The one in which I become one of those girls

Posted on June 8, 2010 by Karen

I am not one of those girls who decided a year or two ago that leggings are the thing to wear. I am definitely not one of those girls who think that leggings are pants. However, I do have to confess that yesterday, I bought my very first pair of (capri) leggings. I know.

But you know what? They are great.

The first dress I bought at H&M

As I’ve mentioned before, I am overweight. And most of my extra weight goes into my thighs (as well as my upper arms unfortunately). Which presents me with not one, but two problems in the summer.

1) Chubby thighs – I have huge thighs. Especially with the extra weight I have gained in the past few months, there is no way I will wear a dress (or shorts) ending above my knees. I do have huge calves as well but well, but above the knee is where the chub really starts, as well as the cellulite. I have been looking for summer dresses that are longer than knee length but have had a really hard time finding one that is that does not have spaghetti straps. This is where my upper arms come into play. They may be big but wearing a shirt with spaghetti straps is like drawing a big red exclamation mark on them, so I’ve been trying to avoid them.

The second dress I bought at H&M

2) Chub rub – I have been told that this is not necessarily a problem of overweight girls per se, but I do have to deal with it. My inner thighs touch, and if I wear a skirt or a dress without tights, well, let’s just say, it’s very very painful. No dress is worth that pain. For a very long time, my solution to that was not to wear dresses and skirts. For years I never wore them, even though I did like them. Last year I invested in a pair of pantyhose which ends above the knee which is great as it prevents the chafing but you can’t tell I’m wearing it. This works great for skirts and dresses that go past the knee paired with shoes that you can’t really wear pantyhose with.

So, leggings. They allow me to choose from a wider range of dresses as they cover my thighs nicely and they prevent the chafing just like pantyhose does. Double-score! And this? Is why I kind of don’t give a crap whether the dress would look nicer without the leggings because on me, it certainly wouldn’t.

Yesterday, I bought a pair of leggings, and two dresses I would not have bought otherwise. And that? Is awesome. Would the dresses look nicer on a skinnier person? Probably. Did these pictures make me think (again), gosh, Karen, you really have to lose weight? Definitely. But right now, this is what I have, and I know I will be wearing these two dresses as soon as I can.

Do you have to deal with any of these issues, and if so, what are your solutions? And what is your take on wearing leggings under dresses, yay or nay?

Sometimes you just need a change

Posted on April 2, 2010 by Karen

In my late teens, I used to dye my hair red every now and then. I never dyed it permanently and I never dyed it an unnatural red. I didn’t dye it because I was a rebellious teenager – I really wasn’t. I just liked having red hair. My dad has red hair and my natural hair color is a sort of golden/strawberry blonde, depending on light and daytime. Add my blue eyes and a few freckles to the mix, and red hair doesn’t look unnatural on me (obviously, depending on the type of red).

Now here is a thing: while I don’t consider myself very blessed in the looks department, I do love my hair color and eye color. I realize that I am lucky in that my natural hair color is not that undefinable dishwater blonde, which we call stray dog blonde in German (not that that makes it sound any more favorable – no offense to all you dishwater blondes out there!), but a color that many people can only get by dyeing their hair.

Being that I love my natural hair color, I don’t ever dye my hair permanently nor do I plan to. Because I know that will inevitably require me to deal with visible roots or having to bleach my hair and then dyeing it in my natural hair color. Which would damage my hair in ways I do not want.

I am pretty low-maintenance when it comes to my hair. I wash & condition it every day or two, and blow dry it, but that’s it. My last hair cut was last summer, and it was cut by my mom (as per usual). I always get a cut that won’t need a trim every few weeks. I do straighten it sometimes, but I usually get tired of it before it’s perfectly straight, so it usually ends up looking the same (or nearly the same) as it does naturally.

I am not one of those girls with perfect hair, and most days I wear it in a ponytail. I don’t know much about different hair styles, and the messy bun is an absolute mystery to me.

In the past few years I have hardly ever dyed my hair. I think part of that is because I have become more accepting of myself over time, including my hair color. I am happy being a blonde – something I don’t think I always was. We all know the myriad of blonde jokes out there and while I realize they are jokes, they, along with derogatory comments about blondes that so many people make thoughtlessly all the time, did get to me.

But that doesn’t mean that I’ve stopped thinking of red as an absolutely gorgeous hair color. And in the past few weeks, two years after the last time I dyed my hair, I had been wanting to dye my hair again. For a while, I was thinking that I couldn’t because I’d be applying for jobs soon and I need to have my natural hair color in the application pictures and for interviews. But now that I am sure I won’t be applying for jobs until I am done with my exams (I simply don’t have the time and energy for job hunting right now), I figured I’d take the chance.

And maybe, just maybe this also has a little to do with my current girl crush who has the most gorgeous hair ever.

The change isn’t as drastic as I had expected and I think that some people will not even notice it unless I tell them, but I do my new hair color (golden copper). I also love how shiny my hair looks and I was surprised to see how much longer it looks compared to three months ago. But see for yourself …

My new hair color

Do you dye your hair? Why (not)?

Ooooh sparkly!

Posted on January 26, 2010 by Karen

Here’s a thing about me: I own a lot of earrings. And by a lot I am talking 60+ pairs. To be more precise, I own 63 pairs of earrings. Unless I counted wrong. Anyway, they are beautiful and sparkly and I love them. And the number is ever growing, thanks to cheap fashion jewelry stores (SIX, I’m looking at you!).

I have lots of different earrings, big, small, silver, colorful. Some I wear all the time, some I wear hardly ever, some I used to wear all the time and now I don’t. But I would never just throw them away. Even though most are not silver and only cost me $5-10. But you know the problem about owning so many pairs of earrings? How do you organize them? Sure, they all fit into a box that is fairly small – and that’s how I store them. But you can guess how long it takes to find a matching pair when they’re all jumbled up like that, often entangled and all in a big messy pile.

Right, so this box? Is far from perfect. In fact, I am sure it is the nightmare of anyone with OCD. And every time I cannot find the second earring unless I take apart the entire box, it is my nightmare too. But you know, this could be so much prettier. Because there are so many great organizing solutions for storing your earrings out there, and not only are they, well, neat, but they are also creative, stylish and beautiful. And I swear, one day (soon), I will buy one of those jewelry holders for myself. Or heck, maybe I’ll even get crafty and make my own. Until then, I will just keep window-shopping on Etsy. (Click on the images to enlarge them.)

Earring Tree by earringgoround1