Its too cold for this outfit.

• Cami: Cato (previously)
• Cardigan: Old Navy (previously)
• Skirt: Maurices (previously)
• Shoes: Gabriella Rocha via Zappos (buy)
• Pantyhose: Just My Size via Walmart

A while back, I saw Ashley of Ashley Getting Dressed post a really cute outfit. It didn't take me long to realize that one of my favorite skirts was really similar to hers, and that I could recreate a very similar outfit for myself. As an added bonus, I realized it would make a great outfit for the blog debut of these camel colored T-strap pumps. And those white blurs in the last two pictures are not a camera malfunction, they're snow! I hope everyone had a great weekend, and of course today's pictures were taken by my beautiful wife.

Black and khaki.

• Sweater: Target (previously)
• Skirt: Old Navy
• Scarf: Maurices (previously)
• Tights: Lane Bryant
• Boots: Payless (previously)

Black with a khaki skirt has always been a classic combination in my mind, and when I saw eek's post the other day, I realized I hadn't posted a combo like that on here before. Edit: I also realized I was inspired by this outfit Hope posted a while back! And although I was keeping it simple with this outfit, I did want to add this scarf to add a little extra pop to the outfit. (And I tied it like this in case anyone is curious) And I realize I have yet again gone with a heavy neutral palette. I definitely need to remember to bring some more color into my winter wardrobe. I guess there's always tomorrow.

I also thought I would remind everyone that I love answering questions. I also realized that since I have attracted some new readers recently (Welcome everyone!), and also just for anyone who hasn't noticed this, that I always try to tag posts where I answer questions with "q and a". I also received a question from Thrifty Momma on my last post: Not sure if you addressed this but I wanted to say at least you are being honest with your wife!! and I was wondering if you two share clothing and give each other tips?

My wife takes the pictures, reads the blog, and reads the comments. So not only is she aware, she is also a (mostly!) willing participant in my interest in fashion, and that is hopefully clear to anyone reading as well. And for all of her help and acceptance, I'm profoundly grateful. But I do want to address the honesty aspect, since I'm pretty sure I haven't discussed it before. My wife is my best friend, and I always try to be honest with her about everything. The only secrets I try to keep are presents and surprises.

My wife was made aware of my interest while we were just dating, and it was not an easy discussion. To make matters more complicated, at the time I did not think my interest was morally acceptable, so I certainly didn't ask her to think it was okay. It wasn't the easiest thing for her to deal with then as well. It has not been an easy road reaching acceptance for either of us. It wasn't until shortly after our marriage that we both reached a productive level of acceptance, and even still, I have times that I struggle with it. The thing is, I do think its mostly a positive part of our lives now, and fashion is a fun creative outlet for me, and we both accept this. Starting this blog has opened up a safe avenue for me to find other people that share my interest in fashion who also find what I'm doing acceptable. My wife has been thrilled at the response this blog has received, and its definitely helped both of us out a lot.

I have discussed before that we do not share clothes. Our clothing and shoe sizes are just too different for that to work. We do occasionally share accessories though, and my wife has borrowed one of my purses before. Of the two of us, I think I enjoy fashion and shopping more, but we do help each other put together outfits and shop for clothes, and I have picked out entire outfits for my wife on a few occasions at her request. :)

And of course today's pictures were taken by my awesome wife.

Little brown dress.

• Dress: Target
• Belt: Torrid (previously, buy it)
• Boots: Torrid (previously)
• Leggings: Maurices (previously)
• Cardigan: Maurices (buy it)

Whatever you can say about this outfit, I'll say this: it was comfortable. I felt so great and comfortable and warm that I didn't want to take it off. For the first part of the day I was freezing, and so when I finally got to the point I could change, I knew I wanted to wear this cardigan. And unfortunately for outfit pictures my wife didn't get home until after dark. But it still worked out I think.

And I feel like I need to give some credit for this outfit and some of my posing as well. I'm pretty sure I was inspired by Ashley from Free Honey both in my posing (and probably a bit of my wife's posing too) and styling from this post (and probably some others as well). Also I probably borrowed a bit from Fashion Momma's post here too. I might have borrowed more inspiration, but its not coming to mind, so if I left anyone out, let me know! And of course my amazing wife took today's pictures.

Friday link roundup.

Its Friday, and I want to have a post, but between a crazy schedule and a flaky camera, it won't be an outfit post! But that's okay, it just means I get to do something different! And now I can't hide behind hiding my face from the camera. Er, what?... Uh, moving on. I want to thank everyone who shared their thoughts on cameras! I mean, who better to ask than people who take a lot of pictures of their outfits for blogs, right? My old camera was from the Canon PowerShot line, and its good to hear that a lot of people also good luck with the line, and so I will probably be going with an updated PowerShot model. And I just wanted to say something about cameras and picture quality. I love to see all the creativity in picture taking with style bloggers! I think its really cool that even the cheapest camera can be used to make art and share self expression. For me, its not about picture quality anymore than its about where you shop! Its can be a lot of fun to have a nice camera, but if you gave me a DSLR tomorrow, I wouldn't know what to do with it(okay, I would, I would put it in point and shoot mode! :) ), and really, I think the hard part in taking a good picture is deciding what to put in the picture and what to leave out. And when in doubt, just take a lot of pictures, one of them is bound to be good eventually! See, its thinking like this that explains why I'm not a professional photographer (oh wait, my blog is supposed to anonymous... or am I? Wait... my wife takes all my pictures... okay, someone in this house is probably not a pro photographer... or are they?). I guess my point is that I don't need a good camera, its just fun to have one, and we're lucky enough to be able to replace the one we have.

Hah, I'm not done yet! A lot of other bloggers (like the really awesome Lisa of respect the shoes) post link roundups from time to time, and since I have been sitting on a growing collection of links I found interesting and relevant.

Gender Labels and Clothing

• Switcharoo(via Feministing) - I addition to being really cool, it took me a minute to realize this was not photoshopped.
• What I Wore posted some inspiration for Halloween costumes, and in particular I found her interpretation of George Washington to be an interesting example of how what counts as masculine attire has changed over the times. Also, her interpretation of Karl Lagerfeld is equally interesting.
• She's Got Balls: 12 Creative Women Get in Touch With Their Masculine Side(via Feministing) - This is a really fun slideshow with an interesting range of female celebrities in masculine looks.
• This blog post has an interesting discussion about the site The Art of Manliness, which prompted an enterprising individual to create a website that simply gender-swaps most of the nouns from The Art of Manliness website to create The Art of Womanliness, and the resulting lack of difference makes some interesting food for thought about gender roles. I know there are a lot of diverse thoughts on that sort of thing, so I thought it would be cool to share and hear other people's thoughts?

General Style

• Scarfing it down which links to Tying scarves with the Angie knot, and then a comment shares another technique.
• How to pull off a bow tie(via A Pretty Penny - Links a la Mode)
• How to Make Heels Bearable - I enjoy wearing high heels, but I also care about protecting my feet and not damaging them, and so I really enjoyed this discussion about the practicalities of wearing heels. I have some friends who have plantar fasciitis, and its something to be avoided.

On Monday, I hope to be back with a working camera and I will be participating in a Wardrobe Capsule Challenge that the wonderful Meli from The Daily Insanity of a Fashion Addict has decided to do. I hope everyone has a great weekend, and since there were no pictures today, I will just thank my amazing wife for being amazing.

Fun with cameras.

• Top: Maurices
• Cardigan: Old Navy (previously)
• Skinny Jeans: Z. Cavaricci via Torrid (previously)
• Red Flats: Payless (same style, different color)
• Bracelet: Torrid

The unexpected surprise in this post is that my camera flaked out yesterday (and by flaked out, I mean the last picture it took is the one not like the others), so we decided to experiment with taking the rest of the pictures with my cell phone camera. I turned my old camera on this morning, and it seemed to be working again, but since the camera is getting some age on it, I figure it's time to look for a replacement. We probably can't afford a DSLR (And we would have to learn how to use it anyway...), especially since we want to replace it this weekend, so we'll probably be looking for a "nice" point-and-shoot model. And of course, thoughts on cameras are completely welcome in the comments. :)

The top in today's post does have some peach in the print (which you probably can't see), but I'm not sure if that counts as pink so I decided to "fall off the wagon" and not claim this as part of Melissa's Blogging for Breast Cancer aWEARness challenge. Also, I don't normally wear flats with skinny jeans, but I wanted to give it a try, because I think it's a really good look on other people. I also feel like I was inspired at least a little by Ashley of Ashley Getting Dressed. Oh, and while the pictures weren't the best, I actually wore this for most of the day yesterday, including a quick trip through the drive thru with my wife for our dinner (she was driving, for the record). And of course, today's pictures were taken by my fabulous wife.

Neutral Polka.

• Dress: Cato
• Belt: Torrid (here)
• Shoes: Payless

This was yesterday's outfit. I've had this dress for a while and I like several things about it, but I've definitely felt like it needed something more. And then I saw this inspiring outfit by Collette who runs the awesome Statements in Fashion blog. I love colors a lot, and so while the temptation was there to add a color, I decided going with an all neutral look would be a lot of fun too, and so I replaced the matching fabric belt that came with the dress with this new gray belt I picked up at Torrid recently, and went with these black pumps with an architectural heel. As always, questions for me to answer are welcome in the comments. We didn't get to take these pictures until very late yesterday, and so I was informed by my wife that the adjective for today is sleepy. So as usual, these pictures were taken by my sleepy wife.

Sock it to me.

• Dress: Maurices (on clearance)
• Cardigan: Old Navy
• Belt: Torrid
• Pumps: Payless
• Socks: Target

Recently I've seen two bloggers make super cute and creative usage of socks. Collette of Statements in Fashion wore an awesome lacey pair of knee highs with peep toes and Amber's Notebook payed homage to Clarissa Explains it All. (And yes, I remember watching that show when I was in middle school...) And then during our Labor Day weekend shopping, I decided to check out socks at Target and found this pair. I also got this dress at Maurices on clearance for around $23. I've been thinking about it every time I've seen it in the store, the lowered price finally convinced me to buy it. I had a lot of fun putting this look together, but I have no idea how anyone is going to respond to this one. :) Honestly though, I'm amazed at how great the style bloggers are, I really didn't expect to get any readers when I started this. Actually, I had no idea what to expect, but everyone has been so amazingly wonderful. Oh yeah, in case its not clear from the picture, these peep toes have little cutouts with blue stitching highlighting everything. Today is shaping up to be a crazy one, so forgive me if I'm not fast on the comments! I also hope everyone has a great weekend! I'll be posting again on Monday. And of course, my wonderful wife took the pictures and provided input on the outfit.

Monochromatic Bruise.

• Tube top: Torrid
• Shirt: Old Navy
• Pants: Torrid
• Belt: Torrid
• Shoes: Payless
• Necklace: Maurices
• Bag: Target

Melissa at A Working Mom's Closet has challenged herself to wear pants this week, and I was inspired by one of her outfits today. I bought this lavender tube top online when it was on clearance because I thought the color was too perfect to pass up, but its a little bit too big on me, so I've been trying to figure out what to do with it. I also don't know if this outfit is truly monochromatic, but the shoes are a deep burgundy color, and go along with the two layers on top. The bag is a dark brown, and the belt is black and the pants are mostly a charcoal color, but neutrals go together, so I think its okay.

Playing with color.

• Top: Torrid
• Shorts: Torrid
• Shoes: Torrid
• Bag: Nine West

Yesterday, I saw another blogger use a blue and purple color combination and I thought it looked really nice, so today I tried this combo out. I'm not sure if it shows, but the shoes are a nice shade of purple, and it did complement the blues of the top nicely. I think I have some better blues and purples in my closet, so I will have to try those out next time.