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love in the time of reality tv

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You guys, can you believe that Heidi and Spencer broke up? I am just beside myself. I mean if they can't make it, who can? Does love even exist? I honestly can't even answer that question anymore.

On a side note, I hope they get back together or I'm going to really regret getting this tattoo.
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Yes, it's the orange skirt again. I think that this skirt has become the bottom half of my weekendi uniform. It's a bit too short to wear to work, so I've reserved it for the weekends and after-hours. I don't mind though, it's perfect for looking cute while doing nothing. Well, I guess I can wear it to work then.

Speaking of doing nothing, I hope everyone is having a good, long weekend. It has taken me two and a half days to clean my house. Not because it's that messy, but because I'm that lazy. Cheers to three day weekends.

*For those of you who are concerned with the correct spelling of "Speidi" -- I wish now more than ever that you would have been there when I got the tattoo. I was just trying to use the old "i before e except after c" rule. I guess no rules -- not even grammar rules -- apply in Hollywood.

one tough cookie

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A few things I learned this week:
1. I am not a good packer.
2. Never leave your photographer at home.
3. I'm addicted to taking pictures of myself and posting them on the internet.
4. I've missed you guys.

As we were taking outfit pictures today all of my narcism that had faded away over the past few days came right back to me. I felt warmth in my blood for the first time in days. I started sounding like myself again, starting out all of my sentences with 'I' or "What about me?" Let's just say, it feels good to be back.

You know when you come upon a piece of clothing and you are so drawn to it that you must not only buy it but talk to it? That is what this dress is to me. I saw her on the rack at J.Crew and immediately began speaking baby talk to her. I asked her if she wanted to come home with me and although she didn't respond, I knew that we were destined to be together.

Anyways, earlier this week on What I Wore, Jessica posted outfits from a weekend challenge called Sweet and Rough. Well I wasn't able to send in photos, but I had this outfit in mind the whole time. I love this sweet little dress with my grommeted belt and my bruised arm. Nothing says sweet like a nice thumb-sized bruise, possibly from a car door, possibly from a bar fight.

I guess there is one more thing I learned this week. A bruise will get you attention but a bruise on your arm in the shape of a male's thumb, will get you more.

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"I can do anything good."



Yes, I'm relying on cute kid videos to keep your readership due to the lack of outfit posts this week. I'll be back tomorrow, I swear!!

Now, let's all repeat after Jessica... "I can do anything good, better than anyone."

Kendi and The Giant Suitcase

I apologize for the lack of posts over the past few weeks. I have been a traveling machine. In less than two weeks I went from one coast to the other and while racking up my frequent flyer miles, I have come to a realization. I, Kendi Lea Everyday, am a terrible packer.

This week I'm in Orlando for a marketing convention. That's an easy task, right? Wrong. The minute I pull out my suitcase I immediately forget how to dress well. It's like a vacuum that sucks out all creativity and originality and all I end up with are tops and bottoms. It's literally like I closed my eyes pulled out 5 tops and 5 bottoms and threw them into my suitcase. Case in point:

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Sure I look fine for a convention. A little wrinkly but cute enough, right? But that's not the point. This outfit is just not me. I would have never gone into my closet and put this outfit on. This feels like the "first year out of college Kendi" who relied on pencil skirts and cardigans to cover up a body she wasn't comfortable with yet. Honestly, I just feel bored. This is what packing 41 lbs of my life into a suitcase results in: complete boredom. (At least a cute belt got thrown in.)

Yes, I've always had this problem, if you were wondering. I've never been able to pack well. Even when I say to myself "I'm going to pack well" it doesn't happen. Just like you can't think yourself thin, I can't think myself into packing well. I look in my suitcase and feel like someone else packed for me. Someone I don't know and someone who certainly doesn't know me. And someone who didn't know that Florida had sun and beaches and that packing a pair of shorts would have been a very appropriate choice as would have a dress and a pair of flip-flops. Who is this girl who packed for me? She needs to be fired.

All that to say, I'll be back on Friday with an outfit post. Till then I'll be sitting out by the pool in a pair of jeans and a sweater.

cut and sew

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Well, aren't you all little poets? I grant you all the "Best Haiku Ever" award.
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Feel free to print this out and fill out your name. I'm very proud to call you all my friends.

Sorry I've been MIA. I bet you've been wondering about me, especially since that last depressing post. Don't worry, my ovaries did not take over, I'm still here. In fact, I've since gotten some sleep and some wine and I got to see my mom. The world is now a nice shade of rosy pink. (Or should I say 'blush'?)

Speaking of my mom, I got this dress a few weeks ago while thrifting*. It was a bit on the long side for me (AKA below the knees) so I got my mom to chop it off and sew it up. Voila -- I got a new dress for $1. Labor not included since she's my mother. Labor on both accounts, I suppose. So thank you mom for the half hour of labor you put into this dress and for the hours of labor you put into actually having me. Happy Mother's Day.

(Bryan just informed me I'm a bit late on Mother's Day. I guess I'll save my macaroni necklace and the framed classic "hand prints in plaster of paris" for next year.)

*definition for my dad. Thrifting is when people go to thrift stores or consignment shops and buy second hand clothing. Just so we are clear Dad, I began this when I started making my own money. I bought new clothes on your paycheck.

shiny happy blog post

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You guys I can't concentrate enough to write a blog post tonight. I wouldn't consider this writer's block, I would consider it more of my ovaries attacking my brain because apparently taking over a week of my life and throbbing isn't quite cruel enough. Needless to say, today was brutal. For being the size of almonds, they sure do know how to break up a good time.

I feel like I should apologize to you guys for not being Suzy Sunshine. I mean I dressed like Suzy Sunshine today (well if Heidi and Suzy's brother Sonny Sunshine hooked up and had a kid, that's what I dressed like today. Oh and not Heidi from The Hills, Heidi from the hills, as in Switzerland.) Anyways, it would make me feel better if you all left partially emo-esque haiku poems for me in the comments area. Heck, I'd even take a limerick. I'll be waiting, with my black nail polish and a snickers bar.

I'll start you off:

today was a bitch
so many meetings and calls
I've run out of wine


(PS -- if you haven't left me your blog link already, please do so whenever you leave a comment or haiku. I love blogs way too much to not be reading yours.)

springy

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My husband said I looked "springy" today. This made me sad because I was going more for a look that was "flowery" + "hot granny" + "80's rocker chic" + "precious, but not the movie" + "Chloe Sevigny" + "white heat". But I guess I'll take "springy", if that's all he's offering.

So I got my top from H&M Seattle and sadly its a bit too big. I got really excited and just grabbed the shirt and didn't look at the size. I usually take my pills before shopping to calm my nerves and to stop me from making said mistakes, but alas I did not shop responsibly. Good news, I kind of shrunk it up in the wash and it was only $9. Fantastic. My skirt was also a cheap purchase. I bought it last summer at Gap, after they made that huge declaration that it was the "year of the white denim" and stocked the stores full of it. I guess not everyone liked the white denim idea so I got this dandy little skirt for $10 and a pair of jeans for $20. I love a good trendy sale.

A few peeps asked if my skirt that I wore yesterday was recently from Target. I'm sad to say that it wasn't. I bought it a few years ago (2008, perhaps?) on extreme sale. It's a few sizes too big (this is a habit for me) so a belt is a must. I just can't pass up a cute, cheap skirt. You know what they say...If the skirt fits, or even if it doesn't, buy it if it's on sale. I'm kidding, don't do that or your whole closet will be filled with nothing but skirts and you won't have anything to wear on top. And then where would you be? (Probably jail for public nudity.)

you can't always get what you want

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You know when you want something really bad from Anthropologie but you went on a spending freeze for 30 days and you accidentally told everyone on your blog so people could keep you accountable but then the very thing you wanted goes on sale and for a second you are like, "who will know if I buy this? I live in Nowhere, America" And then your husband says "I will know, and God and your readers." And you are like "what? how would my readers ever find out?" as you threaten him with a knife to never tell. But then your husband starts pointing to the cashiers at Anthro and he starts saying "what if she's a reader? I bet she is.." and he goes on like this until you drop the most perfect dress in the whole world and walk away from it forever. But deep in your heart you know that it didn't hit the ground when you dropped it, no, it fell into the hands of a greedy girl who has lots of Anthro-dollars to spend. And now it's hard to sleep at night and you and your husband rarely speak anymore.

Don't you hate when that happens?

Well that's why I invented Faux-thropologie (patent pending). This is when you find something from Anthro that you really like and you try to re-create it on the cheap. Case in point, this is the dress I wanted for as long as I can remember (I can only remember back to Christmas 2009):
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But at $120 I couldn't say yes to the dress. So when it went on sale for $50, I sent a million hints to my husband about it and even tried to cheat and buy it while I was on my shopping strike. (I have no soul, really there is nothing there but a Twinkie.) Sadly within days the dress was gone and as we all know, once something is sold (on sale nonetheless) from Anthropologie, it's gone, forever. (Whatever doesn't sell goes straight to Heaven.)

So when I found this shirt while thrifting, I knew immediately that I could recreate a similar look to my long lost dress. And I saved a lot of money by doing so. Let's do the math:
Anthropologie Dress -- $120
Thrifted shirt -- $1
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money saved : $119

Making my husband, God and my readers proud: priceless

Moral of the story: you can't always get what you want from Anthropologie, but you sure can fake it. Now if only I can find the matching skirt to this shirt...

Spellbound Giveaway Winner

Congrats to Amy, winner of the Spellbound Headband Giveaway!



Thanks to everyone who entered! And a big thanks to Miriam of Spellbound, for this month's giveaway. 

hey cupcake

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Hey cupcakes, how was your weekend?

Okay now on to mine. We met our bff's in Austin for brunch + cupcake time. Cupcake time is that special time between lunch and dinner when you aren't hungry, but you're not quite full. The best way to cure this intolerable feeling is to eat cupcakes filled with sugar, butter and cream cheese icing. Seriously, this is the only cure.

Tomorrow is the end of AcademiChic's "Dress Your Best" week and I'm sad to see it go. I might just dress my best everyday. Wouldn't that be something? Slight sarcasm aside, I wanted to showcase my legs today, which are probably a favorite feature of mine. Sadly I can not say that they've carried me through a marathon, or a long bike ride or a nice hike. No I don't force my legs to do anything they don't want to do (see: Cupcakes) Instead my legs have wobbled their way through on many different surfaces in heels, platforms, boots and uncomfortable flats without ever failing me. They've been there through every concert, lifting me up as I tower over the shorties to see the show, ignoring those who yell "Hey ladder legs, down in front!" They have held me up through waitressing shifts and 9-hour days working retail. And they have somehow stayed thin and kept their shape even though I spend more time sitting at my desk than walking on a treadmill. My legs are amazing. I want to be my legs when I grow up.

Thanks for sharing your favorite parts as well! I loved reading what you had to say. And I was able to stop hyperventilating about my vanity issues and eat another cupcake. Here's to emotional eating and self esteem. Cheers.

Friend Friday

My friend Katy over at ModlyChic has a Friend Friday , where she sends out questions to bloggers each week for us to answer. This is my first time to join in and she has some great, thought-provoking questions. Hopefully this is something that interests you and I can continue to do. And as you may know there is nothing that I love more than answering questions about myself. Visit her blog to see other who participate as well. Thanks Katy!

1. What's your main purpose in blogging?
You know when I started this blog, my purpose was to find a community in which I could share my wardrobe with others. Being from a very small town with a lot of old people who don't care about fashion, it was important for me to find others who had similar interests like myself and blogging seemed the best way to find that community.

I think that your purpose as a blogger will change and will grow with you as a person. I feel that my purpose more and more is to get the message out there that you don't have to be a size 0, you don't have to be rich, and you don't have to live in NYC to be fashionable.

2. Do you think bloggers should receive monetary compensation for their efforts?
This question is so touchy, I'm almost afraid to answer it. First off, I don't have a problem with anyone recieving compensation for something that they do and this includes blogging. In fact, if you can make a living off of a blog then you are obviously doing it very well and if you enjoy it, then why not get paid for doing what you love? I think that this is so controversial because so many people have blogs and perhaps it seems unfair at times that one person can blog about the same thing and get paid while another does it for free. Since blogging is relatively new, it seems like the standards haven't been set up for it like it is for other trades. You would never go to your job for free, would you? Then why would you expect someone who can make a living off of blogging to do the same?

It's hard not to look at this economically. Since blogging is essentially intangible I think that most people expect it to be free. The internet in some sense is free (as long as we ignore the costs of the hardware/wi-fi costs it takes to get it, lets assume you are at a public library using their free wi-fi right now), so perhaps this is where people find conflict in being paid as a blogger. I can log onto any website, at any time and gain information for free. News sites, social networking, retailers give out information for free 24/7. But to get this information to you it takes a large team of people working on the website, the products, the stories, etc. And it takes money to keep that team coming back to their jobs. So to offer these free services to you they have advertisements or sponsors. Sometimes very annoying advertisements that pop up or scream at you or dance on the side of your screen telling you that "Obama wants you to go back to school". However, those advertisements fund the information that you receive and keeps people employed, which, as we've learned over the past 2 years with this recession, employment is a very good thing.

So if you look at blogging as a service that someone provides, it makes it a little bit easier to accept when a blogger takes on sponsors or advertisements. Take Etsy for instance, people create handmade items everyday (some good, some bad) and list them for sale. Would you ever say to them, "I want this but don't want to pay for it. Give this to me for free?" No, never because it cost them time, labor and money to make the item. They created it and you want it, so you buy it. Thats the transaction. But when a blogger creates an outfit, thought or an idea they put it out there for free, mostly with no strings attached. Arguably the same time, labor and creativity went into this process. Then why is it okay to ask a blogger, specifically style bloggers, to continue to give you free inspiration practically daily without being compensated? It takes time, money and labor and all though you can't tangibly hold what that blogger provides, he or she is still providing you with something in the end. Another thing to keep in mind is that the money doesn't come from you as a reader, it comes from a sponsor who gets something as well. Quite honestly, when a blogger takes on sponsors, it has nothing to do with you -- its just that the relationship now has three parties involved, the blogger, the sponsor and the reader. You are still the person receiving the blog for free. With sponsors, i's a quid pro quo relationship (or should be), where the bloggers gets compensated for letting a company use a designated amount of ad space in hopes of gaining more customers. The blogger gets to continue blogging as he or she chooses and you get to partake in that blog if you choose.

So is it fair that some bloggers get compensated while other do not? I think you have to look at the big picture on this one. Going back to the Etsy example, not every seller on Etsy, in fact probably a very slim number of sellers can make a living off what they produce and sell. How can they do this? Because they create items that buyers continually want which allows them to make more items to sell more, creating a flow of revenue. (Many more elements go into this, like marketing your etsy shop, but this is the easiest way to put it.) Does that mean that as an Etsy seller if you aren't making a living off of your item that your items are crap? No, certainly not. And it also doesn't mean that if you don't make money off of your blog, that your blog is crap. On the other hand, perhaps, it doesn't always mean that compensation means that you have the best blog out there either. Simply put its a big, hairy market out there for bloggers and you should never think that compensation = success. If you do, then you will never make enough money to be happy. You should blog because you have an opinion, a thought, or an idea that you want the world to see or hear. You should blog because you enjoy it. If you do that, then your blog will be successful.

I put probably 30+ hours into my blog a week, not for compensation but for my own personal enjoyment. Does this mean that I will always do this for my own personal enjoyment only? I don't know. But what I do know is that I did not start my blog hoping that it would become another source of income. Would I take sponsors one day? I don't know, but if I did it would be to further the development of my blog. In the end, I don't think it's wrong to be paid for doing something well, bloggers included.

(If you'd like to read more about this topic, head on over the http://heartifb.com/ and look for the blogging + compensation discussion threads.)

3. What do you find the most frustrating aspect of blogging?
The time constraints that I have. Everything I do for my blog is in the after hours of my full-time day job. From taking pictures to editing to writing to layout design, it's all crammed into the 4-5 hours I have at night when I get home, on top of being a wife and a human being who has real emotional breakdowns once a week.

4. What's the most rewarding part?
The community that I've built. I love each and every reader more than they will ever know. I love the honest feedback people give me, I love hearing similar stories people tell me. I feel like I have a million different best friends and I'm so grateful for that.

Also, being able to be funny and to have people not only enjoy it but understand it. Writing is one of the best parts of my day and I'm so glad that I have people to share it with.

5. What is one goal you have for improving your blog?
One is having more time for it. Another is creating more of a schedule for blogging, perhaps coming up with new ideas to share with my readers. The sky is the limit with blogging! Isn't that a fantastic thing?

So you guys -- What are your thoughts on blogging and compensation? What is the most frustrating/rewarding thing for you? You've heard my thoughts, I'd love to hear yours.

skin deep

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So it's day 2 of AcademiChic's Dress Your Best week for me. With the start of this project, the Chic's encouraged everyone to list your 5 best/favorite body parts. Well, this is actually a lot harder than I thought it would be. (Especially since I can't list things like my liver, fingernails, the backs of my knees.) It's way easier for me to think of 5 (or 10...) body parts that I would like to change rather than to think about 5 things that I'm so glad that I have. So I started to think about the parts of my body that I take for granted, perhaps things that I never think of because they don't cause problems. The good parts seem to be taken for granted because let's face it, if you don't have to work at something you're not going to. But when I started to write down my list, one body part really stuck out to me and that is my skin. I know that this probably seems left field and you are probably screaming "skin isn't a body part! give me an arm!" But my dears, it so is. As the largest organ on my body and the one thing that keeps my guts from falling out, my skin is a fabulous thing.

Growing up, I never understood the comment of "Oh, I could never wear that color" in reference to something that I was wearing. I always thought it was strange that people compartmentalize colors when it came to their wardrobe perhaps because of their own coloring. (Like red heads shouldn't wear red or orange, or blondes should only wear light blue. You know that way of thinking.) But then I realized that it wasn't necessarily a reckless comment on my outrageously orange blouse -- it was a compliment. Because of my olive skin tone, I don't have to worry about wearing certain colors or not wearing certain colors. I can throw on yellow, green, blues, reds, whites, blacks, oranges -- with no trouble at all.

I've also learned that taking care of my skin is the best thing I can do. Finally after 25 years I've realized that I don't have to be melanoma-tan every summer. I've learned to take care of my skin, to not pick at pimples, to drink lots of water and to wear sunscreen. I've learned that if you take care of it, it will make you look fresh, dewey and will get you carded at a bar every time.

I love each freckle that's appeared, every scar that tells a story and every wrinkle that shows another year of my life thats been lived. My skin is a blank canvas to be painted with the endless colors of my wardrobe and that is something I will never take for granted.


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P.S. -- I have to admit I am trying to squash the feelings of pompousness and vanity. I feel so strange talking about myself in this tone of voice (positive, non self-depricating, possibly normal etc.) I so hope these posts don't come off as anything other than the awkward 13 year old Kendi that lives inside of my head coming into her own as a 25 year old woman. This has been such a stretch for me, in a good way, but it's been hard to not use humor to cover up a lumpy thigh or oddly shaped arm. So if you could all leave comments with things that you love about yourselves that would make me feel a lot better and I could stop hyperventilating into this paper bag. Thank you.