On your own style

Won't you be glad when I am back at work and don't have all this posting time?

One of the housecleaning jobs I have done is to clean up my bookmarks on my computer. You know every time you come across a cool sewing site you click "add bookmark" and soon you have hundreds and hundreds. I have decided to do an edit and in doing so have divided those that reflect who I am from those that represent what I feel I should be.

So I am sorry but all those "how French women dress" blogs and sites are gone now. Along with all the ideal wardrobe advice. 

I think I need a real wardrobe before I need an ideal one. 

Why? Well because I am what I am and although I admire and learn some things from French style it would be pushing it to say that I would be comfortable in another skin. To tell you the truth too I find all those "what French women do" books and articles a little annoying. For a start I have lived in Montreal for quite a while and my dear husband's mother is French as in Acadienne. Now before anyone thinks that drinking red wine is going to make you French size I have to tell you that a lot of it is genetics not lifestyle. I mean my very wonderful mother-in-law and sisters-in-law love to eat, but those girls, well they are built like birds and nothing is going to change that or change me into that.

It's about coming to terms with who you are and where you came from and working on expressing that. Now I am not saying that if your background runs towards sweatshirts and running shoes with mom jeans at the supermarket that you should just stay there and not step up your game, I mean even my own mother knows what cilantro is for goodness sake, which she sure didn't when we were growing up, but it's like cooking, you integrate in new ideas if they are smart and suit you - you enjoy who you are and enjoy new ways of being that, and when you get dressed aim for some style and don't ever decide that the occasion, the day, or yourself isn't worth that effort.

Which brings me to healthy weight and living. I remember when I was a kid there was a pathologist who lived next door in our small town and when the hockey coach died in his early 40's, much to everyone's amazement because he was the fittest guy we knew, the doctor friend when quizzed about this man's arteries couldn't say much, but did say "you know sometimes it's not just what you eat, but what's eating you."

Doctors used to talk like that.

If you're traditionally built go with it and the way I look at weight is just to ask yourself if any of those pounds are there because you are not happy with who you are, and if they are, then that's what you have to lose first.  Eat just one serving most meals if you can and remember the foods that working people ate where you came from. Trouble is we all eat now as if every day was Sunday. Keep your body moving even if it is washing the floor. Don't make it harder than it has to be.

You have to like your own skin before you worry about what you put on it. So I have cut out all the self-improvement bookmarks and kept all the being myself ones. The blog sites on my sidebar are those I love and belong to sewers who make clothes I would wear myself and have the kind of style I aspire to. 

Cutting out the clutter.