Last Wednesday was my one year anniversary here at Foxy. Since I’ve been blogging for a decade, I usually find bloggers celebrating their anniversaries to be adorable. I’m like the lady who stopped counting her age watching her children proudly declare their age to the exact fraction. I feel old.

I can’t remember if I’ve ever written about it here, but on my other blog I talk regularly about my living with Bipolar II disorder and the changes I’ve had to make to my life to manage it. One of the major changes was installing an emergency break in my head. Now I realize I don’t have the luxury of coasting gently to a stop when my speed gets away from me. I have to drop everything and yank that break with all my might so I don’t crash.

I’ve decided that Foxy has to be a casualty of my emergency break use.

It seems fitting to end this as an anniversary celebration. It is somehow now a year long creative experiment instead of something I’m giving up on. And I saw so so many benefits to this experiment. So many benefits that I won’t be giving up on it entirely, I’ll just be bringing the outfit posts back to Reese Dixon where they started as part of Project Put Together. I’ll still post at least a couple a month. I just have to cry uncle and admit that I’m not giving this the attention it really would require to succeed as a blog on its own and I have to sacrifice it for the good of everything else I want to do.

As I was looking back through my posts to choose the outfits I really loved, or the pictures that made me feel great, I was so so grateful I did this. I wish every woman could do this for a year. Not only did the time and attention to how I present myself help me to rediscover myself, but believe it or not, this little style blog really helped me to conquer some appearance issues. Appearance issues that Every. Single. Woman. has. Probably every single person. As a not-thin person there have been times I’ve seen pictures of myself and I cried. As a person who is now 34 there have been times when I looked at myself in the mirror and only saw changes that made me unhappy. This project changed all that, but not in the ways you might expect.

I didn’t suddenly stop seeing the things about myself that I wasn’t such a fan of. I just started to see them in context. By taking the pictures, processing the pictures, posting the pictures, I seemed to be putting myself through a kind of immersion therapy. I was seeing images of myself so much, some horribly unflattering ones that I deleted immediately and some that made me feel great, I kind of just, got used to how I looked. And then I started seeing things in a different way. I still have feelings about my stomach, but now those feelings are countered by great feelings I have too. Including being aware of the physical difference that comes over me when I feel confident. Those early pictures are shocking to me in their difference from the most recent. And all because I learned what a huge difference it makes to be thoughtful in how I carry and present myself.

Which was really what this experiment was all about. As a feminist and a social justice advocate, I have always had very complicated feelings towards fashion and consumerism and female objectification. My intention in all this was to put some thought into how I portrayed myself, and what do you know, I became my own best convert.

As I mentioned, I’ll still be posting outfit posts on ReeseDixon.com. Thank you for being in this experiment with me.

Whenever I wear these shoes, I feel like a tap dancer. Like I’m a hoofer who’s going to audition for the Rockettes. I have no idea why, they’re not louder than average and the wedge heels aren’t anything a tap dancer would wear. I guess it’s just the T-strap. We don’t see those much anymore except on people who need to make sure that their shoes stay on their feet despite being shaken all around. I’ll have to take advantage of that little feature.

Shoes: Target
Leggings: Wet Seal
Skirt: I made it
Shirt: Wet Seal
Coat: Vintage
Necklace: I made it

My husband is a major football guy, and I have had to watch way more of it than I’ve ever had any desire to. Right now is playoff season and we’re deep in negotiations about how much I have to put up with. I might be more tolerant if watching a game gave me an opportunity to dress up in a cute outfit, especially this blanket cape I made last year. That’s what gets me to do all kinds of things I don’t want to do. You should see how dressed up I get to go to the dentist.

Shoes: JC Penny
Jeans: Old Navy
Shirt: Old Navy
Cape: I made it.

My latest adventure in pattern mixing has gotten me to branch out from polka dots and into the stripes. The pants are vertically striped, the coat is horizontally striped, and the top is a kind of graphic re-imagining of stripes. Baby steps into trends are the way for me.

Shoes: MJM Shoes
Pants: DD’s Discounts
Shirt: Target
Coat: Vintage

I got this great paisley shirt dress at a thrift store a while ago, but it was ignored in the mending pile for a while. Today is the first time I’ve worn it, and of course I chose to wear it with tights on a dry and cold day. As soon as I walked out of the house it stuck to me like it was drowning.

Eh, what are you gonna do. I think I’ve thoroughly documented in these pages that things like wrinkles and cling don’t get me down. They’re still not yoga pants.

Shoes: Forever 21
Tights: Target
Dress: Thrifted
Belt: Ross
Coat: Chicos

White after Labor Day? Was that ever really a thing? Maybe just not white after Labor Day and before December. It doesn’t seem a particularly Fall kind of color, but Winter? It’s literally all around us.

Shoes: Payless
Pants: White House Black Market
Shirt: Thrifted
Coat: Target

I wore pants to church on Sunday. Which might not sound like a big deal to you, and it totally shouldn’t have been a big deal, but boy howdy did it turn into a deal. It was just supposed to be a silent sign that women in my church care about women’s issues and wish to open a dialogue about that. Instead we lost friends, were told we were defiant and unrighteous, and even threatened with death. That seems about right for a bunch of Christians, eh? We have our work cut out for us.

Entire Outfit: Thrifted

Why can’t I have the kind of life where wearing this dress every single day would be appropriate? I wore it to church and it felt too fancy for there, which is about as fancy as I ever get, what with the not being a gala attending Real Housewife and all. But I didn’t care. I wore it and I’ll wore it again, even just around the house. This was a major thrifting score, maybe my best ever, from my trip to Palm Springs last month. It’s vintage from I don’t even know when, and made out of some kind of a jersey knit. It’s both glamorous and the most comfortable thing I’ve ever put on. I think I’ll just roll out a red carpet for when I’m waiting at the bus stop.

Shoes: Target
Dress: Thrifted
Belt: Thrifted
Bracelet: Charming Charlies

We have had a very rainy winter here, and it’s getting to me. Winter is hard on everyone with depression and this wet gloom has crossed over from the rain I love and makes me feel cozy, to the kind that feels oppressive. I feel emotionally rumpled, so I am not up to an iron. My clothes match my mood. Unwrinkled clothes are overrated anyway, it just means you don’t move.

Shoes and skirt: Thrifted
Shirt: Sears
Necklaces: I made them
Hat: Target

Last year all of my favorite fashion bloggers were layering their fall and winter clothes with fur vests. It was the very cutest thing ever, but when I went to the stores I couldn’t bear to spend that kind of money on something I’d only get to wear a few times a year. So this year as the weather started to cool, I went right out to my fabric store to make one all by myself. I didn’t use a pattern and you won’t need one either. I’ve made you a nice little video explaining it all step by step. Instructions at the link!

Shoes: DD’s Discounts
Pants: DD’s Discounts
Shirt: Target
Vest: I made it, and you can too! Instructions here!