Fashion Therapy

I've realized lately (again) how important it is for me to have a hobby.  I've been feeling stressed, depressed, and even getting angry easily at the kids sometimes.  We are in a pretty stressful period as a family.  The other night I sat down after finally putting the baby to bed (he usually goes to sleep around 10-11PM) and decided to work on this blog.  It was incredible how just doing something fun, just for me - even a little bit frivolous some might say - made me feel so much better.  That was a few weeks ago and I'm just now getting back to it.  My husband graciously encouraged me to take a few hours to get out of the house to work on this, because he knows I need to do something besides feed a baby and entertain a toddler to feel like a whole person.  So anyway, this post is not really about clothes, but about being emotionally balanced.  That said, here is a post about what I wore to a conference almost 4 months ago...

We went to Amsterdam in August, so I knew I needed to dress well for the weather.  We would be in meetings a lot, but it could be rainy outside.  Of course, being a conference, I needed to look put together and at least slightly dressed up.  I also needed everything to be breastfeeding friendly and cover my postpartum belly, which feels like it will never disappear.  We've just been too busy for me to focus on my health, but hopefully in January I will be able to do that.  But that's another post for another day.

I'll start with what I packed:

 I only packed 3 shirts, which may seem a bit crazy for a 9-day trip.  But I did pack a few extra in case of baby messes, which I didn't put in the collage.  I had intended to pack more shirts, but when I started making outfits in the Stylebook app, I realized that I didn't need them.  I packed 2 skirts, 2 pairs of pants, a dress, and a jumpsuit.  It was easy to make outfits, because the jumpsuit is an outfit on its own, and I also used the green dress as a "shirt" with a skirt over it.  My accessories were pretty minimal, since I can't wear dangly earrings or necklaces with the baby.  I packed the sandals mostly to wear inside at meetings and the ankle boots for outside/rain.

Here are the outfits I wore: (I forgot to take a mirror picture with the last two)

I've become somewhat of an expert at packing for approximately a one-week trip.  I wear the same outfit to and from on the airplane.  I plan my outfits in advance on a calendar, so that I can repeat clothes without wearing something two days in a row.

Here is my calendar:

You can see that I wore the jumpsuit on 3 out of the 9 days - travel to and from, and then again on a meeting day.  I'm still not sold on how it looks on me, but it's incredibly versatile, and the reality is that nothing is going to make me look skinny except for diet and exercise.  So it works pretty well for now.

I wore the teal shirt with brown dress pants twice, on Sunday when most people were just arriving, and then again on a meeting day.

I wore the green dress twice, but I added the pink skirt over it the second time to make it look like a completely different outfit.

I wore the floral top and brown skirt only once, but they also could've easily been mix and matched if something had gotten dirty.  I had originally put the pink skirt with the floral top, but when I put all the outfits on the calendar, I realized it looked better to spread out the pink to different days.

The second Saturday was our day to walk around the city, so I wore jeans and ankle boots.  I had originally planned to wear a different t-shirt that day, but I bought the graphic tee at the conference.  I also wore my trench raincoat, but I ended up taking it off because it was too warm.

It's interesting how, with a little pre-planning, you can pack a lot less than you think.