Friday 5 (with extra bonus)

1. It's true what they say about March -- it roars in like a lion.





Fashion shoots have to set up fancy wind machines; I just went outside!

This is a Martin + Osa scarf worn long against a gold cascading cardigan, almost like part of the cardigan. I tucked it together with a belt and wore an ivory tee under it. The pants are my brown NYDJ skinny ponte pants, and the boots are my green Clark suede booties. Since I went with all earth colors, I swapped out my glasses for my plain brown ones.

2. We are celebrating my birthday weekend in Joliet IL and St. Louis. It's official: I am livin' the dream.

Actually, the hotel/casino we are staying at in St. Louis is just stunning. We're looking forward to a quick getaway there.


The lobby of the Lumiere from 3 years ago when we were there last.

3. We had one of our new team members start this week. He knows absolutely nothing about the company, the business or the software, so we've been training him on all of it. It wasn't until Thursday that I saw him finally pick up a pen and take a note on anything we had been saying. He either has a fantastic memory or doesn't give a sh**. At this point I am not sure which it is. This could be a problem.

4. I am so, so glad everyone liked my new series, They Walk Among Us. Isn't Kate amazing? I forgot to mention she's been a friend of mine for a few years now, and on top of keeping herself looking so great and being a runner and a skilled baker, she has two adorable pitbulls (even I can't resist them, and I am not really a dog person) and a killer shoe collection. I think I would really hate her if I didn't like her so much. :)

5. Do not adjust your screens; the camera was crooked when I took these yesterday. LOL!





Target drapeneck top, beloved purple Bobeau cardigan, black Gap bootcut pants, green suede booties. A typical Dress Like A Normal Person outfit.


Bonus: Sadly, the Vince Camuto colorblock dress is being returned; it was completely unflattering on me. It didn't quite fit right and it was a bit short, but more than that, the stripes at the bottom did not work. It wasn't until I had it on that I remembered that a pattern or wide stripe at the bottom of a dress is not a good look for my pear shape; it draws all the attention to the widest part of my legs and drags the whole look down. Even when I was skinnier, it didn't work. See?



Oh, well, lesson learned (again)!

What are you doing this weekend?

Low-contrast twinsets

Angie at YLF posted on Monday about blousey twin sets, which is instead of the traditional twinset of a sleeveless sweater shell and cardigan uses a softer blouse as the under-piece of the set. Ask Shopping Friend, she had a hard time pulling me away from twinsets (remember how you got me to at least wear button-downs with the shell over them, and then that was my uniform for a year?!), so putting a new twist on the idea with this look intrigued me. As much as I like layering and colors, there is something so easy about a twinset; it's like Garanimals for grown-ups!

Then I looked at my unposted photo from last Thursday, and the outfit I put together yesterday, and realized I was already doing a variation of that but going with low-contrast combinations.





The cream Gap boyfriend cardigan from Thursday has already been worn with a color-matching top, so I wanted to see how it worked if I went with a low-contrast top instead of a high-contrast one (which had failed in the past). As I have also done with success with that sweater, I added a scarf to bring color to my face. I also added my long pearls double-looped to hold the breezy scarf down and bring up the elegance of the outfit a notch. My brown NYDJ ponte pants and Clarks olive suede booties finished off the look.



Tuesday's outfit was more of a deliberate nod to Angie's post. I wanted to go with matching purples but of my tops and cardigans none had the right tones. Instead I used a lighter hue from a LOFT summer tee, and topped it off with a black patent skinny belt and my LOFT statement necklace to make it look dressier. Gap skinny pants and my Sam Edelmann embellished flats finished the outfit (only because my longer pants for heels are all at the tailor).



I like these color combinations; I had been falling into a rut of white or grey as my under-top, and I was as bored wearing it as you must be reading this. Now I can look at my layering tops and cardigans with a fresh eye! And I will confess, I have been missing wearing button-downs and have been on the hunt for ones I would like. I think looking for softer-fabrications might be the key to my success this time.

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I hope you all had lovely Halloweens. We had only a handful of trick-or-treaters, so of course have way too much candy in the house. Sigh. But we have had home-cooked meals every night this week, and I just found this recipe for Baked Rigatoni with Brussels Sprouts, Figs and Blue Cheese that I am definitely making tonight. Doesn't it look amazing?

Mark Bittman is a genius.

Lesson in Proportion, v2

I bought this dress on sale at Nordstrom a couple of weeks ago, and have tried fruitlessly to figure out how to wear it. That seems crazy, right? It looks like it would be so easy to style, especially for a dress gal like me.

Turns out, it is a deceptively complicated dress. It's sleeveless, but the pattern right at my chest needs a cardigan or jacket to break it up so I don't get uni-boob. It's got great gathered drape at the waist, but I had to get it tailored because it was too big (a smaller size might have been a better choice) so it needs just the right belt to work.

But the trickiest part of the dress is the hem. First, it's a midi, which makes finding the right shoe complicated. Second, the lighter color repeating at the hem is tough for me to wear, as it tends to drag the eye down and widen me out. (I had the same problem with a dress long ago. I never learn my lesson!)

So I struggled with this dress for a while, trying and rejecting different shoe options, attempting black tights with it (BAD idea, grey is as dark as the tights should get with this), skinny belts, jackets, etc. Nothing worked until today.



These cheap-o grey fabric pumps with mary-jane bow haven't been worn in two years, and by about halfway through the day I remembered why; they're not very stable so I ended up putting all my weight on the balls of my feet when I walked. When I finally got home and was able to take them off, I felt like an astronaut returning from the moon, getting used to gravity again and re-learning how to walk on my whole foot again. Hee! But I did like the sheer black hose with the dress; that part I will wear again.

I added a short-sleeve LOFT Outlet cardigan because my other black sweaters are too bulky, and since it was cold that meant I needed a black layering long-sleeved tee underneath that. The belt from my City Chic tunic from Tina made another appearance, and I finished the outfit with my little-worn grey triple-strand pearls.

It was so early and still so dark when I left for work this day (Wednesday, I think), that the camera actually used the flash for the first set of pictures. Ha! I much prefer natural light, even if it is still dark. At least I don't have to worry about the sun in my eye anymore!

All hail the boyfriend cardigan!

One of the interesting things about batching up a bunch of outfit photos over the course of the week is that seeing the photographs side by side in my photo viewer allows me to see trends or similarities in what I'm wearing, or forces me to compare different styles and determine which is better for my body shape. For example, sweater lengths.



The first one on the left is last Friday's outfit of shorter cardigan, long top and ponte straight legs/skinnies. The sweater actually is asymmetrical so the edges on the side hang longer, but you can't see that well with my hands on my hips. Still, the whole look emphasizes my ice cream cone shape/pear shape. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it is a little disproportionate.

The middle is my easy Saturday outfit. I loved this because it proved to myself that I have built my closet enough that I could pull out the first top in the drawer (a ruched front white LOFT tee), the first cardigan hanging in the closet, grab my favorite necklace, long faded jeans, and for a splash of fun my new Clark suede green booties, and be done. Simple, but effective. That said, the medium-long length of the cardigan stops right at the widest part of me -- but that didn't become apparent to me until I compared the look to the others ablove.

Sunday's look on the right reinforces why long boyfriend cardigans are still the best look for me. I look and feel more proportionate; there's no ice cream cone shape anywhere, but I don't look like I am drowning or hiding in my clothes, either.  And the funny thing is, boyfriend cardigans flatter me the same way whether I am skinny or fat.











Honestly, I don't know why I even bother buying other sweater lengths, when I look at it like this.

A Working Woman's Guide to Leggings

(My favorite outfit of all time.)

My friend J asked me to do a primer about leggings in the workplace. It took me a long time to warm to the idea of leggings at work, and there are only a few circumstances where they are appropriate, but it is possible to wear them in the office, provided you use a little discretion and grace.

Caveat: all of this depends on what kind of office dress code you have. Mine is business casual, and when we are in the office at our desks, it tends to be on the looser end of business casual. When we travel out to the sites or for meetings, we step it up a notch, and for exec-level meetings, it's a suit.

Here are the guideleines I use for leggings:
1. Never ever wear them at a executive-level business meeting.  Just, don't.
2. Cropped leggings are a possibility in the summer, but I have only worn them when I knew I was doing something before or after work that required them. Otherwise they just look goofy.




3.  Long leggings are best, in dark colors. I have black and brown.




4. Wear them with a dress. They say they can be worn with tunics, but not to work. I've tried, and it just didn't look right.



5. Dresses that are too-short otherwise can get a new life when you pair them with leggings, but a regular length dress is best. The idea is to wear them almost like tights before it's cold enough for tights.



6. Wear them with flats, or sandals in the summer. It's the really the best way to wear flats with dresses without looking frumpy.



7. You can wear them tucked into boots, which I have done, but I don't see the point. Why didn't I just wear tights? To me, leggings are seasonal: spring and fall, when the weather is just between tights and bare-legged temperatures. Coincidentally, that's also (ballet) flats weather!




8. My favorite look is monochromatic. I think it's because there's that break at the ankle where skin shows again, so it's not the same as head-to-toe black in tights and boots.



9. Contrast is okay, but tricky. Angie at YLF said once to pull in that darker color up top somewhere in the outfit, and that makes a lot of sense. See? The left has that repeating color, the right doesn't.




10. Don't be afraid of patterns on top, especially if you use rule #9. The left outfit is missing dark on top, the one on the right has better color flow all the way down.



I hope this was helpful to you! Are there any tips that you use for leggings in the office that I may have missed? Do you have an office where they can be worn?

Angie has posted about leggings many times over the last couple of years. If my guidelines are too strict for your office, check out what she has had to say!

Replacements, and my Missoni update

Maybe it's the return to layering weather, but I have been feeling inspired lately as I get dressed. Just before I get in the shower, I stack a couple of outfit options together -- dress and a necklace, these skinny pants and a top, that olive Gap jacket I haven't worn in a while -- and while I am getting ready, I ponder what other elements will complete the outfit. Sometimes my ideas work out, sometimes they don't. But because I have everything visible in my closet, if it doesn't work out I have an alternative right in front of me.

Take Tuesday's outfit. I knew I wanted to wear the skinny pants and a longer blouse-top. This Gap blouse (a replacement for my still-mourned LOFT polka-dot top) doesn't get enough wear, but it should. There was something about the volume of the top that wasn't working this time, so I added my new patent belt from Nordstrom (to go with my new dress that is out getting altered). The new Old Navy sweater in coral (haha, another replacement for that awesome melon/coral Banana Republic sweater I wore down to the pilly nub) was just what I needed to stay warm as the temps went up and down the scale today. The glittery statement necklace (from LOFT) and my Sam Edelman embellished cheetah print flats were the final Fall 2011 Trend items that completed the outfit.





It all came together remarkably fast, for me. :) Of course I have probably just jinxed myself and I'll be late for work getting ready today! LOL.

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Daily Food Tracker: Tuesday
Breakfast: yogurt, berries, fiber one cereal
Lunch: shrimp po' boy, fries
Dinner: 2 Coney hotdogs on wheat bun with Hormel chili, broccoli slaw, wine
Snack: english toffee ice cream bar

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Let's talk about the buzz of the internet for a minute: the grand opening (and closing) of the Missoni collection at Target.

Like I said yesterday morning, when I went online at 5:30am, everything that I had had my eye on (that awesome throw, the glass bowls, and the long cardigans) were already sold out. I put a couple of other items in my shopping cart, but it was nothing I had my heart set on, so I didn't buy them. I logged off, updated my blog, and went to work.

Little did I know the chaos that then erupted. The stores were reporting lines when they opened up, and people were buying everything they could lay their hands on. My own local store even got a mention in the Chicago Trib. Demand was so high the website crashed.

Unaware of this, I stopped at two different stores in my area, the first of which I assumed would have plenty of stuff because the clientele isn't that fashion-forward. Both stores were totally cleaned out.

Store#1's sad shoe display. I'm surprised the hordes actually left the shoe boxes.




Store #2's shoes. They tried filling it in with their regular shoes, like anyone wanted those today.




The only piece of clothing I could find, a lone x-small sweater hanging sadly on a cleaned-out rack. There was a black dress there too but someone came along and took it before I could take the picture.




This was all I could find of anything Missoni at the second store: a dozen plates, some bowls, and 4 glasses. And there were two little old ladies picking over them anyway.




I'm not going to lie, I am sorely disappointed everything's gone. I really was looking forward to buying several items for my house; we're starting to think about redecorating, and I had my eye on a few that I knew would be good items to use as base pieces. That plan is now trashed, so I am going to start using Pinterest to collect ideas for redecorating instead. Can anyone send me an invite?

And excuse my language, but I have no intention of buying any Missoni pieces from any of the assholes who cleaned out the stores to sell it on Ebay. Seriously, they're assholes, and they ruined a lot of shopping fun for a lot of people. If anything, I'd rather save up and buy a real Missoni piece before I would buy anything from those jerks.