Wine a little, you'll feel better

The color for today for the Fall Color Challenge is wine.  I kind of cheated a little bit on this one, I think the true wine color I'm wearing is my long sleeved t-shirt, but I had this outfit in mind for this day all last week as I was thinking about it.  This sweater is another one of my Goodwill finds.  So between my pink, purple and wine colors, I'm just varying shades of wine.  I'm Merlot and White Zinfandel and Pink Moscato all rolled into one.

Long sleeve shirt - Mossimo, Target

Sweater - thrifted Target stock

Skirt - two birds vintage via b. (a resale shop)

Boots - Target, old

Necklace - S&D 

It's no secret that the Pants Monkey and I are beer people, but we do love a good bottle of wine too.  Especially in the fall and winter months.  I love wine with a good steak.  I love wine with Italian food, especially a good Chianti, yum!  Lately one of our favorite meals has been to take some good cheeses, some crackers, and a little meat or bread and then having a good sharp Chardonnay.  I never used to like Chardonnay but have found lately I like a drier wine.
 

Speaking of good wine and cheese, last week I had the chance to meet up again with lovely Maca from the Spanglish Life and we had wine and a fantastic cheese plate!  We didn't take a picture this time, we were too busy enjoying our conversation!  I was so full of cheese when we were done, but it really was delicious!  I can't wait until the next time her and I meet up!

Finally, I got a close up of my boots today because it's Everybody Everywear today and the theme is boots! I have had these boots a million years.  They're a bit beat up and loved, but I think it adds to their charm.  They are crazy comfortable and they keep me plenty warm on these cold days!  And every girl needs a good pair of tall brown boots right?

EBEW - School days

As my mom would say, I'm a day late and a dollar short on Everybody, Everywear once again - but I say better late than never!  I had totally forgotten to look to see what the theme was before yesterday and then once I saw it was "back to school" I wanted to do an outfit because I thought it would be fun!  So, here is my back to school look!

I went for a preppy look, plaid button shirt and khaki skirt.  Truth be told though - I wouldn't have worn this to school back in the day.  When I was little, I loved wearing dresses and skirts.  I stopped wearing them somewhere around 4th grade though.  Then I entered a hideous phase I'd love to forget called "oversized shirts with leggings or bike shorts".  Oh 1990's.  By the time I was in about seventh grade I was into more jeans and t-shirts/sweatshirts or flannels (still the 90s) and that was my uniform more or less through high school.  I was just a casual girl for the most part, somewhat frumpy, no nicer way of saying it. I'm not saying I was Josie Grossie, but style just wasn't that big to me back then!  But hey, I still got the boy - the Pants Monkey was my high school sweetheart, we started dating our sophomore year.  Still, I'd love to go shake my 16 year old self and tell her that denim overalls are just not that awesome.  Man I wish I could show you guys some pictures.  I'll have to see what I can do to scan some in at some point!

So anyway, if I could go back in time, I'd encourage my teenage self to wear something like this on the first day of school.  It's simple, chic and comfy!  Ban the baggy sweatshirts Teenage Bethie!  Just say no!  He he.

Were you stylish in school or did you choose comfort over style like me?

Outfit rundown:

Shirt - Mossimo, Target 

Skirt - Old Navy 

Shoes - DSW

Necklace - S&D

Bracelet - Bead for Life

EBEW - Block Party

Yay, I'm so glad I remembered EBEW this month!  As soon as I saw the choice of color blocking, I decided I wanted to wear my yellow Shabby Apple skirt.  And no joke, I totally Googled "yellow skirt" and "color blocking" for some ideas yesterday.  I saw a couple of cobalt blue/yellow combinations and based on those, put together this.  I'm actually really loving how it turned out!  It may be my favorite way I've worn this skirt so far!

It also finally gave me a reason to wear these darn sandals again.  I have hardly worn them at all and I don't like that.  I need to find more ways to use them.  What's funny to me too is I wore these the last time I managed to participate in EBEW, even though it was a couple of months ago.  If you have only been to my blog on EBEW days I swear I own more shoes than this!

Looking at this outfit some more, I still absolutely love it, but now I'm also realizing, these were my school colors in high school.  Woo, Hylander Pride!  My senior year for some reason the popular thing for homecoming was to take a pair of jeans and attach a ton of blue and gold ribbons to the legs to look like pom poms.  I do remember doing this, but looking back, it was a waste of a good pair of jeans, because you cut holes in the legs to tie the ribbons through.  And it's not like you wore them again after homecoming.  But when you're 17 you don't really care that much about little things like wasting money I suppose!

Back to present day here, I added my favorite roomy bag because not only does it match my outfit, but it also is color blocked on it's own.  This is a better choice of a day to day bag than my cute little one from yesterday's outfits - though all the nice compliments I received on that bag have convinced me to not totally give up on it!  

Outfit rundown:

Shirt and sandals - Old Navy

Skirt - Shabby Apple 

Necklace - Stella and Dot w/Megan Mae buttonflower

Bracelet - Stella and Dot

Bag - Lillian's Shoppes

EBEW - I'm on a boat

Look at your blog post, now look at mine, now look at yours and back to mine.  Sadly your post isn't mine but if you participate in Everybody Everywear's Nautical Day your post could be like mine. Look down, where are you?  You're on a boat with the blog post your post could be like.  What's in your hand?  Back to me.  It's a computer with two tickets to that thing you love.  Look again, the tickets are now diamonds.  Anything is possible when you participate in Everybody Everywear.  I'm on a horse. *Old Spice whistle*

Anyone else remember the Old Spice commercial I just mocked up there?  It's not that old, like two years ago now?  It was hilarious and a running joke between us and some friends for awhile, especially the "I'm on a boat" line.  And as soon as I started writing my post for this month's Nautical Everybody Everywear I could not help myself, I knew I'd be referencing that somehow!  I can't take full credit, I found the script online and modified it to fit - so all credit to the Old Spice people and they are not paying me anything for my parody!  They do make the Pants Monkey smell nice though, I will say that!

So in all seriousness, my outfit is a bit of a stretch for the Nautical theme, but I think it still would work well for an afternoon of boating.  Breezy striped dress, super fun shoes.  I'm all set, just point me to my yacht! 

I love the water.  I would love nothing more than to go be on a boat all day long.  We have relatives and friends that have cabins on lakes and they own pontoon boats and the highlight of visiting them in the summer is getting a chance to go out on the pontoon.  When I when the lottery you better believe that I will own a pontoon boat.  And yes a cabin on a lake where I can bring said boat.  But most importantly I will own a boat.

I am so excited about these new sandals.  I've never done the "wrap" style sandal before and I need to play with that a bit more, couldn't get them to stay up to save my life.  But in spite of that I love the color.  I have been wanting more colorful things in my closet and especially been wanting more colorful shoes, so these fit the bill pretty well.  And they were on sale!  I just realized my dress came from Old Navy too.  And today's theme is Nautical.  Old Navy = Nautical!  Yeah I know I'm really reaching now!

I took these pictures yesterday too - the weather today is definitely not boating weather.  Rain and clouds AGAIN.  But at least it's a workday this time and not a weekend!  I'll just dream about being on a boat, it'll have to do for now!

Outfit rundown:

Dress - Old Navy

Shrug - Ragstock

Sandals - Old Navy

Necklace - Maurices

Better late than never

Ok, so when my thermostat said it was below 30 outside this morning I decided, I'm not taking outdoor pictures this morning, even if it is super sunny!  Too cold for me!  

This is totally not what I meant to wear today.  I was going to wear the pants no matter what, and I decided to wear this t-shirt, but I was going to wear a jacket instead of this little sweater (which yes, it's another cousin goodie, told you we weren't quite done with that!).  Then I opened the closet and saw this little sweater and decided I liked it better, so here you go!

I finally hemmed these pants too!  I won't be tripping over them any longer and now you can actually see the shoes I'm wearing!  I still adore these pants, they are hands down probably one of my most favorite items in my closet right now!

Below is Big Pippin, I had a really cute picture that she photo bombed this morning where she was actually climbing up on me and of course, it turned out fuzzy.  So I tried to recreate it and she was having none of that, so this was the result.

Pippin says "leave me alone mom!"

Silly kitty.  Also, I'm totally a day behind because yesterday I spaced on Everybody Everywhere - so I wore my pastels today and will add my link today.  Better late than never right?

Outfit rundown:

T-shirt - Decree, JCPenney

Sweater - Jones New York (from cousin)

Pants - Anthropologie (thrifted)

Shoes - Merona, Target (thrifted)

Necklace - F21

EBEW - Wearin O The Green

It's Everybody, Everywear day and the theme this month is green which ties in with St. Patty's Day and is also awesome for spring.  Today is not the last time I'll wear green this week either, we have an event at work on Thursday where we're encouraged to wear green and then being a bit Irish, I'll be wearing green on Saturday as well.  Good thing I own quite a bit of it!

I was ironing this skirt over the weekend and thought, hmm, there are so many colors in it, I'm drawn to the red, but I think I want to pull out the green.  So, I added this tank and blazer and I'm so excited with how well it matches.  I swear this skirt is going to be the most versatile thing I own.

It was a little lighter out this morning since the sun is back, but I was running late, so I grabbed my tripod and took these photos as soon as I got to work.  Fortunately my boss always comes in about a 1/2 hour to 45 minutes after me, so I had plenty of time!  I did choose to wear nylons today even though it will be in the 60s.  Tomorrow we're going for 70 and I think I just might attempt bare legs!  In March!  This is just unheard of and I'm still scratching my head, but I'm also still not complaining!!

I am kind of laughing at the fact that by my feet in the above photo is two buckets of ice melt...don't think we'll be needing that here for awhile!

I think my little green flats here will be getting a lot of love this week with all the green I plan to wear!  Although the way this weather is going I may be digging my sandals out of storage!!

Outfit rundown:

Tank top - Mossimo, Target

Blazer - Calvin Klein Jeans, thrifted via Unique Thrift

Skirt - American Living, JCPenney, thrifted via Clothes Mentor

Shoes - SO, Kohls, thrifted via Clothes Mentor

Necklace - Charming Charlie

EBEW - Pink and Red

I feel a little like a walking Valentine today for Everybody Everywear, but I'm just going to go with it!  Besides, it is giving me a chance to try color blocking, which I haven't done much of so far.  I am not super happy with how these pictures turned out, even though it was cloudy I thought, oh let's go outside, it'll be cute in the fresh snow.  Maybe not so much.  I apologize if these pictures blind anyone!

So the Pants Monkey and I have been married almost six years, but we've been together nearly 14.  That adds up to a lot of Valentine's Days celebrated.  And I don't think we've ever gone overboard.  Even when we were younger we didn't go overboard because our dating anniversary was in March, so we tended to wait to do something bigger at that time.  Most years we would get dinner together somewhere and he'd usually give me flowers or something. Some years we even just went out for dessert instead of dinner.  After we got married, we decided we wouldn't really do any kind of gifts for Valentine's Day.  In fact, some years we haven't even gone out, we've opted to make a nice dinner at home or something along those lines.  Then two years ago we stumbled onto a tradition I really like.  We go out for a nice dinner and we buy a nice bottle of scotch to enjoy with the dessert that we usually bring home from said dinner.

I always say I don't need a special day for saying that I love my husband because I love him every day.  But I do like the little tradition we've been enjoying on Valentine's Day and it's an excuse to treat ourselves during the year.  The only other time we go out for any kind of nice dinner on this scale is for our anniversary in May.  So it's nice to have a treat like this!

My outfit here is not what I'm wearing for dinner tonight.  I have something else cooked up for my Valentine that I know he's going to love.  You'll see that outfit tomorrow.  I can't wait to share it.  For now, I'm just going to walk around looking like I should be pasted on the front of a card or something.  The Amazing Walking Human Valentine!

Outfit rundown:

T-shirt - Old Navy

Sweater - Mossimo, Target (old)

Pants - Squeeze (from the lovely Megan Bird)

Shoes - MIA thrifted via Clothes Mentor 

Bag - Nine West (birthday gift)

Necklace - Maurices

Earrings - F21

It's Black, It's White, It's Love for you and me

All right I'll admit it.  I'm a closet (or maybe not so closeted) Michael Jackson fan.  Old school Michael Jackson that is.  Pretty much up through the Dangerous album, before the kids and the scandals and all that jazz.  His early music had a nice positive message, is upbeat and fun and I like to dance to it.  Phew.  I feel better getting that off my chest.  So anyway, today is Everybody Everywear Black and White.  So I have had Michael's "Black and White" stuck in my head all morning!

What I think is too cute, is before Christmas we were watching Glee and for their "Sectionals" episode this year they did a little Jackson family tribute.  And I mentioned to the Pants Monkey that I am actually a fan of Michael Jackson music and Jackson 5 music and such and he smiled and told me he wouldn't like disown me or something.  Nothing more was said.  Low and behold though, guess what one of my Christmas presents from him was?  The Essential Michael Jackson CD - and it's perfect, it starts with the Jackson 5's greatest hits and then has pretty much all the good stuff up through the early 90's.  I thought that was pretty cute.

I have been trying to remember to participate in Everybody, Everywear for several months now!  I'm so excited I finally am doing it today!  And I knew as soon as the theme was announced as Black and White that I'd be wearing this awesome Two Birds dress again!  I think I like the way I have it styled today better than the first day I wore it.  Something about adding the belt is helping with the overall shape.

Speaking of the belt - believe it or not, it was the Pants Monkey's!  I have been stealing it from him off and on for a few years now and he more or less has said I can have it.  Isn't that sweet?  It is a bit long, but it works ok for me!

Rundown:

Shirt - Gap

Dress - Vintage, Two Birds Boutique

Tights - Target

Shoes - DSW

Necklace - Thrifted

Purse - Vintage Coach via Rewind NE Mpls

Earrings - Premier Jewelry

Belt - stolen from the Pants Monkey