Dresses from the Stripes Boutique Mommy and Me Shop
I'm not ordinarily a "mommy-and-me" outfit-type person. I mean OK, my daughter and I have matching pom-pom shoes...but come on: when matching pom-pom shoes exist, buying and then wearing them (at the same time) is clearly non-optional.
So when my friend Elise told me she wanted us to model some of the mommy-and-me dresses she'd designed for her label, Stripes, my answer was "...Eh, I don't know."
Hatch Dress (yes, it's maternity; no, I'm not pregnant) | Sunglasses | Sandals | J. Crew Purse
See how this dress is pretty demure? Yeah, yeah, it's short, I know, but it has that high neck and that loose fit and those mid-length sleeves, so it's always made me feel genteel and graceful, like someone who'd carry a structured handbag and who probably stores her hats in actual hatboxes as opposed to where I store mine, which is in a stack on the floor of my closet, underneath my cat.
It turns out that even a dress this pretty and demure stops being pretty and demure in certain situations. Like, say, when you are spread-eagled on top of a pile of rocks and wet sand (mud), having just been dropped from really quite a significant height by your husband, and especially when the rocks and wet sand (mud) that you have found yourself laying on top of happen to be located directly in front of a restaurant where all the patrons are seated facing towards the beach, making the precise spot where your husband deposited you effectively a stage upon which you now find yourself performing the grand old tragicomic classic, "Hey Everyone, Check Out My Underpants!"
Dress | Cropped Sweater (similar) | Sunglasses | Boots (similar)
Am I showing my age when I tell you that Reese Witherspoon and Marky Mark (who I'm preeeeetty sure was still called Marky Mark at the time, and if he wasn't, he should have been) in Fear were like the ultimate in hot couples? You know - spoiler alert - prior to him going insane and killing her dog and trying to kill her family, I mean.
The rollercoaster scene, oh my god. I am sitting alone in front of my computer and blushing at this very moment.
Oh my sneakers
A few weeks ago, Skechers asked me if they could send me a pair of sneakers from their Spring collection to try out/potentially wear in posts/etc, and I was like "ehhh, I have a couple of pairs of sneakers; I'm probably good, but thank you!" But then I went on the site to take a quick look, and excuuuuuuuuse me but what are those?
So I said yes, please can I try these out because they're red, and now I know that they are also a DREAM on your feet. (This is not a sponsored post, just FYI; this is good old genuine enthusiasm talking here.) I have a feeling that the technology that they use to make them this comfortable was developed for little old ladies with bone spurs, but whatever, I'll take it. (I went and looked up the sneaker info, and the extreme comfort level is apparently a combo of the memory foam insole, the stretchable, "sock-like" inner lining, and the padded collar and tongue.)
April showers, et cetera et cetera
The school I attended up through the sixth grade was technically Protestant - the hint being its name, Trinity - and students were required to attend Chapel each week, but, oddly enough, the student body was predominantly Jewish. So was the student body at Dalton, where I spent the remainder of my grade school years. And so was I, sort of - my dad is Jewish. Except my mom is a lapsed Protestant. And both of them are atheists. So I guess you could say that when it came to holidays, religion didn't exactly play a big role - we essentially cherrypicked the ones that seemed to make sense to us to celebrate, and celebrated those in a way that made sense to us, too.
Easter was never really a big deal in our house; it always came upon me out of nowhere, like an afterthought to Valentine's Day (the Easter Bunny usually delivered my basket of creme eggs in the morning, shortly after my parents had ushered me back into bed; it appears that I wasn't the only one who Easter took by surprise). Once, when I was in fifth grade, a friend of mine took me to an Easter service with her family. I remember being excited to dress up in my favorite plaid skirt, and I remember the kids got to go up on stage to pet a rabbit, but that's about it.
