OOTD: Black and White Pattern Mixing

Today was fairly busy. I had breakfast with my husband, had band practice, pickup Alex from a sleep over, took Alex to her Girl Scouts meeting, fiddled with finalizing travel plans for next weekend, snuggled the cats, wrote about skulls, and pondered how anxious I'm going to get before we leave. I'll be ok. I was actually feeling better about the trip, before I looked at the hotel arrangements and needed to alter them. Going to a big city, Chicago, when I'm not familiar with it, makes me paranoid about areas to stay in. It's not like when I go to Philly and I'm confident about my location, so we're always in a safe area. Chicago is massively more expensive for a hotel than I'm used to, which made the fretting bad from the start.

Anyway, outfit wise, I decided to play with prints and shapes. I chose a striped maxi skirt (Ebay), a stylized floral empire waist tank (Plato's Closet), a cropped open knit cardigan, flat mary janes, a red pendant necklace, and a red poppy (made by me). My intention was to mix the floral and striped prints, with the open textured cardigan, to play with patterns and proportion. Looking at it now, it's not my favorite outfit, but it's not terrible. The tank looks better with a mostly black striped skirt (a different one I haven't shown you). The cropped cardigan idea would be better with a more structured cropped cardigan than this knit one, but it's not terrible. It does cinch in some of the fullness of the tank, giving a more peplum effect. The accessories are fine.



This necklace was a gift. I think it was from my husband. It's part of a set, so it has matching earrings. I don't know where it came from. I think the pendant size and necklace length worked well in this bare area of my chest. It's just a little pop of dark red to break up the neutrals and not distract from the busier outfit.


The other day, I repaired the sole of one shoe, so I could wear these instead of my other trusty flats. My old ones are getting uncomfortable in the heels. With the Chicago trip coming up next week, I wanted some shoes that are suitable for walking in the city. These are from Sugar Shoes, but I don't recall where I found them. Possible Rugged Warehouse, some time last year. The style is called "mary janes". I don't why it's that term, but it's a catch all for women's and girls' shoes with one strap across the foot. These are similar to the Chinese shoes that are common in Chinese shops, but better quality. These have a textured rubber soles over foam soles, pink cotton lining, and an overlapped pieces of fabric to prevent the buckles from rubbing skin. Since they have buckles, they are adjustable. I normally set the straps at a comfortable length, but slip my shoes on and off.


Since this is Memorial Day weekend, poppies are prevalent. I made this glittery poppy last year, with The Wizard of Oz in mind...the poppy scene and ruby slippers. It also goes nicely with my very red hair.


While walking back inside, I noticed our new spider was still by the front porch. I don't mind spiders when they are in places that don't interfere with my life. This one has a web suspended between our front steps, our house, and a large flower pot. It's a gorgeous spider. I didn't bother her much to take this photo...zoom is my friend.

I will be spending the 1st part of next week finishing the prep work and packing for our trip. The 2nd half will be spent traveling with my husband, enjoying time with amazing friends, and meeting Skull-A-Day fans and artists. Our daughter will be rocking out with my parents while we're gone. I'm sure it will be more fun for her this way, though I know she's bummed we're not taking her. Just another trip plan that changed along the path of planning. It's not the long (12 hrs!) drive that changed that...she's done that for 2 past trips. It's testing and not being able to stay longer. Oh well, we'll make it up to her in the summer with a beach trip. Possibly she'll come with us to CA next year...but that is another Skull-A-Day trip that is barely planned. I'll try to update while I'm gone, since I managed to convince my husband to pick a totally different hotel, based on safety, free parking, nice room, and free Wi-Fi. Of course, if I do update during the trip, expect a lot of awesome travel photos and candid shots of the Skull-A-Day team, fans, various artists, and our families. If that doesn't thrill you...at least one baby photo, maybe.

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