Striped Sundresses and Care Packages

I have passions outside of fatshion. Many in fact, but for this post we'll focus on just three of them. Baking, care packages and Jamie.

Jamie, like many of my beloved friends lives far away from Brooklyn in a land called Los Angeles. The distance is difficult, but we try and stay as close as if we lived down the street from one another. One of the ways is our baking tin. Basically Jamie and I bake and then pack it up in the same tin that we cover with stickers and then we ship it cross country. There's always little love notes and sometimes we pack in little presents and then, once in a blue moon I open my box to discover crazy surprises like this. Blondies, a dress and a gorgeous, metallic purple handbag - an early birthday present. Jamie (and Yoni and JuJu spoil me terribly). I do love them so.

As long time readers may remember, I have been the recipient of many wonderful Jamie hand-me-downs over the years, although this wasn't so much a hand-me-down. She said she bought it at Loehmann's, tried it on repeatedly and then finally decided that it really was just calling my name so off to New York she sent it.

I have to say I absolutely LOVE it! It's great and summery and it can stand alone without many accessories, however as you all know I have trouble saying no to accessories. Note the yellow sandals from Old Navy.

My office is so freezing that even though it's 100 degrees outside I always have to have a layer close by. My cute cropped cardi is from Banana Republic and it kills me that they haven't re-issued it as I have loved it to pieces.

My favorite part of the dress is the pockets! Dresses with pockets always make me smile.

And since I can't resist accessories, even though the dress doesn't need them, here you have a closeup of my headband from Dorothy Perkins and my necklace from Primark. Oh dear London (and your shops), I can't wait for my next trip, I've missed you so.

Jamie I hope the dress is just as you imagined it would be on me. I love you and miss you terribly.

My New Favorite Summer Dress

Some days an outfit just comes together in a magical sort of way. Today was one of those days.

I picked up this dress at Re/Dress NYC in a mega sale they were having for next to nothing - something like $5. I think it was so marked down because the dress was originally a maxidress, and when I say maxi I mean it was so long it was dragging on the floor when I put it on my 5'4 self. So I took it to my local dry cleaner to get it shortened and ended up spending triple what I spent on the dress getting it shortened. Joy of joys.

I have a not so great history of getting dresses shortened (or really most anything) and getting them an inch or two shorter than I really wanted. I have to thank the lovely folks at my local tailor for reminding me that if I was planning on belting it I needed an extra inch or two. The length ended up being perfect.



I added a pink belt that I got ages ago from Torrid to give the dress some more definition. I tried to restrain my other accessories, but it was difficult when I had the most perfect shoes to go with the outfit.

See these are just absolutely perfect. They're from Topshop and a billion years old but doesn't look it because I rarely have the patience to wear 4 inch wedges. And even though I knew I shouldn't, I threw on some green hoop earrings.

And finally I had to show how my nails matched my outfit perfectly! I promise this was totally unplanned as I painted my nails several days ago. Btw I am obsessed with this tumblr dedicated to nail art.

All in all, the perfect summer dress for the perfect summer day.

Will I See You Tonight?

As most fastshion readers are likely aware, this weekend Gabi from Young, Fat and Fabulous is hosting a "conference" for fatshion bloggers. I say "conference because she only invited 9 bloggers to participate which doesn't quite make something a conference in my mind, but that's semantics. There are less than a dozen bloggers and folks are coming from all over the world for it, so the fact that I'm not invited is really not a big deal. I do wish though that the conference had at least one blogger who was larger than a size 24 and more varied styles, but I obviously do not make these decisions.

Anyways, while most of the conference is hidden away from the public, tonight at Re/Dress NYC there will be a meet and greet from 6-9 where you can meet all of the participating bloggers and me - I'm going to be there too! I'm really excited to meet Sakina from Saks in the City as she's one of my absolute favorite bloggers.

Are any of you planning on attending? If so, please be sure to introduce yourself to me. I love, love, love meeting readers.

Hopefully I'll be seeing some of you tomorrow. I'll be the girl in...uh...god, I still need to figure out what to wear. I'll be in clothes, likely bright ones.

Sparkles, Feathers and Public Nudity

Almost all of my favorite holidays take place in the fall - Election Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Sukkot. However the big exception to this rule is the annual Coney Island Mermaid Parade which is a huge homegrown, homemade, very Brooklyn parade that is held the first weekend of the summer. Ostensibly the theme of the parade is mermaids, sea creatures, the ocean and a celebration of summer - all of which I love. It's also an excuse to get naked in public, which is also something I love. You can read more about it on wikipedia.

I've been going for years and I've marched for the past two years, but I've never been 100% happy with my costume until this year. This year I marched with a group of friends and our theme was Red Tide. Our cohesive aspect was that all of our costumes would be red, other than that we could wear/be anything we wanted. I freaked out a little over this because I don't own very much red and I couldn't come up with a costume idea. Two days before the parade my friend suggested I be a devil mermaid and I finally started to get behind my idea.

I quickly realized that while I don't own much red outerwear, it's a fairly prevalent color in lingerie drawer, and really I didn't need much more than that for my costume.

The base of my outfit - the matching bra and panties are from Lane Bryant and I've had them for years and I love them. I don't have enough matching bra and panties in my life, a true tragedy dear readers. I realize you can barely see my underwear because I wrapped a red feather boa (a long ago present) around my waste to liven up the outfit.

But a bra and underwear do not a mermaid or a devil make and most definitely not a devil mermaid, so I began to get crafty.

I made my mermaid tail from cellophane wrapping paper and a red plastic table cloth. I added some plastic sea kelp-esque plants to the tail so it looked a bit more underwater and I tacked on my store bought devil tail on top.

I made the devil ears myself using some foam from the local crafts store and I made the trident/pitchfork using some pipe cleaners. I hadn't used pipe cleaners in years - lord they're amazing.

My makeup and rhinestones were a group affair and for that I thank the fabulous members of the Red Tide. I never would have looked so good without ample amounts of assistance from them. Thanks for one of my favorite days of the summer.

The unseen hero of the day and perhaps the most important component of my outfit was copious amounts of Body Glide. Now I know when I first blogged about it I said I didn't know how it would fare for long periods of time and/or on a very hot day. Well the Mermaid Parade was both a loooong day and a hot day and I danced down the parade route with nothing between my legs and had zero chub rub at the end of the day. Body Glide is so my new best friend.

If interested, you can check out my large and (forewarning) completely unedited set of photos from the Mermaid Parade right here. I think this may be my very favorite one of the bunch.

Yay for mermaids, fun and fat body visibility all at once!

Thanks for Voting

Oh my dear, darling readers thank you for all of your feedback on last weeks dress poll. The first, sexy secretary dress appears to be a clear favorite and that's the one that I am going to take as a present from my lovely friend T. Right now it's too hot to wear much of anything, particularly anything that tight but when I do wear it out properly I promise to post it the same day.

I hope I didn't bore you with voting because on Friday is the Young Fat and Fabulous Conference blogger meet and greet at Re/Dress NYC and I have absolutely no idea what to wear. Suggestions anyone? Do you have a favorite outfit of mine that I've worn in the past that you think I should wear? If I don't hear from you, forewarning that I'll probably end up posting 8 different outfits on Thursday and make you all vote all over again.

Sorry it's been so long since a proper post, but tomorrow I promise to post my Mermaid Parade Costume. I was away in the country this weekend with friends and while I thought I would have lots of time to post, the only time I touched my computer was to look up recipes and get directions. There was a lot of sunning, reading, cooking, laughing, game playing, swimming, baking and chatting, but not much time for posting. Oh and there was poolside karaoke - my personal highlight was singing Mika's Big Girl You are Beautiful in my bathing suit while my friends cheered from the pool. Tee hee hee. Long weekends away with good friends are much needed. I hope all of you had weekends as lovely as mine.