A Rhinestone Dragonfly

Now that I've spent all night staring at all the "Best Dressed" and "Worst Dressed" lists of the 2012 Red Carpet Night at the Oscars, I thought that I'd show you how this girl glams it up ...

 

shirt — thrifted

skirt — thrifted

boots — Dansko (Factory Outlet) 

dragonfly pin — (thrifted)

 

I kept it comfortable and casual with an eggplant-colored above-the-knee skirt, and an on-the-both shoulders creamy white top. Note that the knit material of the skirt was selected to complement and facilitate the morning festivities, which featured an encore performance of guardrail climbing. I added a sterling silver chain, a purple-and-blue rhinestone-studded dragonfly brooch, and then completed the look with a pair of sunglasses, which enabled me to travel incognito. Otherwise, I just get swarmed by people who think that they might get their picture in the newspaper on my blog.

Seriously speaking now, one of my favorite gowns from last night's Oscars was this one worn by Missi Pyle.

Photos by A.M.P.A.S. (see here)

Why was this one a favorite? Because this blue dress is actually a "green" sustainable dress that was designed specifically for a red carpet event! It has repurposed zippers and the lining is out of recycled polyester. The silk material of the dress was spun from cruelty-free Ahimsa or “peace” silk — named because the silk is obtained from the cocoons without killing the silkworms inside. And that beautiful seafoam color? The dye came from an environmentally friendly natural mineral. Read more about the dress here and the contest that sponsored its design here.

I'm not sure why I like these next two pictures with my mouth hanging open like this, but I do.I must have thought something was pretty funny.

To answer all your questions from my last post about what did I do after ripping my skirt? My first thought was that I was going to have to wear my coat all day. (That was NOT going to work, since I'm in the throes of hot flashes these days — I apologize if that is TMI. It's not like it's a secret, because the whole world can tell when I have one because I light up like a Christmas tree, and the sweat just pours off of me.) My second thought was that I was going to have to use my stapler, and staple it together in the ladies room. The thought that actually worked, however, was safety pins. They were my very good friend that day. I forget why I had some with me (I use them fairly frequently .... ), but I did manage to get by. It also helped that the rip's bark was worse than its bite (the rip sounded so horrible that I thought it had to be ripped right up to my waist).

Linking up to Patti at Not Dead Yet Style for Visible Monday because I was just the right amount of visible in this skirt (meaning my entire backside wasn't visible).

Flaunting Assets

The days that I commute to my office by mass transit, I have to walk the final 2 miles (give or take a few hundred yards) to get to my office. It's not a bad walk, and it's good exercise, so I usually don't mind.* This particular outfit, however, posed a special challenge on the walk. 

*I'm still amazed that I can go almost the entire way from Newark, Delaware, to Herndon, Virgina, by mass transit!

shirt — Cotton Zone (thrifted)

skirt — Forever 21 (Forever 21)

boots — Dansko (Dansko outlet)

Having to deal with the “challenge” I would face on my walk crossed my mind when I was getting dressed, but obviously I didn’t think long enough or hard enough, because I wore the outfit anyway (maybe I was thinking it would give me material for a blog post LOL). Anyway, I probably just got all caught up in how it looked, and threw caution to the wind. You know how it is when you feel good … I got off the bus, and I was smiling and grinning, and generally thought that I was "working it." Honestly? That should have given me the head's up right there that something was going to happen (like what happened here for example).

It looks like two different shirts in these pictures, doesn't it? 

Now I don't mind hoofing it when I have to, but I'm not really a fan of walking for the point of walking … (One day, a car pulled up and asked me if I needed a ride. It was cold and drizzly that day, so I almost climbed into this person's car. At the last minute, my self-preservation kicked in, and said, “No.” The person seemed 100% normal, and I felt pretty silly for declining the ride. But I didn't know this person. Honestly? I felt a whole lot better in retrospect.)

If I can jaywalk or cut through a parking lot, and it saves me some time? I’m game. I look both ways, dodge the cars and then dash across the street so I can cut through the office park, and then through the shopping center and back on the sidewalk. (I'm on my way to work so I'm a woman on a mission. No time to stop and smell the roses and definitely no time to dilly dally).

 

 

So here I am, sashaying down the sidewalk on my way to work, feeling quite on top of the world, and I get to the spot where the town limits change and the sidewalk ends. It's really quite bizarre. You're walking along, and you're walking along, on a very nice sidewalk and then, all of a sudden, the sidewalk cuts out with no warning whatsoever. Instead of walking on this nice wide sidewalk through the middle of suburbia, you're walking on a dirt path (it's only for a hundred feet or so until you get to the corner, because the sidewalk picks up again on the other side of the street, but still ...). And then to add insult to injury or to pour salt in the wound, when you get to the corner, there's a guard rail blocking your way to the other side of the street.

So what does a former jock and now a pretend fashionista do when she encounters a sidewalk that ends with a guard rail barrier?

She climbs over it, of course!

WWYD (What would you do)?

It wasn't like this was a surprise or anything (I mean, I had been doing this trek and climbing over that same guard rail for a few months), but I still didn't expect what happened next. I heard this sound — this horrible, horrible ripping sound. Oh no. Oh no. I didn't even have to make a guess as to what it could be. I knew what it was. It was the sound of my skirt ripping all the way up to my waist. Oh. My. Gawd. What on earth am I going to do now? Really and truly ... what am I going to do?

Well, for one. I kept right on walking. I had a coat that was hiding most of the damage (although I kept trying to figure out how much damage there was). Oh man, that's all I could think of. Instead of strutting down the street as proud as a peacock, I was trudging along trying to figure out how bad it was and thinking, "Why, oh why, did I have to wear a skirt (and a tight skirt) when I knew I was going to be climbing over that guard rail?"! It's just my luck (not)!

Talk about flaunting your assets. 

Snort!

Where did it go?

My belt ... not the time, but that too.

shirt — Old Navy (Old Navy)

skirt — Loft (thrifted)

belt — thrifted

boots — Hayley (thrifted)

I get up really early (early for me anyway) to get ready for work. In fact, there are times when the night just blends into the morning, because it's easier to just stay up all night than to try and roust myself out of a nice warm bed after just an hour or two of sleep (I know myself and my relationship with my bed all too well, so sometimes it's best to not even try to fight my slug-a-bedness).

The day that I wore this outfit to work was one of those days, or was it nights? Either way, I was still half asleep when I got dressed. I pulled on the skirt (it has one of those yoga-style waist band that is forgiving folds over, so I literally pulled it on), saw the belt out of the corner of my eye, and thought, "Oh wow. What a perfect match!" I took the belt off the back of my closet door and checked it out against the skirt. Yep ... it definitely was a perfect match — a match made in heaven if I say so myself. It's one of those Indian-style seed bead belts, and the colors were just perfect to play off the skirt, without being too contrived.

So then I started hunting around for a shirt to wear with them. Hmmmmm .... a black shirt would work quite nicely, and since half of my wardrobe is black I do have a couple of black shirts, this should be a piece of cake, right? I rummage through my closet, find this one and slipped it on. It was perfect! "Perfect!" I said. In fact, it was so perfect that I couldn't imagine wearing any other combo but this. There was only one problem .... I couldn't find my belt!

Awww heck. Where did it go? I just had it — it couldn't have gone very far, for crying out loud. I looked high and low, and then I looked low and high! The pile of crapola in my room got bigger and bigger as I methodically picked each item up off the floor and shook it looking for that clandestine belt. I went through the pile a second time, and probably even a third time for good measure. I threw all the blankets off my bed, thinking it had somehow found its way under my covers where it was warm and cozy. I looked underneath my bed, thinking that it had slipped down between the mattress and the wall, and the dust bunnies had scurried off with it. No BELT. Geez Louise ... AGGGGH. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. I wanted to stamp my feet and throw a temper tantrum. By this time, a good 20 minutes had probably passed, and I was starting to panic. I still had to get packed for the week, and get out the door, and now I had to pick out something else to wear because no way was I going to wear that skirt and that shirt without that d*mn belt (read about some of my other morning struggles here)! I sighed in resignation and started to pull the shirt up over my head, and lo and behold ...

There it was. I was so tired (and stressed) that I didn't even realize that my belt was under my nose around my waist the entire time. How bad is that?

I alluded to how time was flying by up above, and I hope this partially explains why I disappeared again ... Work has been so hectic and crazy that I didn't even remember that I had a belt around my waist. Thank you all for asking and caring enough to ask about me ... My company went through its rating review last week, which is the project that I've been working on since last October. I'm hoping it slows down a bit now (not too much though ...).

Linking up to Patti at Not Dead Yet Style for Visible Monday, because even though I didn't wear this outfit today, the orange was pretty visible. As an aside — I was pretty proud of this outfit, but I'm a bit nervous that it was a bit too young for me. (Seriously, can't you see a little girl of about 4 years old, with strawberry blonde curls wearing it?) Or maybe it looks like the Great Pumpkin decided to come a bit early and show up in February instead of October?