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!

Outfit of the Day--Monday May 16, 2013

So the percentage of my existence where I'm cold hovers somewhere around three-quarters of my life. I'm always cold. Al. ways. I spend 12 months a year watching television under a throw. It's a heated throw, although I don't always plug it in a crank it up--that's usually only about five months out of the year. Which is why I can't trust myself to judge temperatures outside. I mean, I'll be out in jeans and a sweater when other (I would assume normal) people are in shorts and sleeveless shirts.

Which is why I wasn't sure about yesterday's temperature situation. I'm always out with Charlie at 7 or a bit before and then I was in and out of the house all day until the last time I took him out at about 10 last night. And I kept thinking, "It's getting colder." Only, like I said, I CANNOT be trusted, so it's entirely possible that the temperature was only experiencing a normal day's fluctuation and I'm just a big freak of nature. Until I got up this morning and realized that it really WAS colder. To the tune of 45 degrees when I left the house for the first time at about 8 and saw the outdoor temperature when I cranked the car. It's May. It's the MIDDLE of May. And I saw people who weren't me out in quilted jackets this afternoon.

This is a pain in my ass. For one thing, it makes me feel a general sort of malaise. But mostly because it's hard to dress appropriately. It's not that I don't have clothes that are appropriately warm. I do. I have lots of them. But it FINALLY has started to feel like something approaching actual spring around here and we devolve into a string of days where the HIGH is something like 61. That's just wrong. I have a whole rack of Lilly Pulitzer that's sitting there waiting to be worn. And it's starting to feel neglected and sad. Instead, I wore this (because it kinda, sorta made me feel like spring):



Shirt and Skirt: Target (this spring); Sweater: Ralph Lauren outlet (old, but they always have similar); Necklace: Lord & Taylor; Boots: DSW (really old); Bag: Vineyard Vines (old, but again--they are a VV staple).

That Vineyard Vines tote? Y'all it's the greatest thing I've ever seen, heard or read about. It's goes with EVERYTHING. No really. It does. If it's an outfit that absolutely cannot be worn with my Frye boots and that tote. Well, then I don't want to KNOW that outfit.

In My Closet--February 14, 2013

Dress: Lilly Pulitzer (older)
Tights: Spanx
Shoes: MIA (from DSW)(older)

First of all, please excuse the pile of hanging clothes stacked behind me. That is every shirt I own that's not a t-shirt. It was all part of the Great Closet Reorganization of 2013. Fear not...I fit everything back in there. Now, that's not to say it's not packed so tight that you pull out the two items on either side of what you're aiming to pull. But for now, it's gonna have to do. That said, I had this "Trying to Go to Sleep" epiphany last night about something that MIGHT work to alleviate part of the problem. It would involve a trip to Goodwill/Red, White and Blue, some Pinterest-y craftiness and a complete Soviet-era Re-Education as to what's allowed to be folded and what simply MUST be on hangers. I'm actually kind of excited about it to tell you the truth.

Anyway, yesterday, I mentioned that I had lost something. Other than my mind and my patience. Back in the late spring, there were still a few things in my closet that were winter-y. I guess they would be termed "transitional pieces". All the rest of my winter stuff--and I mean the REAL winter stuff like cords and wools--had long since been packed into Rubbermaid tubs with cedar blocks and stored away. But these things, I had left on the off-chance that the sometimes persnickety New Jersey weather took a turn. Only last spring, it never really did and so when it became clear that summer was really gonna happen, I took the clothes and put them, to the best of my memory, in a Kate Spade shopping bag, which I stuck in the corner of my room. The idea was that at some point, I would go into the attic for something else and at that point I could take the bag up and put it in the Rubbermaids with the rest of my stuff. Only...I don't remember doing that. And now I can't find the bag. I can't even remember what all is IN the bag, although I know off the top of my head three pieces of clothing that I cannot find anywhere. I know they aren't things I would have loaned to friends. I know they aren't things I would have sent to a better home. I wouldn't have even sent them away on accident, at least not in the Kate Spade bag, because that thing was HUGE and pretty sturdy, so I would have swapped it into a different bag. This is driving me BONKERS. I have looked everywhere in the house I can even begin to imagine I would have put it. Admittedly, the cold has made me reluctant to do more than a cursory search of the attic or the under-the-deck storage room, and if it's gotten lost or misplaced or picked up and thrown out because someone thought it was in the discard pile? Well, that's my fault and I can live with it. But LORD it is making me NUTS. Okay...it's making me nuttier.

So, when I post the pictures of myself, they are a day behind. What I mean is that I take a picture every day, but I don't USE that picture until the next day. What I'm really hoping is that I can post on Monday through Friday, but I'm ALSO hoping that I can grab a picture or two on the weekends (like this weekend? I'm going to NYC for brunch with one of my best friends so I'm going to need to look awesome.). That way, if I have a day where I'm cleaning closets and never leaving the house, I don't have to get dressed beyond yoga pants. Well...yoga pants and a shirt.

Here's what I like about what I'm wearing in the picture. Obviously, I like the Spanx tights. If you've never had a pair, they are a revelation. They're not as tight as actual Spanx, but the are definitely tighter than these amazing pantyhose my friend, Carrie, discovered in college that were super sheer in the leg but tighter than any control top known to man in the top and were known forever in the sorority house lore as "Suck 'Em In Pantyhose". They take away any number of bumps and lumps. The dress is an oddity in that of all the Lilly Pulitzer I own, it's one of exactly two Lilly pieces I own that's not ferociously summer season. The other is a cord skirt that's so old that it's got the 1990s tag with the Lilly logo in black. We have Lilly Pulitzer Signature store right in Palmer Square in Princeton. It's called Palm Place and it's absolutely lovely, as are the couple who own it. They have an incredible sale in August and pretty good ones at other times of the year. I got this dress--you can't see in the picture, but the pink part is pink high heels--right before Christmas before last when I was checking the sale rack to see if there was a dress for my niece's gift and ended up wearing it to my family Christmas party. It was actually in the pile of stuff to go in the Lost Kate Spade Shopping Bag when I decided to pull it out to wear over the summer and I ended up wearing it a couple of times, with a pair of sandals on days when the temperature dipped down into the 70s. But the real find is those shoes. I got them at DSW over a year ago to wear with one specific outfit and I have ended up wearing them over and over and over with EVERYTHING. It took me a while to get the hang of the wedge-heeled booties but once I figured out that it was okay to wear them with something other than jeans, they've become my shoe of choice. I got another pair of MIA wedge booties this fall in brown and I've worn the hell outta them, too.

In other news...I tried a different approach to the whole picture thing today for the picture you will see tomorrow. Part of that was out of necessity--everything I did today took longer than it should have in a sane world so by the time I stopped long enough to do it, it was so dark that I got NOTHING from my window (the easiest way to explain this is that my window looks, not outside, but into a small sunroom that's an addition to the house.) and partly because I wanted to see if this might be a better approach. And yes, this was one of the more exciting parts of my Valentine's Day. But for those of you who had awesome Valentine-y stuff going on--I hope it was great. And if you're STILL having awesome stuff going on--I hope it's STILL great. Happy Valentine's (or Single Person Awareness) Day!