Warm Weather Wear

This week is flying by...thank goodness we have two weeks of spring break this year because I'd be pretty sad if it were already almost over! Today we decided to take a little trip over to Napa where they have a great little park for the kids, good food for everyone and a J Crew outlet for me. We met up with friends to play at the park and then headed over to Gott's for lunch. I had heard of this place before but we'd never been. Let me assure you, we'll be returning soon! It was SOOOOO good! If you're ever in the area you should definitely stop in for lunch or dinner. The garlic fries and "Black and White" milkshakes are divine...not to mention their YUMMY burgers rock (the buns are homemade). After lunch we made our way on over to the outlets where I wanted to make a quick stop into J Crew to see what they had to offer. We actually have a J Crew outlet about 10 minutes from our house but the Napa store is bigger and has more stock. We didn't stay too long (but long enough to find some good deals...more on that later).

It was hot out today...I loved it! It was shorts and t-shirt weather for the kids. While at the park my girlfriend and I were talking about the fact that it's so hard to figure out hot weather-wear on the bottom (keep in mind I don't wear things above my knee by personal choice which also lends itself to be a challenge). I'm not a huge fan of knee-length shorts on me...but I sometimes wear them. Capris and even cropped pants, according to some fashion "experts" are not the way to go (although I also own some of those too-capris are not my faves), denim can sometimes be too heavy in the warm temperatures, Maxi dresses require layers on top and can get hot, and where we live it's really windy so fuller skirts are sometimes inconvenient (I'm always worried my skirt is going to blow up in the air). So what's left? Hmmm... We came up with pencil or A-line skirts and denim skirts (heavier material assures you that it won't catch in the wind and blow up in the air). It's just not practical to live in skirts all summer though...and I don't want to. I like jeans and other types of bottom wear. But what to wear? Really, I'd love to know what you think! I have started rolling my skinny jeans a bit to create a less-than cropped but shorter than the regular length of jeans look and don't think it looks too bad. But in 90 degree weather I don't know that I'm gonna want to wear almost full-length jeans. Part of my personal problem is that rolled up or cropped jeans on me only look good if they are skinny at the bottom...my ankles are tiny and look ridiculous coming out of the bottoms of jeans that are wider bottomed...even straight leg bottoms look meh on me. I took a look back at some OOTD pictures from last summer and have decided that I don't like most of what I wore on the bottom in a lot of outfits. Time for an overhaul.

While we were at the park we were also doing a bit of people watching...it's hard not to! It's interesting to see what people wear. We spotted one girl who had the cutest shirt on--stripes with a bit of a Dolman short-sleeve...I made the comment that it looked very "J-Crew-ish" but I didn't recognize it from any recent roll outs that I had seen. Well, after lunch as I mentioned above, I made my way on over to the J Crew outlet. I walked around looking at all their cute things and low and behold what do I see lying on one of the tables? The shirt! I grabbed it! It came in three colors (navy stripes, black stripes and res stripes)...they had the navy and red in my size so I tried both. I went with the XS and it was plenty roomy. In the past I have been attracted to this Dolman sleeve-blousey looking kind of top but until today none of them really wowed me. Today, I liked what I saw. It's really cute! Plus it was 25% and I had a 20% off entire purchase coupon on top of that so for $15.99 this came home with me:



And here's what I wore today to beat the heat (#2 snuck into the picture with me):



Details:
-Bianka Blouse-Anthropologie
-White tank-Old Navy
-Skinny Cropped Cargos-Loft
-Presta Wedge Sandals-Target
-Necklace-Tiffany
-Earrings-Express
-Ring-Forever 21

So the month of March is officially over. It was a disastrous month for my budget. I got annoyed with the idea of a budget (although I recognize the benefits for having one). It was one of those months where the more I restricted myself the worse-off I was (kind of like when you tell yourself not to eat ice cream but all you can think of after that is how much you want to eat some ice cream). I need to come up with something better for April. I do have a list of things I want to replace in my closet so some of that will be happening in April. I also want to focus on finding a few fabulous short-sleeve shirts. I love tanks but since I don't wear sleeveless things I always wear a cardigan over any tanks I wear. It would be nice to have more short-sleeve tops that can be worn without having to layer a cardigan over it. I'm on the lookout!

I'm off to bed...need my zzz's! Have a great Friday!