Just a couple of daredevil anthroholics

Last weekend, my sister Ria and I met up at one of our favorite places to be repeatedly flung upside down by various steel dragons. That's right, we went to conquer roller coasters in the middle of a heat index of 110. I am crazy, remember?



In line for one of my favorite inverted coasters. Ria is wearing the Buds and Bunches Tank. I am wearing the Creative Outlet Tank. Yes, we wore Anthro to a theme park.



This is the Scream Weaver. I imagine it's very similar to what being inside a washing machine on the spin cycle feels like. Also, I'm pretty sure I could eat a cheeseburger and go on it twenty times in a row, but I haven't tried that (yet).



Showing off my contortionist skills as I attempt to self-take a picture while trapped in a Very Serious shoulder harness.

And finally, a very different setting for my OotD:



This is the first and only hypercoaster I have been on, and my favorite ride to date (although there's a certain wooden coaster in this park that will always have a dear place in my heart). A hypercoaster is a roller coaster that's over 200 feet tall. I wish there were more this big near me! The front row experience is worth it, guys. So worth it. Ria wouldn't ride this one with me. Cry. Everyone please tell her that I need a picture next time!

By the way, I'm wearing my JCrew warehouse shorts. Dear JCrew: Please bring your warehouse back to my town so I can get some more $3 shorts. Pretty please? I'll take you on the Scream Weaver with me in thanks. Or I won't; whichever your proverbial stomach prefers. Love, Katie the Thrillseeking Fashionista

PS: Dear self: the next time you decide to use your season pass, maybe you could pick a day with temperatures out of the triple digits?

Creativity, or lack thereof

Good evening! I have an outfit for you!





I don't normally wear this shirt, as it's too big for me, and I definitely don't wear shirts tied like this very often, so this was an out-of-my-comfort-zone outfit for me again. But when I noticed how great it looked with my crazy U.O. pear skirt, I had to try it. I was pretty happy with the result! I've been loving the look of casual skirts and dresses lately.

In other news, this heat-index-of-110-plus is killing my fashion creativity, and that is sad. Hopefully when things cool off even a tiny bit, I'll have something else to share with you besides the same old "just enough cotton clothing to be work appropriate" outfits. And I'm the one who likes hot weather, but this is too much!

Hope everyone is keeping cool(er than me?)!

Watermelon-flavored

On swim team, a watermelon is something that you grease heavily with Crisco, chuck into the pool, and watch with delight as a few dozen small humans hilariously try to drag it out of the pool. No, seriously. This is a swim team tradition. Swimmers, back me up here. I had my own traumatic experience with greasy watermelons around age six. Big watermelon. Big older swimmers. Small Katie. You get the picture. Still, when I think watermelon, I totally think the interesting shenanigans that can ensue when a bunch of kids are trying to get one out of a pool.

I also think of this outfit. I thought the colors were very festive for one of my sad last days of swim practice.

Also, I swear I own other clothes, but I love these UO skirts so very much, and they're excellent for wearing during the nastiest days of summer. Machine washable and heat index of 110 go together, don't you think? I would promise to wear other clothes soon, but my purple one just came out of the wash, so... Um. Maybe this is a good time for a 30 for 30 challenge?







Skirt: Urban Outfitters
Top: Loft, super old
Shoes: Rackroom (Cupcake kids)
Necklace: From my work hospital

PS: How relieved are you guys that Anthro pulled their very-bad-idea diming out of old online items?? I know my poor grad student self cried I-will-never-buy-Anthro-again tears on Tuesday morning, so I'm very glad they saw reason and I can go back to popback hunting. Okay, maybe I didn't cry. Or did I?

I wear pants.

Now that swim team is over (cry), there are definitely a few things I'm not going to miss. Like having my evenings completely eaten up by chlorine. Today I get to go be a nerd at the planetarium, which wouldn't have been possible during the swimming season. I try to remind myself of things like this when the clock strikes 5:00 and I think "Oh crap, I'm supposed to be at the pool -- oh wait. =("

Before I go learn about the summer sky, though, I wanted to post two quick outfits to prove that I really do wear pants sometimes. Maybe the same pair of pants, but I do wear them! I wanted to show two different outfits with an article of clothing that I don't wear often (the first one also features a top that I bought years ago when I had no idea how to wear clothes and that I definitely don't wear often, so it's a double whammy of unloved items!), so you get two different days' worth of outfits. Yes, I realize that white pants are the farthest thing from unusual for most people, but for me this is definitely atypical. Hush, you.


Top: JC Penny, super old
Pants: AG Stevie Cords, Anthropologie
Necklace: From my work hospital
Hair: Three-days-of-chlorine disaster. No, you don't want a closer look.


Top: Anthropologie Picture Frame Blouse
Pants: AG Stevie Cords, Anthropologie
Shoes: Rack Room (Cupcake kids shoes)
Necklace: Gift from my sweet college roommate
Hair: I washed it! During swim team! Be proud of me!

What I've learned.

My life and emotions at the moment are shifting back to their usual pattern around mid-July: When I find myself reflecting on the impending end of the current swim team season and thinking back on almost ten years of memories from the past. I have a ritual I do with my kids every year on the morning of the last day of practice. After some pajama day fun and some focusing-on-your-upcoming-races yoga, we pass a ball around a circle and give everyone a turn to say something they learned this year. You may know that I haven't had the easiest of years, so I've given some thought to this little exercise and how much of a right I of all people have to be leading it. I've had a very hard and very unhappy year in a lot of ways. Who am I to be putting on a smile and talking about happy endings?

That said, for better or for worse, this is what I've learned this season: You can't live your life for other people. You have to make yourself happy and follow your heart. You will lose some friends and make some enemies by doing this, but if you don't speak for yourself, no one will. And the world isn't nearly as scary as you think it is.

I'm passing the ball to you. What have you learned this summer?

Distraction

I'll be honest: I'm having a sad night. I've been anticipating the end of swim team and missing swim teams past and generally feeling sorry for myself. In an attempt to counteract this, I'm going to post my insanely simple but pretty cheery July 4th outfit:


July 4th nails! Also, this is what my hair looks like after two days of French braids. (And uh, maybe some chlorine. Pretend you didn't read that.)



Dress: Old Navy
Barrette: From my sister
Shoes: I'm too cool for them

I think I'm going to continue this pity party by heading off to sleep, but here's hoping there's a good Anthro sale to wake up to. My spirits could use some uplifting around here, Anthro Gods. Also, I still have gift cards that need spending. Hint, hint.

Courageous Challenges (OotD)

Hi readers! How are you? Did you do anything exciting this weekend? I jumped out of a plane again!

Yes, that's right. I'm that crazy. This time was even better than the last. I got to do a lot of new things like count off the plane exit, do freefall turns, learn a lot of cues and hand signals, and pull the ripcord. Next time I'm going to learn tracking, which means moving forward during freefall. I'm still trying to decide if I want to do Accelerated Free Fall (a program that teaches you how to jump by yourself), but I'm definitely going to go again. This is one "hobby" I never thought I'd call mine!

My swimming kids had their charity fun meet today, which means there's officially only one week left in the season. I'm sad, but also looking forward to my schedule and life going back to "normal." Our meet today was a bunch of silly relay races to raise money for local children's hospitals, and all the kids had a great time. The highlight of my morning was challenging a 6'6 easily-twice-my-size guy to a Very Serious doggy paddle competition. I'm never one to turn down a challenge. ;)

This is another one of my new Urban Outfitters skirts purchased during my No-Taylor-Swift Concert Disaster. I've been looking for some solid, casual skirts like this one, and I'm loving it so far. I wore this to a baseball game last weekend with my friends.





Climbing Cowlneck (Anthropologie)
Skirt: UO
Shoes: b.o.c. cates
Necklace: Super old NY and Company

Review: Modcloth's Crepes on the Cape Skirt!

Crepes on the Cape Skirt
Three things that I love:

1.) Delicious crepes fresh from the neighborhood crepe truck. (Yes, we have one, and yes, you should be jealous.)
2.) Light pink.
3.) Versatile, flowy skirts

You can probably see why the Crepes on the Cape Skirt enticed me into my very first ModCloth purchase! I've heard mixed reviews of ModCloth's items, so I was a bit skeptical, but I decided to risk it given their free returns.

First, I was really pleased with ModCloth's speedy delivery: I received my items just a little over two days after I placed my order, and I chose standard shipping! This was weird to me because I've heard that they can take awhile to ship, so maybe I just lucked out, but I was quite pleased. My skirt was nicely packaged as well, and I enjoyed the friendly, personal tone of even their automated emails.

Now, onto the skirt itself. I ordered a small and really wished it came in an XS, because it is definitely big. I wouldn't necessarily fault the skirt for this, though, since it fit like most size small skirts tend to fit on me. There's an inch or two of extra room, but honestly I like this skirt enough to make it work. It's also a couple inches longer than I normally like, but heels solve that problem. Why am I willing to let all of this go? Well, simply put, for $35 this is a darn nice skirt! The quality is excellent for the price. If you're looking for $200-skirt quality, obviously you will not find it here, but it's great for what it is, and I expect it'll last me a long time. I like that it's lined and yet the weight is perfect for summer. And, seriously, how perfect is this color? It's very much a Katie Skirt, and I'm drooling over the possible outfits I could make with it. I'm already impatiently waiting for enough time to pass that I can get away with wearing this again without people wondering if I own other clothes.

I would highly recommend this skirt, and now I'm wondering if there are more ModCloth purchases in my future! I'm really loving this, this, and this color too!

Here is your obligatory IRL photo as well as my first attempt at styling it: (Taken right before my camera battery gave out, so please excuse any weirdness.)



Overall, I'd say losing my ModCloth Virginity was a great experience. What do you guys think of ModCloth? Any good/bad experiences to share?

Wind-rippled dragonflies (OotD)

Wind Rippled Tee, nameless dragonfly skirt, Flushed Beauty Headband (Anthropologie)
b.o.c. Cates shoes (clickie!)

I am slowly getting through my backlogged outfits! 1.) I love this skirt. 2.) I have way too many Wind Rippled Tees. Every color but gray, and I have the purple short-sleeved version. Repetitive much? But if it ain't broke, don't fix it, I say, and I regret nothing!

Tomorrow I have a review to post of my very first purchase from ModCloth, so stay tuned to find out what I bought and how it worked out! (Hint: It's good news!)

A sad evening semi-salvaged

Oh man, guys. It's been a trying week.

Those of you who know me outside my blog know that my concert evening did not go exactly as planned. The short version is that a terrible traffic accident gridlocked my entire city and made it completely impossible to leave town for over five hours on the day of the concert. My friend and I tried every road my GPS could come up with, and there was absolutely no way (short of learning to fly or building a teleporter) to get there on time -- and we'd even left an hour and a half early to account for traffic! What a nightmare. In fact, I'm still sort of hoping I'll wake up and realize it really was a nightmare. But the important thing is that we could have been hurt or killed, and we weren't, and many others were. It was a truly terrible multi-car accident that resulted in many fatalities, and at the end of the day I'm just grateful that we weren't among them. My heart goes out to the victims and their families. I've had a bit of a difficult time processing my experience for a lot of reasons, which is why I've been absent from the blog. I'm glad to be back, though, and I hope you can understand!

We did manage to salvage our evening with a trip to The Cheesecake Factory (hi, favorite restaurant) for some much-needed martinis.



It was good. And I needed it.

Then we took a trip to Urban Outfitters, which I don't visit often but we needed some retail therapy to kill time before our boo-no-Taylor-Swift movie. I found these:



Glasses! I do not need them, but I was pretending to be Taylor in her You Belong With Me vid. No, I am serious. This is the sadness to which my evening descended.

I got a couple great skirts at UO that you'll be seeing on the blog in the next few weeks. For now, have my post-missing-out-on-Taylor outfit, which includes my awesome nerd glasses and one of my new skirts:





So, I loved these shorts from Anthro, until I realized that they were, you know, shorts, and not the skirt I thought I was trying on. Fail, Katie. But I got attached to the idea of a skirt with pears on it, and I was so pleased to find this one at UO, which I actually like better.

Okay, I'm going to post this before I get caught in the blogging blues again and convince myself not to post it. I'm sorry for my absence, and hopefully things will look up from here. Also, I just bought another ticket to an upcoming Taylor show, so I have hope that I'll get to see her someday soon!