New. Thing. #2: Dare. to. Dress.

Wardrobe has been another source of newness recently. While I've been loving the outfits that Sally and I made together and I've even continued to branch out beyond those, I was looking at my closet preparing myself for my friend Renee's bachelorette party (Hi Renee!! Thanks for reading! Can't wait for the wedding, you will make such a beautiful bride! :) ) this past weekend and realized that there are a few things that I haven't even worn or tried to wear. I've decided to incorporate more of the items that I hardly ever wear so that I DO start wearing them more! 

I put this outfit together for Renee's party. 

I received this shirt over a year ago and haven't worn it yet. It was given to me by my good friend, Lorena. She made me swear I would wear it, or she wasn't going to give it to me. At that time, I wanted it, but said, "Oh, I'm trying to lose weight. When I do, I will wear it." Thinking about this, I realized that I don't NEED to lose weight to wear this top! Nor should I ever feel I have to lose weight to wear any item of clothing! I need to wear what I like and what fits me well, no matter what my size! I know that I am beautiful at any size and shape and wearing clothes that suit my body and having confidence in myself is what makes me attractive. This blouse was DYING for me to wear it!  It was a good fit for me. It hugged me in all the right places for my pear shape and it was fun to wear something I don't normally wear.

I paired the outfit with my new sandals by Big Buddha that I got at DSW Warehouse. 

Pretty purple toenails!

Large platform along the whole length of shoe so you are standing flat. So comfy!

Pretty twisted tops!

Sally had previously recommended that I buy Kork Ease sandals. I did go and try some on and boy, was she right! They felt lovely on my feet and I loved the color, but they were just out of my budget at this time. They will have to be an investment I will make in the future. I found these Big Buddha shoes instead at a very reasonable price.  They are extremely comfortable and go well with almost everything. I also like that they are platform shoes, but don't have a high heel type position. They are basically flat soles and therefore I can wear them for long periods of time. I found myself a new pair of platform sandals for the summer! I love them and wore them all weekend!

I also have determined that I'm going to make an attempt at wearing Jeggings! I like them, they fit well and I think I can pair them with fun longer tops for them summer. I picked up a capri length and short length pair this weekend by Hue at Macy's.

Capri-length. Cute pocket details.

Short-length jeggings.

I also went to Arc's Value Village this weekend to see if I could find a new skirt. Not only did I find a skirt, but I found all sorts of new clothes that I can wear. Take note: I bought 5 items, I also removed 7 items from my closet!

Work to Weekend full skirt.

I love this new skirt. I can wear it to work and casually on the weekends! It's almost a denim like material which makes it very durable! I wore this out for a stroll to run errands this past Sunday.

Logix striped top.

Close up.

An adorable striped cotton top that will go with many outfits! Will be great as an undershirt for the winter as well to use under sweaters.

Lands' End sleeveless top and blue shorts.

Fun detail on short waistband. 

A fun new pair of shorts and tank top. I was VERY excited about these shorts. When I tried them on, they fit me just as they should. They hit me right at the belly button! High waisted shorts for pear shaped girls! I'm digging them! Due to these shorts and my new jegging shorts, I got rid of the other blue jeans shorts I had that weren't fitting me quite right. These fit perfect, sans any alterations!

New York & Company wrap dress! 

I love this wrap dress! It just hugged all of my curves and really flattered my figure. Can't wait to wear it in to work one day or out on the town for a dressed up evening or even day! 

I can't wait to put these new pieces on along with some others in my closet that I haven't worn that frequently. I'm excited about making new outfits and having fun with clothing, something I don't think I ever did in the past. Here's to making new outfits and being confident in them!

Are there clothes in your closet that you hardly wear? What keeps you hanging onto them or what prevents you from wearing them?

New adventures in wardrobe!

This week, I got back from work one day to find a very exciting surprise shoved, crumpled and mashed into my mailbox by a Minneapolis post-person. I was not shocked to find the destroyed remains of my package, I was exuberant to see that I had gotten some international mail! Yes, I said international. All the way from Australia! :)

Aussie post! :D

I quickly ripped open the package to find 3 incredible items from my friend Sonya for my birthday. 2 beautiful dresses and 1 awesome bag! Sonya had previously told me about her quest to sell batik dresses and bags at markets in Sydney. She designed these dresses with an Indonesian dressmaker while in Indonesia. When we last spoke, she told me she still had some left and I was bugging her to send them to me. Sonya picked the PERFECT dresses for me! She also knows of my love for ethnic prints and being one of my closest friends, knows my taste to a T! I was so excited and happy to see that she sent them! I immediately ripped off my clothes and began to try the items on! Oh, and I worked on accessorizing!

Short orange dress.

Longer dress with ruffles!

Full body! Super cute! Found my new summer dresses!

Accessorized! Pretend my bra strap isn't there...please?

Beautiful print!

Olive Branch - Sonya's tag.

And now for the incredible and EXPANDABLE handbag!

Regular size...

Expanded!

I wore the short dress over pants and a shirt under it to work the following day. I just couldn't wait to get in them! I received many compliments! As you can see in the pictures, I added a belt to accentuate my pear shape. I have a small waist and the dresses were a bit loose in the waist so I accentuated this with a belt. I should also mention, these items are 100% cotton so they are very comfortable! Of course, one must hand wash the items and line dry, but they are so cute...it's worth it! Plus, they are designed by one of my closest friends! How can you not love it?!

It's official! I have the BEST friends and family! If any of these items strikes your fancy or you'd like to see some more pictures of dresses, please feel free to contact me about purchasing one of these dresses from Sonya! Great work, Sonya! The dresses and bags are beautiful!

No one else has...so I "put a ring on it!"

Yes, people...I put a ring on my finger AND I made it! :) I mentioned earlier that I would be taking a ring making class which I did this week! It was tons of fun and a great learning experience. I took the class at The Studio at Rush Creek in Maple Grove, MN. They offer so many great and affordable classes there, I highly recommend checking them out!

We made "bezel cup resin" jewelry for the class. We learned how to solder rings together and how to solder on bezel cup settings and later fill them with a design and some resin. Our teacher for the class was Kristy. She was a very knowledgeable and helpful instructor! I might add that this is a coffee shop too, so you can get your dose of caffeine while you work! :) I had to forego the caffeine due to my budgets but nonetheless, I loved the class and the studio and may do other classes there in the future.

The studio.

First, we cut our piece of silver wire. Then we soldered the wire together in a "circle".

We placed the ring in "pikel" after soldering to make it nice and clean again.

The "circle".

Next, we placed the ring on the mandrel.

Then we hammered the ring into shape and also down to our ring size. This is Ellie. She was in my ring making class and she was really nice! Great job on your rings Ellie!

The ring.

After soldering on the bezel cup we placed a design in the cup and it was ready to have resin poured in it.

This is Kristy, our fearless leader, stirring up the resin.

Just after pouring resin into the bezel cup. Enough resin for it to "dome". Now let it dry and watch for air bubbles! Pop them if needed. Mine made it home sans air bubbles and now I can enjoy my hard work every day! :)

I should also mention that Kristy sells some of her own jewelry on etsy.com. You can find her jewelry here. She has some beautiful jewelry! I checked out the page and I just love some of the stamped stuff she has! Hop to her Etsy site and support a local jewelry artist! 

Thanks Kristy and Studio at Rush Creek for the wonderful experience! 

More. Snooze.

Here I am again! I seem to be taking some breaks in my blogging, but I am working on being productive so you all will have to bear with me. I appreciate it! One of the reasons that I am feeling as though I do not have the time to blog as frequently during the week is that I am needing to reevaluate some of my habits recently so that I can become a better me! I frequently blog at night after I've achieved many things for the day and often stay up very late blogging. This leads to a tired Alyssa come the following day and I don't feel that I am able to be as present as I would like to be during my work day. As such, I've made a new goal for myself to try and be in bed at 11:30 pm every weeknight so that I can be 1) on time to work 2) present during the work day and 3) much more healthy! This means I will not be able to blog every night of the week. I hope you can all understand. :)

During this past week however, I have achieved some great things!

I met with a consultant with Women Venture again and we reviewed my business plan. I also was able to get some more concrete answers about financing. I have been working hard this week in nailing down some costs so I can proceed forward with my business. Pretty psyched about that!

As I indicated in my goals, I would like to learn some more hobbies so that I can put them to use and they can continue driving me towards my goals. This week, I signed up for 3 classes. Two of these classes are through Minneapolis Community Education and one is through a studio I found called Rush Creek. I will be taking a gardening in a pot and a canning class through community ed. I hope to grow some of my own vegetables during the summer and to can these for use in the winter! I signed of for a ring making class through The Studio at Rush Creek. I recently had an idea about making rings. I am very excited about this as well! I will be taking pictures and blogging about these classes!

I made a new dish this week! Red beans and rice! Of course, as I was making it I was singing, "Baby got back!"  "Red beans and rice didn't miss her!" It was pretty good. Helped empty some more cupboard space. I actually used this recipe, but I didn't use the bacon fat or any of that. I modified it quite a bit according to what I had at home.

Tonight is karaoke for hunger night! I am very excited and I will take pics! :)

Anyone care to share some new endeavors they are working on? Any new classes? New things you are learning?

Love you, just as you are!

I am a bit under the weather today so this will be a shorter post. 

I was made aware, several times today via Facebook, that it is International Women's Day. 

Happy Day Women! ;)

After work today, I went and got my hair done. It's been about 2 months and my red is going blond again. I'm trying to space out my visits though. As much as I LOVE my hairdresser, Tina, to save some money, I can't go quite as often as I probably should. I've thought about doing my own dyeing, but am just scared it will turn out the color pink. So, I'd rather stretch out my visits and make sure I get a quality cut and dye each time. Tina does do EXCELLENT work and I love having her cut my hair. (Bonus: she's super nice and fun to talk to!) You can find her at the Spalon Montage in Woodbury, I highly recommend her!

After Tina put the dye in my hair, I was thumbing through a magazine. I came across an article about women and how absolutely hard we are on ourselves. The magazine states that I believe it was something like 93% of women have up to 13 negative thoughts about themselves every day with regards to body image! That's horrible! One of my many thoughts with my goals was doing the goal with clothing. This was an attempt to and goal to feel good about myself and find the clothes for MY body. Clothes that make my body look its best, rather than focusing on what I need to change about myself to feel better. I DO feel better getting gussied up in these nice fitting clothes and outfits. In turn, those positive feelings transfer to other positive feelings about myself and I feel I actually do accomplish more. This was a goal to remind me, to feel good about me. A goal to focus on one positive piece, getting an outfit that I feel good in each day, to start the day out right. Wouldn't it be nice if we all said more positive things and did positive things for ourselves everyday and the positivity would than radiate? 

What things do you have that are negative, that you can turn into a positive? I am a pear-shaped woman. For the longest time, since I was little, I always wished I had straight hips. I wanted to be able to wear the clothes so many straight-hipped women could! I wanted to wear low cut jeans, but couldn't fit my butt in them! Of course there are times that I don't like my curvy hips but now, every time I feel this, I remind myself of this: I was blessed with curvy hips and a very feminine body structure. Sure, I may not be able to pull some looks off that rectangular shaped girls can, but I can put the va in va-va-voom. That makes me beautiful and womanly. 

I say, on this day and always, women: radiate and focus on your positives. Put together an outfit that makes you feel good about you, paint your toenails, get your hair done, put on make up if you don't normally put it on, do positive affirmations, exercise to feel sweaty, alive, healthy and appreciate all your awesome body can do for you and its sheer awesomeness, do what brings positive feelings and makes those continue to flourish. 

On International Women's Day, let's turn our negatives into positives!

"Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you!"

-Dr. Seuss

Last night, I went shopping...and didn't spend a dime!

Yes, you read right! My friend, Mary, (that genius of a woman!), organized a clothing swap for myself and a bunch of other girls to get together and swap clothes; getting rid of those that we don't need and with hope, finding ones that somebody else doesn't need and exchange. It was also just a chance for a group of goofy girls to hang out together and have a good time, sans spending.

Ah, the merchandise!

Mary reclaiming items she meant for exchange, isn't she a doll? 

Trying on Mary's roller derby bloomers for size.

Nita trying out a headband.

I found a most excellent top. The moment I saw it, I just knew it was meant for me! Today, I jazzed it up with some accessories I had purchased for $2.00 at Goodwill and my NEW boots from Steve Madden that finally came in the mail! I was super pumped and felt like I was looking smokin' hot! I really am feeling a self-confidence boost from all of these great fitting clothes and just knowing what to do with them and how to put it all together. It IS true! If you look good, you will FEEL good! :)

I went out today and did a little more shopping...but this time, it did cost money! I have been in contact with Sally since I purchased my Banana Republic jeans and it turns out, those weren't the right fit for me. She recommended that I check out the Heritage jeans at Talbot's. It's a spendy store, but guess what? The jeans were on sale for 25% off and cost the same amount as the Banana Republic ones! Yippee!

I think I found 2 pair, that actually fit me just as I think that they should! I sent Sally a pic to double check, but I think I nailed it down. Now, to the thrift store to sell my other jeans so that I can recoup some of the spending!

Have you ever had a clothing swap or another type of get together where you switched belongings rather than purchase them? What was it? What was your favorite item you obtained?

Organization mania.

I have been slacking. A lot. I'm still working on my goals, but somehow these last couple of weeks, I seem to have lost some steam! Contemplating this last night, I realized I need to get my butt back in gear again, at the very least with blogging!

This past weekend, I did have some organization mania. Along with simplifying, I need to organize and get less cluttered! My head feels chaotic when I have so much stuff and even more so when it is strewn about!

This weekend I worked on some of these tasks. I had a drawer full of ziploc baggies to store my meats and frozen goods as well as bags of teas tossed in the drawer. Some loose leaf teas were still in their original paper bag and I others that were in boxes, but already in tea bags. The boxes took up so much space it didn't seem I could fit any other items in the drawer. I began by pouring all of the the loose leaf teas into some glass containers to better store them. Then, I took all of the tea bags out of their boxes and combined them all in a plastic tupperware container for easier storage. Then a little other rearranging and VOILA!

I then began working at my filing cabinet. Now, it would be good if a filing cabinet had an order to it, wouldn't it? This is what they are for after all. Mine, did not. I did have to spend some money going out to Office Max to buy some expandable folders. Many of my files have smaller items that I didn't want falling out. I went through all of them and began to label all of the folders. Now? My documents are easy to find and file! I did have one problem, however. I made a "coupon" file. It has since occurred to me that this is completely useless and disorganizes all of the organization I just accomplished! I hopped on to Amazon.com and purchased a new coupon holder that is magnetic and will attach to my fridge! It has an area to store a scissors and cards for categories. I will have to start clipping the coupons I get immediately and filing them. The cost was $8 and no shipping was charged. Today, while working at the food shelf, I also realized I could simply bring in the coupons that I don't utilize; coupons for diapers, formula and food coupons, and keep them in my office for those interested! It will be my new contribution to the food shelf! Can't wait!

Out with the old...

In with the new!

Finally, I had bought a new microfiber mop and a broom. Microfiber will be a huge cost savings due to not having to purchase disposable cloths and will also help me to eliminate waste.  I hooked these to my wall with some 3M hooks. Nice and handy, but still out of the way.






I used another 3M hanger to hang my grocery bags. I try and only use the reusable grocery bags when I go to the store. Not only does it get me a discount at Rainbow Foods, but it's better than using tons of paper and plastic. I like to have them handy and this 3M hanger (originally meant for cords) is very useful as I know they will not fall off but are right within quick reach when I'm out the door.

Other side projects involve:

Food

I made myself a treat for Valentine's weekend! I've been craving going out for brunch. Breakfast foods are my favorite and a weakness of mine was frequent brunching out. Rather than going out, I realized I had some old pancake mix and I went out to purchase some Jimmy Dean sausage that was on sale. I made the lowest amount on the pancake box and had 2 pancakes left over which I froze in a Ziploc bag. I at them later in the week.

In addition, I set out on a new project of starting to use beans in bulk rather than cans. Just a little more healthy and a bit cheaper. I read how to prepare these using the quick method: Boil for 2 minutes and then let sit in the hot water for an hour. Super easy! I did have one downfall in that I think these could cook a little longer. I used some of these to cook a soup (see below) and they were not completely done. I would recommend a little more time for boiling. This is something I will have to continue to experiment with.

I portioned out the beans into baggies with a cup per baggie. I poured a little extra water into each baggie as I've read they keep better with liquid in them. I put 2 cups of the red beans aside to use for this WONDERFUL minestrone soup! It's a mimic of Olive Garden's recipe and I love it! I have been making this soup for a while now and every time I do, it feeds me all week! I've been thinking about portioning some aside and freezing it, just not sure if it will taste the same. I used my own vegetable broth that I made in the minestrone soup.

Veggie broth:

Place any leftover vegetables except leafy vegetables and broccoli into a stock pot. I used potatoes, onions, celery and carrots.  Put enough water into the pot to cover the vegetables. Bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer. Cook for 1.5 hours. Add water as needed when it begins to get low.

My minestrone:

Clothing and STYLE!

I've been working all week on putting together outfits and I feel like I'm actually getting a hang of this! It does however, require me to do some extra shopping and spending. The boots I had before were not the most flattering for me, as Sally at alreadypretty.com informed during my consult. They were hitting me at the widest part of my calf. I set out this weekend to look for boots. I checked at all the thrift stores, but found nothing. I headed out to the Mall of America. I was scared because I honestly hate shopping, especially at the Mall of America. I went to almost every shoe store and couldn't find any boots I liked. Then...Steve Madden's came into my life. I picked the best time! Boots were on sale! I found this pair which I think will work well. I am going to purchase the brown pair. These were marked down about $70. Then, I picked up a 2nd pair, a different style with heels, that were black for only $19! They were originally over $100! What a steal! What do you think?

I also went to the Goodwill over the weekend to pick up some extra things Sally had encouraged me to look for. I got a really cute green sweater and a purple scarf as well as some accessories. I'm so proud I've been able to come up with some really cute outfits on my own with these items! I've been taking some pictures and here they are! :)

Sally had also encouraged me to try on some high waisted jeans as I'm a pair shaped woman and these would be the most flattering for my figure. I bought a pair, (also on sale), at Banana Republic. I think that this is how they are supposed to fit and I can definitely see the benefit as there is no space in the back of the pants like usual with low rise pants. Yea! No more plumber's cleavage! :)

All of this clothing and feeling good about how I look reminds me of another goal: I need to get on top of losing my stress pounds! I've maintained the 5 pounds lost that I had previously discussed but it is time to get down to business. I'm ready to get back to the health me! I've been exercising more lately and I'm really going to try and make an effort to eat better as well. I also joined a dodgeball team which has been an exciting way to be active and meet new people.

I guess after looking over all of this, I realize I have achieved some goals this week, haven't I? ;)