Knittin' Like a Mother Effer!

I spent the last year teaching myself to knit using a combination of books and youtube videos. It has been a grueling process and I almost gave up the first time I tried to read a knitting pattern. That stuff looks like algebra, guys.

But, I actually did it and I felt confident taking on a huge project for Christmas. I decided to give all the lovely ladies on my Christmas list a handmade scarf. I started in August and managed to accomplish knitting 8 scarves by Christmas Eve. I was derailed a little bit by the house thing so I still have two scarves left to knit. It's ok though. One is for me and one is for someone we do a late Christmas with so it will be ready in time.

My mom showing off the "presentation"

My lovely sister modeling her scarf

It felt so personal giving everyone something that I put so much time and effort into and it seemed like everyone appreciated it. I really want to make this a tradition and knit something special every year. Maybe by next Christmas I'll be able to knit mittens or hats!

What a Merry Christmas We Had!

After getting the house we waited so long for right at Christmas time, in a complete "Miracle on 34th Street" manner, we could barely ask for more. But, we were still blessed with a wonderful Christmas too. My whole family came over to the house Christmas morning to open presents and have a huge breakfast.

Santa found his way to our new house!

I made homemade hot chocolate that was INCREDIBLE

Pecan tarts

Table setting and cranberry orange bread

Cinnamon rolls

I was originally planning to wear the dress I was wearing in the above pictures but, I didn't have my brown tights. So, I threw this together to go to my Husband's family Christmas. My mom gave me the sweater that morning and I was so excited to finally have a reason to wear this amazing modcloth skirt that I got on sale.Our Christmas day is a little more casual so, I kept it comfy with the socks and sweater with the skirt being a little special touch. I didn't pictures of my sparkly party dress that I wore on Christmas Eve which means I will have to recreate it to show you all!

Obviously, I still had to wear my Christmas socks

Merry Christmas, Y'all!

Oh, What's This? A Post? Well, I'll Be!

Oh, boy! What a month it has been so far! After six months of wishing, waiting, and worrying, we finally got our house! We closed on December 3rd and since that day, we have been packing, pulling down wallpaper, painting, and cleaning to get ready to move in. We did the big move this Saturday and I now have spent two whole days in my house. It's coming together very slowly and we are trying to live around giant piles of boxes but, I am thrilled it finally happened. After moving around a lot when I was a kid, it feels so good to have a home I can call mine.

I probably won't be posting much in the next few weeks as I have so much to do and a bunch of Christmas presents to make. I'm really hoping life will return to normal in a couple of weeks.

Style Imitating Art Time!: Hello Sports Fans!

Tree of Life, Henri Matisse
Stained glass, 1951

Fellow Wisconsinites, please forgive my unintentional nod to the ol' green and gold. Green and mustard yellow are two of my favorite colors and I have piles of clothes in both colors. But, I religiously avoid pairing them together because I know Green Bay Packer Chic is not a thing. Not that I don't like the Packers, because I do,  I just don't want to feel like I am going tailgating in a dress and heels. Despite this fact, I knew I had to wear this dress for SIA this week. The print is reminiscent of the pattern on the stained glass and I needed a nice dose of yellow to bring it home.

Check out the real sun flares, guys! Score!

You want a toe? I can get you a toe.

There has been a bit of sadness and worry in my house lately. Things are not looking good with the house. We were supposed to close on the 27th but issues with the title prevented it and now we don't know if it's going to happen at all. Here's hoping we have somewhere to live come December 31st. So, I thought I would lighten the mood with a story at Husband's expense.

During dinner yesterday Husband and I got into a game of "Quote the Big Lebowski" because mid conversation I said, "Am I wrong?" Which, of course set Husband off into a slew of quotes.

Husband: Where's the money, Lebowski?

Me: I don't roll on Shabbos!

Husband: Hey, nice marmot.

Me: You are entering a world of pain!

Husband: Shut up, Donny!

Me: Donny, you are out of your element!

(anyone else notice mine are all Water quotes?)

Husband: ...and thural.

Me: Wait...what?

Husband: ...and thural.

Me: *dumbfounded look*

Husband: ...and thural.

Me: *dumbfounded look*

Husband: *sigh* ...and thural?

Me: Are you saying words?

Husband: *loud sigh* Yes. As in, he's a good doctor...and thural.

Me: *things begin to click into place* Thural?

Husband: Yeah, as in, thoroughly?

KAAAABOOOOOOOOOMB!

Me: Do you mean thorough??? With an o?

Husband: *laughs* Yup.

Me: Oh my god. Have you spent your whole life saying thural?

Husband: Yup.

Me: How are you not more embarrassed right now?

Husband: I'm pretty embarrassed. Especially, since I walked around saying that quote at work all day long.

Me: Oh god.

That's my husband.

Couple new pieces here that I scored on Black Friday. Amazing, beautiful, gorgeous, luscious, to die for, bargain boots from Modcloth and comfy corduroy skinnies. For how much I love the individual pieces, I am not loving this outfit. Meh.

So let's see what else I can do with these things!

Blogger Inspiration

A few weeks ago, I was reading through some blog posts and I opened up a link to the most fantastic dress I had ever seen. Dani of DIY Fatshion, had put together an amazing outfit around a killer floral bodycon dress. I was so in love with the sex appeal of the bodycon dress, the femininity of the floral pattern, and the toughness of the denim vest. These three elements are so perfectly combined in this outfit that it just kills me.

Dani in her gorgeous outfit.

After seeing it I couldn't resist trying to create my own version of it. I don't have a bodcon dress so, I just used a floral print dress and it was freezing the day I wore this so, I added the tights and socks.

I did really love this outfit but, it's not definitely not the dress of my dreams that Dani is wearing. I'm thinking of trying the outfit again with the black lace dress from my last post as, I'm getting more sweetness from this flowy, floral dress than I want. I think the black lace dress will be perfect sexy/feminine/tough outfit.

I just decided I'm going to coin that term. Instead of LBD we're all going to looking for our SFT dresses. Just remember you heard it here first. Not buying it? Yeah, me either. But, stay tuned for version #2!

*I'm having a grammar dilemma here. I know I should use "an" in front of LBD but, I tend to say Little Black Dress instead of LBD, even if it's just the acronym. Which, means it should be "a" in front of it and when I read it, it gets all clunky in my mouth.

See ya  later, Alligators!

Freakum Dress - Every Woman's Got One

A couple bloggers I follow have taken part in a new challenge called the ways to wear challenge ran by Gemma of Big Girls Browse and I am really excited to jump in too.

The first challenge is an LBD. I am not really a simple black dress kind of girl. I know how versatile they are and I am trying to change my shopping habits to include high quality simple pieces. But the way it is now, I really only buy things that have details that make me go, "daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaang." So, this is my version of a little black dress.

I bought this dress a couple years ago at Torrid and it has served as a birthday dress, Christmas dress, and a date night dress. But, lets be honest. It's a freakum dress. This dress says, "Honey, don't worry. Tonight I'm a sure thing."

I felt this dress was so strong on it's own that it didn't need a lot of accessories  So, I just decided to accessorize it with my sparkly nude heels, a bright red lip, and my booty.

Style Imitating Art Time!

The Great War by Rene Magritte

I am sad to admit that I am not that knowledgeable about art. I know the obvious artists like Da Vinci and Picasso and a few others that are more personal favorites but, I don't know nearly as much as I would like. I have no technical knowledge of art and when I look at art I go strictly by my gut. I may not know what the art means but, I fall in love with the colors, the composition, and how the painting makes me feel. 

Rene Magritte happens to be one of those personal favorite artists of mine and I was so excited to see one of his paintings as Style Imitating Art this week. I have no idea what his paintings mean but, I am captivated by the images.

I thought the book was the perfect real life way to interpret the flower for me, as I usually have a book glued to my face anyway.

A Very Belated Halloween

Ok, I know it's half way through November but, I didn't get my camera back until a couple days ago and I really wanted to share my Halloween with you all.

This year we put together a Candyland group costume. Candyland was one of my favorite games as a kid because it always seemed to a bit more magical than any other game. As I was seeing all the pieces come together I was really excited about this one. Everybody that participated did an excellent job becoming their character. 

I really wanted to do some serious group and individual shots for the blog but, once we got to the party we just got into too fast so, all I have is a few quick pictures. I think you'll get the idea though.

I was Princess Lolly and I made my skirt out of pink and yellow tulle and yellow ribbon from Joann Fabrics. I followed this tutorial and just made a few adjustments to suit the look I wanted. All the lollipops around the bottom of the skirt are made of felt and hot glued on.* I used an old yellow shirt I had and hot glued sparkely felt circles to the top. The pink pumps were a pair of shoes I already owned and I got the tights from We Love Colors (where else?). The crown is an embroidery hoop with dollar store lollipops hot glued to the inside.

*Funny story. When I was hot gluing the lollipops to the skirt I was being really dumb and hot glued it right on to the table. A bunch of varnish came off and I now have lollipop shaped swirls all over my kitchen table. After I did it I groaned, "Ugh! The dumb things I do for Halloween!" Sawyer picked up on it and kept calling my Halloween costume, "Mama's dumb things for Halloween!"

I really wish you could see everyone better because there are some really fantastic costumes here. The brown guy is my husband as Gloppy the Molasses Monster. What you can't see is the awesome reeds, grass, and felt fudge pops all along the bottom of his costume. The green guy is Plumby and he had one some killer green suspenders and knee high green socks. There is King Kandy, who's costume is all handmade out of felt, Gramma Nut, who rocked it by bringing real peanuts. My sister is Queen Frostine (so elegant and supreme) and my mom, who did the BEST job this year, is Mrs. Mint. We also had a Jolly but he wasn't there when this picture was taken.

The white things on the floor in the clown picture are lollipops. I was sprinkling them on people and apparently causing lots of trouble. Sounds like me. 

 Happy very belated Halloween, everybody!

Studs and Stockings

This is the last of my backlogged pictures so I am officially caught up! Yay!

When I started following blogs I discovered a whole multitude of plus-size stores that had amazing on-trend clothes that I never knew about before. Some of the stores I discovered were Simply Be, Asos, and Evans. After only being able to shop at like three stores for the longest time I went a little crazy purchasing things from these new stores. I broke a lot of rules but, I think the boost in confidence I get when I put these clothes on makes it worth it. So, yes, $75 for this dress was a bit much. But, I love it so much. I am crazy for the studs on the shoulders, the color, and the pleats. I feel absolutely fantastic in this dress. Plus, everything else in this outfit was pretty much free. The clutch was my grandma's, I compounded a bunch of coupons to get the tights for nothing, and I stole the socks from my mom (thanks Mom). So, there ya go, justification.

I wore this to go out to dinner and see a play with my husband and his co-workers. The play was not my cup of tea (it was a courtroom drama and I'm way more of a musical person) but, I still really enjoyed it. As we were leaving we passed the star of the play outside and he called out, "Those are fantastic stockings!" Which, was awesome.

See ya later, alligators!