Saturday, April 30, 2011

Pretty basic outfit for you today.  I bought this jacket when I was first losing weight.  It was on sale from Forever 21 and it didn't fit but Forever 21 has weird return rules, so I kept it.  It came with a little belt, but for some reason I am anti-belt and I shouldn't be.  I like the idea of a knit moto-jacket, but I'm not really sure it fits into my aesthetic.  Whatever my aesthetic is.  I signed up for Pinterest, but I haven't done anything with it yet because I don't know what to do with it.  But I think if I start pinning things, I can figure out what my style is and I'll be able to start building my wardrobe to suit it.
The scarf is one of those really thin floral print scarves that were huge two summers ago and I LOVE it.  I wear it all the time and I like how it softened up the look of the jacket.  I absolutely love my Joes Jeans.  Maybe it's because they were expensive, but they are the best-fitting, most comfy jeans I've owned in a long time.  I used to wear my ancient (5 year old) Express skinny jeans, but the rise hits me at an odd place on my hips, so they aren't really comfy.  But my Joes?  I could sleep in these puppies.  If only I wasn't such a cheapskate, I'd look into purchasing a pair of them in a skinny leg.



Floral print scarf & knit moto jacket - Forever 21; white v-neck tee - NextLevel; Joes Jeans - Nordstrom Rack; black Nine West flats - DSW

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

It's really hard to write a style blog when I've been on a trip for 5-days and in that trip, I wore exactly 1 dress, 1 tshirt & 1 workout outfit.  One of the thing that happens when one loses 50 pounds is that one drops several dress sizes.  And so all my uniform pieces were about 4 sizes too big.  I was told by a manager that I couldn't wear my uniforms if they were that ill-fitting and the most cost-effective solution was to buy one new uniform dress & just wear the hell out of it.  Which is what I did.
I've been wearing the same dress every time I go to work for months now.  Every night in the hotel, I either wash the whole dress in the sink or I wash out the collar & underarms if the layover is too short for the whole dress to drip-dry.  It's maybe a size too big and I'm getting so sick of it and it is starting to look like a bathrobe to me.  

When I started my job, I purchased my first set of uniforms.  Every paycheck, $25 was taken out until the entire $750 was paid off.  After that, the company re-issues a set every two years.  I am sitting on pins & needles waiting for my new set of uniform pieces to arrive.  Most of my flight attendant friends have already received theirs.  I cannot wait to have something to wear besides this one dress!

In other news, I've sprouted some muscles in my arms and I am fascinated by them.  I've never been one to have a lot of upper body strength and I still cannot do a single pull-up or do very many real push-ups (I do girlie on-my-knees push-ups if I do any), but I've been doing bicep curls & shoulder presses & tricep extensions for a few weeks now after my runs and I'm starting to see results!  I've also been working on my abs, doing 100 crunches & 50 reverse crunches after every run.  My tum is flatter than I think it's ever been!

Last summer, when I was in the thick of my weight loss, I decided that the summer of 2011 was going to be the summer that I finally rocked a bikini.  Having always been a bit of of a bigger girl, I've never worn one.  I've worn a tankini, but I've found that those are actually less flattering than even a normal two-piece.  I don't have much opportunity to wear a bathing suit anyway, but I ordered a bikini from Target and it is on its way to my house this week.  I'm still hesitant about wearing it in public, but I think the first step is owning it.  And then wearing it on a layover, somewhere I don't know anyone.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Crazy Cat Lady

So, I bought a new blouse that I am absolutely in love with.  To the point where I may or may not have worn it three times this weekend.  Including wearing it for like 24 hours and SLEEPING in it.  The sleeping in it part was not intentional.

One of the best perks of my job is that I fly for free.  This makes being in a long distance relationship with the mister possible.  Now, when I travel, I'm considered a non-revenue passenger.  And I only get on flights if there are no revenue passengers wanting to sit in those seats.  We have a system where I can look up flights, see how many seats are currently available for non-revs and look at the non-rev stand-by list.  I tend to be a cautious traveler because I don't like being stuck places.  However, getting in & out of Virginia lately has been a real bitch.  I guess it's Spring Break travel time?  I don't know.  All I know is that the flights have been oversold of late and when that happens, I ain't getting on.

Yesterday, I flew from Virginia to New York's JFK airport with no problem.  I wanted to fly through JFK b/c it looked like there were about a dozen seats open on the flight.  JFK is, in my opinion, a terrible airport.  Or, at least, this particular terminal is.  And no one wanted to be helpful.  As a non-rev, I try to be accommodating and polite and I try not to hassle the gate agents, because they have their hands full with the revenue passengers.  But this led to me NOT getting on a flight that I thought I was getting on, which was the last  flight back to Minneapolis.  No good.  I tried to get on a flight to Atlanta, hoping I'd be able to make the last flight out of THERE to Minneapolis.  No good.  I'd checked my luggage, and it got to fly to Minneapolis without me.  And I was stranded in New York.  While the gate agents were not helpful AT ALL, the lovely people working at the Help Desks were fantastic.  They told me I'd have better luck trying to fly out of LaGuardia the next morning, went ahead and put me on the stand-by list for the first flight out and told me the cheapest way to get from one airport to the other.

Another benefit of my job, is that New York is a base for my airline so we have a crew lounge in LaGuardia.  Which is where I slept last night.  Curled up across two chairs in my beloved new blouse.  It was uncomfortable and I didn't sleep much, but it was worse this morning when flight attendants started showing up for work and I was still sleeping under my coat with mussed up hair and smudged eyeliner.  I felt really awkward about it, but I wasn't the only one who had slept in the lounge, so that helped a little.  I got onto my flight with no problem and my luggage was waiting for me in Minneapolis and I'm home now. So it all ended well after all!
 And!  I had a lot of time by myself at the boyfriend's apartment because he had to go back to work so I was cabbing it to the airport.  And I was able to take some more interesting outfit photos, better than the old camera-in-the-mirror snaps.


It should be pretty obvious why I refer to this as my Crazy Cat Lady Blouse.  I love the little cat print all over it!  I also love the drapey feel of it.  I definitely feel a lot freer to play with volume than I ever did when I was bigger.  When I bought the blouse, I definitely had the idea of wearing it with skinny jeans, but I wanted to look a little nicer for my flights, so I opted for my charcoal tuxedo pants.  They might be a little saggy around my bum, which might be something worth having a tailor fix (especially because I only paid $10 for them in the first place!) because I really like the style.

The bracelets and earrings are also recent acquisitions.  I've been trying to work more on accessorizing.  And I've also been trying to work gold-colored metals into my repertoire.  The close-up of my face demonstrates something else I need to work on and that is wearing lipstick.  I hardly ever do.  I'll wear lip balm and lip gloss, but lipstick just seems so fake to me, but I think it's because I don't wear flattering shades, which is something to ELSE to work on.  I am a work in progress.


Crazy Cat Lady Blouse - Nordstrom Rack; Tuxedo pants - The Gap; Black leather flats - Nine West; Bracelets & earrings - LEN

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

I haven't abandoned the blog.  I just haven't bothered putting together any outfits worth sharing.  My mom reads this blog and she told me I needed to stop wearing so many tshirts.  The only problem with that is that I don't actually own many tops that are NOT tshirts at the moment.  Besides.  The tshirts are comfortable.

But I am trying to build a better wardrobe.  It's a slow process.