The Little One’s a Girly-girl

Generally, I'm pretty low maintenance. Getting all gussied up involves blow drying my hair (with the intent that it is dry, not to straighten it or style it) and putting on lip balm. A really fancy date includes shimmery lip gloss and a swipe or two of mascara. 


So I'm not sure what I'm going to do with my girls. Both have weather-predicting hair. The more humidity, the more curl. So their hair will require more maintenance than mine. 


They're also quite particular. My daughter is dressing herself now and it's rare that I can pick out her clothes for her. I must say she does a better job than her dad whose color-blindness causes him to match light blue socks with pink outfits. She insists that everything match. Pink shirt requires pink socks. Striped shirt requires striped socks. Unfortunately, she only has two pair of striped socks and more striped shirts. 


The Little One has not progressed to choosing her own attire but she is showing other signs of being a girly-girl. She adores jewelry. For Christmas, we got the girls several beaded necklaces and bracelets. The Little One will adorn herself with several pieces and then clap. (She hasn't learned the 'take one accessory off before you leave the house' rule yet.) She'll walk around waving her hands so her bracelets catch the light. If she can't find the jewelry, she'll choose something else – shoelaces, mallets from the xylophone connected with a string – to wear as a necklace instead.

Her most frequently chosen accessories – other than her blanket – are a green purse and a cell phone. The purse is the perfect proportion for her and she carries it over her shoulder or in the crook of her elbow with the cell phone tucked between her shoulder and ear. Rarely is another purse acceptable, causing much consternation with her older sister who also favors the green purse. On the occasions where another handbag is needed to accessorize her ensemble, she has resorted to a white fur muff, a purple felt basket with a penguin on it, and a videotape with the film pulled out for a shoulder strap. (How she managed to open the front door of the cassette and pull the tape out far enough I'll never know.)


I suppose I'll have shopping buddies when they're older, although I imagine the credit card will take a hit.

 

What Not To Wear

This weekend I felt like I was on What Not To Wear - you know the show where Stacy and Clinton throw away someone's entire wardrobe and start over hopefully with more flattering results.

I've been sorting through my wardrobe over the last year, trying to weed out the clothing I no longer wear and really shouldn't wear and have no hope of ever fitting into again. In the last four years, I have gone from working full-time requiring a semi-professional wardrobe through two styles of maternity clothes (working and casual) and ending at staying at home with three kids.  The wool dress pants, the dry clean only sweaters and the white blouses don't work for every day anymore nor do they fit the way they used to.  Even though the scale says I've lost all the baby weight, the remaining pounds seem to have relocated themselves. My wardrobe has morphed into jeans, t-shirts, and the occasional zippered hoodie along with a few skirts and blouses for church.

I've finally done the purge of the favorite clothes that no longer fit like they used to, don't fit at all or that I no longer have an occasion to wear.  I like to think I've been ruthless in closet, but I know there are things I'm not going to wear, but I just couldn't part with yet.

I do most of my clothing shopping at Goodwill.  I'm cheap, I like to find unusual treasures (like a print of Paris, a Rainy Day by Gustave Callebotte, sadly much smaller than the original) and I'm never really sure if I will really like something unless I've worn it a couple of hours.  Will the sleeves be too short, the shoulders too tight, or the whole thing too cumbersome and slouchy? It's hard to pay retail prices for something I may only wear once because it doesn't work with the rest of my closet.

My latest quest has been for jeans.  My style doesn't include the super-flared legs or the appliqued or the ultra-low rise  or the intentional fading.  I decided it was time to hit the 'real' stores as my husband called them.  So I went shopping like one of the people on What Not to Wear, searching through the stores for the right thing and gasping at price tags.  I found a couple pair of jeans and a top or two, so it was a successful trip.  Clinton and Stacy would approve (I hope!)

To complete my mini-makeover, I had my hair re-colored, so there were no longer an extensive number of strands that were a significantly lighter color than the rest.

It's amazing how much you can accomplish when grandparents are around. :-)