Fall Crafts

Here is a little peek at my classroom. This is my fall bulletin board display. We worked on the scarecrows, (I ordered them at Oriental Trading), fall trees, and watercolor painted leaves throughout the month of October. My fall board might be my favorite of the entire year. The scarecrows and colors from the leaves and trees are so pretty.
The other picture is a portion of my desk (almost always a disaster area!). I've been a slacker on pink breast cancer awareness outfit pictures so I figured I would throw in a shot of 2 of my favorite pink accessories; my pink animal print coffee cup and pink floral agenda by Vera Bradley. I know not many people use agendas anymore since this is such a tech advanced time in our lives, but there is something about writing down to-do lists and scheduling appointments and activities in those little boxes that I love. Maybe it's a teacher thing!

A "Me" Day

Yes I realized I had a sticker on my jacket before I left the house.. the joys of 4 year old boys!
I did NOT realize that I left the tag on the back of my Loft sweater. No one to blame for that but my 35 year old self! 

On Saturday I had a day to myself. I haven't had one of those in a while so it was nice. First I headed out to make some returns and pick up some new clothes for little R. I love to shop for him as much as I love to shop for myself. Oh who am I kidding, I love to shop for everyone and everything. Well except maybe for food, that is kind of annoying. After the shopping trip I headed down to my sister's house where she was hosting a Willow House party. There were lots of nice housewares for sale and I had more fun.. shopping! AND eating delicious desserts that the hostess baked herself. Hello huge brownie made with nutella. I ate the entire thing and have no regrets!

My "me" day came in handy because when I got home Saturday night I started feeling weird and woke up with the classic fever and body aches that can only mean one thing.. some kind of flu bug :( I missed my nephew's christening yesterday, I just could not get out of bed. I didn't even make it into work today but I'm starting to feel more like a human again now so hopefully I've survived the worst of it!

Jacket: Loft (recent)
Sweater: Loft (recent)
Jeans: Old Navy
Boots: Nine West via Marshalls
Bag: Coach Madison Leather Lindsey Satchel (recent)

Pink is my Signature Color

I threw on this pink jacket over my new green Loft sweater dress. I found this dress on the sale rack, actually I found A LOT of these dresses on the sale rack and that had me thinking it wouldn't work out for me, but I tried it on and thought it was cute. I wore it to work today and got a ton of compliments on it. This will be a go to dress for me during fall/winter..  it's easy to move around in and perfect with tights and boots.

Lately I have blogger paranoia. Nobody in my life besides my husband knows about this blog and I want to keep it that way for now. Today when I was getting compliments on my outfit I had a panicked feeling for a minute and I thought to myself "I wonder what they would think if they discovered this blog?" I know I shouldn't care but I hate when people are overly critical and I know there are people in my life who won't get why I'm doing this. I've actually been thinking about stopping for a while, but that will only hurt me.  Writing is a great outlet for me to release stress. Then I thought about steering away from the fashion angle and focussing more on other things. I like the way I dress, but I'm not the most creative and I'm actually OK with that. Plus I'm on my own with taking pictures and have a plain old point and shoot camera (with no plans to upgrade any time soon) so my pictures don't come out great. Maybe I can make myself more anonymous somehow. Or maybe I just need to step away for a while. Anyone else go through this and have any suggestions??

Dress: Loft (recent)
Jacket: Gap (old)
Tights: Dress Barn
Boots: Nine West
Necklace: Sunshine Daydreams

Eshakti Dress Review

A few weeks ago I was contacted by a representative from Eshakti and asked to review a sample from their clothing company. Of course I jumped at the chance. The thing that's great about Eshakti is you can customize their clothing by providing your measurements. You can even change sleeve lengths and hem lengths to your liking. You can also just order standard sizes and keep the clothing as is, which is what I chose to do. The Eshakti website is very user friendly and has lots of clothes to browse. I had a hard time deciding what I wanted to sample! I wound up choosing a dress. Here was my experience in a nutshell:

*Great customer service. E-mails were answered promptly and with courtesy.
*Wide variety of clothing on the website to choose from.
*Prices are reasonable. I chose the Pointillist Tweed Dress and it is $69.95 which is an amount I would spend on a work appropriate dress.
*Shipping took a while, I didn't receive my dress until about 3 weeks after I put my order in, so that was a draw back.
*The fit of the dress is great, and I didn't even use the custom sizing option.
*The dress I chose is nice quality! The top of the dress is tweed, has a pretty black fringe that lines the neckline, back, waist, and zipper. It is also fully lined. The bottom portion of the dress is a multicolored stretch cord material. I loved that it's stretchy.. very teacher friendly! Even though the cord fabric stretches, the dress still retained its shape throughout the day (and I move around a lot!)

I decided to wear this dress to work today for class pictures. I wore it with a black cardigan this morning since it was chilly, but I can pair it with many different colored cardigans or jackets. It will also look great with tights and boots. I got a lot of compliments on this dress today and am very happy with my selection! I plan on wearing it again to a family Christening this weekend. Would I ever consider ordering clothing from Eshakti again? Definitely!

Dress: Eshakti
Shoes: Nine West
Jewels: Lia Sophia

Pick, Pick, Pick a Fat Pumpkin..

Shorter hair.. I'm still getting used to it. 

Hay rides are the best! 

We went pumpkin picking today and it was the perfect day for it. Blue skies, crisp weather, and a not-so-crowded pumpkin farm. It was great!

Now that the craziness of the beginning of the school year has settled down a little I feel like I can really enjoy this time of year.. and I do. I love the weather, decorating the house and my classroom at school, doing fun fall projects and knowing that the    holiday season is just around the corner makes me happy! 

Shirt: Dockers (don't remember what store)

Sweater/Cape: Old Navy (last year)

Jeans: Old Navy (A couple of years ago)

Boots: Nine West via Marshalls (several years ago) 

                                                                                       

Hot cider donuts.. yum! 

Lofts of pumpkins! 

Spooky hands :) 

Pink and Grey

I have continued to wear my pink for breast cancer awareness.  I've owned this pink jacket from the Gap for many years and I still break it out every fall. You can't really tell from the picture but I'm wearing a grey cardigan underneath the jacket/over the tank. I love the pink/grey combo. I also love the lace detail that I've seen on a lot of LOFT stuff recently. 

Today I had to find a field trip for my grade level, reserve tickets, and submit all the paperwork by the end of the day. Originally the deadline for field trip submitting was November 1st but it was changed to today and I found out about that TODAY! I also had lunch duty with the 1st graders. Ugh. And now I have a splitting migraine headache. On a happy note, tomorrow is Friday! AND my sample dress from eshakti arrived today. I can't wait to wear and review it! 

Jacket: Gap (old)

Cardi: LOFT (recent)

Tank: LOFT (recent) 

Pants: Gap Outlet (old)

Shoes: Nine West (old) 

Little booshie (as I like to call him) decided to
crash my photo :) 

Seasonal

Sorry about the blur, still not
the greatest with the pictures! 

It has been hard to dress seasonably when the temps have been in the 70's and 80's in the northeast. Today was an actual "seasonal" day of overcast skies, light drizzle, and temperatures in the low 60's. I loved it!  I like a warm spring, hot summer, and brisk fall and I don't like when Ms. Mother Nature messes around with those 3 seasons. Winter, on the other hand, well she can disrupt that one all she wants! I'll take 70 degrees in January any day of the week :)


Corduroy Shirt Dress: Old Navy (Fall 2010)
Leggings: Loft Outlet (recent)
Boots: Kenneth Cole Reaction (2 years ago)
Belt: Loft Outlet (2 years ago)

Nothing to blog home about

I have to admit that this has not been my best week as far as feeling inspired to get dressed for work. On Monday night I decided to switch my bedding and while I was pushing the mattress to put on the new bedskirt, I hurt my back. So I've been going mostly for comfort when choosing clothing this week. Also, we've been painting t-shirts for anti-bullying week at school, so I obviously didn't want to break out any of my ball gowns for that project! 

I love these grey cords, they are super comfy and it was the perfect day to wear them, not too cool not too warm. The weather has been beautiful the past couple of days here in NJ. 

Sweater: Banana Republic (last year)

Shirt:  Banana Republic (last year)

Cords: Gap Outlet (2 years ago) 

Shoes: Kenneth Cole Reaction (last year) 

Sunglasses: Coach (several years ago) 

Tickled Pink

Please excuse the mess of toys behind me, such is life with an almost 4 year old! 

I joined up with Melissa from A Working Mom's Closet and some other bloggers to participate in Blogging for Breast Cancer Awareness.  What a great cause and a great excuse to wear pink!  I signed up for at least 1 pink outfit a week for the month of October, but I'm sure I'll have more. I love pink and have a lot in my closet. Although you can't really tell from the picture my shirt has subtle tones of pink, I added a pink bracelet, and of course my pink shoes! I've always loved the pink/brown combo so I like the way these look with my brown pants.

Poncho/Cape: Gap (old)
Button Down Shirt: NY& Company (old)
Pants: Target (old)
Shoes: Old Navy (old, hmm sensing a trend)