Shoes!

Thank you again for all the feedback! You'll see on the right side of the page that I have made a to do list for myself with all of your wonderful suggestions!

First, if you'll let me, I'd like to brag for just a moment. Today I was notified that I received full tuition scholarships to TWO different law schools! So now I have two choices of school in the Twin Cities and one in Ohio! How exciting!

Okay, on to the fashion! I felt like I looked good today, so hopefully I'm at least closer! I think this pair of jeans is much better than the other, although they still aren't perfect.

I also got several questions about shoes. I decided to post a picture of all my shoes, except for my tennis shoes and flip flops. You'd think this would be a daunting task. It isn't. I only recently became interested in wearing anything but tennis shoes. Now that I've gotten there I can't imagine going back, but I still don't have quite the collection I should because I'm very hard on shoes.
I'll start with ones I like:




And the ones I don't like:
And then all the ones that I'm not sure of, particularly the last pair of the group:

Oh, and since someone mentioned it, I actually don't mind dresses. I struggled with them for a long time because I hate my legs, but I've gotten that figured out now. This is my one and only work dress.

I may have learned a lesson on my own!

Lesson: Either drape-y shirt OR wide leg pants. Not both. I think I look about 2 feet tall, or as if I'm a small child in my mother's work clothes.

That said, I consider all of these pieces to be good pieces. The shirt makes my stomach look bad in the pictures, but that is (at least partially!) because of the light hitting the satiny stuff different than the cottony stuff. I am iffy about the jacket though. What do you think?

I wanted to make a couple comments on jeans, since so many people mentioned that below. I badly want jeans with a higher rise, and I am so thankful to the fashion world for beginning to bring them back into fashion. For a long time, it's been difficult for me to find anything but low rise. I MUCH prefer higher. So, that will be something I will look for when I go jean shopping. But here is my jean dilemma: I have large thighs, large hips, and large calves. I have to buy jeans that my legs fit in, and they inevitably end up falling off my waist, which ends up making them bunch at the crotch, which is usually too long to begin with. BUT, since I am willing to make a foray into the world of jeans that cost more than $20, I'm hoping there are other people who have these problems that can help me out with jean recommendations!

Another note: because I am still recovering from the wedding and honeymoon, I will not be heading out to the stores for a while. Taking two weeks off when you're only a part time employee SUCKS! But never fear, I have a plan! In mid-February, I will head out to a department store (recs welcome - Macy's? Dillards? Kohls?) and get a couple bras, since the consensus says that a bra should be my #1 priority. Then, I am going to arrange to go on a major shopping trip for my birthday at the end of March. My inlaws live in Chicago, so I might do that, or there is an outlet mall with a Gap outlet near my parents. I'll probably base it on what I hear from you! In the meantime, I'll keep going through my clothes and getting advice from you.

I'm loving your feedback - please keep it coming!

Solve the Mystery!

Okay, this is what I wore to class today. I look kinda dumpy. This I know. The question is, WHY do I look dumpy? Bad shirt, bad jeans, or bad overall? I'm pretty sure the jeans are bad. They are rather loose on my waist, so they bunch up and I'm constantly fixing them. But is the shirt bad too? I just got it for Christmas from my mom from Old Navy. I'd like to think that it'd look good with better fitting jeans or khakis. So, do I keep the shirt or do both need to go?

EDIT: I didn't get to shower today because I ran out of time. Don't judge the hair and make up!!

First Critiques

Tonight I fell asleep while attempting to read Beowulf for school, so there was no time to go through my wardrobe. However, I do have some honeymoon pictures that I can share. I bought a couple pieces from Target, a few on extreme Walmart clearance because I needed some tank tops, and some capris on eBay because I thought they'd get ruined. (Side note: Lonely Planet drastically exaggerates how hot, dirty, and buggy Costa Rica is.) The results were mixed, at best.

#1 - Vintage Style Dress, Target

I bought this because I thought the poofiness of the skirt would hide my lower body. However, I ended up just looking pregnant, I think because my boobs aren't big enough to carry it off.

#2 - Green Tank Top, Walmart
What happened here?? This is a basic Hanes Perfect Fit Tank Top!! But somehow, it makes my boobs look like man boobs instead of nice boobs, and I look boxy all around. Side note - I need to find a casual hairstyle to replace a ponytail. I look AWFUL in them. Ideas?

#3 - Metro 7 Metallic Scoop Tank, Gray and White, Walmart



















I'm not sure if I order the white in a XL and the gray in the L, or what, but the white one was terrible. I have my swimsuit on underneath in this photo, so that's not helping, but it draped very oddly on me. It seemed... stretched out. The gray one, however, was a pretty good purchase, especially for $4. I think one of my rules, a la What Not to Wear, will be to work on finding tops that have length to them. Short tops will make me look wider, correct?

Rules of the Road

Okay, here's the goal of this exercise:

I want a closet filled with clothes that make me look and feel good. I have learned that I feel better when I look better. Period. This is about me. My husband loves me no matter what, and so do my family and friends. I want a look that expresses my newfound confidence all the time, and professionalism and competence in a work setting. I am especially incompetent in the world of accessories. When do you match? When do you coordinate? When can you throw in bold colors? I haven't the faintest idea.

Because I admit that I know next to nothing about what I am doing, I am leaving myself fairly open to the general public (though I must admit I'll weigh the opinions of those I know IRL a bit more heavily). However, there are a few ground rules that I'd like you to keep in mind when you are helping me make decisions, in order for this to not be completely futile.

1) I'm relatively poor. I'm willing to spend some money on higher quality items, but if I'm going to do so, they need to be versatile items - good jeans, good work pants/jackets/pantsuits, at least one really good bra, etc., not a tank top, or a non-black or -brown pair of shoes, or a purse (I will NEVER understand purses that cost upwards of $50 - sorry. I'm not really looking to change that!).

2) I don't know how to be high maintenance. If it isn't comfortable, it's going to sit in my closet. Shoes are an exception, within reason. I don't expect them to feel like tennis shoes, but I don't want to break my ankle either. I also don't do dry clean only for anything but say, coats. I just can't handle it. Sorry!

So, within the next week, I am going to start going through my clothes. I'm going to try to post pictures of the worst of the worst, for entertainment, and also things that are questionable. Because of the wedding and the honeymoon, I'm not in a position to buy new things right now, so we'll make this the weeding out phase!

Who am I?

Welcome to my blog.

I'd like to tell you all a bit about who I am, what this blog is about, and why I am choosing to write it.

I am overweight. I have always been overweight. I've come to the conclusion that I will always be overweight.

Keep reading. I'm not sad.

I have finally, finally, FINALLY reached a point where I'm happy with the way that I look. I've seen myself a couple sizes smaller and, while it was nice, it just wasn't that big of a deal. Plus, I got that way by being too poor to eat in Italy. Meh to that. Meh to any sort of diet again, ever. No, I'm not going to switch back to non-diet pop. No, I'm not going to go back to the atrocious eating habits that I had as a kid. And no, (hopefully!!) I'm not going to start eating my feelings again, or eating because I'm bored. But I'm also not going to be a calorie counter, or a compulsive food monitor, or an insane exerciser. I've been around those people. My dear, dear grandparents are those people, and while I love them a lot, that's not who I want to be. I think making food and my weight so central to my consciousness was part of what got things so out of control to begin with. When food is a band-aid, focusing on gaining and losing weight is especially dangerous.

And so now? I am what I am. Yeah, it'd be great if I could slim my thighs back down just enough so they don't rub together, or if I could tone up my stomach. Maybe now that I am rediscovering free time, it'll happen. Sweet. But am I going to stress myself out over it? Spend my time thinking about it, and talking about it? No, I'm not. I do enjoy going to the treadmill in my apartment complex, and so I am going to start doing that again. BECAUSE I ENJOY IT.

I can't tell you what a liberating feeling this is to finally have. I finally look in the mirror and feel pretty! I can go out and not worry about what I look like! I love it!

But, I'm aware that, even though I feel like I've caught up now, and most of the things I've bought recently are on the right track, my clothes are not doing me any favors. There are things in my closet that I KNOW need to go, that I just haven't parted with yet, but there are also lots of things that I'm not sure about. I'm also not sure how to rebuild. When you've been living on jeans and t-shirts, it's hard to know what basics you need.

From here, I'm going to follow up with another post, setting some basic ground rules and deciding the format for this little What Not to Wear simulation.

Please help!