New Clothes!

If you follow BlogHer's Life Well Lived series of posts, you know that this week they are asking the following question:

What are your favorite ways to dress well for your size and shape? How do you make your wardrobe work through transitions?

And you know, I've had transitions! I have three young kids and am perpetually broke, so I have some experience with making regular clothes work as maternity clothes, and then back again. I've finally gotten rid of all my maternity clothes and am slowly weeding out the elastic waist pants and baggy shirts and am replacing them with some other basics. I don't have much of a clothing budget at all, but I've found that by hitting the thrift store and the clearance racks and by being really picky, I've built up a solid core of a wardrobe. Granted, I don't work in an office, but I do like to not be sloppy all the time.  For me, the key is patience, not to get something just because it's a good deal. I like knowing that when I walk into my closet that I like almost everything in it, even if it's not totally full.

For example, I recently had to get a new pair of jeans. (I always end up blowing my out just above the knee. I don't wear tight jeans, and they don't rip elsewhere first. I can't for the life of me figure out how I do it.) So just before we went to Colorado we went down to a local store and I found a pair of straight leg, dark wash jeans. They aren't high rise, they aren't low rise. They don't have whiskers or bleaching or faded parts or rips in them. They are pretty much perfect with everything I own, except the most casual of tees. Oh, and I probably won't wear them to the lake. But for everything else? They look great and are flattering. This pair wasn't on the clearance rack, but because I don't care about the label and didn't want anything flashy on them, they were very reasonably priced. (I think they were $21.)



See? Versatile AND flattering.  The shirt was on clearance at JC Penney for $2, in case you're curious.
Head on over to the BlogHer website to see what other people had to say in answer to the question, and be sure to go enter the Life Well Lived Sweepstakes as well, they are giving away an iPod Touch and a $50 iTunes card!

The 21 Day Challenge

One of the biggest challenges to staying at home is to not look like a total schlump (yes, I made that up.) It would be so easy to just wear yoga pants every day and not to care, and frankly, if we still lived in the old house I probably would. In fact, I'd be in my pajamas when Mike got home from work. But now that my job is staying home, I find that I am rebelling against the stereotype of a stay-at-home-mom who wears sweats and her husband's old shirts*. In June a friend and I made a pact to not wear pants (only skirts and the occasional pair of capris) for the entire month and crazily enough it's now August and you'll find me in a skirt almost every day. Granted, a lot of them are super casual and worn with a (non-printed) t-shirt. So when Kayla over at Freckles in April posted her 21 Day Challenge I decided to join in.

Here's how it works (description taken from the intro post):

For 21 days I will post a daily outfit prompt. Each Saturday I'll post the list of prompts for the week so you have some time to prepare, then the day before I'll put up a more detailed post with inspiration pictures.

Then, get dressed, take a picture and upload it to the 21 Day Challenge Flickr group* and/or blog about it and submit your link here on my blog. Cell phone pictures in bathroom mirrors are perfectly acceptable here (but if you want to go all out and take pictures in natural light and cool locations I will applaud you wildly).

I think I can do that. I just need to find a mirror that doesn't require that I stand on the toilet or edge of the bathtub...

(And did I mention there are prizes?) 

*If you know me in person you know that this is SO not me. I Do. Not. Wear. sweats. You will never find me at the Walmarts in sweatpants and an old T-shirt. But I still don't want to be all sloppy and look like I don't care.




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