Stephany Writes

Categories: About Me

Building a Capsule Wardrobe, Part I

I’ll be completely honest: I’m not very fashionable. I think one of the main reasons why I don’t get too into fashion is due to being overweight. It’s not very fun to shop for clothes when you want to run out of every dressing room screaming once you see yourself in a three-way mirror.

I recognize that it’s very possible to be fashionable and look good even when you’re overweight. I see so many women my size who manage to make their size work for them, not against them. I’ve been putting off really honing in on my style and creating a wardrobe I love because I wanted to lose weight first. When I am at my perfect weight, then I can get my life started. This is how I approach many things in life: everything is going to fall into place and my life will be super perfect when I am finally at my happy weight.

The truth is even though I want to get to that happy weight and I am working towards that, there’s no reason to put off building a wardrobe I love. I’ve been putting this off for years because I wanted to lose weight first. But I still deserve to feel good and wear clothes that make me feel good, even at the size I am now. I need to stop thinking the girl I am now doesn’t deserve good things in life. She does. She deserves the effort, she deserves the time, she deserves to feel good even at an unhappy weight.

So that’s what I’m doing. I am going to work on putting together a capsule wardrobe. It’s going to take me a while, but I am really excited to take this on and find a style that makes me feel good. Because we all deserve to like our appearance and feel good about ourselves.

So, let’s talk capsule wardrobes! Basically, a capsule wardrobe is a small collection of essential clothing and accessories to use during a season. You want to choose classic pieces that won’t go out of style and can be mixed and matched in different ways and add a few seasonal pieces to the mix with each different capsule. Things that don’t count in a capsule include workout clothes, loungewear, pajamas, undergarments, and sentimental jewelry (such as a wedding ring).

For me, since I live in Florida and we don’t experience actual seasons, I’m only planning on creating a summer capsule and a winter capsule. It’s only August and we still have a good four months of hot weather ahead of us, so I’m going to work on building my summer capsule now.

It’s up to you how many pieces you want in your capsule wardrobe, but you do want to keep it minimal. For me, I am considering the below 35-piece wardrobe:

    • Skinny jeans – 1 pair
    • Dressy slacks (for work) – 2 pairs
    • Dressy capris (for work) – 1 pair
    • Capris – 2 pairs
    • Dresses – 2
    • Skirts – 2
    • Dressy shirts (for work) – 12
    • Cardigans (for work) – 4
    • Flats – 2
    • Sandals – 1
    • Tees (casual) – 6

One thing I should note is that I didn’t include accessories with my capsule wardrobe. I don’t wear jewelry and I consider my sunglasses more a necessity than an accessory. (They’re as essential to me as my eyeglasses.) It’s up to you if you want to count jewelry in with your capsule, but I don’t think it matters that much.

So this is where I am at right now. I did a big closet purge this weekend and even though I just sent off a huge bag of clothes to ThredUp in May, I have enough clothes and shoes to fill up another bag! That seems so crazy to me! I’ll talk more about my closet purge next week, and where I stand with my current wardrobe.

I know I’ll have some shopping to do to get my summer capsule wardrobe set into place, and it’s something that will be a work in progress for a while. (Since I’m also trying to live more frugally and pay off some debts, which takes priority.) But I’m excited to have a plan and to begin curating a wardrobe that makes me feel good.

Have you ever created a capsule wardrobe? Do you consider yourself fashionable?

Categories: About Me

My Favorite Podcasts

I recently discovered podcasts. It was probably five or six months ago that a blogger I read started one, which introduced me to the world of podcasting. After listening to her podcast, I started searching for other shows to listen to because I enjoyed it so, so much. And now podcasts are taking over my life! I can’t tell you how many times I say, “Oh, I heard about that on a podcast!” or “I was listening to a podcast and…” I listen to them when I’m getting ready, when I’m walking Dutch, when I’m exercising, when I’m driving, when I’m working, when I’m cooking, when I’m cleaning. They fulfill me.

So, I thought I would take today to go over some of my favorite podcasts, just in case you are looking for a new show to add to your queue.

> The Lively Show

This was the first podcast I ever listened to and it remains one of my favorites. It’s interview style where Jess interviews guests of all backgrounds. It’s not one type of niche, which I appreciate. One week it might be a life coach, the next it might be a financial expert, and the following it might be a food blogger. Jess does a fantastic job of moving the interview along, asking important questions, and digging in deep with her guests.

favorite show: Jess’s interview with Kelly Krause on how she lost 137 lbs (!)

>  Joy the Baker

After a few weeks of listening to The Lively Show, I wanted to listen to more podcasts and I had heard of the Joy the Baker podcast before, so I began bingeing on that. Oh, guys, I love this podcast so much. It’s just so fun! It’s just two girls – Joy and Tracey – talking about random goings on. Every show is so different and I giggle my way through it. It’s upbeat and silly and just an altogether fun time. It’s basically like hanging out with your girlfriends!

favorite show: My Wheelhouse, where Joy and Tracey answer questions about blogging. It was really informative!

> Book Riot – The Podcast

GUYS. If you love books and reading, then you need to be listening to this podcast. I have Becky to thank for introducing me to this one, and it’s one of the few shows that I listen to the minute their newest episode comes available. I love the hosts, I love the content, and I love hearing about new books to read. Give it a listen!

favorite show: A Secret Bank of Uncomfortable Topics which delves into an interesting topic of author income and how most authors still have to work day jobs.

> The Jillian Michaels Show

And for this podcast, I have Amber to thank for introducing me! I’m a long-time fan of Jillian Michaels and she is so. much. different. on her podcast than she is portrayed on The Biggest Loser. Many people have “issues” with Jillian due to TBL, but this podcast has given me so much insight into Jillian the Person, not Jillian the Trainer. She talks about health and fitness (obviously), but also her marriage and kids, mental health, and just day-to-day stories about her life.

favorite show: This one where Jillian gives some really awesome insight into her Biggest Loser persona and how it has affected her personal life  

> Stuff Mom Never Told You

This is a really interesting podcast that delves into a range of topics, all focused on women and feminism. I love the hosts so, so much. They are funny and make up the best voices and I am rarely ever bored listening to their show. They cover everything from women explorers to parenting to gaming to body issues to wellness. They even cover men-centric topics, like single-dad parenting, men and cars, male grooming, etc. I mean, honestly, if you are a woman (or a man, too, I guess!) and just interested in learning, this podcast is for you!

favorite show: Antarctic Women where the ladies delve into how hard it has been for Antarctic women explorers to get to the continent

> Stuff You Should Know

You can learn about basically anything on this podcast. History of sushi? Daylight Savings Time? Amnesia? Landslides? Fire breathing? Chess? Revisionist history? Handwriting analysis? Seriously, anything. I also adore Josh and Chuck – they have such a fun vibe and I love the way they joke throughout the podcast. Again, interested in learning? Listen to this podcast.

favorite show: How Temper Tantrums Work

> Freakonomics Radio

I love the news-y feel to this podcast, which is hosted by one of the authors of the book Freakonomics. I haven’t actually read the book, but now I really want to after listening to this podcast for a few months. It basically just dives into different topics to open listeners’ minds up to new ways of thinking. I also think I could listen to Stephen Dubner’s voice for hours and hours. It’s so soothing!

favorite show: Failure Is Your Friend

Do you listen to podcasts? What are your favorites?

Categories: About Me

Unapologetic

I’ll admit that every now and then, I’ll succumb to the draw of The Bachelorette, and this season, I’ve been watching. It’s research! (Right?) So, a couple of weeks ago, it was “hometown” week where the bachelorette meets with each remaining contestant in their hometown to get to know their family. And, during one visit, a contestant’s sister sat down with her brother and asked him this question: can you be yourself with her, unapologetically?

Ooh, that’s good. That’s real good.

I’m not dating right now because I needed to step away and figure myself out. I felt that I was dating just to date because it was what I was supposed to be doing. Every time I would hear about another person I knew finding love, my heart would sink, my stomach would knot up, and I would fall into a downward spiral of panic and anxiety and wondering when it would be my turn. If it would ever be my turn.

So, this quote really made me step back and think. Everyone says you have to love yourself before you can love another, and I always thought that was a little cheesy and hokey. But maybe loving yourself isn’t so much about standing in front of the mirror and saying, “You are beautiful and funny and nice!” but about being unapologetically yourself.

Maybe that’s what’s missing.

People say that your twenties are a period of self-exploration. I won’t lie – my twenties have been a bumpy, bumpy road. I look at people in their thirties and they seem so self-assured and as if they know themselves and where they are going. And me? Oh, goodness, I am fumbling around in the dark. I’m confused and worried and upset and annoyed, yet also satisfied and content and happy and excited. Oh, it’s a whirlwind, the twenties are!

I’ve been reading through posts I wrote when I started this blog – and I was just 21 when I started it. I was a baby! I feel so sad for that girl because she was really, really confused. This is a girl who didn’t have any friends (no, really, my mom was the only person I hung out with), who didn’t quite know herself. And the things I did understand about myself I didn’t like – I hated being shy, being an introvert, being a homebody. I was filled up with anxiety every single day but didn’t know what to call this incessant panic and fear I carried with me every day.

I’ve grown in the past five years, but I still have a lot – a lot – of growing to do. And part of that growth involves learning how to be unapologetically myself.

Being unapologetically myself means…

  • Embracing my introverted ways and realizing two to three hours is my limit with being around people.
  • Learning to be okay that I’m in my mid-twenties and still live at home. This is not a character flaw. This is just part of my story.
  • Understanding that I am a highly sensitive person that gets easily overwhelmed and doesn’t like loud spaces or chaotic environments. And that I most likely get my feelings hurt waaaaay more often than other people.
  • Opening up about my faith and the role it plays in my life, even if I do feel like the worst follower of Christ 95% of the time.
  • Realizing that I’m just a quiet person. I’m not the one initiating conversation or making small talk to strangers. And while I will open up and be more outgoing the more I know a person/group, I’m also always going to be the quietest one in the gathering.
  • Embracing my bookish nature, and that my love for reading mainly falls for silly romance novels, chick lit, and women’s fiction.
  • Owning the fact that I am a homebody and that nights in will always be more glorious to me than nights out. I don’t like being out past 11 p.m. any night of the week because it just makes me anxious, and I really don’t like being busy on weeknights.
  • Recognizing that it’s okay if I don’t have a lot of experience with guys. There’s nothing wrong with being 26 and realizing the furthest you’ve gone with a guy is first base.

These are my truths and writing them out helps me to see who I am and what I want. I’m not ready to reactivate my online dating profiles, but I’m doing the work to get to a point where I can do so. I think one of the first steps is discovering what I am really seeking from a relationship because there’s no point in dating unless I understand why I want it. And, through these truths, I can start to form a picture of not only what I want out of dating, but how I want to date. But perhaps that’s a post for another time.

For now, I want to embrace these truths I’ve listed above. And start to recognize that it’s okay to be single, it’s okay to have very little experience with guys, and it’s okay to be me. I believe dating will come a lot more easily once I own that.

What does being unapologetically yourself mean to you?

Categories: About Me

On Purpose & Passions

I went to a blogging event last week. One of my good friends that I met through book club is a local food blogger and she gets invited to fun events all the time because of her blog (and she’s got some sort of Yelp status? I dunno. I don’t “Yelp,” so I don’t know what that means). So, she invited me along and it was fun. It was also strange because I wasn’t exactly there as a blogger, just as my friend’s “plus one.”

For some reason, being at the event made me take a good, hard look at my blog and what I am hoping to gain from it. Why do I blog? What’s my purpose? Why do I spend hours and hours of my week writing posts and responding to emails and reading other blogs? Do I want to make this more of a career? Should I be concerned about SEO-friendly blog post titles and figuring out my “brand” (god, that word makes me cringe!) and seeking out ways to monetize?

I feel like, since my main love is writing, I should want to use my blog to establish a freelancing side hustle that allows me to someday quit my job to pursue that full-time. But the truth is that working for myself isn’t appealing to me. I don’t yearn to work from home (I actually think, as a shy introvert, working in an office is good for my social development skills) or to be able to make my own hours or any of that. I actually enjoy the office atmosphere, and I like the steady paycheck, benefits, and experiences I wouldn’t get working by myself. So, no, I’m not looking to turn my blog into a business.

My blog is my hobby. It’s not about building a brand or making money. I don’t give two hoots about SEO. (Since I work in SEO content writing, I understand it’s important, but for a personal blog? Ehh.) So if it’s not about that, what is it about? Why do I care so much about my blog that I spend so much time on it?

I blog to have a space to open up about my life. To give voice to my feelings, insecurities, triumphs, and failures. To gain knowledge, to give knowledge. To let others know they aren’t alone, and to have other people tell me I am not alone.

I blog because I love it. It’s fun for me. It’s exciting to write blog posts and connect with other bloggers.

I blog because I have met some of the most amazing, inspiring people from it, people who get me and who I considered some of my dearest friends.

I blog because it has made my life fuller and more open to new experiences. I honestly don’t think I would have ever joined my book club if I didn’t have blog friends pushing me to do so. And joining that book club? Hands down, it is one of the best decisions I’ve made in the past few years.

I blog because writing is my passion and I need a creative outlet for this passion.

I blog because I have to. There is a pulsing need inside me to get my words out, even if it’s as mundane as a “Five for Friday” recap.

I blog for my readers. Because there’s no point in having a public blog if you didn’t want someone to read it. I blog for the ones who challenge me, the ones who push me, the ones who give me hope and guidance and advice. I blog for the camaraderie and the thrill of finding someone you click with so well, you forget that you’ve never met them face-to-face and that they live hundreds of miles away.

That is what blogging is about for me. It’s not about sponsored posts or advertisements on my sidebars or money. It’s about the pure love of the written word, about writing my story down, about the connections I have made. I probably will never get involved in the local blogging scene in my area, mainly because they write the kinds of blogs I don’t read. The blogs I love tell me their story. They tell me the good and the bad, they are vulnerable and share their hearts.

My whole purpose with this blog is to share my heart. That’s all I’m here for. That’s all I want to be known for.

Why do you blog?

Categories: About Me

My Ideal City

myidealcity

I have never seriously contemplated moving out of state. I honestly love where I live. I love the climate, love living so close to so many family members (most especially my mom and brother and nephew!), and love the abundance of things to do. (The beach and the pool and the theme parks and the museums and the sporting events and the zoo and the aquarium and the local events…)

But, last week, I read Kathleen’s post where she linked to a cool quiz about where your ideal cities are. The quiz is fairly detailed but didn’t take long for me to complete, and I was given 24 cities that fit my profile. While I do love living in Florida (nope, 80-degree Christmases do not bother me one bit!), it’s not completely off the table for me to move out of state. It’s not something that I see happening in the next five years, but you never know where life will take you.

When I think about moving to a new state, the number one concern I have is the climate. I have very thin skin when it comes to cold weather, so I wouldn’t want to move somewhere that experiences really cold, snowy winters (so, basically, the entire Midwest is out!). But I would like to live in a place that actually experiences seasons. Florida does not have seasons. We have hot weather and cold weather. Fall doesn’t exist. So it would be nice to be able to live through the four seasons!

Another concern I have about moving to a new state is the cost of living. I definitely couldn’t live somewhere with a higher cost of living (goodbye, California!). The Tampa metro area’s cost of living is okay. It’s not impressive, but it’s easier to live on my modest income here than it would be in, say, San Francisco or NYC or Boston. So any city I’d move to, I’d want to be a similar cost of living or better.

And, lastly, I don’t think I’d like to live in a big city. The Tampa Bay area is pretty large (with nearly 3 million people residing in the metro area), but it doesn’t have a big city feel. I live in a more suburban part of the area, and I like living in the suburbs, with easy access to our downtown areas, beaches, and other waterfront.

So, what were my results from the quiz? Here were the top five cities I was given:

1. Chapel Hill, NC

2. Durham, NC

3. Greenville, NC

4. Rocky Mount-Stony Creek, NC

5. Hampton, VA

Interesting, eh? Four cities in North Carolina are in my top five! It ended up that I had seven total cities in North Carolina on my list so that state is winning in regards to the most popular “ideal” state. I do think I would enjoy North Carolina, though. It seems to have a mildish climate and the cost of living is about the same as Tampa (but in most cases, even better!).

Also on the list, albeit in the lower spots, were four Florida cities: Clearwater (a local city that I may move to next year), Sarasota, Daytona Beach, and Bradenton. So it’s good to know I am living in the right state!

All of my answers were on the East Coast (probably due to my low cost of living needs!) falling in North Carolina (7), Virginia (5), Florida (4), Georgia (2), Tennessee (2), Mississippi (1), Oklahoma (1), Kentucky (1), and South Carolina (1). What can I say? I’m a Southern girl to my core. And I am not ashamed of that one bit.

When I looked through my results and did a little research on the climates, costs of living, and other factors, here are the three cities I decided would be a good match for me:

  • Durham, NC
  • Savannah, GA
  • Charlotte, NC

This list isn’t necessarily in order from most favorite to least favorite, but it’s in order of how the quiz listed my ideal cities (2nd, 13th, and 15th).

Durham was my second most ideal match, and I think it’s a really great option. The cost of living is similar to Tampa, it’s a smaller city but close to a big city (Raleigh), and it has a mild climate. It would give me the seasons I want to experience, with not too harsh of a winter. It seems like such a pretty city, too!

Secondly, I chose Savannah, GA. I love Georgia. I’ve visited multiple times because I have family near the Atlanta area, and it’s one of my favorite states. Savannah itself has a very low cost of living (the housing market especially!) compared to Tampa. While the climate is fairly similar to Florida’s, I still added to my list because I really think I’d enjoy living in this city. It seems to fit my personality!

Lastly, I chose Charlotte, NC because even though a certain blogger friend of mine had a terrible experience living there, everything I read and see about the city I really like. The climate isn’t too extreme, but different enough to give me a taste of actual seasons. It has a similar cost of living to Tampa, and while it’s a bigger city than I’m used to, I still think it would be a fun place to live. Lots to do and see!

Okay, so this post was rather pointless because I’m not actually seriously considering moving to a new city anytime soon. But it was fun to daydream about it! Obviously, I’d never just up and move to a new city without traveling to the area and scoping things out first. But you never know where the future leads. All I know is that I’m leaving my heart open to the possibility, but also knowing I am building a beautiful life I really love in Florida.

Have you taken this quiz? What were your top five answers? If you could move to a new city, where would you move to?