Black and White Everything

I love the holidays but they are not very nice to my waist line! I don’t even want to look at the scale right now for fear of seeing how much weight I’ve gained over the last 2 weeks. The weight gain has also put me behind on fitting into more stuff so I’m back to struggling even more to find things to wear. Jan 2nd can’t come fast enough!

I knew I wanted to wear a dress today but I had no idea which one. I went rummaging through my dress closet in search for a dress that I haven’t worn since before my pregnancy that would fit. I grabbed this black and white striped dress that I bought from Winners and hoped it would fit well. I rarely ever go into Winners because I just don’t have the patience to look through racks, (I know I should because there’s a lot of great deals out there) but I bought this dress on a rare outing there with a couple of my close friends a few years back. Definitely a great find! The dress has capped sleeves so I wore my ever so favourite Charter School Cardigan in Black and my favourite black tights.

I FINALLY got a chance to wear these awesome shoes that I bought at Call It Spring in the summer while they were on sale. They are black and white but they are super hard to wear because of the stripy design. They are very high but still fairly comfortable too.

I decided to keep the look clean and classic with some faux pearl jewellery. Both necklace and earrings are from Suzy Shier.

Makeup was fairly simple today. Just liquid liner and my Mac Rebel Lipstick and Currant liner. As like yesterday, please excuse my exhausted face lol. I have dark circles like crazy these days.

Clueless Inspiration

A few nights ago, the Handsome Biscuit (Nate) and I were relaxing with some chocolate and beer/wine when the movie, Clueless, started playing on Much Music. I absolutely adore that movie! I remember being in total awe of Cher’s entire wardrobe in that movie. She wore a lot of plaid and “school girl” looks that I’ve always loved. Today’s outfit is definitely inspired by Cher’s Clueless looks.

I started today’s outfit with a royal blue button down 3/4 legth sleeve shirt from Suzy Shier and a mini (not so mini on me) blue, grey, and white plaid skirt, also from Suzy Shier. Both were purchased about 6 years ago. To up the Cher factor, I added a black sweater from Le Chateau over top the shirt. This is a look I’ve been doing for years because it just looks awesome, whether with a sweater, vest, or dress. A button down always looks good underneath something with a collar or sleeves popping out.

Black tights and black boots were added to finish the look. I was very tempted to wear my over the knee boots to mimic the high socks Cher always wears in the movies but thought that might look too childish for work.

For makeup I went with a super smokey eye shadow look in Silver and Midnight from my Smashbox Double Exposure palette.  In this picture the midnight blue looks more like charcoal but it’s blue.

With my eyes being so dark I just went with a light lipstick and chose my go-to nude shade of MAC Brave lipstick and Mac Soar liner.

Please excuse the obvious exhaustion in my face. It’s 10:20am and I’m still not fully awake (this was taken at 6:15am).

A Holly Jolly Christmas

Hey Biscuiteers, I hope you all had a great Christmas/Happy Holidays! My little baby biscuit got so many presents that I don’t even have room for all of them! I got some pretty sweet gifts too like makeup and the best gift…a MODCLOTH gift certificate! So of course I used that GC immediately on boxing day. These are the items I purchased with my Modcloth GC:

Onto some of the fashion from the Christmas holiday. Christmas Eve was the big fashion day as I always dress up for my family’s get together. I decided to go for a slick and chic black and white look which just a pop of colour in the shoes and makeup. I decided to wear a black turtleneck from Le Chateau that was one of my first purchases when I started working there 10 years ago. It still looks excellent and has never faded after so many washes. I wore it with my Stripe it Lucky skirt from Modcloth (all sizes still available at $44.99). I LOVE this skirt! It is super cute and comfortable and very stylish. Some people might find it too poofy but I love the poof! I also wore some black tights and my favourite bordeaux heels from Call It Spring. (There are still 4 sizes left at $27.99 in this colour and all sizes left in black at $49.99).

For makeup I’m only going to focus on my eyes because I’ve already talked about this lip colour many times. I decided to wear the gold/green Coastal Scents shadow that I received in my December Birchbox (see previous blog for details). I really love the combo of this gold and green together. It’s too bad that the shadow started to crease after only a few hours.

For nail polish I wore the same nail polish I use every Christmas which is Dear Santa by OPI. Unfortunately they no longer sell it and the only one I know that looked close to it, Friar Friar Pants on Fire, also looks to be discontinued as well.

My son wore an adorable outfit from Gymboree. The shirt is onsale for $7.99, the pants are onsale for $7.99, and the tie is onsale for $5.99 right now.

For Christmas day, I didn’t dress fancy at all so no pictures were taken of me but my son looked super stylin’ in another outfit from Gymboree. Unfortunately the entire outfit is sold out.

On Boxing Day we had another party. I just wore a basic black dress and my cat scarf that I’ve already shown on this blog in other posts so I didn’t take a full outfit picture but I did get some pics of accessories and makeup.

With my dress I wore my Spot of Spontaneity Tights in Cranberry from Modcloth and a chunky ring from Suzy Shier.

For my eye makeup, I wore two colours from the new Smashbox Double Exposure palette that I got for Christmas. I wore Peony and Haze, which are the two colours after the silver and blue in the palette. I love these colours together!

And here’s the palette I got:

All in all it was a great holiday weekend and it sucks that it’s over. I hope all of you had a great holiday as well!

December Birchbox Review

This is the first Birchbox I’ve received since I started this blog so this is my first review! I’m basically just going to go through the initial unboxing and then I will go through each item I received.

For those of you who do not know what Birchbox is, it is a monthly beauty box subscription. It’s $9.99 a month plus shipping (this is the Canadian pricing) so it ends up being just under $14 a month. I believe you have the choice to subscribe monthly or you can do 3, 6, and 12 month increments for a deal rate. I chose to do the monthly so on the first of every month, Birchbox charges my debit Visa and then the box gets shipped on the 10th of that month. It usually comes in within 5 days of the shipping date. Once it ships, you can log onto the site and see what you are getting. You also now have the choice every month to choose one item that you get in each box. You also get to help customize your boxes by filling out your profile so you get items that are based on your skin colour and tone, hair style and colour and so on. Most items in the box are sample sized but sometimes you get full size items. Their website also sells the full size items so if you like the sample, you can buy more there.

Each monthly box is a different colour and design based on a theme. For December, Birchbox chose a white and silver design to mimic snow.

The first thing you always see when you open your box is a little note talking about the box and theme on one side of the sheet.

The other side always has a breakdown of the items that are in your box. These are the items that were in my box.

As an extra gift, Birchbox also gave everyone a $10 gift certificate to buy full size items on their site. I don’t have money right now to buy anything from them and this GC expires Jan 10th so if any of you people reading  this want to use it, go ahead and use the code below. First come first serve, of course. Merry Christmas!

Finally I see the items!

First up is a FULL SIZE Twistick from Lord and Berry in the colour Shut Up, which is a lovely raspberry colour.

To me, it’s not really a lipstick as its texture is like a balm/gloss and it comes off very easily. Its something that I wouldn’t use on a regular basis because I like lipsticks that stay on. I would probably use this to go out somewhere where I know I’m going to be eating something messy because I know this will just come off easily and not end up on my face. It’s also a good idea to keep this in your purse as an emergency lipstick just in case something comes up and you want some colour on your lips.

Next is the item I was most excited about because we had the chance to choose the colours we wanted. I had been wanting green eye shadow but didn’t buy any because I was waiting for this t come in and the colours do not disappoint! These are just two colours that normally come in a larger Palette by Coastal Scents. I wore them on Christmas Eve and the colours are gorgeous. I will have a picture of them on my lids in my next blog. The only thing I didn’t like is that they started to crease after just a few hours, even with a primer. That’s a deal breaker for me so I won’t be buying any shadow from Coastal Scents. I’ll still use these but I may have to use more primer.

Next up is a Protect and Detangle hair elixir by Beauty Protector. I used this on Thursday after washing my hair and I loved it (it’s a leave in spray)! I’m still not sure if it works better than my Davines IO All In One Milk but it definitely works and it smells delicious!!!!

Next there’s a ceramidin liquid by Dr. Jart+. It’s a face liquid that has ceramides that help to calm and hydrate skin. I haven’t used it yet.

Lastly the box came with a perfume sample that came in an extra package (I’m assuming its so it doesn’t break open). The fragrance is called Always Loved by My Daughter Fragrance. I’m not going to mince words…this stinks. I am so picky about perfume and this is just gross to me. I’m not a fan of florals or patchouli in my perfumes so this is going to probably be given away to someone else.

And that’s my Birchbox review! I’m pretty happy with this one, as I was with my September one but October and November’s boxes were a waste of money. I think I’m going to stick around for January’s box and see if it’s good. If it’s not good I think I may cancel my subscription if I feel it’s no longer worth it.

Scarves and Lopsided Buns

It’s casual week here at work because of Christmas (well it’s always casual now but I’m old school and still dress up Monday-Thursday) so I’ve decided to just lump the last two days of outfits together into one post.

Yesterday I went with a nice and comfortable purple and grey theme. My grey graphic print shirt and purple sweater are both old purchases from Suzy Shier and my jeans are another old purchase from Bluenotes. My awesome scarf was bought a few years back at Le Chateau and my grey boots were a splurge purchase many years ago from Aldo. Excuse my poorly done lopsided bun lol. I was in a rush and was also too lazy to fix it.

I love these Aldo boots. They are a lovely grey but it’s more of a brown grey instead of a blue grey so they sometimes look brown in pictures.

I think the earrings I chose yesterday were bought at Suzy Shier. They are definitely one of my favourite pairs.

My awesome purple glasses are from Zenni Optical. I love this place because you can get sweet designs and cool frames at super cheap prices! SUPER CHEAP. For example, the glasses that I currently have in my cart on the site are $23.95. And these are quality glasses, they just don’t have name brands. These purple ones have lasted me 7 or 8 years so far.

To add to the purple theme I wore my Kat Von D Studded Lipstick in Wolvesmouth.

For today’s look, I wanted to look a little more Christmasy (I know that’s not a word) so I decided to wear some red! My red shirt is from Le Chateau. It’s amazing when I wear my old Le Chateau stuff because it really shows how much the sizing has changed over the years. This shirt is a size XS. Even on my wedding day I was not wearing XS, yet here I am, 30 pounds heavier, wearing an XS. If this shirt was sold today it would be sold as a Large…maybe a Medium. My jeans are Bluenotes and I’m pretty sure my cute little red flats were bought at Suzy Shier. My fabulous scarf was given to me as a gift last year from work. As you can see, the lopsided bun is still there because it didn’t unravel at all while I slept last night lol.

My shoes are a little worse for wear. But I’ve had some great use out of them!

My lovely faux pearl earrings are from Le Chateau.

For makeup I wore my Russian Red Mac lipstick and I had a little more fun with my eye shadow by creating a winged look with the dark brown shadow instead of with black liner. I really like how it lifts my whole face and makes my eyes pop even more. 

Now hurry up, 4pm! I have a Christmas to get ready for!

A Little Bit Country

My poor little baby biscuit is having such a horrible day today. He struggled to fall asleep last night and he was miserable while I was getting ready for work today. Usually he’s either napping or playing in his jumper while I get ready but today, his nap was earlier and his jumper wasn’t keeping him entertained. I moved him to his crib, then his playpen, then his excersaucer but nothing worked. He just cried after 10 minutes in each place. Finally the little butt calmed down when I sat with him in my lap. Poor little dude. Pretty sure it’s the teething and the fact that he now understands when I’m leaving for work and he doesn’t like that. We haven’t had a full day together in a week so I’m sure that’s getting to him. I’ll be happy when Wednesday evening comes around and I have the little guy all to myself until next Monday.

Luckily, during Nolan’s first nap, I decided to get a head start on getting ready by grabbing my outfit that I had planned in my head the night before. Good thing I did because the shirt I originally wanted to wear (a cute cream colour sleeveless blouse with a white peter pan collar and little cats on it) doesn’t fit my chest at all! I know it will when I lose the weight but it really looked like it was big enough :(. Anyway, I didn’t want to overhaul the entire outfit so I frantically looked for something to replace it. Luckily I found a shirt that could work with my vision: a canary yellow 3/4 sleeve button down shirt that I bought from Jacob Express almost 10 years ago when it still existed. The rest of the outfit consisted of my Charter School Cardigan in Navy, Justfab brown boots (featured previously), navy tights, and a old jean skirt from Bluenotes. I also threw on my navy chunky necklace from Avon that I featured on a previous blog.

After taking pictures I realized I look like a modern country girl with the jean skirt and boots! All I need is a cowboy hat! I’m liking this kinda country look. These boots just inspire that look 😉

For makeup I just did the usual stuff that I’ve already previewed here before but here’s a picture of my eye shadow. I showcased these colours in a previous blog.

 

Oh and before I go, look at this adorable Yoda hat my co-worker, Shaylyn, got for my baby biscuit! The force will be strong with him!!!

 

You Better Work, Pig!

Ok ok, before people start wondering about the title, believe me, this blog is aptly named. Last night, some girlfriends and I went to The Works for dinner and as usual, I made a large piggy of myself. That’s not the reason for my title of this blog though. The reason is because of the delicious and ridiculous burger I ordered: the Gettin’ Piggy With It. This burger comes packed with delicious pigginess! A bacon & beef patty, Canadian bacon, cheddar, smoked bacon, bacon ketchup & crunchy onion strings. OMG it was awesome! I also had a Poutini Martini, which is Fresh cut fries, cheese curds, gravy & crispy breaded onion rings. I was stuffed and super sick but it was worth it!!! I would suggest to everyone that has a Works in their area to go! Other Burgers I’ve had there are Man Cave, War Pig, Dead Ringer, and Notorious P.I.G.

Excuse the fuzziness of the picture below. A friend took it with her cell phone.

Because it was just a nice casual night out, I didn’t want to get fancy with my outfit. Plus I wanted to make sure my pants wouldn’t kill my stomach after my meal lol. But I still wanted to look nice because I rarely get the chance to go out with friends these days. I went with some Bluenotes skinny jeans and the rest of my outfit was from Modcloth. I wore my Polka-Dot Darling Top, (sold out) Charter School Cardigan in Black and my The List Goes Awe and On Heels (sold out). I also went with a lip tint instead of a full on lipstick because I knew my lips with get ruined but I still wanted my lips to show in the pictures. I wore Tarte’s Lipsurgence Lip Tint in Classy (dark berry), which looks to be sold out.

Calling All Pin Up Enthusiasts!

Happy Friday Biscuiteers! So today’s outfit is nothing special to go in detail about so I’ll just write a quick blurb about it with 3 pics at the end of this blog post.

Today I wanted to do a blog about another online clothing store that I love called Pinup Girl Clothing. I’ve showcased the crap out of Modcloth and I talked about Romwe yesterday so I thought it would be a good idea to showcase other sites I like too. I LOVE the dresses on this website. I’ve actually never bought anything from them but that’s only because I hate the price of their shipping and I’m hoping that they will eventually start using a better shipping method to Canada. I have worn one of their dresses before and loved it and I have so many of their dresses on my wishlist. Pinup Girl Clothing specializes in, of course, pin up type clothing. They don’t just do dresses. They have tops, pants, skirts, shoes, purses, and the most darling swimwear! They frequently have 20% off sales as well for people on their mailing list, same as Modcloth does.

Here’s a few of their dresses I currently have on my wishlist.

The black polka-dot one below is one that I wore for a Pin Up shoot I did back in early 2014 with Lady Luck Pin Ups Photography.

Aren’t these dresses soooooo pretty?! I want them all!

And just because this blog is usually about my outfits…today was casual Friday at work so I just wore a pair of skinny Jeans from Bluenotes (I only wear Bluenotes jeans because they fit amazing and last forever), one of my fave loose sweaters from Suzy Shier, JustFab boots, my cat scarf from Modcloth, and a grey/blue leather jacket from Danier Leather. Simple but cute 🙂

Nothing Beats a Good Dress

Before I get started with the OOTD (outfit of the day) I want to talk about a new clothing website I was recently introduced to by another fashion blogger called ROMWE. It’s pretty hit and miss when it comes to the style of clothes I like but there are a few nice dresses and the prices are ridiculous! Right now there’s a huge sale going on and as a new customer you get an extra 55% off with your welcome email. I didn’t get a welcome email when I joined last night but then today I got an email offering me 65% off the two items I had left in my shopping cart. SCORE! So I got these two dresses for under 50 bucks Canadian!

I am sooooooooooo excited to get them! I just hope they are not crap since I’ve never bought stuff from this place before lol.

Onto today’s outfit! As my title today states, nothing beats a good dress! Anyone who knows me, knows I have a dress obsession. I have an entire closet just for dresses, so my go-to thing to wear at work is usually a dress. Today I looked into my closet for a dress that of course, would fit me right now, and I found another stretchy dress that I bought during my pregnancy. Funny enough, I purchased this Meet Me At The Punch Bowl Dress in Oceanside during last year’s Modcloth Black Friday sale for an amazing $29.99 (The actual price is $59.99 and it’s still available in a few sizes and it’s also available in a berry colour).

I just love the colour and style of this dress. The shape/style and material of this dress are extremely flattering for all body types. The deep v neck is definitely troublesome for larger breasts but you just need to add a fancy cami like I did and voila, it’s work appropriate! I paired it with a black cardigan and added some antiqued fashion jewellery for some much needed drama!

I scrounged around my tights and pantyhose looking for something patterned to wear and found these super cute black polkadot pantyhose. For shoes I chose one of my favourite pairs of heels from Modcloth that I recently purchased. They are gorgeous but they are incredibly painful. They are fine for sitting but it’s REALLY painful to walk in them. I think I’ll have to buy some insoles for them tonight.

At first, when I pulled this outfit together, I thought it was pretty boring. After I took these pictures I changed my mind. I really do love this outfit. Great dress and great shoes make all the difference.

For makeup I decided to go with my Cynthia Rowley blue liner and my MAC Girl About Town lipstick and MAC More To Love lip liner. I love a bold lip and fuchsia always pops when wearing darker colours.

One more day till the weekend! So excited! Oh and Christmas is coming!!!!! This makes me happy 🙂

 

April Showers Bring December Flowers

It’s December 16th and I was outside without a winter coat today! I am loving this mild weather we are having right now for many reasons. I don’t have to wear a winter coat which is awesome because none of them fit me right now anyway. I get to wear cute shoes. Also, I don’t have to bundle up my son when he goes outside or worry that his room is way too cold (it doesn’t hold the heat at all).

Other than the awesome weather today, I also had a very easy supply day supervising a Safe Talk Suicide Prevention workshop. I’ve supervised at least 8 of these sessions in the last few years so I’m certified in Safe Talk as well as the level above called ASIST. Safe Talk basically teaches students how to spot when someone is suicidal and how to be like a band aid to those people by letting them know that there is someone that is prepared to listen to them and get them to people that can help them. The people that can help them are people trained in ASIST. ASIST training teaches adults how to talk people down from suicidal thoughts and keep them safe. I really think that all teachers should have to take both courses because suicide in young people keeps growing, as it is with people in their 30’s as well. I’m glad that school boards are bringing this kind of training into the schools so that kids feel more comfortable talking about this issue and be more prepared to deal with it.

Ok onto today’s outfit! Along with the boots and hat I purchased on Black Friday, I also bought the Abiding Beauty Dress in Bouquets from Modcloth because it was on sale and I had saved some money to buy something from Modcloth that weekend. All sizes are still available to purchase. I got the dress in the mail yesterday and was pretty happy with the way it looked. I didn’t love the material but it was fine for the price. When I got home from work last night I decided to try it on to see if it already fit and it fit amazingly well because it’s so stretchy, so I’d say the dress the style does run a little large. Because it fit, I decided to wear it today. The shape of the dress is very flattering. Right now it fits me like an empire waist dress because of how large dem boobs are lol. But I know that when I lose the weight and it fits more at my natural waist, it will still look good because of the A-line bottom portion. I really liked the floral pattern of the dress but what really made the dress stand out for me was the super cute brown bow belt. Unfortunately, the belt is so poorly made! It’s one of those stupid belts with a little metal ball that goes into the belt holes. Who comes up with this crap thinking it’s a good idea?! That damn belt kept popping off me all day because the ball made the hole bigger as I moved around. I kept moving it between three different holes. Someone at work suggested I attach a Velcro thing to it. I think I might have to.

Along with the dress I wore black tights and my Justfab cognac boots that I reviewed a few weeks ago.

For jewellery I wore a few amber pieces that I bought from Vivah when I worked there. Click here to find out more about amber.

My outdoors look included a jean jacket I bought from Old Navy a few years ago, a beige/brown Le Chateau pashmina scarf, and a crochet black hat from Suzy Shier.

For makeup I wore the same eye shadow that I wore yesterday (Smashbox Quad in Socialite) and my Twig lipstick and Whirl liner by MAC.

I really hope this weather continues so I can keep wearing cute outfits!