What I Wore: Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Alright, day 2 of the Pantone Challenge with Literate & Stylish and The Modern Austen! Today's color is African Violet. I didn't have anything in that particular shade, but I had to make a Goodwill run yesterday for something that's coming to our house this weekend (ooh, cryptic...), so I searched for something while I was there. I found something, but unfortunately, thanks to our Monday that got away from us, I didn't have time to wash it last night and had to improvise with these:

I'm going to call these African violets! ;-)

(Side note: does anyone else wash their Goodwill stuff before they wear it, or do they go all out and wear it fresh from the store?)

Here's the entire outfit:

Not sure why I'm so blurry and my colors look "off"

Full body blurry shot!

I didn't realize it until I was leaving, but the outfit has the same color palette as our bedspread:

Promotional picture...our bed never looks that nice!

Also, did anyone read the news story about the guy who lost his entire life savings on a carnival game? There was a line in there about him receiving a "giant stuffed banana with a rasta hat" that had me screaming with laughter...at work...in a library. I laughed so hard that I cried; I couldn't control myself. I guess it was just one of those things that struck me at the right time! The line was funnier than the picture, but I'll include the picture anyway in case someone doesn't feel like reading the entire story:

Lost your life savings? Here's a banana for your trouble, mon. 

So, no matter what kind of day you've had, remember that it could always be worse...unless you're a fan of giant stuffed rastananas (my own new word).


There are still 3 days to go in the challenge. Dig out your yellow for tomorrow (or BYOB- bring your own banana) and join in!

Trying this out today. Let's see how it goes: Follow my blog with Bloglovin

What I Wore: Monday, April 29, 2013

Here we go with the Literate & Stylish and The Modern Austen Pantone challenge! I LOVE the color green, and as someone with dark hair/eyes, I feel like jewel tones work well on me. However, I had a little bit of panic when I was choosing my wardrobe for the week. I tend to take things very literally sometimes (it's the librarian in me, I suppose), so I wasn't sure if my dress was truly emerald or just pretty green. I decided to make an executive decision as a blogger and call it emerald.

I bought this dress for my wedding reception/celebration that we held a week after the wedding. Since it was close to St. Patrick's Day, we did a green theme. Today is the first time I've worn it since then, so I was glad to have an "excuse" to bust it back out. Also, I received several student compliments about it today, which is always nice!

All decked out at my wedding reception!

Who says I'm not a ham?

Unfortunately, after this day turning out to be waaaaay longer than I intended it to, I haven't had a chance to find my SD card connector and load my pictures from my camera. I'll probably come back and edit this in the next day or two and add today's outfit shots so everyone can see the hem of the dress and how I styled it. I'm not off to the best start in this challenge, am I? ;-) Found my camera connector, Fitbit charger, and iPad charger! That's like a week's worth of unpacking in one day!! Here are a couple of shots from yesterday:

Asymmetric hem. Wore the leggings for modesty...and to hide my white legs!

Bit of a close up of the fabric

Want to participate in the challenge? Here's the lineup for the rest of the week. Any clothing or accessories in these colors will work!  

How to Succeed at Blogging...or How to Not Abandon This Again!

I'm married!!

I guess that was a given considering my last post talked about how I was 3 days away from my wedding day! Now that I've been married for about a month and a half and have begun settling into wifey lifey, I wanted to try reviving this blog and making it even better!

Gratuitous wedding shot c/o Paper Owl Photography!

I think there are three main reasons that I've been having trouble maintaining this blog and not feeling inspired by it:

1. I didn't have a plan for it. As the adage goes- fail to plan, plan to fail. I didn't have any ideas of when to post (I was trying to post every single weekday, even when I was off work!), how far behind I would be, when I would upload pictures, etc. I also think I over complicated things sometimes, but that's another issue I'll work on as I get back into this. 
2. I had a bad location and technique for taking pictures. I took them inside of my office during my lunch break or at my former home (I lived with my parents prior to the wedding) and either used the self timer or tried to do mirror shots. I didn't want anyone to know that I did this, so I would try to sneak taking my pictures, which made them look rushed and kind of terrible, which brings me to number 3...
3. I never edited my pictures and had trouble finding a place to host them. I know that the vast majority of blogs aren't done by professionals who blog full time, but many of them I read have pictures that have been spruced up a bit. There are so many great, free photo editors out there, so I'm going to start experimenting with a little editing to see if that improves the quality of my posts. I'm also going to bite the bullet and either make a public Flickr account to integrate with Blogspot or pay a little bit to host my pictures somewhere.

My husband does know about the blog (in fact, I used his living room, now our living room, as a picture location on at least one occasion), so I may enlist his help in the whole picture taking thing. I may also (gasp) venture outside and take advantage of some natural light from time to time. 

Another way I'm going to be more involved is to participate in a link up next week! Literate & Stylish and The Modern Austen. The challenge starts on Monday, April 29, and it involves incorporating a Pantone-inspired color each day next week in an accessory, item of clothing, or shoes. I'm excited to plan my outfits this weekend!

If you're interested in participating, here's the schedule with the colors:



Let me know if you're participating!

Almost Mrs. time!

I'm getting married in 3 days!!!

My life has been wedding planning/marriage preparation consumed for the last couple of months, but I definitely want to make this blog a priority when the post honeymoon dust settles down, and I'm unpacked in my new house. I've been following a lot of blogs, and I'm loving the No Longer Neglected Challenge that Kate at a journey in style is doing. I want to do something similar, perhaps in April, especially since I'm finding clothes I had forgotten about as I move things to the new place. Also, I DO want to complete 30X30 this year! My golden idea is to 30X30 to turn 30 leading up to my 30th birthday in July. I think it would be easier to do the challenge when the temperature is more consistent.

Hope all of you are doing well! Can't wait to start back here again (and with a new picture location...no more washed out office pics!).

Pop goes the challenge...and a little sunshine!

Honestly, the first part of that title doesn't really make too much sense to me, but I thought it was moderately funny...

So, um, hey. I've been unintentionally gone lately, and I'm sorry about that. I'm going to blame everything on planning my wedding, even though that's not really the reason I've been gone. It just sounds better than laziness!

I've been enjoying reading everyone's 30 x 30 submissions. Unfortunately, my challenge fell apart for a couple of reasons. First, as I said here, there were a couple of items that didn't fit well or just weren't a good fit for this challenge. Second, as I wore a few things, namely my red cowl neck shirt and gray jeans, I realized that they were just plain worn out. The shirt had a hole in it, and since it's a thin cotton knit, it wasn't even repairable (at least not with my subpar sewing skills). My gray jeans had shrunk a good 2 inches and looked so sad and tired that even my fiance, who always has something complimentary to say about me, said they needed to be put into the donation bag.

I have at least one more 30 x 30 outfit that I photographed and need to post, and then that's it for that. I definitely want to try this again...maybe in June/July leading up to when I turn 30 (30 x 30 for turning 30...hmm...). To all of you still participating, I commend you and can't wait to see how you wrap it up over the next few days!

In other news, Sam from Sam ipsa Loquitur nominated me for a Sunshine Award! This is my very first blogger award, and it makes me feel like a real blogger...albeit one who hasn't posted in a while and crashed and burned on 30 x 30 a couple of times but a real one nonetheless (actually, that may be what all bloggers do ha ha). If you don't know what a Sunshine Award is, here's the gist:

"The Sunshine Award is an award given by bloggers to other bloggers. The recipients of the Sunshine Award are: 'Bloggers who positively and creatively inspire others in the blogosphere.' The way the award works is this: Thank the person who gave you the award and link back to them. Answer questions about yourself. Select 10 of your favorite bloggers, link their blogs to your post and let them know they have been awarded the Sunshine Award!"

Since Sam tagged all of the 30 x 30 participants, I'm skipping the part where I award 10 of my favorite bloggers (since I'm not sure if anyone else even reads this!), but I'm answering the questions!

Who is your favorite philosopher? I'm going with Jesus on this one. I'm really working on becoming a better Christian, and man, Jesus has it going on (philosophically)...does that sound weird?

What is your favorite number? 42. I don't know why. I think it's the answer to the ultimate question of life and the universe and everything, but I liked it before it was cool...

What is your favorite animal? I've never been a huge animal person, but I'm marrying a dog fanatic, so I'll go with that! =)

What is your favorite time of day? Evenings, after work until bedtime. The work day is over and the time is all mine!

What is your favorite holiday? Gotta go with Christmas on this one! Lots of days off work, spending time with family and friends, presents, and Jesus' birthday!

What is your favorite physical activity? I go to a GREAT gym that has functional movement training classes (I guess it's kind of like CrossFit). The classes are an hour long and TOUGH, but I'd rather do that than slog it out on the treadmill or elliptical!

What is your favorite non-alcoholic drink? Coffee!! And chocolate milk!! Or a mocha coffee with milk...ooh...fancy!

What is your passion? I'm actually doing some soul-searching right now to try to figure that out. I've felt kind of blah lately, and I think it's because I don't really have anything that I'm just oh my stars passionate about. I'll get back to you on this one...

What is your favorite flower? Tulips. I'm not sure why, but I've always just really liked them!

A little 30x30 trouble...

There's been some trouble in my world lately concerning 30x30. First, my maroon skinny pants have decided they are too skinny for me after my holiday entire month of December and part of January overeating binge. I guess that's what happens when you don't try on your pieces before selecting them. Also, a black sweater that I chose has proven to be incredibly itchy. I've worn it once, and I didn't have that problem, but maybe I was just feeling super-sensitive since I was on my way to getting sick with a "viral infection" (put into quotation marks because it sounds like a really generic way of saying "bad sinuses" or "crappy response to the up and down weather"). So, I've been home from work 3 out of 5 days this week, and I can't wear 2 of my 30 pieces, and I realize that I just plain don't want to wear a couple of the items. I think I'm going to do some shuffling around this weekend and swap some things out. I've only worn a small portion of my choices so far, so I feel justified in doing this, even if this is going to take me into the second week of February (unless I start getting out of the house on Sundays...hmmm...). On the plus side, I did plot out my outfits using Sam's OCD Organization Idea (and let's be honest, I ripped off the idea of a Life 2013 spreadsheet also. So much more helpful than having 40 different related but different spreadsheets clogging up my Google Drive account). Planning out my outfits is something I'm going to continue beyond this challenge...IF I ever finish it! 

How's everyone else doing with the challenge? I've seen some very cute outfits that are also responsible for making me want to swap out some of my pieces! 

Catch up...hold the mustard...

Before I started the 30 x 30 challenge, my last posted outfit was from November 12. I've been taking pictures every weekday that I worked since then, but I didn't want to go back and do individual daily posts for each outfit. That would be confusing and time consuming. However, I didn't want to let all of the cheesy pictures of me and my outfits be withheld from my adoring public, so I wanted to come up with a good solution. I've decided to do a couple of catch up posts featuring lots of pictures. I'm going to split them up into kind of the good, the eh, and the ugly (using the labels that are on the top of the blog). I know other people read this, but this is a tool for me also to keep up with what works, what doesn't, etc, so this will help me tremendously. So, in the next few days expect a couple of compilation posts sprinkled in with the 30 x 30 posts. As always, if anyone who's been doing this a while has any tips on how to keep up, create a blogging schedule, take better pictures, save the world, or anything else, please share them with me!