Sparkle Someone Else's Eyes

A sparkly shirt and sparkly shoes ...

Sparkle someone else's eyes
Now woman, get away
American woman, listen what I say

This song was first released by The Guess Who in 1970, six years before I graduated from high school! And now that I have dated myself, I'll say it again — I am really old. But how on Earth did that happen?

shirt — Western Connection (thrifted)

pants — London Jean (Victoria's Secret)

belt — thrifted

necklace — Anne Dick (thrifted)

shoes — Dansko (Dansko Company Store)

earrings — DIY (and why exactly does do it yourself sound so much better than home made?!)

Believe it or not, this was a hard shirt to wear. I thought the spandex-like material would be super comfy, but the sparkles (which don't show up all that well) made the shirt feel really stiff. It fit nice, but it wasn't all that soft. (and on top of that I kept feeling like I was leaving sparkles on the ground behind me ... sort of like a Hansel and Gretel trail.)  And then the color was really odd ... it wasn't quite brown, but it wasn't quite green either, so I had a tough time trying to figure out what to wear it with.

Once I decided to wear it with my old faithful pants, I played off of the gold sparkles on the shirt and used the opportunity to wear some other gold-tone stuff (my belt and necklace) that I have but don't wear all that often (I kind of have this phobia about wearing gold these days). I got the belt at a thrift store the last time I visited my parents, and it was too cool for even my phobic self to pass up. I had to wear it home instead of stuffing it in my luggage (talk about setting off the metal detectors) because it was so heavy (a couple of pounds?!). I was pretty sure that it would have tripped the scales!

This isn't the best picture of it — you don't get the feeling of how heavy it is ... it's like a dead weight (but it is oh so very cool ...). You can see the sparkles in the shirt a bit better too ...

Pardon this interjection while I say that I love this next picture of me because I look skinny. How weird is that? Same day, same clothes, same everything ... so why do I look skinny in this picture and not in the others?!

Anyway, I have to say that the really REALLY cool thing about this outfit is the necklace. Yes. My necklace. I got it in a thrift store; it was in a big ziplock bag that was stuffed full of jewelry for some insanely low price. I didn't give it a second thought until I started writing this post, and then I did some research on it (yeah, I'm still a nerd ...). I noticed that it had a name on it ... Anne Dick, and that seemed worthy of a Google search.

Wouldn't you know ... this necklace was made by the third wife of Philip Dick, the science fiction writer? I read his book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? for one of my book groups  — the 5Bs ... the Bodacious Beer Boozing Book Bitches (and, yeah, I have the T-shirt — erm ... denim shirt — and I wear it proudly).

This next pictures isn't bad either ... LOL. Oh man. I guess I can be kind of vain sometimes, can't I?

Linking up to Bloggers Do Sequins Better, because I was a sparkly blogger today.

And since my shirt, my necklace, and my belt is thrifted I'm doing a double whammy and linking up to Meagan at Spunky Chateau, and her Thursdays is for Thrifters.

Over the Top

Day 12 of the 21-Day Challenge was to jazz up your jeans, so I jazzed up my jean skirt with a sequin vest.

tank — French Dressing (Cost Co)

vest — Style n Design (thrifted)

skirt — Bongo (thrifted)

Is there a better way to dress up denim than with a beautiful sequin vest? (I got this vest on my most recent thrifting excursion, and I was so excited. I had been craving a sequin vest ever since I saw Megan of Megan Mae Daily wear one here.) And would you believe that my tank (the gray tank) is the most expensive thing that I'm wearing?

I was curious about the vest, so I Googled it, and I actually found the exact same one in an Etsy shop here, where it was described as vintage 1980s. I don't know about that date though. How do they come up with these dates?

I've tried to wear sequins before, but I haven't been too enamored of my two previous attempts.

I'm not sure if this is any better though — even though I like how the vest and the skirt looks, I highly doubt that I would wear this to work. My skirt, number one, is way too short for work, but even if it was longer, the vest is a bit over the top. Is there anyway I could switch this around so that I could wear it to work?

I have this bad habit of buying or getting something and then never ever using it. I save it because it's too good to use or I want to use it for the perfect occasion, and then that perfect occasion never happens. I would have squirreled this sequin vest away, and it would have languished in my closet, probably never to be worn. I would have taken it out every so often and oohed and aahed over how beautiful it was, and then wished that I had somewhere or some event to wear it to. But it would always be just too nice to wear — I might damage it if I wore it out. Well, what is the point then in even having it?

I'd love to find some way or somewhere of wearing this vest so I can enjoy it outside the privacy of my own room.

There is something to be said for this habit, however. When I was a kid, our Sunday dinners were always a fancy occasion. We may have just been having meatloaf for dinner, but it was always served on the good china, and we used the good silver. Even though my sister and I griped about it (we were the ones who had to set the table and take care of the dishes), it made our Sunday dinners special. If we had used the good china for everyday, would they have been so special?

the good china

And since this vest is so visible, I'm also linking up to Visible Monday at Not Dead Yet Style.