OOTD: Bright Bohemian and The Problem with Inchworms

Today, I put on something colorful, to show how I style bold and colorful dresses...which I'm sure I'll approach again in a different way. I wanted to take Alex swinging, but also out to dinner. We went out to the playground to take photos, but had to battle many inchworms and a few beetles to take photos. After we got back inside, I had to remove 3 inchworms from Alex's clothing and hair. In addition to outfit photos, there is a special treat of beautiful nature photos at the bottom.

I bought this colorful dress from Rugged Warehouse last weekend, and love it! I don't normally wear super colorful clothing, so I wanted to branch out into something very colorful, but not out of my style preferences. I love the saturated colors and almost handmade look of the print. If you aren't familiar with Rugged Warehouse, they sell factory rejects. The one by me normally just has clothing, shoes, bags, and accessories for men and women, but recently has added housewares and removed the children's clothing.  The clothing pieces they sell can have misprints, fit issues, odd sewing, broken straps, or holes. I normally buy clothing from them, which is what I'm the most familiar with. I don't mind this, as the prices are low, and most things like holes in the seams and broken straps, I will easily repair. This dress is slightly off print...which I like, because it gives a hand printed element to the design. The fit is fine for me and there are no repairs needed. For $10, it's a great deal for a beautiful cotton maxi dress.

The white cropped cardigan is one of several clothing pieces I recently purchased from Goodwill. It's in great condition. There is a tiny stain on the front, but my husband found a stain remover that he insists I try. The cardigan was $4, which is a great price. I wear cardigans through out the year, because I get cold easily. They are great in cold to cool weather, but in warm weather too, in case the AC is too cold for me. They are easy to put inside a bag when not being worn. The cropped styles like this one, and shorter, are great for giving my arms a little coverage, and occasionally with deep necklines like this dress had, to give me some coverage. As I've mentioned before, I wear a lot of neutral colored clothing, so this white cardigan will be a great piece for my wardrobe. It's nice to have a white option, vs just grey, cream, and black.

Accessories wise, I pulled from the colors of the dress and kept the pieces classic, but to my style. The pink daisy hair flower is one that I made years ago. The necklace is a vintage one that I bought on Ebay or at an estate sale many years ago. I think it's 50s or 60s. It has a slide clasp that can be worn in the front or back. The wedge shoes are from Target. I hadn't worn them much since I bought them many years ago, and today I was reminded why. They are incredibly uncomfortable. They will be going into the "donate" pile. Still, the blue color works great with the dark blue of the dress. I have a pair of blue flats that will work fine for dinner tonight.

As I mentioned in the beginning, we had many inchworms bothering us at the playground. Though they were bothering us, I'm sure they were just as bothered BY us. We had to move several of them to use the swings. The trees around and above us, had be ravished by the inchworms and beetles.

This is the short slide covered in pollen...yuck. This beetle is one of many we've seen. It scurried away as I was trying to photograph it.

Alex took all the full body photos of me. I took all of the others. We're off to dinner now. I hope you all have a fantastic Friday, where ever you are!