May 1-15 Outfits

 Starting to look more pregnant. I feel like the sitting pictures are even more unflattering.

 The purple dress is not maternity. I tried to wear one of mine that was but it was entirely too loose.   I can't believe how I don't even look pregnant in the 5-9 photo.

My camera arrived and look a real outfit photo that is crisp and clear... Too bad I didn't keep it up.
Momlife is a shirt I painted. Those shorts make my legs look so skinny!

May 1-14: Outfits

I got so behind on blogging but I have my daily pictures cropped from May 1-14 so I think I'll just post them  here. (A few dates were blogged about so I'll skip those).

May 1
Dress & Sandals: Kohls, Necklace: Charlotte Russe

May 2
Dress: Target, Sandals and Necklace: Kohl's

May 8
Shirt: Loft, Jeans: ? (Mudd from 2003), Necklace: Target

May 9
Necklace: Target, Top: Ann Taylor Outlet, Cardigan: Limited, Jeans: VS, Shoes: Famous Footwear

May 10
Earrings: Target, Necklace & Cardigan: Limited, Top: NY&Co., Jeans: VS, Shoes: Famous Footwear

May 11
Shirt: Loft, Jeans; Express, Necklace: Limited, Shoes: Brooks (gift)

May 12
Shirt: Loft, Shorts: AE, Shoes: Famous Footwear

May 13
Shirt: Google, Shorts: AE, Shoes: Famous Footwear

May 14
Shirt: F21, Jeans: VS, Shoes: Famous Footwear

I surprised got dressed out of my pajamas a good number of days. It might not seem like a lot here but that's because I already blogged about a few of the days.  I did wear dresses 2 days in a row.

11.17

Dress: H&M, Necklace: Target, Boots: Famous Footwear

Even though I went to sleep close to 8PM, I slept until 10am. Around 6:30 I thought I should wake up but decided to go back to sleep for a little.  Next thing I knew it was 10 am.

Note how I eat the old fashioned kind of donuts. I eat the piece that sticks off around the entire thing then eat what's left.

8.1 - Peanut Butter Pie

Cardigan and dress: Express, shoes: Famous Footwear-Connie, Necklace: Charlotte Russe

I have a love hate relationship with this dress. I wish it had a slightly different fit but I am not sure what exactly.  I like the fabric.

Dave and I walked at lunch.

We had chicken and corn for dinner.  We ate some of the peanut butter pie. The filling and the crust was good. The whipped topping was no good.  I still want peanut butter pie like the kind I've had before.

Poor Poly threw up for the first time

6.29 - Poly and Carino's

Dress: Kohl's

I wore it on my telecommuting day. But I was freezing, so when I left the house I changed.   The dress was 1 of my 7 items for Styling the Scavenged Seven.

Jeans: Express
Shirt: Loft
Necklace: Sears
Shoes: Famous Footwear

Poly slept on me while I telecommuted. She also just rested on me. She likes me.  I accommodate her. See how my monitors are separated so she can walk from one desk to the other.  When I woke up, I sure was tired. I was out late at the Cabana Bar. I must be old now.

After work, I went to get an allergy shot and then went to Carino's for dinner. I got a Panini and soup this time around. I ate half the panini. After I got home, I looked up the calorie info and the panini meal (Turkey, bacon, cheese panini with fries) is 1700 calories. Next time I'll just stick with the Italian Chili. The sandwich was still cold in the middle so it wasn't that good anyway.  I texted Dave when I was there and he wanted me to bring him home dinner. It would be after 8PM when I got home. He wanted a meatball panini. Usually neither of us get a panini so it was odd we both got one. After he ate it all at home, he told me how he ate dinner first forgetting I would be at Carino's.  His calorie count was worse than mine.   Carino's hasn't been as good lately. Service is bad. We have to wait too long. Servers can't keep up on unlimited soup. Just a bunch of stuff. I'm sad about that. I love their Italian Chili.

5.29 - Anniversary Celebration

I curled my hair for my parents anniversary lunch.
Dress: Kohl's -2010 - $25
Necklace: Sears
Shoes: Aldo
Bracelet: Target
Earrings: Target

Normally I wear a cami under this dress but when picking out a dress for the wedding the previous weekend, she told me not to wear it with a cami. So I didn't. I felt like a hussy though.

This might have been the first time I wore this dress without a cardigan.

We ate lunch, then headed to my parents. While at my parents, I changed into outfit 2.

Jeans and shirt: Express
Shoes: Brooks
Jewelry = same as outfit 1

I curled my hair for the celebration. I timed it.   I put sculpting gel in. Then I curled a little. Then I used hair spray on all my hair. Then I curled  it. Then I sprayed it. Then I got out the smaller curling iron and recurled it all since it went straight besides the very bottom. I sprayed everything again at the end too.  It took 33 minutes total.  I basically started over 17 minutes into it.

Poly hung out with me in  morning. She even read my emails with me.

I put 6 bags of mulch down in the morning.  After my shower, Poly almost got stepped on. I didn't know she was in the bag. Then she did some flips and got comfy.

After lunch, we went to hang out with my parents a little. Somehow my mom got to talking about how we should tear down the beams (Styrofoam not wood)  in the family room. She's hated them for years. So my dad got to tearing them down.  My mom has been trying to get him to do it for years.  She said that's a good anniversary present.  My mom thinks that my dad was willing to do it because Dave was sitting in my dad's normal spot. My dad is like me. We are both very productive when company is around. Sometimes I try to get my mom to visit so she can sit there and talk to me while I clean. She thinks I'm nuts. She likes to clean when she's home alone.  Too bad my mom lives an hour away so she doesn't come visit when I need to clean.


Man the more I look at these pictures, the more I love my hair curled. I should really do it more. I just feel like it's a waste of time. Just curling the ends under looks great and I still never do that and it only takes about 3 total minutes to curl my ends under.

5.6

Dress and Cardigan: Kohl's 

Shoes: Famous Footwear (they weren't even on clearance)

Necklace: Charlotte Russe

Purse: Target

I had Dave take my picture at lunch because I went to PT before work so I got dressed at PT. I forgot my slip. Sad times.  And after work was hitting the gym so I needed to get an outfit photo.

I wore this necklace with this dress because Kimberly told me they went. Also she told me the necklace would go with hot pick. Well I did them both in one outfit.  I wasn't wearing the necklace with many things before because I didn't know what it matched and only went by what my color wheel told me. 

I have had these shoes for a few weeks but this was the first time I wore them. The toe box was a little tight but it probably has to be so your foot doesn't slide too far down the toe hole. I thought they were sufficient.  Late in the day, I realized my left big toe had some skin scraped away. I guess they weren't as good as I thought. 

They wind made my picture not as cool. Sometimes wind can enhance pictures but here it made them worse.

That cube wall in the very edge of the window shown is my cube wall.   

I got back to my desk and after a minute I hear over the cube wall "Colleen, did I see you getting your picture taken outside."  Oh no I was busted.  There was a short conversation where I was asked why I was getting my picture taken and I responded about my calendar site. Then I sent him the link. A different coworker came over to talk about work related things so we stopped talking. After I got back to my desk he made 2 observations. He said I wear a lot of red (which I often talk about on my blog and why I started my color rotation challenge) and he said I didn't wear yellow much (which I realized during the challenge). Then I walked over to his cube and we scrolled through 3 years worth of pictures. He told me I should themes and challenges (he didn't call them challenges but what he described were challenges).  It was fascinating... a little weird, but fascinating.  Has anyone caught you taking your picture and then asked you about it?

Before PT, I had some time to kill since I didn't wake up early enough to make it to work, so I went on my computer to write a blog post.  Well Poly jumped at the opportunity and got on my lap. I petted her for awhile once I was ready to get up, but then it was really time to go. I even tried to tilt Poly off of me so she would think it was her idea to get up. She did not go for it. She managed to get situated and still stay on me when I had her tilted at a 45 degree angle.  I actually had to lift her off and put her down. Sad times. I never move her or make her get off of me.

Once I got home from work I should have packed, but I just grabbed a few things and the suitcase. Poly sure didn't want me to pack by evidence of her sitting in my suitcase.

My regular camera was downstairs so I had to use my iphone to take her picture.  I quit early on packing and went downstairs to watch TV.  I came up after a few shows to pack with only a little bit of time before bed. I thought packing can't be that hard.

I closed the suitcase while I picked everything out and Poly sat on that. She really wanted to impact my packing ability.  I packed extra because I talked to Nicole and she was packing a lot. I did put some stuff back that I had out.  (Later I learned I shouldn't have put that back. I forgot that I was accounting for three outfits on certain days.)  I was packing jewelry and realized a year ago was the last time I packed and I really only wore 1 or 2 necklaces so packing was easy. Now I have a ton to pick from.

I was almost done packing but needed something out of my bookshelf. I opened the door and Poly went right in there. Then she thought she was trapped. I opened the left door for her and then she left.

Purple - 4.9.11 - Baby Shower

Dress: Kohl's - $20 - 6/27/10
Cardigan: Kohl's - $15 - Spring 2010
Cami: Express
Shoes: Famous Footwear - ~$20 - 4/17/10
Earrings: Target - $5.99 - 4/8/11
Necklace: Gifted

I went to a Baby Shower with my mom. The mom to be is one of my mom's friend's daughters.  I think she was skinnier than when I've seen her every other time minus the basketball in the front of her. Too bad I didn't get a picture of her standing.

So her husband showed up and she made him help her open presents. That made me actually get out my camera.

The shower was far away. We didn't know other people there but we ended up talking to the people at our table. The only lady at my table had on awesome shoes. We asked her the brand and started googling them on our phones.  They are sold out everywhere :(  They were also a shade of purple.

We talked about fashion and fashion trends. I felt so proud to be able to contribute because just the day before I did my research on the spring trends.

After spending time at my parents' house after the shower, I headed home. I stopped at  Famous Footwear and bought shoes.  Then came home and and did a bunch of stuff instead of eating dinner.  At 9:15, I finally finished dinner. I had Ramen, cereal, and Beefaroni for dinner.

Summary 1-19 and random thoughts

I'm too impatient to wait until Monday for 1 through 20 so I did 1 through 19 and the first photo is repeated at the end since it wants an even number.

It would have been 1 through 18 but I decided not to take Friday off to hurry this contest along.

If you want to see what day I wore each of them since I scrambled the pictures above, just look at my calendar site.

I have a few outfits picked out to wear for next week:

1. black and white shirt with red pants
2. White shirt with khaki skirt
3. black and white dress, black cardigan, black, white, or purple shoes
4. black cardigan, red shirt (white belt), and some skirt but not the gray one
5. Green shirt and black and white skirt (I only wore the green shirt once and it wasn't even to work) + perhaps a cardigan and then a belt
6. black skirt with turquoise shirt

Seeing the summary in one shot helps me know what outfits I didn't wear yet. I need to print this so I can know what to wear. Well it appears I planned more than a week's worth since I numbered them. I even have more options. I'm glad I did not quit this challenge 1 week ago. When I was only halfway through it seemed like the end was an eternity away. Does anyone else have any suggestions?

What will I do in the winter when I cant wear so many skirts? I think I will have to buy new pants that fit.  I also can't wait for winter so I can find red jewelry. Now just seems to not be the time. I want a red necklace.

I was ready fashion blogs this morning just like every weekend morning. I still have not found an engineer that documents their clothes daily.  Most people are in fashion design, write professionally, or use their fashion blog as their full time job. I did follow one that just took her bar exam. So that's unique there.   I read all these tips like make sure you proofread your posts. Hah. I never do that. Even if I do, I don't notice my mistakes.  I  don't have that kind of time. I have so many ideas in my head that I want to post about. All ideas are centered around me: my running, my clothes, my creative creations. Perhaps the title of my blog should have been titled in a way to focus on me but I do not want to change the name because I know a few people are following me (even if it's not listed on the side) and I don't want to lose them.   I often wonder if I should have multiple blogs for my multiple interests.  Most fashion blogs are all fashion. Most running blogs are all running. I'm a mix of everything.  I don't even know if I would consider me a fashion blog but I just started posting them here recently because I could write about my outfit a little, but I still love my calendar site. I like to see it all together. I like to easily be able to tell the last time I wore my red pants and how many weeks ago it was.

Does anyone have any suggestions for how I can improve my blog or improve my website?

Summer Black-out

In late June, I participated in Summer Black-out. It started out as a week, but I seemed to do it for more than a week.

There were only 9 pictures. I actually wore a khaki skirt and blue shirt (not the khaki skirt in the pictures above and not the blue shirt either) but I forgot to take my picture that day. The first picture is repeated at the end because that is how picasa does it.

I enjoyed not wearing black and barely wore it all summer. I think I only wore my black pants once and my black skirt a few times.  I seem to keep misplacing my black shirts so that made it easy not to wear them.  I actually didn't wear black on the weekends but the pictures weren't as nice so I didn't include them in the summary.  View my calendar site for what I wore all days.  The calendar is an easy way to get a quick view of all my outfits.

Sally went the entire summer without wearing black and has a nice recap of her experience.

Source: http://www.alreadypretty.com/ 

When I started the challenge, I didn't know if there was a purpose, I just thought it would be fun to do. I liked doing it because it gave me something to do with my outfits besides just looking at my entire closet and grabbing something.  I used to wear black all the time and basically lived in black pants. I loved that I stopped wearing so much black.  I never got so many compliments on my outfits as I did this summer. Many of the things I wore, I had for years so I had worn them before but they were just always worn with black or were barely noticed with all the boring outfits I was wearing.  I just skimmed through some months in 2006 to see what I had been wearing and maybe I didn't wear black daily but it was always black or brown even in the summer months. Now I wear a wider variety of clothes and colors. Also I have expanded my jewelry collection and actually wear what I have.  I wear this one pink necklace now at least every other week and I have had the necklace for 4 years and 3 months and probably only started wearing it 3 months ago.

At first with the Black-out I didn't realize you could wear black or have black in patterns. The skirt above that is white with black embroidery was actually my first day after the black-out was over but that was barely any black and the next few days I didn't wear black so I left it in.

I think my next goal should be to try to wear everything in my closet or maybe to get rid of the 20 pairs of shoes that I have and won't wear because they hurt my feet.

I read 10 Fashion Don'ts today and they specifically say not to wear red pants to work. I disagree with them.