Fierce Fashion Disaster

My sweet friend Salwa from my days in Ohio has a fashion blog that rocks--she has three kids of her own to keep up with every day, and she still manages to be fierce!  Her degree in fashion design and her passion for all things fashion probably give her a leg up in that department.  :)  I know absolutely nothing about fashion, so I read her blog in an effort to at least try to educate myself.  Her most recent post deals with Mommy fashion (or lack thereof), and I feel like she followed me around for a few days and then wrote about all the things I do wrong fashion-wise:

Salwa's Mommy Fashion Statement

She gives some really awesome advice for frazzled moms that I'm going to try to work into my days.  I've always felt like I could be a candidate for What Not To Wear...so far, no one has dared secretly video me, and I would most likely cry if some stylists threw out all my clothes.  I have a comfort zone that I pretty much stick to every day--and sadly, many days that includes wearing my pjs all day.  Seriously.  Here is the night shirt I wear fairly frequently that Dan absolutely hates--he calls it my muumuu.

I totally agree with the message

So yeah, that's a little embarrassing.  Thank goodness I don't have any actual pictures of me wearing it!  Dan's parents gave me that night shirt after I had Abby, so I always tell him to take up his complaints with them whenever I have it on and he gives me a hard time!  It's comfy...what can I say?

I just did a quick glance back through pictures to see what I could find pictures of myself wearing on a daily basis--ie, my mom uniform.  That quick look confirmed that I'm not in near enough pictures with my kids--Dan is in tons of them!  But I hardly ever make it in front of the camera, which I totally need to rectify.  It's not that I don't want to be in the pictures, because I do--apparently I find it hard to remember to insert myself in the frame while performing my duties as camera woman.  So here's a rundown of what I wear (at least when I manage to get in the picture)--Salwa might de-friend me after this.  As a disclaimer, this is pretty much my winter look--I'm positive it gets better in the summer?  Okay, not positive, but it has to...right?

the black zip-up hoodie and t-shirt

black zip-up hoodie strikes again

That picture above was actually an outfit I put together with Salwa in mind (she would probably be mortified)--she had just written about the hot color combination of the season being blue and black, and I put this outfit in my suitcase for our trip to Ohio specifically because I owned the hot blue color shirt!  I also thought she would be particularly pleased that Abby and I complement each other so nicely.  Please don't look at my shoes!

I also have the zip-up hoodie in orange!

orange hoodie is a favorite when I want to change it up

for good measure, I also have the hoodie in gray

gray hoodie and t-shirt--I'm so fashionably daring

I honestly couldn't find any other pictures of myself not wearing one of my three hoodies, in looking through the last 6 months...and I didn't count Christmas, because I know better than to wear a hoodie for special family occasions, usually!

Let's break down the hoodie fashion, shall we?  The gray hoodie, I've owned probably since high school--it's a little frayed around the cuffs from massive wear, and it doesn't go in the rotation as often because of that fact.  The black hoodie and the orange hoodie are probably both 10 years old, and I just discovered a hole in the orange hoodie (hopefully my mom will come to the sewing rescue, since I don't know what I will do without it!).  The t-shirts I usually wear underneath the hoodies are solid colored Gap t-shirts from probably 10 years ago as well--I know they are at least as old as Abby, because I wore them all throughout my pregnancy with her (and my pregnancies with Jake and Alex, too).  That should give you an idea of how wonderfully stretched out they are!  The collars are all messed up and they are roomy from my pregnant belly turning them into unintentional maternity wear.  But under the hoodie, you can't tell they are kind of a mess--bonus!  I like the layers in the winter to keep me warmer, and per Salwa's advice, layers are great for moms in case kids spill stuff...there's always another layer to save you if you need to shed the top one!  Also, the hoodies are camouflaging my discomfort at my current weight--they don't hug all the curves, and hide shirts that do.

An embarrassing confession:  For most of my life, my mom has bought my clothes for me.  Not necessarily paid for them (sometimes I pay her back when I ask her to shop for me), but she does the shopping...because I hate shopping, and I most especially hate shopping for clothes.  Trying on clothes is a depressing, demoralizing experience, and I don't have time for that!  Her favorite shops include Kohl's and Macy's, and she usually gives me a few new shirts for my birthday and for Christmas every year.  That is the extent of my new clothes for the year, typically.  My mom doesn't have bad taste (I almost always like what she buys), but I'm quite positive that my taste would be different were I to shop for myself.  I just don't usually take the time to do that--I'd have to go on a weekend when Dan could stay with the kids, because I'm not dragging three kids into a dressing room with me.  The last time I had the kids in a dressing room with me (probably 2 years ago), Jake loudly asked me what all that stuff was hanging over the top of my pants...aka, my belly fat.  Thanks, son.  Plus, I'm ridiculously frugal--I have TONS of clothes (because I rarely get rid of anything--want to see a shirt I wore in high school?  It's most likely in my closet!), so going out to buy more makes no sense to me.  The solution to that problem would be to go through my closet, weed out all the clothes I'm never going to wear (although I hang on to a lot of them hoping someday to be small enough to fit into them again...), and then update my wardrobe...but that sounds like a lot of work!

Another embarrassing confession:  I own 3 pairs of shoes.  Well, that's not entirely accurate, but I only wear 3 pairs--my black slip-on clogs in the wintertime (featured in the photos above), my sneakers for exercising, and my UVa flip flops in the summer.  I did buy three more pairs of dressier shoes to wear for Dan's brother's wedding last summer (a pair of black low heels, a strappy sandal, and ballet flats...the first two pairs I've worn once each, the ballet flats are still in the box), so I guess I probably own more like 6 pairs of shoes.  I think I have a pair of snow boots as well, so make it an uneven 7 pairs of shoes.  I'm not a shoe person, and even though I think ballet flats look awesome on other people, they look weird on me...hence why I have not worn my pair yet.  I don't really wear heels because Dan is only a few inches taller than me (if that), so I don't want to be taller than him with heels on...and also because I think heels are hideously uncomfortable!  Clearly I don't adhere to the "suffer for fashion" mantra in my life.  I'll admit that I totally don't know what I'm doing with shoes--I need someone to take me shoe shopping and figure out what is cute on me!

Okay, enough embarrassing myself.  Salwa does long-distance styling sessions, so maybe once I'm at a comfortable weight for buying new clothes, I'll tap her for a fashion overhaul... obviously, I need it!  She also sells her own designs, but I haven't been daring enough to try incorporating one of her beautiful scarves into my wardrobe yet (apparently there's such a thing as a "starter scarf"--I don't know anything about scarves, other than they can keep you warm when it's cold outside, so the whole idea of a starter scarf intimidates me!).  In the meantime, I'll just try to get dressed in something other than pjs--and maybe ditch my Mommy Needs Sleep muumuu for good!