Hiding in my closet

What do you do when it’s officially fall but not officially the cool fall weather you need to break out the heavy stuff? You wear this amazing dress…..

This gem has been hiding in my closet too long! Actually, if I am being honest, I want to hide in my closet today too! Since I am an adult who has silly responsibilities such as bills and a faux child, hiding is not an option for me today. (Wah wah wah…..)  
What do you do when you are tired, overwhelmed, dealing with a disease that is currently kicking your butt and just don’t feel good? You put this amazing dress on. You also:

• Take a deep breath
• Tell yourself that you are allowed to not be perfect
• Give yourself permission to retreat
• Be as kind as possible with society and just be as quiet as you can
• Rest
• Be honest with those around you – not mean – just honest. It’s ok to say “I’m not ok today”
• Tap into those encouragers and supporters around you
• Push through the day with the promise of a long, hot bath when you get home

Here’s to a great Tuesday with a great dress that fools me into feeling fabulous!!

P.S. I love the hint of yellow in this dress and the fab glasses! 

  

Fat Girls Shouldn’t Wear Polka Dots……(and other ridiculous things we convince ourselves of)

Look, I’ll be honest.  The smallest thing on my body are the holes in my ears for earrings.  That is a cold truth.

I’m not advocating that you accept me wearing a thong bikini on the beaches of Brazil.  I wouldn’t wish that upon anybody…..

I am, however giving myself permission to stop convincing myself that I can’t wear something because someone said so.  

Insert cute polka dot scarf here.  

it’s only the beginning.  I started with polka dots around my neck and now I feel like every polka dot outfit I come across in the stores is begging me to try it on.  I caved and tried on one dress and folks, it took my breath away.  Not because it was scary, but because I actually don’t look like I am carrying octuplets with it on. Can we all agree that even though it’s not typical, this maroon and coral combo is legit?  Especially these shoes that I forgot I had!

My whole life has been a ridiculous web of lies convincing me that I can’t do something.  And it’s all solely based on someone else saying that I shouldn’t.  It doesn’t always get said directly to me (I mean, I have never received a direct call from Gucci, but…..) and it doesn’t always get put so bluntly.  But it happens.  And ultimately, it’s my own fault for letting any part of me believe them for even one second!

Here are some of the ridiculous things I have let myself be convinced of.  I am curious to hear some of yours!  

1.  You can’t wear skirts because your legs are too thick.
2. You can’t write that book because you don’t have time and you’re really not that good.  Nobody will even buy it because you can’t have a best seller without a big publisher.
3. You can’t wear that furry vest because it just makes you look like a sheep dog (that’s a good blog “a-comin”).
4. You won’t ever save money because you were never taught money management. 
5. You can’t go sleeveless because some kid might innocently get caught in the crossfire of an arm swing and die.
6. You have to keep your hair longer so people don’t concentrate as much on your round face.
7. You will only ever have an average love that you will have to just settle for because the real big love isn’t for girls like you.
8. You will never get to speak in front of people and do the type of public speaking you want because only skinny girls do that.
9. Nobody will listen to your story or learn from your journey.  You aren’t liked enough to have people help spread your message.
10. You just need to accept that you will always be average.

Doesn’t that just make you mad and sick and a host of other things reading it?  Simply ridiculous!  So glad that even though those thoughts still creep in from time to time, I stand on an AWESOME promise that I AM ABSOLUTELY meant for great things and I ABSOLUTELY will do them!

Hugs!

Pete and Repeat – The Boys That Won’t Go Away

Hooray for a new week!  Some of my favorite outfits are up on deck this week to show you from shopping in my closet as well as some of my favorite stories and life lessons to go with them!  You’re going to see lots of repeats this week.  That was what made putting these together so fun, that I had so many pieces that worked with so many different things!!! 

In the theme of repeats, I figured we might as well talk about repeat boys.  Before your mind starts wondering to places it shouldn’t in reference to repeats (especially you people from my home town that know what a stupid teenager I was), let me clarify.  I mean those repeat offenders that you keep letting back into your life when they have proven so often that they don’t deserve to be there.  You know, the ones that you just can’t seem to cut ties with?  Maybe you’re not always the one bringing them back in, but when they show up, you don’t object.  If repeat offenders were one of those punch cards that when you fill up you get free food, I would have been able to feed my whole family last week!  Was there an old flame haunting convention in town and I missed it?

I am going to try really hard to make this short and sweet when every typing bone in my body could get started and not stop until at least a few chapters were written on just this subject.  In my complete education from the School of Hard Knocks and extreme lack of education in the area of psychology and other “guru doctorness”……here are my reasons/revelations as to why the only repeats I want in my life moving forward are good outfits, good movies and good songs on loop!  Although the following is more of a “me preaching to me” session, I am guessing there is someone else that needs to read it too!

1.  You only have one heart.  It’s so fragile.  And every time you choose to use it to invest love into someone, you give a little piece of it away (or in my case a big piece).  Whether you want to admit it or not, you literally carve out a piece of it for the person you are choosing to love.  With an organ so very fragile, shouldn’t we take extra care of it and be careful how we give it away?  Because, even though we can glue it back together, or give it some kind of repair when it breaks, it will still never be the same.  Rarely does the person who took that piece you gave them, ever give it back in the same condition it was given in.  If they didn’t handle it correctly the first time, why would we allow them to have another piece.  What happens when you have given so many pieces of your heart away that you have nothing left when the right person does come along?  
2. You are giving them permission to not change.  So, you broke the ties once (or maybe they broke them for you).  You finally begin to heal and realize that you are moving on in a better direction and that there is new opportunity for you to grow from it (or at least I hope that is the case for you).  Now, for whatever reason, they come knocking on the door of your heart again.  Maybe you invited them back out of loneliness.  Maybe they are coming back out of their own loneliness.  Either way, they’re back and your choice on whether you let them back in or not sends a louder message than you know.  Of course there are the situations where one actually does change and things actually can be repaired.  Often, those are more the exception than the rule.  Remember, the ties were broken for a reason.  And more often than not, you allowing repeat back in sends the message of “You don’t really have to change, I’ll let you back in and my guard will eventually fall enough for you to start the old habits of mistreating me again.”  Be careful of the message it sends to your own heart as well.  You could very well be letting it know “hey heart, I know you were working really hard to repair and move on, but we are gonna go backwards for a bit.”  I am not proud to admit that some have gotten not just one repeat trip, but a few.  
3. You are delaying your real prize!  When you combine one and two above, you get delay.  See, whether you see it or believe it now or not, there is that one purpose that ONLY YOU are supposed to be.  It wasn’t made for anyone else, so nobody else can receive it.  Same goes for that “one person for you”, if you will.  It’s perfectly ok that you take a rugged path to get there or that you take your time.  It’s even fine to have the hiccups of going through a few wrong people.  BUT, if you don’t move from them and you allow them back, you are only delaying the greatest happening of your life.  You just are.  Man, that hurts to type and swallow for me right now!  I will tell you that finally truly believing that I deserve what is supposed to be for me and believing that there really is something THAT GREAT coming, has made it much easier for me lately to “cut the cord” a lot quicker with repeat bad things in my life (whether it be relationships of any kind, food, unhealthy thoughts, etc).  I want to get to the good that I know is there waiting and I do not want any more delays that I bring upon myself!  Make sense?
4. You are risking an avalanche.  When you allow the repeats and give just that tiny opening for the brokenness to come back in, it is almost inevitable that it will affect other things in your life as well.  In my situation, it just opens the flood gates for negativity and it usually starts with me attacking myself.  It’s not secret that I am already battling that daily as it is.  It took more restraint than you know not to make this post about all the horrible things I see in these pictures (huge legs, puffy wrists, seven chins, etc).  But, if I take a stand against not allowing repeat “bad heart treaters” in my life, then that includes repeat self-hate.

As usual, I rattled way more than I intended to!  I hope that you get what I am saying and that you truly understand how precious you and that big ol’ heart of yours are!  Let’s end the repeat boys right there and get over to some good repeats, like this outfit! 🙂  This chami was purchased for less than a Sonic drink and goes with SO MANY things in my closet!  First up, is how it looks with this cardigan.  Don’t you just love a long cardigan?  I will have to have the same talk with myself as I do every year.  I will stand in the mirror and say “Alicia, you cannot wear a cardigan every single day this fall/winter.  You have to give the other great pieces in your closet some love too!”.  

Before you go, can we also just please take a minute to drool over these FABULOUS shoes and that great hat?  My exchange student insisted that I bring the hat into the wardrobe family and I am so glad she did!!  These shoes.  Well, these shoes are filling a hole that no man could fill anyway right now! :p 

FashioKNEEsta Follies

Now that you’ve been following the blog and are all caught up on the great shopping in my closet project (if you have no idea what I am talking about, click here), I am excited to share what I come up with.  What I am not excited about is my inability to talk about it.

I have plenty to say.  That’s never a problem.  But I struggle in the world of fashion blogging.  I’m not even trying to be one of those.  I am just stupid excited that I have cool things in my closet to mix and match versus draining my bank account for new stuff all of the time.  I studied great fashion bloggers far and wide.  They talk in fantastic detail about their outfits, the brands they wear, the occasions to wear them, the story behind the purchases…..all very fashionably romantic.  It seems no matter how hard I try to come up with a story or a great bunch of words in relation to what I am wearing, I fall short.  Every.  Single.  Time.

Chances are, whatever I am wearing was on sale, from a store that was probably on my way somewhere, that I forced myself to stop into, because…..I honestly hate shopping.  It doesn’t make sense.  I know.  I am a girl, of course I like shopping.  Nope.  For various reasons (I’m poor, I hate the inconvenience of the mall, etc), I just can’t make myself like it.  I have instead decided to just post the pictures of the outfits and chat with you about other random things.  Is that cool with you?  Yes?  GREAT!

I accept that I will never be a fashionista.  It’s a burden only an elite few can bear.  The word fashionista did make me think of knees though (and it actually made me think of it while I was peeing – which is where I do my most genius thinking).  I have great respect for knees.  You can’t hate something that essentially holds you up.  Mine deserve more respect than most, because, let’s be honest, they are carrying around a few extra poundage than most.  I guess it only makes sense that with all the pressure they are under, that sometimes they buckle.  The fact that they never buckle at a good time is when I struggle to still love them.  For example, last night, I had a killer outfit on and pulled into the grocery store to own some food shopping like a boss.  Being there at a busy time encouraged me to walk taller and strut with a little extra confidence on the off chance that the future Mrs. Me was inside awaiting my arrival.  Then I went down.  Not downtown to listen to music or have a few drinks.  Down as in down on my knees (and not by my choice).  It felt like I had an audience of 4,239, but turns out it was only 7.  As usual (I fall a lot more than I care to think about), I picked myself up, acted like there was something in the middle of the floor that tripped me up, and moved on to picking out the perfectly ripe bananas.

Today’s outfit:

I am pretty certain that I will wear this dress til the threads are barely staying together. It will never go out of style in Alicialand!
And these boots……..they have been screaming from the depths of my closet to come out for the fall. I like to imagine that when I stand in my closet trying to figure out what to wear, they are jumping up and down like Donkey from Shrek saying “pick me, pick me”…..It’s going to be a great fall with these guys!!

Kudos to all of you who this fashion thing and make it look so good.  For the rest of us, grab something out of your closet and wear it with the confidence that if you fell in the banana aisle, you would still rock it!