Author Archives: Rena Anne

Fashion Friday

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This week I have the awesome opportunity to have my beautiful friend, Cheryl as a guest blogger on Fashion Friday. Cheryl has an amazing style and definitely doesn’t mind spending more money on her clothes. I like to live vicariously through her Anthropologie purchases. 😉 She has a totally different approach to shopping than me, but her outfits are always adorable.

Don’t forget to leave her some comment love and thank her for sharing her advice.

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Hi. My name is Cheryl and I get to fill in for Rena this week.

In many ways, I am the complete opposite of Rena. Shopping is not my favorite pastime. I do not find extra joy from getting an item at a crazy discount…but I love fashion, and like Rena, it took me a while to develop my own sense of style. I have now embraced my own way of enhancing my wardrobe.

Rena (and several other of our friends) enhance their wardrobe by searching for treasures. They hunt high and low for items that they like and that are inexpensive. Sometimes I forget that this is how they shop and I make the poor decision of joining them on their hunt thinking it will be a fun time.

It is not fun for me.

They spend hours looking through items that range from mediocre to hideous in order to find one or two gems that they can incorporate into their wardrobe. They rejoice in the fact that they have found a couple of things after hours and hours of hunting.

I do not like the search. I don’t want to hunt. I want to walk into a store and be presented with all my options so I can skim over those things that I am not interested in and focus all my time and attention on things that are pretty. I also do not want to wade through mediocrity to find something I like. I want to be surrounded by things that are beautiful and chose those items that are my very favorite.

This is one reason I love Anthropologie. It’s like walking into art, sometimes literally. It’s not a shopping trip, it’s an aesthetic experience. It makes me want to spend all my money. But I can’t spend all kinds of money so I sacrifice quantity for quality. Granted I usually choose things that are on sale, but I certainly do not get the deals that Rena finds.

In order to manage having more a more expensive wardrobe on a non-expensive budget. Here are my tricks…

  1. Spread out shopping trips. If I don’t see it, I don’t know how much I want it.
  2. Choose items that you really love. If its just okay, you probably don’t need to spend $60 on it.
  3. Choose items that you can wear for a long time. The things I spend money on I wear for years and years and I still get compliments on them.
  4. Don’t forget that its okay to buy more expensive items. You just have to buy less of them, especially if you don’t have enough money to buy new things every week.

The Magic Hour

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I love summer nights because there is a “magic hour”  right before the sun goes down where the color in the sky is beautiful and the air is the perfect temperature.

The other night we jumped in the car and drove around with the windows open just to experience the glorious breeze on our faces.

Every time we came to a stop sign, we would let the boys take turns telling us where to go. They LOVED having the control over where we went and it led us on a fun little adventure.

Hope you’re enjoying your summer nights as much as we are!

And Fashion Friday this week made it onto Simple Homemade’s Weekend Links list.

Check it out here.

Voila!

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This week we had Kids Games at our church. I volunteered in the 2 and 3 year old class, so that my boys could participate. We had SO much fun! The only drawback was the shirt we were required to wear everyday.

To jazz it up a bit, I decided to change the shape, cutting off the sleeves and collar to make the neckline a little lower. I just went through my scraps and found colors that complimented the orange shirt. Then I added the lace ribbon as a “collar” and made three fabric yo-yo’s.

Believe me when I say, I am NO seamstress and everything I did was with a needle and thread (no machine involved!), so it possible for anyone to do it. (If you are a visual learner, like myself, click here to watch a video on a Yo-Yo how-to.)

 I am excited about the changes I made and satisfied enough to wear it in public. Now if only I could change the color… 😉

Happy Friday! 🙂