Pulling it Together: Madewell Silk Shirred Dress Review, Madewell Terrace Dress Review, and Everlane Tee Review

Starting any weight loss journey is tough. I don't plan on discussing my journey terribly often, it could happen, but it seems unlikely.

The first thing I've done is realize that in order to lose weight, I must come to terms with the weight I am now. I decided to purchase a suite of clothing that would fit me at my current body. My favorites have been as follows:

Everlane T's: I own 2 black ones (one v neck, one round neck), a navy, slate, and beige color, all in Large. I wear a 34H cup and am 5' 4'' for reference, and they fit me well, loosely actually, and have room for my chubster belly. They're comfortable, hold up in the wash, and are reasonably priced at 15 dollars each. I adore them and wear one almost everyday.

Everlane Tee in White with a Round Neck

If you're interested in them, here's a link to sign up and get some of your own if you're in the market for awesome t shirts and want me to get a free shirt the next time I hit a lower size during my weight loss journey: https://www.everlane.com/n/n5abzg

Madewell Shirred Silk Dress:

This dress is amazing. I'm busty, petite, and have a very short torso. This dress makes me look like I have an awesome hourglass figure, which is hard to achieve when I'm 180lbs+. I currently seem to fit well into size 10's (I'm pretty sure Madewell has some pretty spectacular vanity sizing) and adore this dress in black, red, and beige dot. Its comfortable, and it looks fantastic under a v neck sweater to boot, allowing me to use it as a really awesome skirt as well.

Don't be fooled, if you're busty or have an hourglass,
this dress really accentuates it.  You will not look like a small
child in your pinafore a la this model. 

How could I resist a cute red dress? Seriously. 

I think red can occasionally be difficult to pull off because it screams sex if you don't wear it correctly, particularly as a busty petite. These dresses also have the plus point that they have this vertical line running down the middle. Its a subtle detail, but it ended up being surprisingly slimming. All in all, I adore this dress. It's currently on sale at madewell.com, go get it before its gone, its amazing.

Madewell Terrace Dress:

Once again, if you're a petite busty hourglass like myself, particularly with a short torso, this dress looks phenomenal. It somehow manages to make my skin look creamy and flawless, accentuates my hourglass figure, and makes my chest look proportional and smaller. The skirt is long enough to be appropriate for most occasions, and the fabric is soft, stretchy, and incredibly warm and comfortable. I can't recommend this dress highly enough.

Now, the advantage of most of these dresses is that they can easily be altered down to a smaller size, and they make me look good right now. I have tried to get myself to lose weight via self hatred many, many times, and its never worked. This time around, my plan is to see whether in the process of getting to know my body better and paying more attention to it, I can get healthier via liking it more. We'll see how things go.

Love Letter Nails - Sally Hansen Salon Effects Review (Spoiler: They're awesome)

Sally Hansen Salon Effects Manicure in "Love Letter"

So last week, I ran into Danielle at CVS while running some errands, and we ended up meandering over to the nail section. I hadn't done my nails in a really, really long time (specifically, since December, while being a bridesmaid at a friend's wedding). I happened upon these nail strips and thought they might be fun to give a try. They were really great.

Review:

I think these are awesome. They took about 20 minutes to apply, stayed chip free for about a week, and since I have small hands, the cost (10 dollars for a box, but I have smaller nails and ended up discovering 1 box = 2 full manicures for me) is actually great, given that getting a salon manicure takes a lot longer including transport, costs about 15 bucks including the tip, and lasts for about the same amount of time chip free on my fingers. Also, they look cool! I've gotten compliments literally every single day I've had these on!

Everything else:

This was a photo from the day after I did these nails. I am really impressed and this is awesome. As a computer scientist, I type around 12 hours a day on average, and my nails take a beating, so I don't bother polishing my nails because the combination of me being a perfectionist with chipped nails is a super super bad thing. I also just have like no patience, so it drives me sort of insane if I have to wait for my nails to dry because I COULD BE DOING STUFF, so I think I fell more in love with these nail strips because they have no drying time. Also I'm a typography freak so this was cool.

I don't think of myself as a nail art person at all. I use my hands a ton, and am generally sort of fidgety, so I don't think I have the patience for the most part, not to mention that I type a lot and play the piano and knit, so I just assume the nails will get messed up very quickly and gave up early on. However, when I did this manicure, it was completed watching a Legend of Korra episode (EVERYONE SHOULD WATCH IT) and at the end I just felt so...pretty and polished. It actually inspired me to care more about my appearance for the rest of the week, because I had such pretty nails, and I wanted the rest of me to be pretty too! I actually sort of forgot what it feels like to have any part of me be pretty for a while.

This particular nail experiment also sparked an interesting memory that I'd kind of forgotten about. While I am not normally into nail art, I was extremely fascinated by the Klutz books as a kid - books that would come with small kits of materials for art projects, and then have project instructions inside. I ended up recalling this book:

Every time I went to the bookstore for about 2 years, I would stare wistfully as a kid at this book, fully knowing that there was no way in hell anyone would ever get it for me. Its actually still sold on amazon (I know! I know!!) but I am a little less enchanted by turning my nails into ladybugs. I might still do it, on principal though. Still, good times. It was incredibly exciting to remember this, look it up on the internet, and suddenly realize that I am an adult and if I want that book, I can have it. Yep. Thats what I pushed myself through college for - the ability to buy the book of my 8 year old self's dreams and have it delivered to my door, no extra charge.

Speaking of the internet, now that I'm excited about it, I went ahead and while the cost is ok, I was curious as to whether this could be cheaper. Answer: IT CAN. These are also sold on amazon at various much cheaper prices, and even cheaper on ebay! Ebay is also neat because you can get past limited edition patterns/prints that aren't sold in stores. I got excited and grabbed these shades at about 3-5 bucks a pop:

Sally Hansen Salon Effects in Shiny New Year

Pink and Gold Glitter? Whaaaat? Yeah. I could not resist. I guarantee this will not be limited to holidays.

Sally Hansen Salon Effects in Di-Vine

Gold and Black and Flowers!!

You may notice as I continue to blog that my style tastes have some unfortunate addictions built in. Namely, basically all of my favorite clothes and accessories and makeup products are some combination of Gold, Black, and varying shades of Pink and Peach, Red, and Beige. This is mostly because I look good in these colors, and generally feel like its harder to pull off a lot of colors that are offered in the US since I have darker skin (approximately Jessica Alba colored), but I am aware that I should branch out, which is why I branched super super far out into a very adventurous monochromatic navy blue t shirt recently, but that discussion is probably best saved for another post. Regardless, I am pretty excited that my nails get to look like that instead of me having to painstakingly paint them gold and then have it ruined within 15 minutes after I've forgotten my nails are wet and started peeling an orange.

Other shades/patterns I've got my eye on and/or super like and may be trying out are:

Sally Hansen Salon Effects in Girl Flower

I adore flowers. Incoco Nail strips actually offers a few gorgeous floral patterns, which I plan to try soon as well. This design actually sort of matches the cover on one of my favorite notebooks.

Sally Hansen Salon Effects in Bold Rush

Gold, Glitter, and some Purple. I'm a little worried that these will be harder to remove, but I guess glitter always is, and its so fun, and its Ombre! Look at that gradient guys! My love affair with Photoshop never ends.

Sally Hansen Salon Effects in Lustrous

More black and gold. In fact, probably I'll just give all of the black and gold ones a shot:

Sally Hansen Salon Effects in Frock Star, Laced Up, Misbehaved, and Glitz Blitz

Ok, I think thats just about everything I have to say about these for now, I'll probably instagram/blog pictures of my nails the weeks I do these.

Overall, I'm looking forward to being excited about having pretty hands/nails, and am mostly trying to figure out which patterns I like look professional and pretty since I want to do well on my interviews, but not have my hands be distracting during them. We'll see. Might just go with something more tame like the gold with black netting in Misbehaved for that. I think in general, as small as it seems, these have been a huge step for me in terms of doing something that has been positive and encouraging for my body image, while not necessarily being too jarring or overwhelming or noticeable to others, which I think is pretty much what you want in the beginning.

What do you guys think? Are you going to give any of these a shot?