Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Dressing The Part

It's not always feasible to dress in my fancy pinup clothes, but I try. I work from home, so, theoretically, I could work in my pajamas or yoga pants every day. I don't. Since I wanted to expand my business and have clients take me seriously, I made a pact with myself that, unless it was a major housecleaning day, a holiday or birthday baking day, or I was deathly ill, I would make an attempt to dress up.

It's tough to do without running water sometimes, but it's still so worthwhile to do. I always feel so much better about myself and my abilities when I take the time to put on something nice to wear, a little makeup, and do my hair. 

Oh... that "no running water" thing? Yeah, that's how we've been living for the last 3 and half years. My parents had a piece of undeveloped property that they said we could build on, so we did. There was an old, dilapidated house here that had to be torn down, but there was no power, no sewer, no phone, no Internet, and no water. My husband is a master auto body repairman and customizer, and he's used his talents and horse-trading abilities to get everything put in here... except water. Because we're trying to do this without debt - I have enough debt with my student loans - we have to save or get lucky to have the money to do it; the quotes we've gotten to have a well drilled out here are all around $20,000 US. The water table is 300 or so feet down, plus well casing, plus a pump, plus electrical, plus piping it to the house...  yeah, it's a pricey thing... so we're saving and hoping one of our car projects sells. In the meantime, we shower at my parents' place and haul in water to use in the house for all the household tasks, like toilet flushing, dish washing, etc. 

Because we're saving money for that, though, there isn't always money to spend on my pinup stuff, so I hoard coupons, stalk the swap and sell pages for clothes, and I buy cheaper stuff whenever possible. Most of my makeup was either on clearance or I bought it at the dollar store. I do my own hair - coloring, curling, cutting, etc - and I just don't do my nails... I keep them short because I play guitar and the strings mess up polish, anyway.

The one place that I don't go cheap is with faux eyelashes. Because they go near my eyes and because the cheap ones look fake and cheap, if I have extra money, I always buy my lashes from House of Lashes. I love their Noir Fairy and Smokey Muse lashes, and they're sturdy enough for repeated washings and uses. Yeah, if I am going to splurge, it's on eyelashes.

In order to make the pinup look work on a day-to-day basis, I have found ways of dressing down my dresses and skirts and blouses, mostly with colorful cardigans. I think it's still a little something of the designer in me or still a little girl playing dress up, but it is a whole lot of fun to mix and match stuff that maybe wasn't meant to go together. And it is possible to be a pinup without the clothes or makeup; like I've mentioned in another post, being a pinup is an attitude.

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