Glam for the Low Maintenance

I'm not a slave to fashion-no one would ever put me in the fashionista category, but I don't think I would be a nominee for What Not to Wear either.  I like to look clean, neat, and appropriately dressed, but don't have the knowledge and probably wouldn't care if I did, to wear the latest designer styles or follow makeup trends.   I don't throw money at name brand products when the less expensive off brand does the trick, but I have a few favorites products I cling to.  I love a nice apricot facial scrub, and let it do double duty as an elbow and knee exfoliator.  I can get out the door, from shower to hair coiffed in fifteen minutes, so am thrifty with time as well.  That last bit was ingrained since childhood as I had so many siblings, and a one bathroom house, I  had to learn to be fast.  This extended into my adult hood, with college roommates, and marrying a man that seems to need considerably more grooming time.  As the kids got older, I also had to compete with teenagers for the bathroom as well.

So where am I going with this?  As I get older, I'm finding my  scraped back, get out the door routine might be fine for every day, but when it comes to going out with friends and my husband at night, I'd like to look a bit more put together, as opposed to thrown together.   I know Facebook is at least one part exaggeration, and another part choice photography, but so many of my friends and acquaintances seemed to have blossomed in their empty nester years, and I still look like the car pool lane mom of three. I don't mean they look like jet setters, magazine models, or presidential candidates, but they look self-assured and confident. A couple friends look like the stylish grandmas I hope to be someday; playing it cool with their young grandkids, sporting jeans and just the right tops.  A work friend can wear scarves like no one I know.  She doesn't have an extensive work wardrobe, but has scarves by the dozen, and mixes and matches them depending on her day, or color she wants to accent. 

My one claim to middle years self-confidence is my relatively wrinkle free and spot free complexion.  I wasn't one for sun bathing as a teen, and was usually wearing a cap of some sort when I was out in the sun.  Perhaps my lack of convoluted beauty routine helped-less scrubbing and pulling on my skin.  For makeup though, even when I took the time, it was nothing more than a little foundation, blush, and mascara.  Lip stick and eye shadows kind of scare me as I picture that I will look like one of those carnival caricature drawings.

 Here is my plea for help. What do you focus on for those special nights out?  What have you added to your day routine that has helped you perk up your self-confidence?  What are you go to "glam" products?   Do you have signature clothes pieces that help you feel like you are making your own statement?  Please join in the conversation. I love the idea of using vintage and repurposed items-old things worn in new ways, so those of you who have done a makeover with your own closet, I want to learn from you.  Blog pages you rely on are appreciated.

The Beauty of Ordinary Days

"Well, that's what life is - this collection of extraordinarily ordinary moments. We just need to pay attention to them all. Wake up and pay attention to how beautiful it all is." -Alexander Payne

About half way through the movie Nebraska, I started realizing just about every character resembled someone either I knew or remembered from my childhood.  I was a little bored up until that point, but was a captive audience as it was a limited selection on a transatlantic flight, and I was wide awake.  The basic premise is a man thinks he has won a grand prize, and is intent to go claim it, despite his age and deteriorating health.  His son agrees to take him, and they end up bonding in an ordinary, yet unexpected way for both of them. I felt my mind drifting, remembering some of the events that were part of my life.  Well actually, none would be considered an event, but rather moments, ingrained in my memory.  Since losing my parents, mom four years ago, and dad two years ago, the memories while bittersweet, in looking back, become simply beautiful moments.

I'm old enough to remember the days before pump your own filling stations, and my dad pulling up to the pump Sunday mornings after church, filling the car for my mom for the week ahead.  There was one station with the "hot"  pump attendant, and getting a look at him while he used the soapy water and squeegee to clean the windows. While he was  beautiful to look at, the real beauty was in the weekly ritual, which meant my mom didn't have to start Monday morning, or any other morning with a stop at the gas station, an ordinary action that in its meaning was anything but ordinary.

I remember the memorial day services, and meeting up with other family friends for hot dogs and pop, at the VFW club later in the day.  These men, friends, more like brothers,  of my dad's, were of the Greatest Generation, WWII vets. I remember walking down to the same VFW club after middle school sports, where my mom sometimes, not often, stopped for a little beverage instead of going home after work, saving a trip back into town. If we weren't in a hurry, she would sit and visit with friends sipping her sloe gin and orange juice, while my sister and I munched on Old Dutch potato chips and a coke from the mixer gun, freezing cold over ice.  I remember wedding receptions of my sisters, and anniversary parties for my parents in the back social hall.  There is still a VFW post in our small town, but the cost of upkeep, and diminishing interest in a "club" meant the post sold the bar and accompanying hall, no longer deemed fancy enough for the weddings of today. The vets now meet in a space in a strip mall.

Being 10 of us kids, one of us was often the acolyte on Christmas morning, as my dad ushered. I remember my dad being beside me one Christmas morning, when I woke up in the little overflow room next to the church sanctuary, after fainting in the front of the church.  I was the acolyte, lighting the Christmas morning candles.  I foolishly wore a  new hot sweater, underneath the acolyte robe, which added to a crowded church, meant a recipe for disaster.

 My mom, each summer, used one of her precious vacation weeks, to  support our 4-H activities around the county fair.  As we girls were the ultimate procrastinators, it was not uncommon to be sewing a hem, or wrapping a loaf of bread the morning of judging.  She would get us to and from the fairgrounds, and take a full day shift working the 4-H lunch counter with us as well.  My parents were not particularly demonstrative, but they created beautiful moments in ordinary days. 

My dad found the styles his grand kids wore in his later years a bit perplexing.  He always got a chuckle at seeing the girls in their name brand blue jeans with fashionable wear and tear on new models. My daughter was running late yesterday morning to church, and threw on an old pair of comfortable jeans.  The jeans were clean, but even by our own casual contemporary worship standards, a bit "holier" than I would have liked. She sat and played with a hole in her knee during the sermon.  The words of my dad came in my head and I wrote my daughter a little note on the pew note pad. "Grandpa would be wondering if you paid for those holes."  She smiled, and wrote back.  "No he would have said, 'I could have made those holes and saved you a bunch of money."  I smiled, but felt a tear in the corner of my eye.

That's my dad and me in one of the "big moments".