What a difference a skirt makes!

I've been thinking about my image lately. Like most women I'm not happy with how I look. Mostly I'm happy with what's under my clothes, (I eat well-ish, I work out regularly) but I dress like a frumpy housewife. I fall into the trap of not bothering to dress up because so many days I spend all my time dealing with children and not even leaving the house. If nobody but my family is going to see me, why bother?

I have lots of lovely clothes in my wardrobe, made when I worked in my BIL's hair salon. I have very large boxes filled with fabric I love, and enough pattterns to last forever. Not to mention the know-how to create my own, should I so wish. So I have no excuse to dress like a frump.

A few days ago David found some photos of a holiday we went on 10 years ago to Fiordland (the only time we have ever been away with no kids - Cayden spent a few days in Wanaka with his grandparents and it was a year before we had the next one). So there I was, 30 years old and having had only one child, and the thought that I couldn't get out of my head was that I look better now than I did then! But quite frankly, who could tell?

And that got me thinking that it is high time I stopped dressing like a frump and started working those lovely clothes into my wardrobe. Today I had some errands to run in town, and I decided to get out something nice to wear, as opposed to the something tidy I usually reach for. And when I started the archaeological dig required to peruse the long unworn contents of my wardrobe what do you think I found? This skirt. I made it before I had the twins and loved it, and had never worn it because I couldn't think what to wear with it! Time to change that! A good dig through my drawers'o'tops produced this one (well, actually first it produced a dull gold one identical to this one, till I remembered this one and thought it'd work better). I wore a little black cardy over it, but David said to take it off for the photos he took when he came home for lunch. He said lots of other stuff too, but that's private ;-)

And all day I've felt like this.

Here's a boring frontal shot to show how it sits when I'm not swishing.

When I looked in the mirror this morning I thought "nice legs!" and I hate my legs and their cankles, so that tells you something!

For the record, the skirt is Butterick 4859. And the top is a Burda one which I can't currently find on their site because a server somewhere appears to be down. Next time I make it I'm going to bring in the shoulder. I don't think that hanging off the shoulder point does me any favours - my shoulders and arms are my best bits and would be shown to better advantage with an armhole that shows the top of my arm.

So there you go, I've decided that I want to feel like this all the time. I need to work out how to incorporate the lovely items from the depths of my wardrobe into outfits I can feasibly wear to play with the twins and walk down to school. I'll keep you posted.