Hi, friends!

It’s been a hot minute but we’re finally all moved in. The boxes are unpacked and almost everything has a found a place in the new house. We’re well on our way to being completely settled. We’ve had a chance to meet our super nice neighbors, and we’re looking forward to when we can all safely gather and be more social. We’re excited to get to know them better and really become part of the community.

Welcome home!

By now I’m sure you’re all familiar with the home delivery style boxes like Stitch Fix. I’ve been doing Stitch Fix off and on for several years now, and I like it but not enough to do every month; I usually scheduled a Fix whenever I’m feeling like I’m in a rut (and have some disposable income), so maybe every 6 months-ish? I also did Le Tote for a while but their options were so limited because they had very few petite pieces so nothing ever really fit. Anyway, I feel like I haven’t had much luck with my past few Stitch Fix boxes so I decided to finally try Trunk Club. It’s the same concept: they curate some items for you, mail them to your house for you to try on, and you keep what you like and send the rest back. A few differences are that they send you 6-10 pieces (instead of 5 like Stitch Fix) and they let you view what they’re sending you ahead of time so you can swap things out if you don’t like the piece (much like Le Tote). It was like the best of both worlds so it sounded great to me!

I actually found out about Trunk Club through Nick because it started out as a men’s styling service and then added women’s when they were bought by Nordstrom. Nick had pretty good luck with them so I figured I might have some good luck, too. I really liked that I could speak directly to a stylist who asked me lots of questions about my lifestyle, how I currently dress, and what I was looking for in a box. I was really excited about the process and got my first box last night.

Now that I have my general life resolutions all set for 2016, it’s time to think about my style & blog resolutions. I recently read an interesting article by Kristy Ellington for ModCloth, featured on PopSugar Fashion titled I Let a Fashion Editor Dress Me For a Week, and Here’s What Happened. I figured it would be the typical I-was-pushed-outside-of-my-comfort-zone story, and it was, but what really struck me was the author’s realization that her fear of stepping outside of her fashion comfort zone was creeping into how she viewed her everyday life. The entire article is worth reading, but here’s where it really gets good:

“And it was there, in this unlikely outfit on a random Thursday, I realized something very important: “I could never pull that off” was creeping into how I thought about other things in my life and totally holding me back. […] Not being able to “pull that off” was becoming my excuse, my crutch, my limitation to avoid failure. But it was also keeping me from growing and learning new things. So I made a promise to myself to stop trying not to “pull things off” and just do it.”

Whoa, you guys, that’s deep. Especially when I’ve heard tale of so many ladies feeling like fashion is frivolous and unimportant and that they can’t “pull it off.” But I can definitely relate because not only have I said I can’t pull off some cool fashion trend, but I’ve also said I can’t pull off some aspect of my life. Like, I could never pull off that job because so I won’t even apply or I don’t know how to network so I could never pull off that event. Taking a cue from this astute view of “just do it,” I’ve decided to make some style resolutions for 2016. As for the blog, I resolve to post 3-4 times per week. I’d like to incorporate more life and writing posts along with my outfits, and I’m going to work on my photography skills.

Style Resolutions

1. Determine my style. I’ve tried a few trends over the last few years and some of them worked and some didn’t, and that’s okay. But somewhere along the way I lost track of what makes me feel like me, so I’m going to figure it out this year. I think this will require a full closet clean-out but I’m up for the challenge.

Getting my jewelry organized has already been a huge help in achieving my style goals for this year!

2. Invest in pieces I love. Once I’ve determined my style, I’m going to only purchase pieces I really love and can see myself wearing over and over. I’m ashamed to admit that on more than one occasion I’ve bought pieces simply because I didn’t have anything in that color or because I thought I needed it but it didn’t fit quite right or something else was off about it so I only wore it once and left it sitting in the back of my closet. Well, I will do that no more!

Now it’s time to organize my closet, starting with these sweaters.

3. Only wear high-quality shoes. Look, we all know that shoes are awesome and it’s exciting when they’re super cheap because you can buy so many pairs. But then they fall apart or cause your knees to ache because they don’t offer enough joint support (that’s a thing, right? or did I make it up?). So, to determine my style and invest in pieces I love will include buying high quality shoes with lots of support.

It’s not that my current shoes are bad, but they could be better. I’m not going to complain about a closet full of shoes 😉

4. Get better at dressing for my age. I stopped shopping in the Junior’s department years ago but I want to get better at dressing for my age. I’m 31 years old with an awesome career at a sweet nonprofit. I’ve resolved to start acting like it, and now my wardrobe needs to reflect it, as well. The good news is we don’t have a dress code, but keeping my age and lifestyle in mind will ultimately help me really determine my style.

5. Wear more lipstick. If I see a lipstick I like, I’m going for it. Until recently, I rarely ever wore lipstick because, you guessed it, I didn’t think I could pull it off. I always notice how polished it looks on other women and wished I could wear it, too. This year, I’m just going to do it.

Stick with me and find out how I do. Happy New Year!

You may (or may not) have noticed that I’ve taken a short break from blogging. That’s partly because I had a lot of work to do as the summer session and my internship came to a close, but partly because I’ve been a little unhappy with my clothes and with blogging lately.

I started style blogging because I was really inspired by the amazing bloggers I’ve been following.  I was really excited about my outfits and wanted to share that with others. I felt good, I was getting a lot of complements and, most importantly, I felt comfortable; I felt like myself. I’m sure this happens to all bloggers, especially when starting out, but soon I started to feel like I was trying to keep up with the Joneses, and that I was dressing for the blog instead of dressing for me. I was doing way too much shopping (read: spending too much money) and purchasing pieces that I didn’t really like because I thought they would look good on the blog. And that’s not what I wanted my blog to be. I want it to be about having great style with easy, inexpensive pieces.

From a recent shopping trip

So, I’ve still been getting dressed these last couple of weeks but without constantly wondering if what I was putting together was cute/trendy/stylish/whatever enough for the blog, and the result has been great: cute outfits, a few complements, more confidence and comfort. Throughout all of this, I’ve also tried to take a good, hard look at what my style really is, and I’m thinking I’ll do a closet inventory post soon to get rid of the pieces that aren’t really me so that I can show you outfits that I really love and feel completely comfortable in. So, if you’ve followed me on my journey thus far, I am so thankful to you, and I hope you’ll continue to follow along. I have some cute outfits that I’m excited to show you!

source: Pinterest