Thoughts on my wardrobe for the year ahead

Three days shy of one full year ago, I posted about my desire to fill some of the gaps in my wardrobe in the coming year. At the time we were waist high in packing and preparation for our (then) upcoming cross country move, but after long, long mornings and afternoons spent in the close company of packing tape and countless cardboard boxes, in the evenings I was busy as a busy trying to scout out good deals on some of the items (and a few others) I listed in that post.

Around the same time I was in the midst of selling off my rather large collection of cute Japanese Re-Ment miniatures, so that I could apply some of the funds from their sale to buying the garments my wardrobe was sorely missing. As you can imagine, last January was a very, very hectic month! Sales went great though and I was able to purchase numerous items, some of which have appeared here in various wardrobe posts since then, and to fill in a fair number of the gaps that I felt were lacking when it came to certain staple garments.

A good part of the reason why I felt especially rushed about doing a decent sized chunk of this shopping is because I didn't want to move to B.C. with the stress that can come from having a somewhat (or very, as the case may be) incomplete set of basic items in my closet, in a new house and in a town where I knew we'd be doing a lot more going out and socializing. I wasn't short on clothes in general, don't get me wrong, it's just that while I had scores of some items, I had very few - or none at all - of others that I felt really constituted the backbone of any good vintage wardrobe.

Most of those missing items have been acquired. A few remain (vintage or repro trousers that actually fit me well, instead of being way too big or just a touch too small, as is often the case, I find, would be marvelous, for example) and a couple of others have popped up as time went on, but over all I no longer have that looming sense of dread about missing some rather key pieces from my closet.

Three cheers on that front for sure! But what about my wardrobe and 2013? What does this year hold in store for it? This is a topic that began to pop up often in my thoughts around last October and which has continued to do so ever since. The more I thought about it, the more it struck me that I usually divide what I want to buy (in terms of clothing into) four basic categories:


-Wardrobe staples: Those pieces (such as a basic black skirt, white blouses, a sturdy winter coat, etc) that make up the foundation of your closet and which are fundamental to your wardrobe.

-Variations on staples: Technically, if you have the very basics covered, though your wardrobe might be small, you wouldn't truly be without clothes. However, just as few of us would want to eat the same foods few foods day in and day out, so too do most of us crave variety in our wardrobe and generally expand beyond the very basics. These pieces are the next rung up the totem pole, so to speak, and are variations on the basics (for example, a red skirt instead of just a dark neutral hued one, or a second pair or repro jeans) and often constitute the biggest percentage of a person's wardrobe.

-Wish list items: These are garments and accessories that you may have had to save up and/or search for before buying. They're items you want, but which may not be the most practical thing to buy on a whim, especially if you're lacking in either of the two previous categories. You'll likely have some wish list items that fall into the other first two categories, but also some that are more frivolous (and I don't say that in a negative way at all) and just for fun (say, a tulle 1950s prom dress to wear for fancy parties or date nights).

-Holy Grail items: There are pieces - and we all have them - we'd practically give our right arm to have in our closets. The reasons why we don't (yet) vary, but are often centered around an items rarity, price and/or ability to find said piece in our size. They can be staples, but very often are more akin to wish list items (for more on the topic of wardrobe holy grails, see this post from December 2012).

{Sometimes pieces or ensembles can fall into more than one of these four categories. For example, an outfit such as this timelessly wonderful 1940s Hardy-Amies suit with matching felt hat would be, for me at the moment, both a wardrobe staple and wish list verging on holy grail find. Image source.}



Having bulked up the number of staples in my wardrobe, and in some areas not lacking much in terms of variations or even wish list items, this year I'm predicting that the focus of my clothes shopping will be on certain variation staples, some wish list items, and perhaps even a holy grail piece or two (a girl can always dream!).

Beyond that though, I've already begun to somewhat shift how I spend some of my clothes budget. No longer (when it comes to most types of garments) do I feel that sense of incompleteness and a desire to keep upping the tally. I have numerous skirts, sweaters, tops, hats, gloves, and dresses, for example, and am not about to risk going naked anytime soon! I'm very grateful for my wardrobe (which, while not huge, has been well curated and is full of the kinds of pieces that serve me best for the life I'm living these days) and don't usually buy clothes just for the sake of it or out of habit.

Instead I like to review what I own already every so often and see what's missing, what needs to be replaced, what should be weeded out and sold or passed along to someone else, and what I'd like to find for it in the future. Instead of working (largely) on quantity (of over all garments), this year I want to challenge myself to save up and spend a bit more on investment pieces.

I'm not talking vintage Dior evening gowns here, goodness no, but rather, instead giving myself permission to allocate a bit more (within the scope of my budget) on the garments and accessories that I buy. Many times I've passed up a piece I liked, or even loved, because I knew that the money it cost would probably be better spent on purchasing multiple pieces that I needed.

I don't think, even if I woke up tomorrow and was suddenly a billionaire, that I'd ever be the kind of the person who forgoes a great bargain (on the contrary, I'd be thrilled to have money to go barging shopping with!), but now that I have the piece of mind that comes from having a fairly well rounded wardrobe, I can allow myself to spend a bit more on certain pieces from time-to-time.

Instead, for example, of buying five cute $20 vintage hats over time, I could could purchase one show stopping topper for $100.00. There are also certain staples that cost a bit more (for example, vintage suits) that I still need, but which I've largely refrained from. It's my hope that circumstances will permit me to buy some of those pieces this year, as (again) I'm no longer worried so much about filling in those aforementioned wardrobe gaps.

As we sit here at the beginning of a brand new year, I feel very positive about the direction that my wardrobe will continue to take this year. I'll never stop nabbing a really great bargain on something I need (or just plain love!) when I see it, but at the same time, I'm excited about the prospect of adding more investment pieces, no matter which of the four categories they fall into, to my closet in the coming months and beyond.

What are your wardrobe goals for this year? Are you working on plugging holes? Expanding certain beloved categories, trying to cross items off your wish list, focusing on finding some of those elusive holy grails, or something else entirely?

Whatever your plan, I hope you have an awesome year of vintage clothes shopping all throughout 2013!

New hair for the New Year

Early last January I wrote a post detailing four fun goals that I hoped to accomplish throughout the year, one of which was to do something about my hair. Though I did get a pretty good cut shortly thereafter, that was, at best, a slight improvement over what was already a fairly dismal situation.

You see, as I mentioned in that post and have occasionally touched on elsewhere in on this blog, my hair had problems. Big problems. The main issue, without a doubt, was the fact that it was thinning. This wasn't a recent problem. I first distinctly noticed my hair beginning to thin when I was fourteen and a half, and though I consulted many doctors about it, had a batter of tests done, changed my diet at times to see if that did anything (it didn't), tried taking numerous vitamins and supplements, used (from my late teens onward) only ultra pure, gentle, natural hair products; stopped colouring it (for a while, which didn't help, so I went back to colouring, as darker hues actually helped a bit in terms of hiding the overall thinning), and myriad other things, nothing helped.

Nor could the doctors definitely tell me why my hair was thinning at such a young age (even though I've been tested many times and never - to date - diagnosed with a thyroid condition, I am personally convinced that my thyroid is playing a roll here, as I lost the second half of my eyebrows in my teen years, too, and that is something that is seen almost exclusively in individuals with thyroid issues, and also because numerous relatives, including my mom, on both sides of my family, have serious thyroid problems).

Now, I didn't start out life with ultra thick hair to begin with, but as far as bone-straight locks go, it was a totally acceptable amount of hair until it started thinning. At first, in my teen years, things weren't so bad and I kept a small flame of hope burning that perhaps this problem would stop once I hit adulthood, but as my twenties rolled on, the issue persisted (again, I sought medical help and was never given a definite answer as to what was causing the thinning).

By about age 25 (perhaps even earlier) I made total peace with the fact that I could tell, unless the problem stopped completely, I was destined to one day wear a wig. This point didn't really phase me at all. Many people the world over wear wigs either by necessity or choice, and in some ways the prospect exited me. Still, I did want to hold onto my natural hair for as long as it looked even moderately acceptable.

Now, everyone will likely define "moderately acceptable" a little bit differently, but for me, as 2012 wore on, the moderately acceptable line was crossed. Though I tried very, very hard to hid the thinning (which was worst in the front, crown and sides, but present across my whole scalp) with different hairstyles, a fairly dark hair colour, headbands, hair accessories, and hats (don't get me wrong, I'd wear hats even if I was blessed with the most incredible head of hair ever), the bald (or nearly bald) patches were getting worse.

I began to say that it was just smoke, mirrors and hairspray that were keeping me from revealing to the world how bad the issue was. Though I never (and would never) doctored (Photoshopped, etc) my hair to make it look better in snaps, I did often have to leave photos on the editing room floor, so to speak, because they showed (in my opinion) how bad the issue was. I wasn't ashamed, but I didn't feel that such shots added to the posts I might have included them in.

Throughout much of the last summer and fall, I wore hats and large hair accessories (flower clips, wide headbands, head scarves, etc) to hide the issue, but as fall wore on and it was getting trickier and trickier to make even a sparse faux bang roll or teeny Victory Rolls (let alone hide the especially noticeable thinning spots), I knew that the time had come to say good-bye to my natural hair.

And so I set about to buy a wig. Now, I should mention that I had zero firsthand experience with wigs prior to this year (I'd never even worn a cheap-o Halloween type of wig), though I had begun researching the general topic a couple of years back. I knew that a good quality real hair wig wasn't in my budget at the moment, and so set about to find a synthetic hair wig that I liked and thought would work well for me.

This was not the easiest of tasks, especially since there are no local wig shops here in our town (and I don't know anyone in person who wear a wig), so I had to turn to the web to source wigs from. The first wig I bought was a high end, fairly expensive synthetic one. Though the colour (a blend of warm golden blonds) was gorgeous, I was shocked by how little hair (not length, thickness) it had and how it was almost impossible for me to style without it showing the wig cap (as the wig, in its natural state itself was modern looking that didn't work well for my vintage style unfortunately), so sadly that wig is most likely a write-off (I may try cutting it or, more likely, I'll sell try to sell it).

I supposed - perhaps both naively and optimistically - that most wigs would be akin to Barbie doll hair in the sense that you'd be able to style them in a wide range of ways without the scalp (wig cap) showing through. I've sense learned, the hard way, that such is not the case and that one usually has to buy a custom made "thick" wig if want to get anything even close to this effect (the ability to style it in a wide range of ways without the cap showing through, I mean). Having just such a wig is now my long term goal (ideally a human hair one, but a thick custom heat resistant synthetic wig would probably do the tricky quite well, too), but as that's unlikely to happen anytime soon, I really needed something in the meantime.

In no small part this is because I had, when I got my first wig (the lovely coloured one that didn't pan out) made the choice to shave my head. One morning Tony (who's no stranger to shaving his own head due to hair loss) and I shaved my head completely. It wasn't nervous at all, in fact, I'd say that a zen-like calm filled my soul as the eclectic razor whizzed across my scalp.

I was sick and tired of the handfuls of hair I lost each time I showered, of the years and years of picking dozens (or more) hairs off my clothes every day, and of the continuous task of trying to hide how bad the problem was (wanna know a secret? If, in an outfit photo you saw the front of my hair, you were likely seeing all of it, by this I mean, if I draped hair over my shoulders, there was little to nothing in the back, and vice versa). It was time, it felt right, and even things have been a bit tricky on the wig front, I haven't regretted this move for a split second.

Though I will always hold out the hope that perhaps one day something could be done to help stop and, better yet, perhaps even revert some of my hair loss, as such solutions have been anything but forthcoming, for now I'm going to continue to keep shaving my head and wearing a wig.

Ok, so the first wig didn't pan out. This only really bugged me because of what I paid for it, but chalk that up to a learning experience. Then I set about looking for a wig that looked (or would be easy to style) vintage (aka, like a 1940s or 50s hairstyle).

Well let me tell you, my sweet dears, there are not many of them out there, especially if you're trying to avoid the obvious costume styles (such as Marilyn Monroe and Lucile Ball costume wigs). I scoured the web, looked at dozens of wig websites around the world, and in terms of pre-styled synthetic wigs that were within my budget, the best option I found was one called Pin Up by the brand Jon Renau.




{My new wig, Pin up by Jon Renau, pictured here in, I believe, a colour called Chocolate Soufflé. I'll be sporting Cherry Cobbler myself. Image source.}



This brand makes a wide range of realistic and more costume oriented wigs, however unlike their realistic (aka, modern style) wigs, Pin Up was not offered in many non-costumey colours. Of the more realistic hair hues there was platinum blond, very dark brown, and a warm auburn called Cherry Cobbler, the latter of which I opted for.

Cherry Cobbler (isn't that name adorable?) must be one of the best sellers in this wig, because it was sold out on several sites, but I was able to find it from a website called Max Wigs. The wig took its sweet time to arrive (though the site charged me more than enough to send the wig via USPS Priority Mail, it was sent through First Class, and took a little over three weeks to arrive to my house here in B.C.), and I was growing a touch anxious because there I was with a shaved wig, a wig that didn't really work for (issues above aside, it turned out to be something of an unflattering wig for my face shape - though could do in a pinch), and no idea exactly when "Pin Up" was arriving (First Class mail to Canada doesn't include a true tracking number, just a customs number).

Alas though, after many restless days, my wig arrived and I loved it. Is it perfect? No, that would likely be far to much to ask from a synthetic wig in that price range, but it's a heck of a lot better than my other wig which was more than five times the price. The bangs weren't cut that straight and I think they fall a little to low on my forehead, so after wearing it for a while I cut them (the first three outfit posts you see of me in this wig have the ever-so-slightly longer bangs, after that, they're a touch shorter and more to my liking). The curl isn't perfectly even (or tight) on both sides and I can already see it dropping a tad, the more I wear it, but over all I quite like this wig. (Perhaps my greatest qualm, so to speak, with it is that I worry it makes my face look rounder in a way that might make me look heavier than I really am - but I'll let you guys decide if such is the case or if it's just my imagination.)

The colour is great, it's comfier (by a long shot!) than the first wig I bought, and it looks relatively vintage-ish (it’s quite similar to Bettie Page’s iconic hairstyle). I can't fashion it in a million ways, but I can pull the sides back, do small rolls, tuck it into a snood, and am continuing to experiment with other styles.

This wig isn't meant to last me forever by any means, and it certainly won't (I'll be impressed if it holds its curl and looks presentable until spring arrives), but it's a good compromise right now I think, as I begin to slowly save up for a thick, very good quality custom wig. In the interim, I'll most likely purchase other inexpensive wigs, especially if they have a vintage hairstyle vibe to them, but Pin Up is my "hair" for the moment.

Though I've certainly learned more about wigs in the past couple of months than I ever have before, I'm by no means a wig expert (perhaps one day), and I hope that you'll enjoy learning alongside me in the months and years to come, as I continue to broaden my knowledge on the topic, try other wigs, and live life without my natural hair.

I realize that this was a bit of a long post, but I really wanted to delve into the subject of my hair loss and recent experience with wigs before unveiling photos of me sporting my Jon Renau Pin Up. I have an outfit post slatted for next Tuesdays (the 8th), and will unveil my new hair there - so be sure to tuned for that!

These past couple of months have been interesting ones on the hair front for sure, but like any big change, there's almost always going to be ups and downs, curve balls, mistakes, and successes. I'm truly happy that I made the decision to start wearing a wig, because it has relieved me of the constant problems and stresses associated with half a lifetime of continual (albeit gradual) hair loss.

If you happen to know of any good sources for vintage (1940s or 50s styled) wigs and/or have have any great wig tips/personal stories/etc that you'd like to share with me, I would be truly grateful for your knowledge and suggestions.

Thank you very much for letting me share this experience with all of you. Here's to starting of the New Year with brand new hair and all the fun and excitement that such a change entails!

The importance of having a blogging schedule

Welcome to 2013, everyone! I'm buzzing with excitement over the vast stretch of time that is the next dozen months, and am thoroughly ecstatic to kick off another bright, shiny new year with all of you.

{Image source}

As I've touched on in some of my recent posts, last year was one of the best I've had in a very long time, and certainly one of the key factors that helped contribute to that is the fact that I really hit upon a blogging schedule that works well. From the very first days (wayyyy back in April 2009) of this site's life, I've tried to have some kind of blogging schedule in place, but it took a while to hammer out the kinks, so to speak, and really hit on a pace, pattern, and technique that work excellently for me.

Before I go any further on this topic, I feel I should preface it in a sense by mentioning that my current blogging schedule only really works for me if my health stays about (or, unlikely as it may be, improves somewhat) where it is now, and where it was last year.

I know from particularly challenging years (medically speaking), such as 2010 and parts of 2011, that all it takes is an especially rough patch, an unexpected hospital trip, emergency surgery, or other major loophole to throw a substantial wrench into this system. However, for the sake of simplicity - and with only the most optimistic of thoughts in mind - I think it's best if I tackle this subject from the standpoint of how most of last year played out, and how I hope this year - and beyond - will as well.

Over the years I've often seen bloggers, be they from the vintage crowd or otherwise, lament about the fact that they sometimes found blogging to be overwhelming and/or that they were at a loss as to what to write about. Such feeling and thoughts are completely natural, and I think that even the most seasoned blogging pro, probably runs into them every now and then. However, as there are things you can do to keep your blogging mojo going all year long, so too are steps that you can take to help combat not knowing when to post or what to write about.

{Image source}

By and large, I'm a very organized, methodical person. Sure, I can fly by the seat of my pants or let the wind take me where it may sometimes, but when push comes to shove, I usually like to know when, where, and how that pushing and shoving is going to take place! I not only like, but really feel as though I need, a sense of order and structure in almost every area of my life, and have worked diligently to create just that over the years.

My take on blogging is no different, especially since the very unpredictable nature of my health means that I never know for sure just how I'll be feeling from one day to the next. In order to help keep churning out new posts here, I've developed an eight part blogging schedule that I stick to as rigorously as possible.


1.) At least one month in advance of an upcoming month, I sit down with a calendar and create a document with a list of dates that I want to ideally post on. I generally post once every other day, as this is a pace that, over all, works well for me, my health, and my day-to-day schedule. So, for example, in a thirty day month, I might plan to post on the 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, 11th, 13th, 15th, 17th, 19th, 21st, 23rd, 25th, 27th, and 29th of that month. Though that may seem like a lot, in reality, we're only talking about (in this example) fifteen posts.

2.) Once I've established the days that I hope to post on, I look to see what important events, holidays and/or anniversaries are coming up in that month. I love blogging with the seasons and holidays, so if there's an celebration that month, I'd likely devote one or more posts to said event or holiday. For example, if (Canadian) Thanksgiving fell on the 9th, I might do a "Happy Thanksgiving" type post that day, with one or two other posts relating to Thanksgiving in the days leading up to it.

3.) Having established the days I want to post on and the noteworthy celebrations in the near future, I assign topics that I plan to write about to all of the days that I've selected. There are a few frequently occurring posts here that I like to include on a regular basis (such as Saturday Snapshots and Flickr Favourites, as well as vintage recipe posts), so I then schedule those in throughout the month. I also aim to post two or more vintage outfit posts per month, so up those go on the schedule next (please note that at this point in time, I'm not writing the actual posts themselves yet, I'm just planning them out). If I have an upcoming giveaway in the works, now may also be the time when I'd pencil that in, too. Once those things are in place, I usually have between eight and eleven posts left in a given month in which to write about anything my heart desires.

4.) Often times I have tons of post ideas swirling around in my head and in my inspiration files, as well as topics that I may have said (in previous posts) that I was going to write about. Some of these get added to the schedule next. Sometimes these things alone will cover the remaining topics for a given month, but other times, I may need to put on my thinking cap and come up with some cool new ideas right then and there. Knock wood, I rarely have a problem in that regard (actually, there's usually far more things I want to write about in a given month than there are days in which to cover them!), but there are certainly times when I turn to outside sources such as the blogging community, history books, my day-to-day life, my family, Flickr, Pinterst, and the web as a whole for inspiration and ideas for my posts.

5.) Plotted and planned as I like life to often be, it is fun to have a little mystery, too, so sometimes I leave one to three dates empty (as in I haven't assigned post topics to them yet), to write posts for in the moment, especially if I suspect that something noteworthy may be happening around those days and I want to record and share about it with all of you asap.

6.) For reasons already touched on in this post (chiefly my health), I find that it's important to have at least a few posts already written and scheduled to go live in advance of their respective posting dates, so the next thing I do (over the course of numerous days) is to write several of the posts for an upcoming month. At the same time, I'll check on my supply of "emergency posts", those posts that every blogger should have in the wings for times when, for whatever reason, life throws you a curve ball and you may not be able to sit down and write anything new for a few days or longer. If it's dropped too low for my liking (having any fewer than five reserve posts at any given time makes me antsy), I'll try to set aside time to write some new reserve posts, too.

7.) Once some of the posts for an upcoming month have been written and scheduled, I'll usually let the rest happen organically throughout the month. I don't always have the photos for two to four wardrobe posts on hand at the start of the month, so in such cases, I'll create some of my vintage outfit posts as the month progresses and new images have been captured for them. As some posts take a lot longer to pen (and/or may require more advance research), I'll often focus on writing those ones first, so that if one (or more) of those pesky curve balls comes my way, I don't have to worry about writing a post that takes six hours on a day when I'm up to my eyeballs in stress or busyness. On those kinds of days, if I'm able to get in any writing, it's often best to have fun, easy posts to cover, such as vintage recipes or perhaps an edition of Flickr Favourites.

8.) At some point, usually after the half way mark, during the month, I start the process all over again for the next month, so that most anytime, I have about four to six weeks (or occasionally more) of planned posts all lined up, with anywhere from one to four weeks of posts (or most of the posts, I should say, for that period) already written and ready to go live. I do enjoy blogging in the moment, as mentioned, so I pretty much never write all of the posts for a given month completely in advance. Most however, will be ready to go - or I'll know what I'm going to write about as the month unfolds - when the first of the month arrives.

{Some months I like to keep my blogging schedule in a Word documents, others I use a good old-fashioned pen and paper, in which case a free printable vintage inspired calendar page like this really comes in handy. Image source.}



That's it, folks. Eight steps or points might seem like a fair amount, but once you've got a month or two of this kind of approach under your belt, it really becomes second nature. I find my mind often works better when I'm able to blog at my own pace, without worrying about not having any future posts lined up. In fact, and this is certainly a helpful boon of this system, I often find that the more posts I have scheduled and written in advance, the easier it is to come up with new ideas for future posts down the line. It's a sort of productivity spawns creativity spawns more productivity circle, that I hope I'm able to keep going for as long as I'm a blogger (and I certainly hope that's for a very long time indeed!).

There are a lot very good reasons why you should implement a blogging schedule, whether it's a carbon copy of this one, or another style that works for you and your life. You may have limited time in which to write, have a busy job or school schedule, need to run a household and manage a family, be planning a wedding or preparing for a new baby's arrival, travel a lot, have chronic health problems, or just find not knowing what to blog about, and when you're going to do, it so off-putting that it discourages you from blogging on a regular basis or at all.

One of the most important aspects, I believe, to successful blogging is for it to not feel like a chore, burden, or full-time job, especially if you blog for fun, not as a means of earning your living (however, if such is the case and blogging is your day job, you'd want to approach it appropriately – and would, more so perhaps than ever, need a good blogging schedule). By implementing a blogging schedule that works for you, you're better able to help alleviate some of the potential risk of this kind of stress cropping up.

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You presumably blog because you enjoy writing, what to share one or more of your passions with the world, and enjoy the act of creating new content for your website. The less things there are to detract from this, the better - and more productive - of a blogger you stand to be.

Case in point of coming up with topics to write about well in advance, I first started thinking about this very post last October, but instead of writing it in the moment, I felt that it would be of more benefit to my readers if I held off until the beginning of January, when not only a new month, but an entirely new year was just beginning. (And for those who are curious, I wrote this post last night.)

If you've wanted to, but haven't yet done or, or have tried, but have not stumbled upon a system that really clicked for you yet, now is the time to start following a blogging schedule. You can create whatever plan works well for you - the point is not so much the system you use - but the fact that you have one in place and that you try to maintain it as best as possible.

There will always be things that throw you off course, times when you need a blogcation (a short break from blogging), or when you simply don't feel like writing, but those periods will seem a great deal more manageable when you know that you've ideas to write about when you return, and (hopefully) some posts already lined up (or in your "emergency file") for the days when you're definitely not going to be producing new content.

Blogging can, and most often should be, a joy. It's a creative process, a learning experience, and a way to share your voice, thoughts, and soul with the world, and for me - as for many people - having a posting schedule in place can truly help make the act of blogging, and being a blog, worlds more pleasant, stress free, and fun.

So as we embark on all that the next twelve months hold in store for us, I hope that this year, complete with its blogging schedule, will be every bit as wonderful - if not even better - than the last for me, as well as for all of you and your awesome sites. Here's to the prospects, promises, and potential of 2013!