I'll Title This Later, Unless I Forget Or Can't Come Up With Anything Else

All right, before I forget, here are the pictures I teased yesterday:

The first one here is the girls playing "Happy Birthday." I convinced them to actually keep it over the leaf pile.

Here's my Afton, as buried in leaves by her sister.

And here's my Annika, not quite buried yet. This is pre-haircut.

And here we have post haircut! Don't ask me about the smile. I have no idea. She thinks she's funny, though. (And yes, she was sitting on the toilet at the time, but the lid was down. You know you were thinking about it.)


I could end it here and be happy, I think, but I've had a couple of things rolling around in my brain that I wanted to share.

The first is for my more vision-impaired friends. Do you find that you rely on your sense of touch more than your sense of sight? I realized a couple of days ago that I was all thrown off when some of my clothing wasn't folded the way I normally folded it. It disturbed me because I couldn't tell by *touching* what was what. When I think about it, I realize that I'm more successful digging around in my purse if I'm not looking in it. Well, for the most part. When I crochet, I feel for the next stitch to work through, rather than looking for it. Things like that. Anyone else, or is that just me? I have to admit, if I remove my glasses I'm pretty incapacitated--things have to be six inches or closer to be fully in focus for me. So maybe my brain is compensating.

Here's the other thing: I read Color Me Beautiful yesterday. The original version, not the "updates" that have come out since then. The cover is kind of hokey, but the information is solid and just as relevant as it was nearly thirty years ago. To me, it was the cumulative point of my fashion studies of the past two years. I'm determined to get myself a copy, which should be a relatively cheap and easy exercise. I recommend it. My studies, as they were, began with 10 Steps to Fashion Freedom. I picked it up on a whim at the library, as the fashion stuff was on the shelf just above the sewing books. I highly recommend this book as well, though it wasn't what I expected at first. This is not a how-to manual, but a who-are-you manual with the goal of helping you express yourself through your clothing. Everything I've read between these two books has added to my body of knowledge, especially Leah Feldon's Does This Make Me Look Fat? Feldon's book contains the rules on how to dress, Color Me Beautiful contains the rules on what colors to wear and how to wear makeup and accessories and jewelry, but 10 Steps to Fashion Freedom teaches you how to take the rules and break them successfully. I need to read it again. Or own it.

So if you're looking to figure out what to wear and you don't have Stacy London handy, a careful perusal of these three books will get you on the right track to feeling confident and comfortable in your clothes. It's working for me!