Amiable's Blog

Birthday celebrations (from last week) continued this weekend with a mini-retreat with some friends to a nearby town.  I had to leave the retreat a bit early to attend a family friend's wedding, and I didn't take my camera.  So here's my outfits as I tried them out beforehand.  

#1 New-to-me jeans (gray jeans #2 - Jag Jeans.  I love them.  They have black studs around the pockets!)  They're straight legged. And new-to-me varying grays and white striped tee.  Both Good Will from earlier this week.

#2 I thought I might get cold, so I added a jacket (which I've had a long time).

#3 And a hoodie, just in case (this hoodie also from Good Will this week - it's SO soft).

#4 The jacket over hoodie outfit from Angie a week or two back.

#5 And the back view.

#6-8 Topped with my new-to-me white coat (Old Navy) from Good Will.  I'm in love with this coat.  I don't think my friends were fans though.  Am I delusional?

#9-10 WIW to the wedding - Angies cropped top (I think hers was a sweater instead of a jacket though) over a flared skirt.   I added silver sparkly earrings to go with the bracelet, and the white coat.  Does the combo work?  (The skirt is black eyelet, the jacket is new-to-me DKNY Jeans blue and black jaquard, from Good Will earlier this week).

See, I did buy lots at Good Will (I think this isn't quite half way through yet?)

What do you think?  Suggestions for improvements on the outfits?  Purchasing errors?

Off to catch up with what's been going on here in my day and a half gone :)

The trouble with a shopping marathon is that card-carrying members of Team Wear, such as myself, are faced with way too many options of what to wear first!  Argh - how to decide?

I had on my list " long sleeved striped shirt".  I bought three.  I also had on my list "gray skinny jeans", and bought two.

Here's one of each - a raspberry/black striped tee from Joe Fresh, and gray skinny jeans from Gap.  Both actually from Goodwill, of course.

I'm wearing my swashbuckling cardi over them and still freezing - I may need to break out one of my new sweatshirts or sweaters, or add my new-to-me thermal undershirt from Cuddl Duds via Goodwill)

What do you think? Will these work reasonably well in my wardrobe?  Do they fit okay?

Yesterday, I spent the day with one of my favorite friends, visiting nearly every GoodWill in the Omaha, Nebraska vicinity.  This was great fun, but rather bad news for my 40-bags purge.  (Or maybe great news, as I now have lots more stuff, so more purging will inevitably take place, right? right.)

Anyway, it was a terrific time, and I have lots of new-to-me clothing!  It's in the washing machine now, so today I'll show you what I wore shopping, and my current outfit (with new-to-me red suede booties).  (#1 is WIW, #2 includes the coat that I left in the car, #3 is WIW today)

Bonus pics of a few things in the dressing rooms: #4 and (5/6) stayed, #7 (white layering tee and gray skinnies), 8 (black bootcut jeans) and 9 (camo jeans) came home with me.

Suggestions for improvement on the outfits?  (The shopping pieces you'll see later, I promise :) )

A few semi-orphans survived my purge this weekend - because they met my criteria for what I was willing to keep.  This is one of them - teal and plaid.

Now that I wear it, I'm less sure.  The sleeves have little tiny puffs, and I don't like that.  I think this is at best a placeholder for a better teal plaid shirt :)

Anyway, I feel pretty okay in it with white jeans today. It feels just sharp enough to be a teensy bit festive, which I wanted, since it's my birthday.  (Mini celebrations will be going on here and there for a few weeks - but nothing big.  Tonight, dessert with my kids and parents is planned)

What do you think - suggestions for improvement?  I haven't decided yet whether to change before taking my kids to boy scouts tonight.

On Saturday, I took Angie's advice, and purged many of my problem orphans.  In fact I went further.  On Friday I'd read the "Stylish minimalist wardrobe" series here, and decided I was inspired to try a slightly more minimal wardrobe.  

So I purged my "probation" zone, and moved into probation everything that wasn't black, white, gray, red (any dark shade, and I kept a couple of orange items out) or blue (any shade, including teal and turquoise), and anything that was patterned with a pattern other than stripes or plaid.  We'll see how long it takes me to get tired of what's left!  (My guess is that this won't be a long experiment - but it does include all of my favorites, so we'll see).

So to church yesterday, I wore what proved to be a new favorite - black and white striped tube skirt (the camera angle makes it look longer than it was, or I hiked it up later - I'm not sure - but it hit at the widest point of my calves, to make them look a little curvier), and my burgundy cowl neck sweater.  Happiness factor was high in this, yay!

What do you think?  Is this combo a winner?  What should I do to improve it?

Today's orphan outfit is kind of cheating,  But oh well.  It's day 15, just so that I can keep count.

I'm re-styling the knit button-down from yesterday - I put a wintersilk under it, and thought it actually looked pretty good as the outer layer. But the turtleneck of the wintersilk really looked bad (#5-6).  So I added a scarf (#3-4), but then that didn't actually include any orphans, and I have this grandpa cardigan languishing that might go perfectly over it.  So I tried it (#1-2).

In reality, it's a bit warm for today with the cardigan, so I'll probably spend most of the day without.  Which means maybe it's an orphanless orphan day. *sigh*.  if I get a chance, I'll change into some an orphan later today.

(Worn with my weekend jeans that you all helped me keep last week, and my trusty brown boots.  I like these jeans so much they might get worn during "Mom" days too.)

I'm inclined to keep the knit buttondown, and only wear it as the outer layer - I like the visual simplicity.  (After seeing these pics, I untucked the wintersilk, now it grins evenly).  

I'm not sure about the grandpa cardigan.  It's a yummy carmel color, and I think the color is probably the one shade of beige that works ok on me (sorry for the backlit photos, you probably can't tell anything about the colors).  But I wish the cardigan was longer.  Should it go?

Okay, so I realized today that part of the danger of doing a 40 day orphan challenge is that my happiness factor with my outfits in likely to suffer.  I mean really - most of these are orphans for a reason, right?  Because I'm happier in the clothes that I wear most often....

So today I broke out an orphan that's not on the chopping block because it's sentimental - a sweater that my mother knit me.  The arms are super long (at my request), and the body is kinda cropped.  The front has a twist, making it sort of a mobius tube - which is why my mom chose to knit it for me - she knows I love that kind of stuff.

I paired it with an almost-orphan white knit button down (I can't get my head around why it isn't very versatile, or at least why I don't wear it much - it seems like it's be the perfect slouchy buttondown, but something is just barely off about it - I'm not sure).  

I had a hard time choosing the jeans, oddly enough.  Blue and black both looked too ... accidental?  unintentional?  I'm not sure - like I just threw something on, not like I chose to wear this.  I thought gray was closer to looking intentional and just a bit edgy.  So I went that route.  Finished with burgundy boots to mirror the dark red of the sweater.

What do you think?  Does it work?  Suggestions for improvement?  Should the sweater be stored and admired rather than worn?  Can you pinpoint what's off about the knit buttondown, or do I just need to get used to it?

BTW: Happiness factor wasn't all that high today either, but it was nice to wear a sentimental item.  I wanted it to be ever so slightly edgier.

Yesterday was too dark to get a good picture, and today it's too bright to get a good picture. (I may try again with my tripod once my kids leave for swimming lessons, so they're not offended that I'm not letting them more pics...)   So thanks for bearing with my bad pics. :)

Today's orphans (day 14) are an olive green tee (shown without topper in #2), and a navy suede jean-style jacket.

I found the jacket yesterday when I was trying out the red velvet one (now purged), and couldn't believe I'd forgotten about it.  I like both the way it fits and the color (navy with yellow jean-jacket styled stitching).  I knew right away that my goal today would be to wear that jacket.  I paired it with the olive tee, because it's another orphan, and because I thought it would make a reasonable pairing.  What do you think?

Does the addition of the brown belt and shoes bring in too many disparate colors?    In my mind, it works, but your eyes are much better at seeing these things that I am.

My leaning is to keep the jacket and is neither here nor there on the tee.  It's useful for layering (which is probably the only way I'd wear it anyway), but I'm not sure about the color on me, and it's kinda thin (not very substantial).

What do you think?

The jacket from my orphan WIW this morning is too small to wear over a sweater.  How about over a shell?

Pardon the strange camera angle.  At least I got outside lighting :)

And I realize that it really doesn't go with this particular shell, jeans or shoes.... 

Keep or Ditch?

Orphan Day 13:  if nothing else, I'm more fully utilizing my clothes, right?

Up today is a black turtleneck that is surprisingly un-versatile, and a dark red velvet cropped jacket.

I kept the turtleneck for it's potential of wearing under jackets like this one (or under sweaters), and I think it works okay under the jacket.  But this is probably the only way I'll wear it - due to red stripe down the arms (The stripe says "Harley Davidson" in white on it, and it's fully a part of the sweater.  I'm not opposed to motor cycles at all, but it makes this turtleneck much less versatile.  There's a small Harley logo on the back too).

I don't think I like it enough to keep - my block cowl neck sweater with the bit of sparkle will serve just as well under a jacket and is much more versatile. (I think I'll try it under this jacket just to see if it fits - it isn't as streamlined as this one, I don't think). 

As for the jacket - I'm not sure.  I like the length, but it seems snug.  Especially over this sweater.  I can move fine in it - it just looks snug to me in the pic.  What do you think?

Suggestions for improvement?