End of the year. And with it, time to recap and make some sort of personal balance of 2016. As always, it's been a year full of nice moments and bad times, it is what it is. As always, I try to be conscious of making too much resolutions for the coming year, but there's always room for improvement and there will always be things to work on.

2016 is been a year full of unexpected things, unexpected friendships, moments and experiences. It's been a year full of unexpected bonds and teamwork, of exciting things and mostly a year plenty of illusion for me: about new projects, about my career, about what's to come next. It's been the year I experienced firsthand how it really feels to work in an architecture studio, dealing with crazy deadlines, huge papers and the bosses. It's been also the year when I've started discovering my true self, how many stuff I'm capable of handling, where's my limit and still, I'm trying to figure out if I can reach further. It's been also the year I've said goodbye to those whom I felt didn't contribute to my life anymore, for many reasons. Sometimes, it's just better to let go.

Maybe it hasn't been a year plenty of blog posts, but I think I've taken enough fresh air out of the blogosphere and I've been looking around to know how to focus better on this task, how to communicate better, or how to boost my ideas to write more about the things you care the most. Because as I'm always saying, my task here is to inspire and to be inspired, and all of you are a big part into this. After 2016 I feel more capable of taking Something Fashion into the next level, getting the most out of fashion, streetstyle, emerging designers, vintage and so on by twisting everything, and giving it a new point of view.

What's to come, then, for 2017? I'm currently considering tons of options, tons of new projects and partnerships. Hopefully, there will be more blog posts to come. I'm also considering giving the whole "blogging specialization" thing a chance. However, as there are lots of things I've been mixing around here these almost 7 years, I don't know if that will work out. I'm also considering if staying local as I've been since the very beginning, or in the other hand, being more internationally focused when writing about fashion events or news. I don't know. Right now, I'm waiting for everything to settle down a bit: for Christmas holidays to end, for my exam period to end as well, for that time I have enough savings to invest on blog improvements... Everything is a bit blurry now, but as always, it will eventually work out!

I can't believe it's almost Christmas and we're almost done with our quarterly subjects, which include (as always) tons of work deliveries and presentations for December 21st-22nd. After that, I'll be mostly at home for the coming exam period and working on some nice architecture contests we've been looking after. But, as Christmas always is, the season includes uncountable relative meetings, dinners, casual meet-ups with old friends around cups of tea and biscuits and so on. That means having a bunch of easy and quick outfit fixes for every event the holidays might come up with.

A nice idea is to take out of your closet all your mid length, mid sleeve dresses in warm tones or with subtle details and pair them with your best opaque, thick tights or leggings and medium heels. Then, get wrapped in your warmest scarf and coat and you're done to rock this Christmas! I did so in this grey, A-line dress from Lightinthebox which arrived just at the perfect time to assemble my Christmas outfits for casual events or evenings strolling through the streets of Valencia. This dress is the perfect match for the holidays, and for less than 30$, which is a real deal!

It's made of an elastic grey cotton, it ends a little bit above the knee, has a side zipper, is cut at the waist with a ribbon to adjust to your back and a lovely V-neck. It runs true to size, but I must say I was a bit scared of if I could wear it successfully or not as I ordered an XL as these kind of dresses usually run pretty small. But, if you follow the size charts at the Lightinthebox site as I did, I'm pretty sure you won't face any problem. As you can see, I succeeded at the sizing and it fits nicely.

The quality of the dress is also great. It has no lining, but I don't think there's need of it, as the grey fabric is thick enough and nothing can be shown through it. All the hems and final touches have been sewn carefully, as no thread has gone rogue in the way of wearing the dress. As said: a real deal to wear this coming Christmas season, and a dress you'll get tons of compliments with!

The whole shipping process was also very easy and quick. The dress came in about 2 weeks since I ordered it, and arrived to Valencia during one of the stormiest weeks I've ever lived. Thankfully, we've been having an exceptional warm weather for the past two or three days, which allowed me to wear the dress for a family lunch and to an event at the Architecture School without even carrying my coat with me. Not even a light blazer. Seriously. Valencian weather is the craziest thing.

Back to 2011. It's been a long way since that night in Boston when I decided to take up and give a chance to this whole universe of blogging and ultimately, give fashion blogging a go. I can't believe it's been more than 5 years since that blurry selfie from my old, tiny laptop and those clumsy words written in such amateur, poor English. I don't want to get too emotional, though. Today's post is about how stepping out of your comfort zone and starting something you have little, or even no idea of can change your life and help you think out of the box. This post is also about self-confidence and how trusting your gut can help you deal with anything you make up in your mind. In my case, I started a fashion blog and fixed "keeping it no matter what" as a goal.

10 ways of how fashion blogging can change someone's' life can be a little too brief, but in my case, and for those of you who are thinking about starting your own blog or taking the big step into entrepreneurship are enough as a start. Let's get down to business, then!

#1 Obvious improvement in writing and fluency on the use of a foreign language (English)

As you might know, my motherly language is Spanish. I was born and raised in Spain and didn't start learning English until the age of 8-9 years old (or more than that). English seemed like the first and obvious communication vehicle for me when starting this blog, as it was the language I was trying to improve and in which I thought I could reach the most people possible. So, something that has absolutely changed since I started blogging is the way I communicate in this language which I think I've made my own little by little.

#3 Self-confidence improvement

Thanks to fashion blogging, I've learned some little hints of the industry of fashion, and become aware of things like textile waste, fashion poverty, and production chains, among others. Being a fashion blogger does not only mean posing in front of a camera for me. Being a fashion blogger for me means knowing every step of the process of the things you wear and which ultimately, will help you assemble the outfits for you to look the way you want. Thanks to fashion blogging, words like recycling, design and manufacturing process, or fashion consciousness among others have been burnt into my brain forever.

Architecture is a tough, competitive field on which nowadays is very difficult to get your foot in. Thanks to fashion and the blogging world, I've discovered a new passion with so many different paths (some of them even related to architecture) that I can make research on and dedicate my life to in case architecture doesn't work. Not only I have a PLAN B, but fashion blogging has allowed me to discover fashion journalism, copywriting, marketing or even visual merchandising for me to have more chances in the nearer future.

Last, but not least, I've been able to test my abilities to collaborate in every way I've been capable of. My journey through fashion blogging has lead me to discover amazing projects related to design, collaborative fashion, startups and fashion entrepreneurs which eventually have lead me to boost my ideas in a way you couldn't ever imagine. Fashion is collaboration, and so means blogging as well.

It's been a while! You can't even imagine how much I miss writing on a daily basis and sharing with you fashion ideas and theories running through my mind. Days off for shooting are not an option, and since I'm looking forward to the (huge) English exam on the 3rd December, and I've been seriously thinking about returning to the fencing piste this coming Spring, everything requires some planning and schedule-knitting for everything to work out. It's exciting, though it requires a lot of energy and long days to handle everything.

Being always on-the-go, running up and down has meant changing my daily style and outfits without even realising it. Since I entered College, since I'm constantly up to what's new regarding design and materials I've subtly built a simple, minimal style which has evolved through the years. Feeling comfortable on what you wear and it allowing you to do your job or daily activities successfully is something I really appreciate. Layering, neat shapes and monochromatic are things currently on my wardrobe for this season. And I can tell you they're here to stay. That, paired up with the right makeup and hairstyle makes everything easier (although I'm thinking about chopping my messy curls off again). I think this Bimba & Lola blue dress with heart-shaped neck is one of those perfect options when you're running late.

(OK. I just realized I'm touching my hair on every picture of this post. Not made on purpose. I promise. It looks so weird).

Now that Summer seems to be officially over (warm weather and daylight usually stays for a while in Valencia), I hope I can keep those simple outfit vibes through cold mornings stepping out of home for classes and even applying them to one-step-at-a-time jogging evenings, which I recently enrolled. I'm currently looking for comfortable but chic sporty clothing ideas I can layer up or down depending on the routine or weather. Still figuring it all out and still getting used to the sporty routine twice a week, but hopefully I'll be fit enough for the Spring fencing tournament right on the time!

#AirMomentUPV. Some say it's the journey and not the destination what matters the most. Well, when it comes to architecture and design of anything I would absolutely say that! Last Saturday we had the chance to have the girls from Conjuntos Empáticos (which is an investigation group about architecture, art and pedagogy which gathers up some cool people mostly from Madrid) as guests at Valencia Architecture School to teach us about inflatable and pneumatic architecture, which we could make ourselves with their priceless help.

We spent the whole day at the School, a group of nearly 30 Architecture students working non-stop patterning in huge plastic rolls, cutting edges, "sewing" pieces with our flat irons and basically, invading the whole School's hall to build a huge inflatable, plastic "mushroom" in which we can get inside!

It feels amazing to see the process, from the first excitement and don't-know-exactly-what-I'm-doing moments to the peak of the day when you see it all black and you're sure you won't achieve the goal, to the final countdown in which you realize you're part of the the team, everyone's working super hard to get the work done and you'll achieve it. It makes me remember last year's ETSA·TOPIA festival, which was all about team-work with people you might not even know at all, but whom you end bonding and sharing those crazy, race-against-time moments. I find these kind of experiences super important for anyone in any professional field: it develops teamwork, empathy, social and crisis-solving skills which are essential in any job, but specially in architecture. You are supposed to be against this kind of experiences every single day in your future, so better be prepared!

So, that's the main reason why I'm bringing you these pictures today: mostly to see the process behind that very cool thing we built. Those are the pictures which hide our conversations while "sewing" plastic, our desperation moments because we couldn't find any sense to the patterns and seams (but we figured it all by the end of the afternoon) and the final result. At the end, fashion is a series of processes and creative solutions to some needs and problems which are supposed to be solved, too. And which are supposed to be of good use: in this case, we will use the #AirMomentUPV pavilion to meet and have a cozy place to relax between classes and seminaries at the Architecture School. How cool is that?