Best of 2018 and Intentions

JANUARY 2018

To end this year on the blog, I've decided to pick my 10 favorite outfits of the year. I feel that each year, from the very beginning of my blog, I learn something new about style. It all started with colors for me, then I moved to patterns, layering, and proportions. 2018 became a year of textures and details. I wonder what the next year will bring? I would like it to be a year of refining my style: sorting things out, donating what I don't wear, finding new combinations with existing things, and adding only things that are of higher quality and which really resonate with me. It's been my intention ever since I started getting an interest in clothes as a child or teenager, but there were also periods of lost and returned interest, periods of different abilities, skills and focus, and periods of experimentation. I have a feeling that it's time for refinement of whatever I've learned in the past few years, but I'm not the one who thinks that our goals are set in stone. I'm not saying that there is no place for goals and plans in our lives - sure there is. But I also love watching the natural flow of life, seeing how things develop organically, without us forcing them, but rather staying open-minded. So, I send my intentions out there and see what happens - it'll be fun seeing how they transform and manifest themselves in the new year.

Happy Holidays!

I will not be myself if I don't wish you happy holidays and don't share with you some of our latest outings and other slices life generously offered at the end of the year. So without further ado, let's dive in!

Red with Teal or Blue

Ta-daaa! To those of you who put bets on the color of my second beret and guessed red:

CONGRATULATIONS!!!

I bought three berets this Fall: gray, blue and red. I thought that either I would share them all with my daughter, or that she would choose the one(s) she likes and make it (them) her own. And since she has just discovered her love of the color red, I was almost sure that she'd choose the red one, but to my surprise she chose the blue one instead, perhaps to match her new wool coat. The blue one was also the smallest of the three and just wouldn't fit all that extra fluff I have in my big head, so it seemed like a perfect choice anyway.

The Cutest Couple on the Town

 

As you can tell, my new wool berets quickly became my favorite headwear (I soon will show you the other color that I got... can you guess what it is?). Another strong favorite of this Fall is this rust plaid dress by eShakti, made of cozy brushed cotton and fully lined (the style and fabric is similar to the skirts you've seen before, last time in my posts about Portland back in April 2018 HERE and HERE). I wore this dress sleeveless when the weather was warmer earlier this season, but now it is wet, blustery and penetrating - just perfect for layering with turtlenecks! (I guess it is time to refresh my stock with other pretty colors too.)

Modish Matrons #30: Iceland

If you ask me why Iceland even came to my mind when I put together the list of themes for the 2018 Modish Matrons back in December 2017, I couldn't explain - it just did. I have never been to Iceland and I didn't know the first thing about it. Obviously, I had to visit and learn. Or at very least commission sending a photographer to this intriguing far away place. The things we do for blogging, right? 

Sequins Are a Girl's Best Friend

I didn't know this line when putting on this outfit for the opening performance of the new professional regional theater program in Tacoma, and yet I wore sequins as if I knew.

Tartan and Snake Print; Freedom and Gratitude

To all my American friends and readers, 

Happy Thanksgiving!

It is my most favorite of ALL the American holidays, and I am so happy to celebrate my 17th Thanksgiving this year! I am truly thankful for my life, for everything that it throws at me, good and bad, I love it all. I really came to believe that contrast is what shapes us - what helps us to sort out the infinite ways of life, choose what feels right to us (to each, their own!), and what makes us who we become. It's easy to feel gratitude for good times, but I've learned to love my disappointments and crisis just as well, because like nothing else, they really teach me to focus on what I want to experience, on what I actually want my life to be. If everything comes easy, then how can we know what is important to us and what is not? How could we learn to appreciate? And how could we ever be able to make choices and stick to our dreams? And our freedom to dream and freedom to make choices is what it's all about to me. That's what I celebrate on this day, and I am deeply and forever 

grateful.