All Dressed Up with Nowhere to Go || Pandemic Style

Lately, I have been feeling like a blob.

You see, I thought that the Pandemic had  not really affected us much — what, with me being a stay-at-home mom, us having shared a single car for almost our entire 8 years or marriage, already being used to having the kids home 24/7 (so homeschooling this year isn’t a big deal), and just generally being a homebody. I thought… Covid really didn’t change much about my life. Right? I stay home all the time anyway, right?

But there are little things that have changed. In the last eleven months I’ve only been thrifting maybe 4 times. In the last eleven months weekly visits with my parents and in-laws went from weekly to… well, a handful of times with a lot of caution. Monthly friend visits stopped. Going grocery shopping with the kids stopped (grocery pickup is a blessing, though). I stopped leaving my house for much other than absolute needs. And I stopped having a reason to get dressed.

Dress, Miss Candyfloss found on Poshmark — similar here || Brooch, gift (similar here) || Shoes, Amazon || purse, vintage (similar here, and here, and here) ||  Earrings, vintage (similar here)

I’ve been a preacher of “get dressed for yourself” for so long here on the blog, but I think I forgot myself for a while. I forgot that I don’t have to be going anywhere to dress up. I don’t have to be seeing someone to feel good about myself. So today I got all dressed up in this lovely Miss Candyfloss dress a friend of mine found for a HUGE deal on Poshmark (and sent me because it wasn’t her size), I put on my favorite lipstick and some acessories, and… drove to the coffee stand for coffee.

I didn’t get out of my car. Nobody even saw my outfit. But I felt cute, and it reminded me that I need to get dressed up for the sake of myself and my own mental battles.

It also made me realize that I need to invest in a few more modern reproduction items. Most of what I have in my closet either doesn’t fit, or is vintage and I’m always afraid I’ll be popping seams, staining things, or ripping something with kids around. After years of saying I wanted a practical wardrobe… I don’t have one. Time to thrift some inexpensive everyday cute clothes, I guess! Now that thrift stores here are opened up again, I want to go (safely masked and distanced, of course!) and bulk up my winter everyday wardrobe. Plus, searching Poshmark and ebay for wearable items.

And then, get dressed. For me. I might try making this blog a bit more of everyday-style documentation. Not that I don’t wear things I post here, but for a while I felt like I had to write a lot of interesting things in order to share outfit photos… and honestly sometimes I just want to post photos with  minimal words because that’s how the day goes, ha!

We’ll see. For now, I’m just going to focus on the practice of getting dressed up with nowhere to go, simply because it makes me happy.

Dress, Miss Candyfloss found on Poshmark — similar here || Brooch, gift (similar here) || Shoes, Amazon || purse, vintage (similar here, and here, and here) ||  Earrings, vintage (similar here)