eye painting

I haven't abandoned my blog. Just been busy. Personally, I didn't think helping out with SOMEONE ELSE'S wedding would take up as much of my time as it does. I've been traveling between cities a lot and I'm so tired at the end of my day, I can't even finish the last 25 pages of the book I'm reading. Pitiful.

Anyway, I love Sephora. I can spend a good chunk of time there. I also have an acquaintance that works at MAC who always tells us to not shop at Sephora for what come off as fairly biased reasons.

I remember a long time ago (so long I can't find the blog) I blogged over my excitement in procuring the Smashbox Mother Earth Palette that was done exclusively for Sephora. It had 4 pretty awesome shades of eyeshadow and and orangey blush. Made from cornstarch and other natural ingredients, no parabens and all that jazz.

I've been acquiring a lot of eye shadow lately as I have been learning to get more comfortable with going crazy with eye shadow combinations. Most of the colors I acquire happen to be MAC. Recently, I put MAC to the test against the dark brown from my Mother Earth Palette - oh yes, I went to a night club. Using two colors on my lid, by the end of the night, only the MAC color stayed on it's own. I don't know if it has to do with the nature of "all natural" eye shadows, but right now, the Mother Earth Palette is just an eye shadow mixer for me.

Is my pencil skirt too tight?

UPDATE: This topic has been revisited and updated here. Feel free to enjoy this particular posting anyway. - Christine

Seriously, I don't need to ask myself this question. I know my style preferences well enough to feel and know that my pencil skirt is too tight, but for some reason when googling and trying to find pictures, an inappropriately, unintentionally tight pencil skirt is hard to come across. I'm searching for validation. I'm told to do the "sit down" test without any real explanation of what I'm looking for. Luckily for curious people beyond this point I'm about to match a face to the madness that is a tight pencil skirt.

The first part is acceptance. You recognize that, for whatever reason, your pencil skirt just doesn't feel the way it use to. No matter how much you like the pattern, or how much you paid, unless you go to a tailor, there's no making your pencil fit like it use to. Once you get past that, along with any sentiments, you can more easily look at yourself objectively in your skirt and think "only a miracle will make me look good in this skirt." Then, start with the "Sit Down" test.

1.) When you stand up, does your skirt bunch at the hips (or any other place for that matter?)





2.) Do you need to pull your skirt down for it to regain it's shape?




Yes to any one of these means more likely than not, you're skirt is too tight. Constantly having to fix your skirt ruins the sex appeal of wearing a pencil skirt to begin with.
Here are more obvious signs that your pencil skirt it too tight:
When you walk, does your skirt bunch and rise up? This makes it so that you have to fix your skirt virtually all the time.
Does your butt go beyond the give of the skirt to where it distorts the shape? Pencil skirts are not suppose to flare out at the bottom.

Yes. It's too tight. It's times like these that you have to look yourself in the mirror and recognize that the clothes don't make the woman, but it's the woman that makes the clothes. This skirt is of no use to me if it only looks good on the hanger. I did contemplate sleeping in the skirt to see if I'd have any chance at changing the shape, but I think the skirt has enough stretch to make that plan fail miserably.

I bought this skirt over a year ago so returning it was a bit of a pickle. At Anthropologie, it only rings up the dead price (10 cents). There were some complications with the return, and personally, I'd rather keep a skirt that doesn't fit me than get $0.10 for it. Seeing that there is no real point in keeping a skirt that doesn't fit me...

Until I work up the time to get this skirt on eBay, it's on sale for $30. Email me for details.

Yoana Baraschi's Happenstance Skirt
done for Anthropologie
Size 0

the danger of trying things on

...and this is when it all goes to hell

So, a couple weeks ago, I went to Anthropologie to make a return. The return was the main plan, but of course, that wouldn't stop me from looking at the website and thinking about if there was anything that could possibly interest me. I was in the market for a basic black pencil skirt and there happened to be one on sale. This is where my logic fails me. Since I'm all for convenience and efficiency, if I'm going to try on one skirt, why not try on six more?



the expression says which one I got

Who takes a camera into a dressing room? I've found it to be an easier way to review what I've worn without having to go through the trouble of trying on the clothes again. It's a more objective way to review yourself as well as an easier way to compare everything you wear across the board and there's also the bonus of viewing yourself from a different angle. When it came to the pencil skirts, lets just say that lighter colors sometimes let you see things you'd prefer not to. I liked the shape, but not so many of the visible stitch lines; they looked more subtle on the black skirt...and I liked the subtle lines oppose to the more harsh ones on the taupe skirt. I was looking for a black skirt anyway so that made the choice pretty easy.

I can't collect them all, you know

There was also this interesting skirt that looked like it could be good for Fall & Winter...maybe Spring if I get creative, I liked the effect of the ruffle that went down the side. I happened to like all the patterns. Going through the choices in my head was a little harder. I know, the grey one looks the best. What killed me on that one was that I already have a grey, tweed pencil skirt. It was just too similar. With the brown dotted skirt and the navy pinstripe skirt, I had some qualms because I had another pencil skirt that was like a hybrid of the two: a brown pinstriped pencil skirt. True, I could've just put them all back, but I wanted that ruffle! In the end I decided that the navy skirt was the least like any I owned and I went with it. And the picture of me in the grey skirt is just torture >:(



uhh...

Truly, these skirts symbolize that moment of "what the hell :) ! why not?" I saw the purple skirt on the website and decided to check it out. I liked the pattern and the shape, but what's even cooler is how it's cut. There's some subtle gathering that can't be seen that well because of the pattern, just trust me, it makes the shape more awesome. As for the pink ruffles...I liked how it moved...I think this one was the true impulse buy. I just decided to see how it would work with my current wardrobe.

So, this is how one thing leads to another. A return results in a massive buy, I come home with 4 new skirts (I bought the last two.) I'm currently trying to see how well they integrate into my wardrobe (FYI, the purple flowery sequin skirt is officially in my wardrobe, the rest are still pending.) Perhaps there may be some returns in the future...but we know where that may go :/ I don't know if someone can just "try it on." Maybe most people are skeptical, but, for once, clothes fitting and looking good can cause quite the dilemma.

2 pc & a biscuit - 3 lessons

One thing about joblessness is that all the extra time you have goes towards body criticism that you wouldn't have had the time for or would not have even noticed if you had a job. Prior to the start of my job, I was feeling quite chunky. I imagine that my frequent cravings for chicken fried steak didn't help matters.

In my experience, any stressful situation brings some kind of weight loss either through the lack of ability to eat regularly, or something of the like. Also, for some reason, I just get fatter in San Antonio. Anyway...

My sister is getting married! And all of her sister's get to be bridesmaids!


Don't we all look happy? I find that I look rather jobless (chunky), but also, my dress was suppose to look like this:


Let me just say, I think the gathering at the waist was too extreme and added too much puff. All of the extra tulle did not help. Among other things you notice, my sister in the middle seems like a bit of the oddball out.

Lesson #1: To the hospitable bride...

My eldest sister's approach to her wedding was to take everything that irritated her about weddings and not do that. So, in addition to paying for the bridesmaid dresses she also let us pick out the style and only required that the color be the same.

Initially, I picked out a short taffeta dress, Irene picked out the longest chiffon dress and Elie picked out the tea length satin dress. Mine came out longer and more puffy than expected. Elie's dress was actually made of taffeta too and Irene's dress...there is no chiffon with a sheen, at least not with this dress so hers looks different. Hence this is the extreme that results from too much freedom on the bridesmaids side.

Really, if a bride wants to be hospitable, it should be one or the other. Let us pick our dresses and make us pay, or make us wear the same dress and (the bride) pay for it. Also, pick the color AND the material. It'll save a lot of tears later. My elder sister lucked out and got two dresses out of the deal.

Lesson #2: Seriously, take advantage of custom measurements and get seamstress measurements

I told my (bride) sister that and she ended up just taking her own measurements and her dress came out looser than expected. If you're going to go custom with the measurements, have a seamstress do it.

Among other things, take advantage of custom measurements if you can. Not only did my dress come out ridiculously long, it was severely puffy. I put too much trust in the standard sizes. So my dress is in the works, I ripped it up and re-pinned the skirt:

even then, I decided that my dress was still too puffy and I ripped it up more and tore out the tulle:


and now it's pretty much where I want it to be. I still need to sew it, and hand sewing really sucks, but at least everything else is ready. The dress even looks more like the original and the puffy-ness is now more from the gathering at the waist than any of the leftover tulle inside. Man, I look like crap in both of those pictures.

Would there have been a way to get a puffy-ass bubble hem shortened and also the tulle ripped out of the puff for less than $50? Only if grandma were home.

Lesson #3: Be wary of ordering times

The bride to be was rather eager to get these dresses out of the way, so she bought them while I was unemployed and taking out my depression on chicken fried anything. My presumption was that I was going to remain at my current chunk, or at least close to it, so I went one size larger since the smaller size seemed too tight and the larger size seemed like it would fit fine. The tufts of cloth at the sides will tell you otherwise. What was even worse was coming back to Austin, getting a job and losing more chub. Just when I thought I'd actually have to go to the tailors on this one, I found that the easier route to getting the dress to fit: a 2 piece & a biscuit

heck yeah!

$5 for fried chicken is way better than $55 for alterations on a dress I'm not going to wear very often. So that's the plan, before the wedding - a 2pc & a biscuit.