mind the mess on the coffee table...that's just day to day living around here!, especially if I'm looking at magazines! We opted to go with a darker flooring instead of a light, more shabby finish. I'm glad we did as makes the furniture, cabinets and accessories "pop" more and gives it more of a cozy feel. Light and airy is fine for the summer, but here in Utah, cozy is better in winter. It's cold enough out there, we didn't want our home to look and feel harsh during those long winter months.

I also had to purchase a bunch of new rugs (isn't that a shame!) for the floors and I got them from a mixture of places...HSN, JCPenney and the antique mall. I purchased an absolutely huge pink rug from an antique mall since these pictures were taken and it is now in place of the one underneath the coffee table in the family/tv room. That pretty pastel rug is now under our dining room table and the one under the dining room table is now downstairs. Talk about musical rugs! Do you ever find yourself doing that when you are redecorating something? You want to put one new picture on the wall and pretty soon you find yourself redoing the entire room and the next one beside it! (*_*) Good thing that it's such a bunch of fun!

We actually still have more flooring to put down in our offices and we've been putting it off long enough! Reason being is that my office has SO MUCH STUFF in it that everything has to be taken out and I want to paint the walls while I'm at it and give my office a bit of a redo...so that is going to be happening here pretty soon. There's nothing like a good spring reno to kick off the season! Until next time, ~Stacy~ xo