My Husband Hates This Sweater

And my mom's not crazy about it either.

But hey, it perfectly matched the Inspiration Monday picture for today, so I had to wear it.

Sweater: Yoki via Zulily; Scarf: H&M; Jeans: Kut from the Kloth; Boots: Madden Girl

Literary Stylings - Flowerantha

This is the last time I'll mention my NaNoWriMo novel for awhile, I promise. I admit, it's a little (a lot) presumptuous and self-serving to use my own unpublished book for Literary Stylings, but the alternative was Nick Carter's self-help book, and I didn't want to make light of his situation. Plus, I'm still jazzed I finished a first draft of the thing, so I wanted to share a bit of it.

In one scene, the male main character's mother lent dresses to the two girls traveling with him. One of the dresses was pink with puffy short sleeves, and the girls wore tall leather boots.

Dress; H&M; Blazer: Narciso Rodriguez for Kohl's; Boots: Madden Girl; Necklace: c/o Blue Nile (giveaway coming tomorrow!)

When Bridget saw me in my pink dress, she insisted on matching.

Novel Excerpt:

Bushraal’s mother looked slightly agitated. “You may borrow some of my things. I am not sure if we will be able to find anything to fit,” she said, eyeing Beverly in particular, “but at least you will be clothed. Follow me.”

Beverly and May Lynn followed Bushraal’s mother up the stairs and into her bedroom. A giant canopy bed stood against the back wall with a dressing table on another wall and three wardrobes lined up side by side on the third wall to the left of the door and across the room from the bed. Bushraal’s mother dug around in a trunk at the foot of the bed first. While she dug, Bushraal wandered back in and sat backwards in the dressing table chair. She looked over at him. “Have you no decency, son? There will be women changing in here.”

His cheeks turned a little pink, but he said, “I am simply making sure you do not pick anything too fussy. They need to blend in and look like Floweranthans.”

“Bushraal, I am a Floweranthan,” his mother reminded him. “They will look just like me.” She returned to her digging and pulled out a long, green dress with white lacy ruffles at the sleeves and neck and an empire waistline. She looked at the dress and then at Beverly. “You may be able to squeeze into this. I wore it when I was pregnant with Bushraal. I was absolutely huge back then.”

“Mother!” Bushraal hissed under his breath.

Beverly’s face was beet red. She took the dress and mumbled, “Yeah, I’m really tall. Thanks,” and she disappeared behind the dressing curtain beside the wardrobes in the corner of the room.

Bushraal’s mother left the trunk open but rose from her knees to open the middle wardrobe. “Here are some more things I kept from when I was younger in case I ever had a daughter. I want to keep the nicer things for Rosie, but I am sure we can find something in here.”

“Anything is fine,” May Lynn said. Bushraal shot her a sympathetic glance, and she returned it with a sweet smile. 

Bushraal’s mother pulled out a dress similar to the one she had pulled for Beverly except that this one was much smaller and had short sleeves and a lower waistline. “Here, try this one,” she said, handing it to May Lynn. Taking the dress, May Lynn joined Beverly behind the curtain. Bushraal averted his eyes, looking anywhere in the room besides that direction.

When the girls walked out from behind the curtain, Bushraal stood. The pink dress suited May Lynn perfectly. Beverly’s green dress was a little more of a problem with the hem falling to the top of her boot and sleeves hitting just below her elbow instead of her wrists as intended.

“Well, these look better than expected,” Bushraal’s mother said. She stood up from the bed and fluffed out May Lynn’s sleeves more and smoothed the waist of Beverly’s dress, tugging it down a little. “Really, other than the length, you look lovely in this,” she said, looking up at Beverly and trying to atone for her harsh earlier comment.

***

By the way, I recently saw a tip on Twitter that said that "look" is one of the words overused by novice writers. I used it nine times just in that tiny excerpt. If you didn't notice, bless you. If you did notice, and if it made your eyes bleed like it did mine, I apologize, and I'll fix it in the rewrite. Heh...

I'm also linking up with the Fashionista Style Hop.

NaNoWriMo Wrap-up

Another year of NaNoWriMo has come to a close, and I can officially call myself a winner again!

Thank goodness for write-ins because I'm not sure I would've caught up otherwise. I was too shy and too busy last year to attend any write-ins (which are basically a bunch of NaNoWriMo participants in a room together with laptops), but I'm so glad I made it to three this year, including the one I hosted! I met three creative, like-minded ladies (who are all writing very different novels, which is a good thing) that live nearby, and I hope I get to read all their finished products in print some day very soon. At the write-in on Friday, they even gave me a great plot idea when I got stuck. Thanks, ladies!

Sunday, I attended the Happily Ever After party, and it was a lot of fun! Going into it, I wasn't sure what to expect, but I'm really glad I went. My s'mores bars I brought were a hit. (They always are, even when I forget to add the vanilla, d'oh!) I'm already look forward to next year.

I also got to FINALLY finish a work in progress that I began when I was 11 years old. Except this time, I wrote it from a different character's point of view, and I think it took the story in a completely new direction that I was pretty happy with. My brother (who remembers me writing the story the first time around) said I should put it out on its 20-year anniversary next year. So maybe I'll give the self-publishing thing a try.

But for now, my next plan is to go back to last year's novel and continue revising because I think that one has better potential to actually become something. Then I have to decide if I'm going to participate in Camp NaNoWriMo in the spring and summer...one thing at a time.

Here's what I wore to the party and for Inspiration Monday. I did consider wearing leather leggings like the inspiration picture shows, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Not in broad daylight. I went with studded instead.

Sweater Dress: H&M; Leggings: Target; Boots: Payless

Borrowed from Mom

Being without a tripod is quite inconvenient. Try to ignore the kitchen table on the left and the box on the right...

It's pretty nice having a mom with good style who I can share some clothes with. When I saw a picture of her and my grandma on Facebook from their sorority's 100th anniversary party, I commented on how I loved her dress with the leather accents.

And then, next thing I knew, my mom brought it to my house this weekend for me to borrow! I didn't know it when I first saw a picture of the dress, but it has a pepluuuummm. I love a good peplum.

Dress: Calvin Klein (borrowed); Shirt: Phillip Lim for Target; Booties: Steve Madden

Thanks, Mom!

I'm linking up with the Fashionista Style Hop.

I Finally Found the Perfect Sweater Dress

In fact, I found two of them. Thank you, Zulily! (<---That's my invite link, by the way.)

Zulily is trouble. It's one of those subscription shopping sites that have new deals every day on heavily discounted items. This one is targeted for parents and sells mostly stuff for children and mothers.

In general, I should not buy clothing online because once I get the clothes in the mail and try them on, the fit is usually not ideal. Like one sweater I bought from Zulily that was delivered a couple days before these dresses, for instance. Or the fleece-lined tights I'm wearing below, which I bought off of Groupon. They were too short, so I ended up cutting the toe seam off, and now they're footless tights. They're super warm and comfy otherwise. If anyone wants to take the new-in-box black pair off my hands, they're yours for $10 including shipping. The size range is 5'5"–6', 165–250 lb.

I wasn't terribly optimistic about these sweater dresses, but the price was good, and I've been on the sweater dress hunt for years now. They are both pretty much perfect. Not too tight, not too boxy, and not too short. And machine washable. I went with XLs in both because sweater dresses always run small on me, but I may have been able to get away with larges in these. But I'll take the extra room.

Left - Dress: Jessica Howard via Zulily; Tights: HB by Harve Benard via Groupon; Shoes: Chelsea Crew
Right - Dress: Lennie for Nina Leonard via Zulily; Boots: Kohl's; Bracelet: c/o Wantable

The navy blue Jessica Howard dress is available at Boston Store (or any of the other Bon-Ton department stores), and the colorblocked Nina Leonard dress is available on Overstock.com for just a little more than what I paid for it. If you love sweater dresses as much as I do but can never find one that fits right, I highly recommend both of these.

I'm linking up with the Fashionista Style Hop.

Literary Stylings and Another NaNoWriMo

I haven't been doing many outfit posts lately, but I do have a stack of books I'm trying to get through (very slowly). I'm reading Fangirl now; then on deck I have Facing the Music And Living To Talk About It, which is written by Nick Carter about overcoming his addiction, and Longbourn, which is basically Pride and Prejudice mixed with Downton Abbey. I accidentally purchased a Barnes & Noble membership, so I'm trying to make the most of it. Looks like Bridget's getting a lot of books for Christmas!

Also, I thought this particular book was appropriate for Gracey's Literary Stylings linkup this month since I've decided to embark on another year of NaNoWriMo. The author, Rainbow Rowell, wrote the book I'm featuring during the 2011 NaNoWriMo session. You can read her pep talk here. Pretty awesome and inspiring!

Fangirl is the story of Cath, a Simon Snow (think Harry Potter) fanfiction writer making her way awkwardly through her first year of college. I couldn't spoil it for you even if I wanted to since I haven't finished it yet, but it's pretty good so far. It's exactly the age group I wrote my last NaNoWriMo novel for and about, so it was good research for me to compare the tone of her story to mine to make sure I'm on the right track. Present tense, meaning my novel I wrote last year is not any more done than it was a year ago. No surprise there though. After I finish my current NaNo project, my goal is to pick last year's back up and wrap it up by summer of next year.

Source

I have two Slytherin Harry Potter shirts (I know), so it was pretty easy to come up with an outfit for this one. Plus, the book said that the only things in Cath's closet were T-shirts, cardigans, and jeans. I thought about posing with my Malfoy wand, but I couldn't bring myself to nerd it up that much.

T-shirt: Wizarding World gift shop at MCO airport; Cardigan: Forever 21; Jeans: New York & Company; Sneakers: Converse

Lost Without You - Hanson in Chicago

Day Two of the Anthem Tour was more about hanging out around the city than sitting in line, which was kind of a relief. Unless you do the Pass the Line deal at the House of Blues, there's not much point to standing around. At least in our opinion. We usually just get there right before the show starts and stand in the back unless one of their 1-mile barefoot charity walks is scheduled, which was the case on Sunday.

We left home with plenty of time to spare and surprisingly did not hit any traffic. Since the Chicago marathon was going on the same day, we wanted to be prepared for extra travel time. With about an hour to kill before the walk, we found a sunny place to sit and warm up. It was pretty chilly in the shade.

As usual, the Chicago walk was fairly crowded, so we didn't try too hard to get by the guys this time. And again, Taylor was absent.

Zac, the hat...why?

On the walk back to HOB, I was next to Isaac for a minute, but it was too much work to hold that position. Plus, I couldn't think of anything to talk to him about that day.

After the walk, we decided to venture back out and made our way over to Millennium Park and the Bean.

I took the opportunity to get an outfit picture this time. I had gotten the idea that for this show, I would recreate an outfit I wore to the Bay Beach amusement park Hanson show in Green Bay on June 19, 2000. My outfit of pleather pants and a sort-of v-neck shirt has been an inside joke with us since, so I thought it would be fun to pay homage to that. Plus, I wanted an excuse to buy faux leather pants again.

2013 Outfit - T-shirt: Land's End; Pants: Rock & Republic (Kohl's); Blazer and Sunglasses: Target; Necklaces: Forever 21 probably; Shoes: TOMS; Bag: Christian Siriano for Payless

Clearly, I needed a lesson on venue-appropriate clothing choices back then. Pleather pants at an amusement park??

I have to say, I definitely enjoyed sightseeing over standing in line all day. We grabbed an oddly delicious and satisfying hot dog in Millennium Park and each got a mocha from Caribou Coffee for the walk back. We also ducked into the Disney store for a few minutes, and I bought Bridget a Little Mermaid doll. I couldn't go in there and not buy her something.

Before going into the venue, we toasted to T's 60th Hanson show (K and I are now at 49, and E is right behind us at 48) and our collective 16-year fandom.

As annoying as HOB can sometimes be, Hanson loves it there, and the shows reflect that. In my opinion, the set list was even better than Milwaukee's; we were dancing around and having fun the whole time; and I got to hear one of my new favorites, "Lost Without You," and an older favorite, "Lost Without Each Other." Yeah, Hanson tends to write songs with basically the same titles a lot. It's a thing.

I didn't take any pictures since we were near the back, but I did get one video of Isaac's solo, "For Your Love" again.

Really, the only disappointment of the night was not being able to try the MMMHops beer. Apparently, they had sold out of it well before we leisurely sauntered in. It's a pale ale, so I probably wouldn't have liked it anyway, but someday I'll still have to try it. My friends went to the second HOB show the next night, so they did have a taste.

You can see all my pictures from the weekend in my Facebook album or read about my Milwaukee concert experience.

Let's Get Fired Up - Hanson in Milwaukee

Where to begin? I guess 6:30 AM on Saturday morning is a good place to start. That's when I pulled into downtown Milwaukee and swung around the Pabst Theater to scope out the situation. I'm not sure why I was surprised, but there were already quite a few people lined up for the Hanson show that night. I drove around for a bit and found a place to park. When I got in line at almost 6:45, I was number 24. That's how crazy we Hanson fans are, folks. Many of the people ahead of me had camped out, but I think the group right in front of me had only been there for maybe an hour when I arrived.

From the Pabst's Facebook page. This was taken around 8 in the morning. You can see my empty red chair in the middle and my friend E to the left of it. I must've been off getting coffee at that point.

As you can imagine, the rest of the day was a lot of sitting around, waiting for something exciting to happen. Here are the highlights with an approximate timeline.

10:30 - Our friend K arrived and joined us in line. I had given the three groups behind me a heads up that a couple of friends would be meeting me later, and they were fine with it.

11:30 - Some drama broke out about line jumpers behind us. The cops got involved. No seriously.

12:00 - A truck pulled up, and the crew started to unload equipment. I recognized a guy from high school and tried to chat him up in hopes of getting some VIP access. I didn't really know how to make that happen, so I basically engaged in a few minutes of small talk and then walked away.

12:30 - Hanson's tour bus arrived, and we welcomed the excitement. I saw Isaac come off the bus and was dumbstruck by how good he looked in his leather jacket, scarf, sunglasses, and hat. I'm used to seeing him in a suit, but I prefer his laid-back look. Although I had jumped on the Zac fan train for a few years there, that moment brought me back to my Isaac fan roots.

1:30 - K's friend R arrived, and we educated him on all the craziness he witnessed while we waited for the 1-mile barefoot charity walk to begin at 3.

3:00 - The walk commenced, but Taylor was nowhere to be seen. We hung out by Zac for the first half mile and Isaac on the way back.

Zac making sure we all get across the street safely

Mid-walk speech

I paparazzied my friends by Zac, got a few pics with them by Isaac, and then got to have a couple conversations with him myself, which went something like this:

Me: Isaac, your foot, what happened? (He had a bandage wrapped around his foot.)
I: Oh, it's nothing.
Me: Oh OK, nevermind then. (I almost said something about it being a sore subject, but it sounded too punny in my head. At least, I hope that stayed in my head. I can't remember for sure.)
I: It's on the top. It's not walk related.
Me: That's good to hear.
I: It's more...ignoring something for too long.
Me: Ah, gotcha.

We then stopped and waited for the light to turn green, and a girl took a picture with him. When we started walking again, there was no one else walking by Isaac up in front, so I felt like I had to say something else to him. I'm kicking myself because I had my camera out, on video mode, and pointing at myself and Isaac during this next conversation. The only problem was, apparently I did not push the button to start recording. Arg!! Luckily, my friend K got a couple pictures and a video!

(Also, my outfit was inadvertently but conveniently very similar to the Inspiration Monday photo for this week, so I also wanted to link up with them. I wish I had gotten a full shot of the outfit I was wearing that day, but I never think of it at the time. Too much other stuff going on.)

This conversation isn't accurate at all. I think Isaac was rambling more than what I actually remembered to write down afterwards. But here's the gist, which I updated on 10/16 when I saw the video clip K got of the conversation:

Me: I'm really excited for MMMHops tomorrow. (They were debuting their beer, MMMHops, at the two House of Blues Chicago shows.)
I: Yeah, we were hoping people would be. I hope we have enough.
Me: I was wondering about that. Should I only have one? Is there enough to go around?
I: Haha, you should have as many as you want.
Me: OK done!
I: You should have as many as you want. Um, heh.
Me: so it's just going to be at the bar?
I: It's gonna be at the bar, yeah so, there should be plenty left to go around, but it's our first time, so we'll see how quickly it goes. (Foreshadowing...)

After the walk, I stood right by the guys on the steps for their post-walk speech.

4:30 - We listened to the sound check going on inside from our spot in line, and I headed inside the adjoining hotel to charge my phone for awhile.

5:30 - Our friend T showed up with her friend D. They went across the street to kill time at the Newsroom Pub.

6:15 - R and I got bored and joined them for shots.

6:45 - Doors opened!

Although the Pabst is a seated venue, they used the area in front of the seats for a pit, which is where we ended up. The four of us got spots about three people back from the stage on Taylor's side. Everyone in front of us had either gotten there way earlier than we did or had a meet & greet, so I was pretty satisfied with our spot. Plus, I'm a head taller than everyone else anyway (sorry, people behind me).

It felt like forever before the opener, David Ryan Harris, went on at 8. He was pretty decent, but most of his songs were pretty chill, and I wasn't feeling very amped up at that point. His set finished at 8:45, and we waited impatiently until nearly 9:30 before Hanson came on. That's when I decided I would never stand on Taylor's side again. He kept having to tell the fans in the front to move back and be nice to each other because one little person fan in the front row kept getting slammed into.

Besides that, the show was great. I loved hearing the new songs live and thoroughly enjoyed the covers they did of "Happy Together" and "Ain't Too Proud to Beg." I was also glad that they decided to bring back the portion of the show where each guy performed one of their solo songs. Many of us Isaac fans felt shafted on the last album with no Isaac leads, so hearing him sing the new song "For Your Love" was a treat.

11:30 - After the show, we filed out to the bus to wait for the guys to come out. Zac came out almost right away and signed autographs from the bus window since there were so many people.

1:00 - Isaac came out and signed a bunch of autographs for people. K got a picture with him, and then E pulled me into her picture with him, which I am very grateful for. I was a couple fans back, and I don't think I would've gotten a picture otherwise.

Yup, all three of us basically have crazy eyes in this picture, hehe.

2:00 - Taylor came out for the handful of fans that were left, and E got a picture with him. Very soon after that, the bus left, as did we.

You can see the rest of my pictures from the weekend in my Facebook album (hopefully that link works).

Needless to say, I was pretty tired Sunday morning when Bridget woke me up at 7, but I was ready for another day of Hanson excitement down in Chicago.

A Review of My eShakti Experience

I was pretty excited when eShakti contacted me and offered to send me a sample from their fall collection to review. From seeing so many other bloggers rock their dresses, I was curious to learn more about eShakti, especially their many customization options. You're able to order a standard size or enter your measurements for a more precise fit, and they offer sizes 0 - 36W. Depending on the style, you can also specify skirt length, sleeve length, and neckline style.

After browsing the site, my favorite dress was this drop wait ponte dress...

...but I had already determined I was going to go with a sheath silhouette to take full advantage of the customization. Normally, when I try on a fitted dress, the top is too big and the bottom is too tight. I was hoping eShakti's customization options would solve that for me.

It came down to the graphic print colorblock sheath dress and the colorblock graphic print knit sheath.

I liked the neckline options of the black and white one better, but I wanted long sleeves, which that one didn't offer, but the red one did. As a tall woman with long arms, actual long sleeves are hard to come by. I had visions of looking like Jennifer Lawrence in her Prabal Gurung dress from last year.

Source

After asking a friend's opinion, I decided on the black and white one with 3/4 length sleeves and a boat neck.

My dress took 7 business days to arrive, right on schedule, and I received a text from DHL the day before with the tracking number and instructions for if I was not going to be home when the package was delivered. Of course I wanted to try the dress on the second I got home and ripped open the box.

I was surprised to find that eShakti had sent me two dresses. At first, they looked identical, but my husband guessed that one was probably a different size. I didn't believe him until I tried them on - one was noticeably more fitted than the other one. While the slightly looser one skimmed my stomach and better camouflaged anything I was self conscious about, I felt a little frumpy in it. I didn't want to have to wear shapewear, but after trying the smaller dress on with some not-too-uncomfortable Spanx, I was in love. It was exactly what I wanted, and it fit better than anything I could find in a store. I could definitely see myself ordering something else from eShakti in the future.

Dress: c/o eShakti; Shoes and Sunglasses: Payless; Bracelet: c/o Wantable; Bag: Badgley Mischka via T.J.Maxx

You can check out eShakti on Facebook and Pinterest. I especially enjoyed looking through their Real Fashion Real People board on Pinterest to see how other customers wore their purchases.

---

In case you're curious, because I sometimes am, here's how I measured up, using the graphics on their website to figure out where to put the tape measure. I took most of the measurements myself, but my husband helped with the shoulder and the upper arm. I rounded up on some of these because they didn't have half inches.

Height : 5'11"
Length of arm: Long
Upper arm: 13"
Hip: 46"
Waist: 33"
Under bust: 34"
Bust: 40"
Chest: 37"
Shoulder: 17"

DIY Embellished Sweatshirt Tutorial

When I first trimmed the sleeves of this sweatshirt with lace a couple years ago (using this tutorial), I didn't have enough lace to do the shoulders. Cut to now, when I got the idea to make kind of lace epaulets to finish it off. I can't remember where the idea originated, but I may have gotten it from Miranda on Project Runway with her military background.

This may be self explanatory, but here's a little step-by-step tutorial for you anyway.

Materials you'll need:

• sweatshirt
• lace trim
• six buttons
• tape measure
• scissors
• thread
• needle
• pins

Optional materials:

• needle threader
• thimble
• sewing machine

Directions:

1. Line up the lace how you'd like it. I doubled it over and placed the folded end toward the shoulder. 

2. Cut the lace for one shoulder and then lay it on top of the remaining lace to cut a second piece of the same size.

3. Pin the lace to the shoulders.

4. Hand or machine stitch around the edges. I used a needle and thread and stitched all the way around through both layers, but you could play with sewing only the bottom layer for a more three-dimensional look to the epaulets.

5. Use a tape measure to determine where you want to place the buttons.

6. Mark the spots with either a writing utensil or pins. I chose to put the buttons at 1-1/2, 2-1/2, and 3-1/2 inches from the neck.

7. Sew each of the buttons into place while trying to ignore my un-manicured nails.

Done!