#7: Wear scarves

For this post I would like to give credit to the staff at R-bistro in Steinbach. Thanks for great service, a good laugh and being a part of my project.

Where would a hipster be without a scarf. Summer, winter, rain or shine, it is a staple for any coiffured and trendy hipster. Only a stripster would be caught without one, and we all know they are like the Ke$ha's of the hipster world. One only needs to visit tumblr to realize that!

Along with a couple pairs of skinny jeans, I am fortunate enough to already be the owner of a few too many of these babies. Not like my SIL. She has over 40. She is legitimately a hipster though, but don't tell her I said that. It's like outing a gay friend before they have figured it out for themselves. Not cool!

So here is what you can expect to see me wearing in the coming weeks:

Hipster Commandment #1: Thou Shalt Wear a Scarf

Final thoughts for tonight:

"I could feel it for a long time. I was saving something up, I went around doing one thing and feeling another" - Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

#6: Paint something

I am not an artist. No, really. This isn't some coy admission I'm making in order to get compliments from strangers about how I'm a creative, beautiful and artistic person. I really cannot paint. So today's challenge forced me to be the creative and artistic person I wish I was (beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so I'll take that one, thanks!)

So I was in town today, considering paint, brushes, canvasses, the chapeau and co-ordinating smock. Then these came to mind:

Gap jeans

"Brilliant," real me thought "I can have my cake and eat it too!" And so I did, but in the form of rollo ice cream. Needless to say that was a big mistake.

I picked up some 'antique white' paint and some q tips and was happily on my way. Arriving home, I found my victims. They have been in my closet for over 2 years now. These are my pre-pregnancy jeans. Dark denim. Skinny. American eagle. It didn't get any better as far as my ironically hipsterific plan was concerned. Only two obstacles stood in my way - my left and right thighs.

After lying down, holding my breath and vigorously wriggling like a boa constrictor at a 90's rave, I was in. Sure I needed help standing up. Absolutely I could not sit down. But that's not the point. Vanity sizing means I can now fit back into my size 4 jeans. Boo-yah!

So the painting part was easy. Waiting for them to dry, and then the thought of having to squeeze them back on again was not. However, I conquered and all that was left was to take some pics of my first hipster outfit.

Greasy hair: Check!
Band T from 6 years ago: Check!
Bored look and bad posture: Check and check!

Before

During

After

All in all, this project cost me $1 and 1 hour of time (including drying). But like whatev.

Until tomorrow,

"Love the skin you're in" - Olay

#5: Make and consume something vegan

Honesty time. I wasn't completely sure about what I could eat/drink today that would be 'vegan'. Hipsters are VERY particular about their diets. It isn't enough to say that hipsters are vegetarian or vegan. I read this very interesting article online all about the hipster eating code. One comment really summed up the magnitude of my task:

“Whether it’s gluten-free, anti-diary, pro-dairy, detox, all-raw, anti-oxidant, pro-soy, anti-soy, the point is that hipsters have to be prepared to argue their eating position to the death. In other words, it’s not the diet that matters so much as the level of expertise. Hipsters research their diet with the rigor of a specialist and use their contrarian eating habit as a springboard for showing off their fluent knowledge of chemistry, anthropology, history, and bio-medicine."

Ummmm, yeah. So I have a lot more reading to do I guess! Giving up being mainstream is harder than I anticipated. In any case, Hipster Challenge #5 was to make an consume something vegan. As I had some starfruit kicking around in the fridge, I thought I would try and find something to do with it for today. So I hussled up some banana, kiwifruit from my homeland and my starfruit to create this masterpiece:

 

I need to work on getting my photo's to look more instagrammy next time, but you gotta crawl before you can walk. The website I found the recipe from is www.incrediblesmoothies.com and they have tonnes of recipes to cater to any of your hipster food preferences.

A final thought for today:

"The world is full of obvious things, which nobody by any chance ever observes."

                                                         - Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles

#4: Wear skinny jeans

Totally Hipster

According to my extensive research over the last 3 days, hipsters love to wear skinny jeans. Not the slim fitting 'wow-your-butt-looks-great-in-those' figure hugging kind, but the 'my-crotch-is-chafing-and-I-suddenly-have-a-muffin-top' kind. But enough about the guys; girls wear them too. The more androgynous your skinny jeans the better. Plus a little distressing to give them a vintage looks doesn't hurt either - see above for proof of that.

So today's challenge was to wear skinny jeans. Simple, I thought, I already own a pair. Problem is, I had nothing to wear them with. No plaid, nowhere! So I attempted to wear them with something as vintage-y looking as I could find in my very eclectic closet. My closet is a bit of an enigma, a mish-mash of various styles and colours of things that I love, but are not exactly Aeropostale or American Apparel. So suffice to say, a white shirt and blazer are not uber-hispter (do hipsters say uber? Does anyone anymore?!) but it did well for a dinner out with friends.

So my challenge for next week will be to stock up my already chronologically confused armoire with some thrifted, inherited and decidedly ugly hipster digs. So deck.

Here's one for today:

"Caring doesn't lead to misery. It always does"
                                      - John Green and David Levithan, Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Have a blessed Sunday xx

#3: Create a blog

Ok, so I am DEFINITELY cheating here. But really, what fashion loving hipster doesn't have one of these things? I'm also playing catch-up for lent. I didn't think about blogging my Lentolutions until yesterday, and didn't really think about a blog as being very hipster-ish until I realized that most of what I am pinning to my hipster board on Pinterest comes from hipster blogs.

*gasp gasp* I think I just created a hipster paradox!

In the spirit of practicing living ironically, and in the hope that perhaps you have read my previous posts, here's another quote for you:

"I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough it will make sense."  - Ray Bradbury, Farenheit 451

Happy weekend! 

#2: Say something disparaging

In a conversation with a co-worker today, I found the perfect opportunity to pick up on Hipster Challenge #2: Say something disparaging.

Now real me actually likes this guy. Hipster me hates everything. The conversation ran along these lines:

Co-worker: My daughter went to see this play.... I can't remember the name of it now...
Hipster me: Mhm. I've probably heard of it.
Co-worker: Anyway, she loved it. Although she had a hard time with some of the language. Do you know that she hasn't even studied any Shakespeare?! I tried getting her to read Crime and Punishment...
Hipster me: I love Dostoyevsky...
Co-worker: She thought it was slow; it took her a while to get into it.
Hipster me: I just think that there are some 'classics' that really shouldn't be a part of the English Literary cannon. There are way too many texts on that list which are just too modern for my taste, especially American Lit.
Co-worker: uh, I guess so...
Hipster me: But like whatev

Like I said before, I like this guy, and I'm new at this whole hipster thing, so I changed the subject onto something a little less heavy for a Friday morning - gluten free cupcakes. All in all I don't think I did too bad, although I did come to a realization. I care way too much about hurting people's feelings and coming across as obnoxious and self-absorbed. I need to practice in the mirror my "I don't give a crap" face, along with convincingly saying "I love your jeans" so that it seems sincere, but really means 'Those are from American Eagle, aren't they?'

For today I'll leave you with this:

"Maybe our favourite quotations say more about us than the stories or people we are quoting."
                                                                                                                   - John Green

#1: Lentolutions and Giving up TV

Ah New Years. The time of year where people make a fresh start, set goals, and are determined to lose those last 5 pounds, train for a marathon, or find their soul mate. For about 3 days. I have a theory. The reason we all try (and fail) at keeping our new year resolutions is that
a) we really don't think that much about it
b) we aren't sober when we are thinking about it, and
c) 365 days is a freaking long time to keep something up for!
So that's why I gave up on them 4 years ago and started making Lentolutions instead.

What are Lentolutions, I hear you ask bemusedly from your IMacs. My theory is simple. I have from New Year's until the beginning of lent to figure out what it is that I really hate about myself. Also, during that time, I have built up enough guilt and self loathing that I can actually commit, for forty days, to changing that behaviour or attitude. Just in case I can't, there is always Sunday, that sweet blessed day of rest, where I can bath myself in holy water and eat as much chocolate as I want.

So needless to say, I have been thinking about what I would be doing for lent since yesterday when I was eating pork chops and realized it was Ash Wednesday. I made the snap decision to give up television for lent. A bit of a cop out considering I don't really watch that much in the first place. Then, inspiration struck. Call it divine intervention if you will.

Hipsters don't own televisions. What if I became a hipster for lent?

I was salivating at the thought. There is something alluring about hipsters. Is it the sock bun, the vintage wayfarers, improper adherence to hygiene or just their blatant disdain for anything remotely attractive I do not know. What I do know is that secretly, I want to be one. I know, I know; even saying that puts me out of the clique. No matter how well I cover myself up in plaid shirts, skinny jeans and hand crafted jewelry, as soon as it starts to rain they will sniff me out. However, the Walking Dead has taught me that if I want to survive this apocalypse, I need to aim for the brain.


And so here it is, my first installment in a forty day project that will perhaps make me less fashionable, more environmentally aware and perhaps even a little more talented. For each day of lent, I will undertake a daily hipster challenge. I will need to talk, do, make, wear and consume like a hipster. Each day, I will post on my blog about what reactions, successes or failures I encountered while living out my hipster life.

On that note, I will leave you with a favourite quote of mine. You probably haven't heard of it before, cos like, it's pretty obscure:

"The best minds are destroyed." - Allen Ginsberg

Let the hipster apocalypse begin.