Event: Trying to get ready

I have a wedding to go to on Saturday, one of my nephews who I haven’t seen since he was 2, I think that’s how long it is, maybe another time, but mostly it’s just through pictures I know him. At any rate, I don’t feel so good this week, things feel more behind than usual because Frank was here for so long without any trips due to his contract being let go suddendly when he didn’t have any others at the time, and then now he’s been gone this week since he picked up another one.

We don’t really have extra money lying around, so it’s been super tight, missing one paycheck, but OK as long as … but that’s not the case now. I don’t have anything to wear on Saturday. My daughter needs new shoes to wear with her one decent enough dress to wear on Saturday. My 9-year old son needs something, no doubt, just what I’m not sure. My 2-year old son needs shoes to wear with the linen outfit my 9-year old wore for Easter in 2002, if it fits my 2-year old, which I don’t know yet, since it was dirty from cats sitting on it & now it’s wet … so maybe he does need shoes for it, or not. If not he needs new shoes & a new outfit.

My husband & 13-year old son have things to get by with.

I’m just frustrated with moving things around here as well, lately, and the mess that uncovers and makes everything else worse. I don’t have the energy to deal with much of it, and I have to get some other things washed and found earlier too that the baby seems to have gone into the laundry room and stopped the load I had going. That’s the most frustrating thing about a front loading washer I must say.

I need to color my hair, for the first time in ages and ages. My hair color is difficult to deal with, and gray/white is coming in more and more here and there, and it’s not nice on me. So I want to go more ash colored not darker, but a tad lighter. Problem is my reddish hair, a lot isn’t red, but light brownish, and others are slightly reddish and others are metallic red. I have a color kit to try and I’ve chickened out every time I’ve tried to make myself do it. Now it’s Thursday before the wedding and I have to wash my hair and dry it before I can do the coloring and I have to go to the airport in less than 3 hours and so it won’t get done today. Oh no! I’m in trouble.

I’ll be seeing at least 2 of my 3 sisters and some Aunt/Uncle/Cousins maybe too. It’s not that I have to travel far, not in trouble for that reason. It’s only a couple of hours away that we need to go, so we don’t have to get a hotel or anything and do this all in a strange place. I just like prepreparation way ahead and I am totally behind because of lack of energy and just as much, lack of money these past few weeks. Frustrating to no end.

Holiday Season 2007 – What To Wear

The initial “holiday season” is over … which is Thanksgiving, which brings in the “Christmas Season” practically, and in our home there is also something else, before or after Thanksgiving. It’s a birthday. This year it was the Sunday after, so “Christmas Season” for us feels like it doesn’t start until after that, and so it is such now.

There is a wedding later in December for us to get ready for, and I can kill two birds with one stone this year. Getting something for each child to wear for Christmas and the wedding, just one outfit, holiday nice-enough for a wedding, Christmas Day just to look nice and for pictures that day, and we usually go out to the movies as well, dressed nice. I will hopefully be able to get the clothes and something for me too, and do it soon enough to get a family picture to send around. Oops. I can’t believe I wrote the above and totally forgot about the baby! I didn’t really in writing, but did forget about him in thinking about the “outfits” in my mind.

I had gotten nice flannel shirts for each boy from Osh Gosh, and thought about having them wear them with Osh Gosh jeans for a picture, but that doesn’t really go with the “holiday nice-enough” idea of “wedding”-able. So I have to re-think and do something else. My thoughts have been to find nice winter sweaters and turtlenecks with babycord pants. Of course, we don’t have any of that, except one boy does have a black turtleneck he could wear if we found a sweater to go with it that is good for his “Spring”-ish (not sure if he’s a true Spring or a mix with Autumn perhaps … but maybe not) coloring (black just being a very small accent, to wear underneath something more colorful.)

The baby does have a couple of turtlenecks he could wear, but no “nice pants” nor any “sweater” of any sort. Nor any “nice shoe-things” either.

I have such “casual” stuff for all the boys. Not that I’m looking for “formal” anything, no, just “moreso dressy-er” — and for my girl, she has had dresses every year for quite a few now, that are lovely, from Strasbourg Children, but I don’t have anything that fits her that is even a “tad” dressy that isn’t summer-y.

Now then, it’s me that’s the problem. I’m 5 months post-baby-born, and not able to wear many things either because I’m breastfeeding or just weirdly shaped still. So most of my stuff I have to wear that I CAN wear is non-holiday, and not very nice over all. Very, very, very casual.

So now I’m wondering just how I’ll be able to pull this off. The only thing I have that I could do, if it fit, which it doesn’t, is a lovely wool skirt and blazer “set” that I got at Dillards a couple of years ago. It’s a blue and black plaid pleated fairly long skirt and a solid blue blazer and they don’t, as I said above, fit me now. The blazer, sure, I could wear it, but it’s the skirt that’s the problem, just not able to get it put together right still. If I could, then it’s just a blouse I’d need to find.

We’ll have more money to burn come 2008, but January is too late to have anything to do with December clothes needed. Oh, well. So I’ll just have to wait until the end of this week and see what we can squeeze out of everything to make something do-able in the clothing department. The hardest part though is going to be finding a solution for me at all, and being able to afford the girl solution (which I could find easily at the SC store, mentioned above.) Then next in line is finding the right thing for the boys to wear.

I wasn’t into “matching” things for the boys before, just co-ordinate nicely enough together — that was with 2 boys. Now there’s a third boy, though he’s still a baby, but he has the same coloring as his oldest brother, and so it’s kind of nice to have them matching and then have the other brother in the same sort of thing but a different color. He’s a “Spring” as I said above, and the other two are blond, blue eyed “Summer” boys. It’s possible, just might be hard to pull off that way.

So I’m anxiously awaiting the end of the week to start solving this puzzle.