Seasons greetings.

• Tree: Walmart
• Lights: Walmart
• Star: Walmart

My wife and I will be spending the next few days visiting with friends and our families and observing the Christmas holidays. And while I will be reading and catching up on blogs here and there, I will be taking a posting break until next week, and posting lightly until after the New Years. I can't thank everyone enough who reads this blog, and thank you for all the wonderful comments you leave! It has really made a huge impact on my life! Rather than an outfit today, I thought I would post our Christmas tree. Our Christmas tree is rather small, but that does make it perfect for the moderate size of the space we live in. Even better, we bought this tree together while we were still dating in college, and so it has a lot of sentimental value to us. But I know many of you celebrate different holidays, or no holidays at all. But no matter the details of what you do or don't celebrate, I wish you the best! Thanks again everyone, see you next week!

A Christmas party.

My outfit

• Dress: Maurices
• Belt: Maurices
• Cardigan: Torrid
• Red tights: JC Penney
• Pink floral fishnets: Torrid
• Pumps: Nine West via Zappos (buy)
• Necklace: Maurices
• Bracelets: Torrid (previously)
• Purse: Nine West (previously)
• Coat: Kohl's (previously)
• Scarf: Kohl's (previously)
• Gloves: Isotoner via JC Penney (previously)

My Wife's outfit

• Top: Maurices
• Skirt: Maurices
• Belt: Maurices
• Cardigan: Torrid
• Tights: JC Penney
• Pumps: Maurices

In the middle of last week, some friends invited us to an impromptu Christmas party last Saturday night. While the party itself was rather informal, and involved good food and board games, we all decided to take the opportunity to dress up for the party. I don't always get a lot of opportunities like this and so I had to get to work planning my outfit. After talking with my wife and my blog buddy Pamela, I narrowed down my options, and came up with this outfit. In addition to my own outfit, my wife asked me to come up with an outfit for her. I pulled together a couple of ideas and laid them out for her to pick from while I got dressed. Now, it wasn't entirely on purpose that we color coordinated, but purple was the only pair of colored tights my wife owns. I ended up loaning her a purse and the cardigan (which was too big, but worked well when it was belted).

We spent the morning getting ready, and since this was a big deal, my wife did a fabulous job on my hair and makeup. After that it was off to the park to take pictures. Please excuse the wrinkles since we had a bit of a drive to get to the park and this dress wrinkles easily. Unfortunately, our photo shoot was cut short because the day was pretty enough that people were out walking in the park. My wife got a little nervous at the onlookers, but my paranoia ended up being more about the dogs. At least one friendly dog seriously considered jumping on my dress with muddy paws. Thankfully the dog did not, and most of the pictures turned out great.

After the park, the plan was to go out to a restaurant, but after my wife's nervousness in the park, we decided it would be best to skip another public appearance. Instead we hit up the McDonald's drive thru. After that we showed up unfashionably early. Thankfully our friends hosting the party were very understanding about the situation.

After everyone got there it was picture time. Someone suggested doing pictures by gender of outfit, and after a brief discussion, someone came up with the brilliant idea of dividing up by whether we were wearing pants or skirts. Since one of the female guests was wearing pants, this kept things roughly even, and I thought it was an especially pleasant way of splitting up. While I would love to post some of those pictures, I didn't get permission from the other guests (although most of them read the blog), and this is already a picture heavy post. But everyone was dressed quite well for the occasion.

The party itself was a lot of fun. We got to hang out with friends that we don't get to see as frequently as we would like. It also meant a great deal to me that we got the opportunity to dress up well and go out for the evening. And while fashion was not the preeminent topic of the evening, the layered tights were a hit, and we discussed scheduling a shopping date with one of our friends sometime early next year.

And with that, I want to thank my amazing and adorable wife for doing my hair and makeup and taking the pictures and being patient with me in general, and I want to thank our wonderful friends for having us over for a wonderful evening and providing an opportunity to dress up.