fashion friday: fakin’ it

Happy Fashion Friday!!

I’d be lying if I said this wasn’t the post I looked forward the most to this week. I’m loving this new series and so happy about this huge source of motivation I receive from posting each Friday.

I have 3 very brief housekeeping notes, then we can jump right into my fashion for the week.

hold uppppp

1. If you want to read my weight loss story, it was up on Team Giles yesterday.

2. I’m also on Life After Bagels this week talking about the struggles and rewards of returning to school as a “mature student”

3. Jessica at Healthy Dairyland is having a blogger bake sale NEXT Friday that I am helping her with. She’s raising money for Team Challenge. She’s looking for people to donate a baked good (and buy baked goods). If you are interested, please go to her blog and contact her!

Okay, on to the fashion!

As I mentioned yesterday, I was feeling sick all week. Thankfully, the weather changed for us and it was cool and in the 60s-80s all week. This was great for my clothing options, but since I felt sick it was a struggle. Honestly the last thing I wanted to do was get dressed up when I felt like my head was a balloon.

I decided to roll with more comfortable clothes and dressed them up with accessories.

I’m sure you can see from the pictures, I wasn’t feeling too hot. And truthfully, while I loved this outfit – I just felt so sick that it definitely interfered with how great I should have felt wearing these clothes. I am glad I wore them, because they did help – but being sick is just miserable no matter what, you know?

I do love this blazer though. It’s a jersey knit blazer that has a single button right underneath where the belt lays. I had been eying it at Old Navy for quite some time but couldn’t bring myself to spend $40ish on it, because back then I never wore jackets. I found it on clearance for $15 a few months later in a medium, tried it on and it fit! I LOVE buying mediums because I basically never have in my life.

I was also feeling self conscious because these jeans are too big for me to wear without a belt now. They kept sliding down, which was making my stomach stick out and I felt pregnant! I’m definitely not going to be able to wear this pair with a high waist belt like this again.

Just to give you a comparison, here’s me wearing these same jeans in April when I took my last round of weight loss pictures. I’m definitely hanging out much more over the waist then and these jeans were really tight back then. Now, after I wear them for the entire day I can pull them off without unbuttoning or zipping them.

I’m not sure you can tell the difference, but let’s pretend we all can

Here’s where I bought these clothes:

• Black Knit Blazer: Old Navy $15 on clearance
• Cream colored V-neck: Old Navy for $7.50 (I also have a nude colored tank top under it because it’s slightly see through)
• Belt: New York and Company for roughly $18
• Jeans: These are actually Lane Bryant. I have to admit, I had never shopped there and bought these jeans 4+ years ago when I needed nice jeans for casual fridays in corporate america. They are the “right size”  in the curvy and I LOVE THEM. I’m actually sad they are getting to be too big because I’ll definitely miss them.
• Shoes: Payless
• Necklace: Target on clearance $10 (with earrings)
• Bracelet: Old Navy

I also jazzed up my hair from just a normal side ponytail and added some twists in the back. Getting this picture was basically impossible, just so you know.

Moving on to my bonus for the week – I created a simple inspiration board for myself with fashion pictures.

I hung this in my office right next to my corkboard, so I can see it from my desk anytime I turn to look at the wall.

This was a super simple magnetic dry erase board for $4 from Target. I added some cute magnets and hung pictures of me when I’m looking nice. Next to the pictures I wrote motivation = confidence, to remind myself that when I build my confidence (by dressing better and feeling good about myself), I’m also building my motivation to continue to lose weight.

I plan to keep adding pictures from my fashion posts each week to this board so I see awesome pictures of myself where I feel confident and pretty.

Don’t forget – if you want to participate or did participate in Fashion Friday today, leave a comment with the link to your post below so we can all see your version of Fashion Friday!

Until next week – let’s all rock nice clothes so we can keep boosting our body confidence and body image!