Change of Pace: Outfits of the Week

Another blog I follow and love is Clarabelle. This girl is awesome and funny and she had Ah-Mah-Zing fashion sense and always take pictures in the CUTEST real people clothes. Plus, she always talks about stuff other than fashion, like how to be a good blogger--she has GREAT tips, y'all. And a while back she posted about how sometimes keeping up with cute outfit posts is stressful. To HER. Which made me think...I need to chillax about this. I mean, someone from real life asked me about the outfit posts and why I would do it for a while and then stop forever and a day and it kind of made me freak out and feel like the world's crappiest blogger. Because let's be serious--most people, even if they have a job where they have to look acceptable five days a week, are gonna have a day where they're like, "Oh, it's raining like a monsoon and a hurricane had a baby and the product was this storm and I can't possibly do anything more exciting that black pants and a white shirt today." Or if you're me, a day like that means, "I'm wearing yoga pants. If you're lucky I'll wear something fancier than an old sorority t-shirt. But don't hold your breath." And there are days that there's just SO much happening that I need to know that whatever I put on at 7 that morning is gonna work for me by the time I get to a dance rehearsal at 7 that night...so, you know, yoga pants. (To be fair to the pants, they're nice, Lulu Lemon yoga pants.)

I kind of was taking this attitude about blogging--especially when it came to the outfit posts--that if I did a post on Monday and then missed Tuesday, well, then the whole week was shot to hell and I had to wait and start over on the NEXT Monday. This is similar to the idea that I've always held about being on a diet--if you mess that sucker up in the middle of the week, then you should just eat what you want for the rest of the week and start over the next Monday. But then I had this thought...if you're going to blog about your life, whatever part of your life that might be, you don't have anything to blog about if you aren't doing anything except getting ready to blog. So if I'm taking an extra hour to get ready to take a picture--not that it would always take THAT long--and I'm only doing it to take the picture, well, that's a lot of pressure on me and it's wasting time that on that day, I just don't have. Thus, my conclusion is this: I'm going to take pictures on the days that I'm lookin' good (read that as "as good as possible under the circumstances"). And I'm not gonna stress that I take the pictures in a mirror with my phone and they don't look as awesome as other blogs, but if I have time, I'll experiment with doing it other ways--like with my real camera and tripod and timer. And if I have one picture at the end of the week that's cool and if I have six pictures at the end of the week--sometimes I do things on the weekends--that's cool, too. It is what it is, y'all. Which has kind of become my new life philosophy. About everything. So why not about blogging and what I wear, too?

Hence, this is the inaugural "Outfits of the Week." I only had two last week. And let's repeat to ourselves, "That's okay." I actually had a third day where I looked super-cute but the aforementioned hurricane-monsoon hybrid baby storm happened and I got absolutely SOAKED so that turned out to be a super-cute outfit, if one is into drowned rats.

First picture: Dress and sweater (Target); Shoes (Unisa from DSW-old); Necklace (Forever 21-old)
Second picture: Sweater (Target); Shirt (Elizabeth McKay-older); Jeans (AG from Anthropologie);Belt (Anthropologie-old); Shoes (same as above)

I don't know what's gotten into me this summer. I seem to be obsessed with orange/coral and what's more, with wearing it with navy. Which seems reasonable. Except that is some straight up Auburn colors. And I am dyed in the wool Alabama. It's just that the colors look so pretty together that I can't stop myself. I'll stop myself once football season rolls around, okay? If I had enough of these little knit dresses with a cardigan? Would wear that shit every single day. The problem is that cute little knit dresses shrink and they tend to shrink UP and I am completely paranoid about things being too short. And in my definition (at least at my age) "too short" is "anything where you can see more than the three inches above my knees." Which is why I'm wearing cuffed jeans and not shorts (like a normal human in summer) in the second picture. I'm so worried about my glaringly-white, vaguely-chunky legs. I have a good friend who (correctly) called me on my tendency to wear things that cover me completely and are sometimes too big. I can't deny it. I wear cardigans because I'm afraid my upper arms are fat. I won't show my legs. I don't like anything to be tight. I'm a mess, y'all. Plain and simple.

So, I guess we'll try it this way? See how it goes? I already have one in the bag this week so maybe this is gonna fly!