Thursday, July 21, 2011 at 10:53AM 
Today I am wearing sparkly (sequined) shoes.
(Oh, hi veiny feet. Ew, I know.)
These are actually my other "go-to shoes" for the summer and I love watching them catch the light as I walk down the hall at work. They make me want to kick up my heels, literally, and click them together.
But I'm not sure I have the ability to do that. Oh, and all the halls have cameras. So, yeah... no.
But they sparkle. Fun!
Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 1:42PM As I started reading more personal style blogs, I noticed that many of the bloggers repeated their shoe choices... a LOT. I was seeing the same 3-4 pairs of shoes every week. I thought this was odd. These are fashionistas - don't they have entire closets devoted just to shoes?
Maybe they do. If they do, though, they still wear the same ones a lot - just like the rest of us, I realized! I own more shoes than I use. Some are occasion shoes - necessary for interviews, weddings, and other events that only come up sometimes but need particular sartorial options. But more often than not, I find myself using the same shoes over and over again, completely neglecting others.
Lately, these have been my go-to shoes:
I have worn these shoes at least three out of five workdays a week for the past two months, mostly with dresses, but sometimes with cropped pants. I love Blowfish shoes in general, but there's just something about these (purchased in 2008, maybe?) that I just love. They're holding up well, too (phew!).
Realizing that I was reusing the same shoes repeatedly just like some style bloggers do made me feel better about doing it. I love these shoes and they suit my days perfectly. Why add variety just for the sake of variety? If the t-strap ain't broke...
Do you have any go-to shoes? Or a go-to scarf, shirt, pair of earrings, etc?
Thursday, July 7, 2011 at 1:18PM I have a few new favorite things these days.
NurtureShock
by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman
If you are a parent, I highly, highly recommend you read this book. I read it as an e-book but am considering buying a hard copy so that I can flip through it at will as I develop questions and want to re-read certain chapters. The book challenges a lot of accepted parenting norms - like why it's actually better to praise your child's effort at something than tell them they're smart and exactly what happens to kids who are told often that they're smart. The chapter on why we should discuss race with young children was truly fascinating and informative and the chapter on language development is probably the first one I'll re-read a couple of times. I really cannot recommend this book enough.
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
by Stephen Chbosky
After my friend Kate mentioned her library the other day, I realized I had forgotten about the library. I was sitting around wishing I had the money to buy this book when I could just borrow it from the library. It isn't the sort of book I'd want to immediately keep and re-read over and over, so it made for a perfect library book.
It is a YA (young adult) book, so I had to go into the YA section at the library to get it, which was a real trip down memory lane. When I was in middle school, I used to hang out there all the time and just read... and read... and read some more.
The reason I was interested in this book is because it's being made into a film starring Emma Watson (Hermione from the Harry Potter films) and Nina Dobrev (Elena/Katherine from the Vampire Diaries television show). It's a film I knew I'd want to see, so I wanted to read the book first (I always prefer to read the book before seeing a film). The film promises to be quite good - not only because the cast is fantastic, but also because the book's author wrote the screenplay AND is directing the film.
If I were a high school freshman or sophomore English teacher, I would definitely use this book in my class - possibly even for 7th and 8th grade honors English classes. It's a real page-turner, too. I picked it up at the library yesterday morning and finished it last night - and I worked a full day yesterday! Like I said, it's YA fiction, so it's an easy read, but it's a truly compelling story with interesting characters. I highly recommend it.
Currently reading: The English American, by Alison Larkin
The plot of The English American is that Pippa is a young British woman who has always known that she was adopted, but also finds out that she's from the American South by birth. That's all I needed to read to add this book to my "to read" list when it came out - and now it's mine! (Okay, from the library.) I'm only 30 pages in but I already adore it.
I've also got some new (to me) non-book literary likings:
Is that not the best literary nerd baking blog name ever? I've heard the name of the blog a few times here and there over the past year or so but I never took the time to really check it out. I recently did and I lurve love love it. The author is Rebecca Crump, which is even a simply awesome name to have as a baking enthusiast. "Rebecca Crump" sounds like a character in a novel about a British baking blogger, right? She's not British, though - she lives in the Midwest and has an English degree. She worked as a writer for ten years before deciding to switch gears and become a baker. I mean, really, it's a novel waiting to happen, right? Her autobiography would read like a wonderful novel I'd love to read on vacation.
To boot, her recipes and photos are fabulous. I recently made her "No Bake Chocolate, Peanut Butter and Oatmeal Cookies" and they are delish. I look forward to trying many more of her recipes.
This is a style blog I recently came across through someone else's blogroll. The title of it immediately caught my eye (as I like to fashion myself a nerd) and quickly browsing it, I loved it immediately. She calls her list of what she's wearing in each photo her "Works Cited" (love it!!), is studying British Literature in a grad program in the Midwest and talks about teaching and grad work and basically everything I adore. I definitely envy this blog a lot - I wish I was in a grad program in the Midwest, teaching undergrads and style blogging.
Is it weird that I feel like if I got together with the writers of Ezra Pound Cake and What Would a Nerd Wear, we'd have a ton to talk about? Okay, they'd talk a lot and I would try to learn, learn, learn from them. I think that means they're awesome bloggers. When your writing on a website makes ordinary people want to hang out with you and talk about what you love to do, you're doing something right (imho).
So that's what I'm into these days. I find it funny that there's a clear literary thread running through all of it. It feels very right, right now. Ever stumble on a theme in your life and think, "Yes. Yes, that's totally fitting right now for how I feel"?
Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 1:00PM I need a wardrobe intervention. I need Stacy and Clinton to swoop in with their $5,000 and save me. This fact shames me, though, because I used to pride myself on being someone who would've never needed their help. I used to style myself quite well, actually.
Have you heard of or followed anyone who's done the 30 for 30 project (tagged #30x30 on Twitter)? Long story short, you choose 30 items from your wardrobe (not including shoes, handbags, and other accessories) and mix those items and only those items for 30 days.
I love this idea - what a challenge, right? So I got to thinking that I would love to do this but then I realized two things:
1 - I would need clothes that fit in order to do this, and
2 - I probably do 10x10 already, meaning that I think I wear the same 10 items of clothes every two weeks, basically.
I don't have a lot of functioning clothing right now. Most of what fit the last two winters is now too big. I have to wear a belt on my pants nearly every day and it's cinched so much that the strap is through the second belt loop, by my left hip, almost around to my back. And it's the only belt I own. I own NO skirts that fit (how did that happen??) and only a couple of workable dresses. I only have a few sweaters and no long sleeve button-down shirts, just short-sleeve ones.
I have an ugly pair of black loafers that aren't even comfortable, a pair of black shoes I wore while pregnant because they offered great arch support, and two pairs of black mary janes. I have many, many more summer shoes, but the days are frigid and piled high with snow lately so I'm not about to wear flats (and I don't like the look of flats with socks and I'm generally too lazy to carry a pair of shoes to work).
I own one true pair of heels - a really nice looking high-heel black mary jane-ish pair of Isaac Mizrahi for Target. My new hairdresser is tall but is always wearing heels and I said to her a couple of months ago that I only owned one pair and hadn't worn them in a few years. She laughed, looked at me and said, "Seriously? Do you need me to tell you where to go buy more?" Come to think of it, I do have a few dressy pairs but I never wear those either.
I need wardrobe rehab. My wardrobe is sad and in no way reflects how I feel about myself right now. It actually reflects how I felt after putting weight on during and after grad school, which was sad and embarrassed. Now, of course, I know that I had developed a thyroid problem. Of course, I also wasn't eating well and was completely sedentary. Now that I'm medicating my thyroid, eating a bit better and a bit more active (although mostly because I play with Nate and walk the dog, so nothing big deal), weight has come off and continues to come off, albeit slowly.
About six years ago, I had a wardrobe I loved. Gap jeans, NY&Co sweaters, DSW shoes, Target odds and ends, Kohl's shirts. Everything fit and I felt attractive in it. Then the weight started coming back on and the clothes got tighter and tighter, until I had to put them away and buy new clothes. I didn't feel good about needing to buy those new clothes so I probably put minimal effort into choosing them.
So now I'm left feeling unexcited to get dressed, every single day. The only exceptions are the days I get to wear something that fits (some pairs of my jeans or this one pair of wide-leg pinstriped trousers I have for work). And, of course, when we're barely able to pay the bills, going clothes shopping isn't even a non-priority; it's simply an impossibility. I want to remix, but it's like trying to mix with broken records. My clothes, plainly, do not work.
And I'm still hoping to lose more weight - hopefully another 15 - 20 pounds (which is a crazy small amount for me to even consider because when I was over 100 pounds overweight, I would get so aggravated at people who talked about needing to lose 15 pounds). Losing even 20 pounds will still leave me 1 - overweight and 2 - at a weight higher than my adult low, but I'm okay with that. I want to find a weight where it takes me a little bit of effort to stay there (can't pig out daily, have to make sure I get my fruits and veggies, have to be at least a little bit active) but that doesn't require the four-day-a-week-three-hours-at-a-time gym routine I had going when I was a size 12/14 (my smallest adult size).
This is me at that size:
I don't think I "look like" a size 12/14. If I saw that girl, I'd think she was a size 10, maybe an 8 (if not sitting down and so smushing my hips out to the sides). Maybe I'm crazy or deluded, but that's how it feels to me and what I learned from being that size is that the number on my pants really doesn't matter to me. I always thought that was bullshit, but it's not. I know now what it feels like to be happy in my pants. (Wait, that doesn't sound quite how I mean it. Ha.) What I mean is that I know how I feel on the inside when I'm happy with myself and when I'm not; I don't need to look at the tag on my pants and have that determine my happiness.
I've been looking at a few personal style blogs and have been getting really, truly inspired by them. These ladies put together really great outfits and they aren't spending hundreds of dollars on every single item. Similar to how I'm building my own personal cooking style by first following other people's recipes and tweaking them in time, as I grow more comfortable putting food together, I think I'm going to do the same thing with clothing. I might try copying some other folks' outfits or styling choices at first so that in time, I can learn how *I* like my clothing to look and begin to build my sense of style back up (I used to have one - a pretty decent one, actually - even at my heaviest).
Here are some of the personal style bloggers I'm loving right now:
Kendi Everyday (she runs the whole 30 for 30 Remix Challenge)
By Hillary (I love love love that she takes her pictures in the library and I have been thinking obsessively about her red sweater from this post since she posted it)
So that's the way I'm headed. I'm hoping the scale keeps moving down. As soon as I have some expendable income, I'll be buying a few clothing items (especially pants) and I'm going to continue to go through the containers of "too small" clothing I have to see if anything newly fits. As time passes, I'll continue to add to and edit my wardrobe until I get to a point where I can do a 30x30 and challenge myself to dress creatively and, most importantly, dress like myself.
Got any good personal style blogs you want to recommend?
Wednesday, January 26, 2011 at 8:00AM clothing, life, things that make me happy in life 
