Guilty Pleasures

What's your number one guilty pleasure?

Before I tell you mine, here's the obligatory outfit picture ... 

shirt set — Andria Lieu Collection (thrifted) skirt — twenty-one (Forever 21) boots — Dansko (Dansko Factory Store) necklace — (thrifted)

I'm really disappointed about these pictures. It was one of those days when I just couldn't get a picture that I was happy with. The pictures that showed the outfit and the colors the best? My eyes were closed, or I have this pained expression on my face (see the above picture ...). And if my eyes were open? The colors were all washed out. I even tried to retake the pictures the next morning, and I finally had to admit defeat and go with what I had. Oh well ... I can always crop off my head! LOL.

Anyway ... this was another outfit that got compliments at work — both the shirt and the necklace. The shirt has one of my favorite things of all times — three-quarter sleeves. Yes. I absolutely adore three-quarter sleeves. I love them so much, that if it wasn't for the fact that three-quarter sleeves are hard to find, all my upper-body clothing for fall and winter (and cold spring days) would sport this feature. I don't know what it is about long sleeves, but they get on my NERVES big time! If I have something with long sleeves on? I push them up, I fold them up, I roll them up ... I do whatever is needed to get them out of my way (even now I am sitting here with my sleeves folded and pushed up)! I used to think it was weird and unique to me, but I've found that a lot of bloggers share the same idiosyncrasy. And even though I usually wear bracelets, the first thing I do when I get to work is to take them off and push up my sleeves!

My necklace? I have gotten so many compliments on it! And it's always from people who I would have never expected to like it. Or maybe it's not that I'm surprised that they would like it — it's more that I'm surprised that they would say something to me. People have mostly told me that they like it because it's so big and that they didn't think that they could wear it. And you know what? I never would have worn it a few years ago either! But I don't think twice about wearing a statement necklace these days. It looks great with so many outfits!

So ... what's my guilty pleasure? Reality TV, and one of my favorite ones was on tonight — Survivor. (Oh man. I admit it. I would dearly love to be on that show. I have even contemplated on submitting a video as to why they should select me. Unfortunately, I don't think that I would be all that good at the social game.) I love those shows. I absolutely love them. Yeah, there are some that I hate ... but for the most part, I love watching these stupid silly shows. Yes, even The Real Housewives of where ever ... LOL! (My daughter refused to believe that I would actual watch these women b*tch at each other — she said that they were worse than the witches girls in high school. I think they're hysterical! And you know? As bad as my life can get at times? I am never tempted to become a reality witch.)

I love seeing how people "choose" to behave when they're put in a fishbowl. Do they become a fame whore and do whatever and say whatever they need so they can extend their moment of fame? or do they stick to their morals and stay true to themselves? But then again, maybe the fame whores are being true to themselves. Who knows? And the best part about watching these shows? I don't have to think. No brain cells are involved.

In Like a Lamb

How's the weather where you are? It's been nuts in Delaware — last week, we had record high temperatures,

and then last night? Temperatures went below freezing.

shirt — Danar Hedi (thrifted)

dress — Express (Marshalls, I think? It's older than dirt)

necklace — thrifted

boots — Dansko (Dansko Factory Store)

On top of that, the wind was just roaring here yesterday! Br-r-r-r-r. I even had to turn the heat back on (the wind just whips through my walls), and bring all my plants back inside. Instead of March coming in like a lion and going out like a lamb, it's been the opposite around here.

And then how do you dress for this flip-flopping weather? I'm kind of lucky because the colder weather of the past few days is giving me the opportunity to recreate some of the outfits that I wore back in February. I was so busy before that I didn't get the chance to take pictures. Actually, it wasn't that I was busy, because I definitely had time during the day to go outside and snap a few pictures. Mostly, it's that I still feel so self-conscious about taking my pictures that I would put it off and put it off, and then it just wouldn't happen. It feels really strange to pose in front of a camera, and to take my own pictures (as opposed to somebody else taking them) on top of that? It just seems weird and self-absorbed to me. It would be one thing if somebody wanted all these pictures of me, then I would have an excuse, right? Instead, it's all about ME, ME, ME! And I dunno ... I have a hard time coming to grips with that. 

 

Anyway, back to the outfit ... The shirt is way too big (note the folded up cuffs), but I still felt pretty snazzy in this outfit. I even received several compliments on how I looked that day (I was having an awful day at work — one of my "deliverables" had been ripped apart, and I was feeling pretty crappy and upset. Usually my emotions show all over my face, so it was a nice surprise when people told me that I looked good.)

BTW, one bad thing about recreating outfits is trying to remember exactly what I wore. Sometimes that's a good thing, because I can improve the outfit for the pictures . But this time I screwed up. The belt that I actually wore was this gold-tone one and went with the shirt much better (it didn't dangle either). I'm disappointed that I forgot, because it looked pretty cool.

One last thing ... it's kind of exciting to see how my style has evolved since I started this blog!

March 2012

November 2010

I've had this black dress for forever — easily over 10 years, and probably more like 15, and maybe even 20 (seriously, when I find something I like? I hang onto it until death us do part). I loved it when I first got it, and I still love it. It's a black sheath, and it's another very, very comfortable and forgiving dress. I used to wear it a lot, and when I say a lot, I mean a LOT — maybe once a week during the winter (and this is once a week for years!), and always with that same sweater/cardigan and the same slip-on clogs. I would even wear it in the summer, because the a/c was so cold in my office! It was like a uniform for me (no lie. My kids could vouch for me!). It's not that it was a bad outfit, but it Never. Ever. Changed.

It does now. 

Linking up to Apron Thrift Girl and Thrift Share Monday.

Just like Pajamas

Have I ever said how much I love sweater dresses?! Yes. I adore them (please ignore the wrinkles — it was left in the laundry basket a bit too long!). 

dress — Weekenders (thrifted)

boots — Dansko (Dansko Factory Store)

belt — (thrifted)

I think it's hard not to look good in one (they're so forgiving), and besides that? They are so-o-o-o comfortable! To me, they're the closest thing to being able to wear pajamas at work.

And speaking about work ... I was laid off last week. Yes. Here I go again (read about how I got laid off last year here), worrying about money and wondering when and if I'll get another job. It wasn't entirely a surprise — the project that I was working on had ended last month, so I knew the ax was going to fall at some point. I just didn't know when exactly.

But on the bright side of things. . . good-bye to one hell of a commute. No more putting in 12-hour or 18-hour days, or even staying up all night because there was no point in trying to sleep before getting on the road. No more packing up in the wee hours of Monday morning to spend the next three or four days on the road. And no more getting dressed in the dark! Can you tell that I'm a bit relieved?

Even though it's scary to be unemployed, getting laid off is probably a blessing in disguise. My commute was just completely wearing me down. The days that I wasn't commuting, I was living out of a suitcase. It seemed like I was never home, and if I was home, I was so exhausted that I couldn't really do anything that needed to be done. I think that I spent enough time commuting in the past 6 months to last me a lifetime!

I do think the economy is getting better, and I got some really good experience that should help me find another job this time around. But still ...  keep your fingers (and toes) crossed that something will come up soon, and that it won't involve commuting for hours upon hours every day. In the meantime though, I'm going to start catching up on everything that went by the wayside for the past 6 months. 

Linking up to Patti at Not Dead Yet Style for Visible Monday once again!

 

And since my dress (and my bangle and my belt) was thifted?

I'm going to link up to Megan at Brass in Pocket for  Thursdays Are for Thrifters.

Strawberry Shortcake

"No, Mommy ... NO!" said my daughter when she saw me pick up this skirt.
(She was completely horrified. I think she shuddered, and she may have even screamed! LOL!)

sweater — Delia*s (Delia*s)

skirt — Requirements Petite (thrifted)

boots — Dansko (Dansko factory store)

She told me that I would look like Strawberry Shortcake if I wore it.

Other than us both having strawberry blonde hair, I don't really see a resemblance, do you? Ok. So maybe the skirts are a little similar, but still ... it's not like I have green-and-white striped stockings on. LOL.

 

She then basically dared me to wear it. So I did. (After all, I wouldn't be a "real" mom if I didn't embarrass my kids.)

I don't know why, but I liked this skirt, especially paired with the sweater, which I wear a lot (see it worn another way here, ). It's not like it's on the cutting edge of fashion or anything, but it was fun in its dorkiness.

Which brings me to my next point ...

I've been having a lot of fun with my clothes since I started doing this blog. Before I started blogging, I would have never, and I mean never in a million years, picked up that skirt, especially if my daughter was so dead set against it. I take more risks with what I wear, and I don't worry as much about how I am perceived. (I'm still a neurotic basket case — I wouldn't be me if I wasn't worrying about something  ... I had a 5th-grade teacher who told me I was going to get an ulcer because I worried so much — so it's got to be in my genes).

And nobody expresses this idea of having fun with fashion better than the wonderfully fun and chic women in the trailer for the upcoming documentary Advanced Style, directed by Lino Plioplyte and produced by Ari Seth Cohen of Advanced Style. 

"I think it's fun to dress up," says one woman. Another says, "I'm not ready for a convent so I can still wear leopard glasses."

"And if somebody doesn't like what I wear?" proclaims another woman. "I don't give a sh*t!" My sentiments exactly.

I can't wait to see this film in its entirety.

Linking up to Patti at Not Dead Yet Style for Visible Monday, because I certainly wasn't hiding in this skirt.

I'm hoping that my stress level (my job and other things) will start to ease up a bit so I can get back to posting and commenting on a more regular basis. It's just been a bit a lot crazy, and I can't seem to catch up or do half the things that need to be done. 

The Surreal Life

A few days ago, my night could only be described as surreal (having the disorienting, hallucinatory quality of a dream; unreal; or utterly fantastic). How else would you describe a night in which an evacuation, a smoke-filled train, and a high-speed police chase all took place within the space of a couple of hours?

At least I was dressed for the excitement though!

dress — (thrifted)

jacket — (thrifted)

boots — Dansko (Factory Outlet)

necklace / belt — (thrifted)

Before I get into the events of the night, though ... I had to laugh when I saw this picture of the horn in the back of my head! (Don't you think that I disguised it pretty well?) Unfortunately the camera never lies, or lets you forget, for that matter!

So ... the events of the other night. Let me set the scene a bit. I was commuting home to Delaware from Herndon, Virginia, and had finished the walk and the bus ride and the metro ride (A side note ... I had met a lovely woman at the bus depot, and we rode the bus and the metro together. I got off at Union Station, but she continued on to Silver Spring. We had been having this conversation about how the long commute was a bear, but something interesting was always happening. Truer words were never spoken!) 

But back to my story ... I was at Union Station, and I was pretty exhausted. It had been a long day and a long week (when is it not?). I usually have about a two-hour wait in Union Station before my train leaves, and for the most part I'll spend it in the Amtrak waiting area — maybe venture out to McDonald's and get a hamburger. This particular night, I was going to treat myself, and went upstairs to a restaurant. I ordered me some appetizers, and even a beer.

My food had just arrived, when all of a sudden, sirens started going off! (Truth be told, I didn't realize that I was hearing sirens. I thought it was just this annoying sound that was starting to get under my skin and not allowing me to relax the way that I had intended!)

Next thing I know, the waitress is bringing my bill and telling me that Union Station was being evacuated and that we had to leave! GULP! I gulped down as much food as I could, grabbed my belongings, and left. It was pretty strange to walk through the Station and see a place that was usually bustling with activity, completely deserted and eerily silent, except for the sirens and the voice over the loudspeaker that said, “An emergency had been detected.” Yikes.

Outside the station, the people were milling about, but nobody seemed to be all that worried. As time passed and the minutes ticked by, my thoughts turned from what was going on to how I was going to get home?! My stop is at the end of the line — the last station. It's so far out there (read about that here) that there aren't that many trains to pick and choose from. The 9 pm train is the last one until the next morning. The people around me assured me that the trains probably had to evacuate as well, but I wasn’t convinced. It got later and later … 8:15 ..., 8:30 ..., 8:45 ..., 8:50 ..., 8:55 pm. Uh oh, by this point, I had pretty much reconciled myself to spending the night — all night — in DC.

All of a sudden, the security guards showed up and opened the doors. I rushed inside the station and heard the announcer saying that the 9:00 pm commuter train to Perryville was boarding at Gate C Track 13 and would be leaving as scheduled. Aw geez … no ifs, ands, or buts, I ran.

I managed to get on the train before it left. I didn't need to run, because it didn’t leave on time, but it also didn’t leave all that late. If it wasn't for all the people rushing on board at 9, it would have left on time. I was lucky! WHEW! Crisis averted.

 

I sat down, chatted with the guy sitting across from me, and then leaned back in my seat, put my head phones on, closed my eyes and started to relax.

All of a sudden, I smell candle smoke. I opened my eyes, and I ask the guy across from me, “Do you smell smoke?” Well, I didn’t need him to answer, because he had this look of sheer panic on his face. I look behind me, and OH MY God! The train’s on fire! The smoke was so thick that I couldn’t see to the back of the car! By this time, the guy sitting across from me is climbing over me trying to get out.

I start grabbing my things, and I’m about to follow him, when the conductor gets on the speaker and says, “Folks! The train is NOT on fire. There’s no need to panic.” From what I understand, our train was in the Baltimore and Potomac Tunnel with a freight train, and the exhaust from the freight train ended up inside our train.As one passenger said to me as he got off the train — “There's no need to panic unless you want to breathe!”

By this time, I just want to get home. I had had enough. We finally pull into Perryville about an hour later, and now it's just a 25 minute drive down I95, and I'll be home and crawl into bed (or maybe even under the bed ...) But nothing more is going to happen, right? Wrong.  As I'm driving down the highway, this car goes flying by me (and I have a lead foot, so when I say the car was flying, I mean it!). I see flashing red lights in my rear view window, and I think to myself that this person got caught.

Whoooooooooooooosh! 

The police car goes flying by. And then another one goes flying by. And another one! All of them were gone in a matter of seconds. Can you believe it? What a night! It was surreal!

Linking up to Patti at Not Dead Yet Style for Visible Monday.

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!