Winter 2015 Project 333/37

Winter capsule wardrobes can be hard to do. Especially if you live somewhere cold (like I do.) I'm in Minnesota and by January and February, it will be in the negative degrees here. Sometimes I feel like I'm wearing all my clothing at once. But, then when I go inside a building people have the heat jacked all the way up like it's a summer day in the Bahamas. So, then I better have enough on underneath that I can take it off layer by layer.
When I lived in South Carolina I didn't really do layers. It was hot or it wasn't quite hot. The most I would need was a cardigan or a light jacket. The change has been hard for me. This is going to be my second winter here and I'm still not sure what to expect. Everyone said that last winter was mild, and I thought I was going to freeze somedays. This year I want to be prepared for it to be colder than it was last year. Since it's an "El Nino" year, it is quite possible that it will be another mild year. But, it doesn't hurt to be prepared anyways.

I don't like to add my accessories to my number because they are needed here.
I give myself those 3 extra things because I still struggle with keeping my wardrobe down to the 33-37 items and including jewelry and accessories. In the winter it gets pretty cold in Minnesota and I need a hat, scarf and mittens or gloves. Those are needs, not accessories. So I don't count them.

I talked about my color palette before, but I took out the extra grey and added white. I don't wear a lot of white, but I have a few things that I wanted to add into my capsule. I think I should have put white in the accents and switched my pinks, so that light pink was an accent and the cottage pink was a main color. Oh, well. I hope you get the idea still by seeing my little color picture.

The asterisk on the description means that those items are new this season. I just ordered the grey boots this week and they will take awhile to arrive. So, I'm without those for the time being. I've been thinking about getting them for several months and I looked for some like them around town, but with no luck. So, I splurged on them and I'm excited to see how they work out for my capsule. 

Winter 2015 Capsule Wardrobe

Blue Dress

Long sleeve Chambray 

Cottage pink plaid button-up

Navy henley

White linen w/ Navy accents

White linen button up

Cottage Pink wool skirt

light blue linen blouse

Navy stripe tee

Taupe linen tunic*

Zombie Love baseball tee

Navy polka dot  button-up

Mint tee

Grey tee

White tee

soft pink skinnies

Cottage Pink Skinnies

Dark Navy Jeans

Grey Pants

Taupe Pants

Multi colored sweater

Cottage Pink cardigan

Mint Sweater

Red Cashmere Sweater 

Taupe Wool Sweater

Long Sleeve Pink tee

Grey and Cottage pink cardigan

Black Ballet Flats*

Snow Boots

Navy Jeans

Grey pencil skirt-back view

Grey boots*

Custom Leather Boots

Wool Mittens

Grey Leather Purse*

Ear muffs

Winter Coat

Navy Blanket Scarf*

Blue and Green Knit Hat

Pastel Hat 

Assorted Scarves (I'm trying to let some go)

Thinking about adding

Cottage Pink Wool Fair Isle Pullover

Are you doing a winter capsule this year?

Color Palette for my wardrobe

I have been fiddling with the colors I've been choosing and if you look at all the seasons together you can see the progression of it. In the fall I didn't put up pictures of my clothing, but I went with navy, black, red , blue and white.

I have quite a few black clothes, but they don't do much for my skin. They make me look really pale and washed out. So, I haven't been wearing them as much. I took all the pinks out of my fall wardrobe, but near the end I went and got a pink shirt to wear. I really missed it. So, I put it back in. Since it's not an exercise in deprivation I wanted to figure out how to keep the pink/mint combo with the red/navy combo all while extracting the black. Apparently, this is not a "fashionable" combination and I couldn't find anything on the inter webs about these colors in a wardrobe together.

The colors at the bottom are the neutrals, the ones to the right side are my accents and the 3 largest ones are my main colors. I'm planning on this palette being my colors for quite awhile, since I love all of them and it creates several different options.

I already have quite a bit of navy clothing. I have been buying it and not realizing it for years...

I am still trying to go through all of my clothes. I did a large purge last year when I started this endeavor and I've been going through the rest slower because those are ones that I like more and did wear quite a bit. I now challenge myself to get rid of 5-10 pieces when I go in there. I have all these clothes hanging up in my spare bedroom and I'd like to use that at a nursery soon and not have it be full of clothing that I'm not wearing! 

I need to get in there and get rid of some more things! 

For now, I know which things can go by looking at whether or not they fit in my palette and then whether or not I love wearing them. 

Do you have a color palette that you stick to in your closet? I find it helps me know what I need when I'm shopping for that next season or to fill holes in my wardrobe. 

'Age of Adeline' Wine Velvet Dress

I've scoured the internet to see if anyone has ever tried to recreate the wine velvet dress that Adeline wears to the new years parties. I did not find anything. It's such a beautiful dress. It has a beautiful, yet classic style. The cut out in the back was actually fairly popular in the mid to late 1940's. You need to have some kind of support inside the bodice to make the cutout AND the low neckline. It's sexy, but not overly flashy.

Now, if you haven't seen the movie yet..you really should. It is simply amazing. The plot is awesome and the way the shot the movie actually gives it the period feel for each decade that they show you.  It's no 'New Amsterdam', but it's a close second. That will always be my favorite plot. I long to see it done again, and actually finished.


And I'm even going to give myself a deadline for this dress. I want to make it in time to take it with me on a cruise I'm going on with my DH. In February. It's the beginning of November now, that gives me basically 2 months to complete it. I have a lot of work to do still. And then I need to think about how I'm going to do the beading. Am I going to do that by hand? Or can I find a strip that I can tack down on the dress?


Now to convince you of the beauty of this dress.

This is just the best picture available of the dress. She's a beautiful girl as well. 

This picture shows the actual color of the dress. In the movie, the way it was shot it looked black to me until I watched the special features. Knowing that it's red just made me love it all the more. 

See what I mean here? It looks a little black, no?

This dress is classic. My favorite word to describe clothing. 

And here is a shot of the back. The cutout makes construction a bit harder... 

But, I'll get into that next time. 

Let me know which of her costumes was your favorite. 

Happy Sewing!!

Why I didn't post in October...

This month DH and I have been working on the house. Of course ive been canning and I put that up on my facebook page for the blog. If you want to see more pictures go on over there.

But. Our livingroom carpets were gross when we moved in and with 4 pets they kust got worse. We had planned to replace it, and we have been saving money to do it. Im not going to tell you how much we spent on this project, but it was a lot. And we did all the labor. I can't imagine what this would have cost us to have someone come in and do it!

And of course i have some pictures for you! 

I took pictures of the room/areas before i started the job. 

Yuck right??

I forgot to get a before picture here. But you can see how bad the carpets were i. The others. This is the largest part of the room. 

All nasty carpets took me most of the day to rip out. Then there was all the sand and dirt underneath it!! Then i had staples and tack strips to remove too. 

Me and declutter dog were up to the task at hand! We filled this bucket 4 times with tack strips, room dividers, and staples. Oh my word! If i have to pull another staple in my life it will be too soon!!

So after everything was removed it looked much better.

The natives were getting restless though. 

We decided to replace part of the sub floor, due to some damage. (Dont do it if you dont have to folks! This was a lot of work!!) we swept and swept and swept again. 

Then it was time to lay the underlayment down. Oh look im going the wrong way! 

So we had to move it and cut it to fit and then move the wood as we went too. 

(Not light!)

Finally we got that going the right way. 

And we're ready to lay the wood down. (That piece is just holding the underlayment down for now.

Fall 2015 Capsule Wardrobe

Autumn in Minnesota is a funny thing. It can be 80 degrees and then suddenly it's 50. And the nights get cooler and mornings seems to stretch into night with the dew and frost touching the ground longer. Watching the leaves change and sipping warm cider or coffee while the breeze blows is heaven. Until one day, it's 20 and you didn't realize winter was coming so early.

I seems that summer is slipping away from me at an ever increasing rate.
I've been canning up the last of the garden harvest and bringing in the winter squash for storage.
The garden will be tilled one last time and the meat chickens all slaughtered.

Now, what will I be wearing in the cooler weather?
I've got pants that seem to rotate seasons with me and a few shirts.
I keep all my long johns and swim wear together in what I call a seasonal drawer.
I bought a few new pairs of wool socks for winter. How I love wool socks!

I wanted to have more flannel shirts and warm sweaters in my closet. But, realistically I still have a few of them. I need to see how they go together.

I'm having a problem of whether I should stay with the colors that I've been using. The navy/pink/mint with purple and yellow thrown in for good measure. But, I've decided to go with a navy/red/white/mint with a touch of black  for more of a autumn feel. I'm making a red skirt from some wool that I've had for awhile with flannel pockets. :) (so cozy!)
And some red corduroy flare pants.

It's likely that the pants will not be done before I start wearing it all, but it will be a welcome addition once the chill sets in.

I've been using stylicious (a free app) to put outfits together.