Wear Your Praise Wednesday {#rockyourreaders...a collaboration with Readers.com}

I told y'all that #wearyourpraise is a thing.

You see, friends, I've been...contacted.  Yes.  That's it.  I've been contacted.  I received an email asking me if I was interested in an affiliate post, in exchange for product.

Wouldn't you know it, my very-very first really true affiliate post is with (drumroll...)

Readers.com

Stop laughing, because you are about to be jealous.

Given, this wasn't totally out of the blue.  I heart Readers.com, and that's never been a secret.  I have declared my bifocal reader love to the world, in several earlier posts.  But I had to buy the bifocals first. So you can imagine my excitement, in getting a few pair to enjoy at no charge...

...if I'd just blog about them.

This is big, y'all.

I really truly wear my bifocal readers every day of my life.  Why bifocal readers?  Two reasons:

1.  Glasses are a fashion statement all by themselves.  This makes me feel lucky to need readers.  People who don't need eyeglasses are wearing fake glasses.  And if you do need glasses, and you are wearing contacts...well...you and I can't be friends.

Just kidding.  But seriously, consider wearing glasses like any other fashion accessory - and get more than one pair.  A girl needs several pairs, to match her outfit or her mood.

And hey...if this article by THE Sartorialist can't convince you to get on the glasses train...I can't help you.




I told you you'd be jealous.  Wearing glasses is a beautiful thing.

Reason number 2 I wear bifocal readers every day:  Back before I discovered bifocal readers, I was continually losing my regular readers.  My only recourse was either go bifocal, or buy a chain to attach my readers to, and hang them around my neck.

Um.  Ain't gonna happen.

Because, even though I am a granny, I can't wear my readers on a chain like a granny.  Because I want my grandkids to be able to wear shirts like this:

And if I wear my readers on a chain, that can't happen.

I'm excited to share a few styles of readers with you, and chat just a little bit about glasses in general.

First up, is the Ivy League bifocal

...I wear these when I'm feeling intellectual.  Which is every day, almost.

Next, are my all-time favorites, the Elwood bifocal, with a tortoise frame:

No lie, I feel pretty in these specs and this dress.  And that's what "wear your praise Wednesday" is about.  Here's another mood:

Next, when you are in a fun-loving state of mind:

(I wore these with my orange T-shirt this past Saturday...thinking it would be good luck for my team, the Tennessee Volunteers.  Alas.)

I requested these specifically.  I wanted them, because white-rimmed eyeglasses are trending hard right now, as evidenced by my new friend, the adorable Gabi Blair of Design Mom:

(My home was featured on her informative, award winning design blog this past year!)

Diverting just a minute to sunglasses, I also love these:

The "Iris" bifocal sunglasses.  I refuse to wear any other bifocal sunglasses for now.  These win.  Hands down....er...hands up...and peace out.

Last but not least, when I want my glasses to be cute, but understated, I go with these "Indiana" bifocals:

Once in awhile, I may be in an every-day-ish, understated sort of mood, but don't be fooled.  My glasses may be understated, but my heart still wants to wear its praise and live loudly.

(For more on how #wearyourpraise Wednesday got started, click here)

I'm excited to be able to offer my friends and readers (ar, ar...no pun intended) a 20% discount on any pair of readers on Readers.com's  website.  The coupon code is "sheila".

Have fun looking!  If you order something cute, please send me a picture of you in your readers...or share it to Instagram with the hashtag #rockyourreaders and #sheilaatchleydesigns.  I'd love to see you rocking your readers, and perhaps even share your picture here on the blog!

Wear Your Praise Wednesday {...too busy to shoot myself...}

Hiiiiiiii there, girlfriends (and the occasional guy!)...

...around here there has been an unexpected and entirely tragic funeral in our church family, an impending overnight guest,  a big-time video shoot with the beautiful Elisa Trentham of Sherwood Media for my part as an "extra" in Jeanne Oliver's new online course "Art of Home || Modern Simple Living".

(You can sign up here )

And so, I've been too busy to shoot myself.

But never fear, I won't leave you hanging.  I have two fabulous links to two fashion articles, both looking ahead into the fall season.

Top 15 Fall Trends - by the team over at StitchFix

(Which, by the way, I did keep a pair of jeans that came with my "fix" this month.  I had two credits, and that brought the price down to irresistible proportions.  Will share soon!)

And Fashion Rules You Should Resolve to Break - I chose this one, because it explodes the myth of "no white after Labor Day".

Finally, I was in Target today to pick up some beach essentials (South Carolina here we come!) and happened upon this:

(That's not me up there.)

Anyhoo, it struck me that this, surely was a Beach Essential.

So I snagged it on sale.

That is me up there.

In my closet, where I now live.  Thuggin' for the iphone camera.  Making time - just for you - to shoot myself.  See the tags??

The.  Things.  I.  Do.  For.  You.

Wear Your Praise Wednesday {...tender thoughts on beauty...and a peek into a fall launch design...}

To read my other "Wear Your Praise Wednesdays", click here here, and here

This post is for anyone who wonders why "wearing your praise" matters.  This post is for those who, like me, have searched for the line between healthy self care and vanity.

I find it increasingly hard to label myself, theologically.  (I promise, this has everything to do with fashion and beauty - at least in my life, theology informs just about everything.)  I'm not Presbyterian.  I'm not Charismatic, in the strictest sense.  I'm not Baptist.

I'm not a fundamentalist.  Though we did homeschool, I refused to wear long skirts and tennis shoes together.  I wore a little extra makeup and cute shorts (on purpose) to all the home schooling summer curriculum fairs, and thus scandalized 80% of the crowd.  Good times.

I'm not a hedonist.  I'm not a stoic, unless it comes to my negative emotions.  I have come to believe that the stark opposite to "wearing your feelings on your sleeve" is good, old fashioned Biblical meekness.  Meekness is any strong emotion - under control.  My feelings are invited to the party - but they are not allowed to plan it.

I wasn't always meek, and I'm still not, on days.  But now I really am chasing rabbits.

Suffice it to say that at one time, when I was a girl, I wanted nothing more than to feel pretty...to be pretty...and some told me that that was a sin.

Is it any wonder that I am working my way, 12 hour days at a time, into making a living from beauty?  I was meant to be an artist.  I have craved beauty and order since I was a child.

When I was a 20-year-old one-income, poverty-level newlywed with honeymoon twins, I remember spending the meager amount set aside for our tithe, to buy just one new outfit from JCPenny.  There I was, all grown up and married with children, and my hunger to feel pretty was still clashing with my theology.

My theology won, and I have no regrets - giving, even from your own lack today, is a key to prosperity in the future.

Throughout my kids' growing up years,  I resorted to mostly (amazing, miraculous) hand-me-downs from clothing shop owners and friends, supplemented with thrift store scores.  And I did all sorts of silly (and wise) things to stay as fit and healthy as I knew how.  I just wanted to like the woman I saw in the mirror...and looking back, I know that I was far too hard on myself.

Fast forward to the years when my children (now grown) were teenagers and young, single twenty-somethings.

Is it just me, or does anyone else understand the stage your nearly-grown kids go through, when they begin to question everything they were taught, the way they were taught it, and all your mis-deeds are remembered, either in vivid detail, or sometimes even embellished beyond recognition?

We were there.

And someone did something for me, that even she didn't know the profound affect it would have, especially in my relationship with my daughters.

At a church event one day, this young woman was chatting with my daughters as I was off somewhere else across the room.  She looked at me, and said to my girls, "Your momma has the cutest backside of anyone I ever saw in my life.  She is so beautiful for her age.  I want so badly to be like her as I grow older."

It sounds so silly and so vain, and I didn't find out about the remark until much later.

But do you know what that did?  It gave me fresh - and at the time, much needed - credibility with my daughters, at a very crucial stage in their development.  I realize that seems like a stretch.  And there were a lot of other factors involved.  However, trust me when I tell you that that really was a turning point for them...for me...for us.

And here is where I bring this home - sorry it has taken me so long, but the "back story" matters, in this case.  (No pun intended.)

Throughout history, a beautiful woman has been a sort of gate-keeper.  It perhaps shouldn't be so, but it is.  Beauty opens doors, it brings credibility even when credibility is unearned and undeserved.  Young women especially will listen to another woman who embodies the kind of pretty they seek to be.  They will take her word as near-gospel.  Many of us middle-agers still (almost) believe that beauty equals wisdom, hence our great love for "beauty secrets". Pretty certainly equals power, whether we like that or we don't.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to find a teenaged girl and casually mention to her how gorgeous you think her momma is....when her momma is nowhere around to hear it.  Be specific about it.  Apparently, my backside is special.  Not sure how I feel about that, but there it is.

Affirm the other woman's beauty - to her daughter.

You may never know it, but you just might change a life doing something as silly as that.

And that, gentle reader, is why I still care about how I look.  Because pretty equals power, I want all I can reasonably get short of idolatry or plastic surgery.  (...aren't those two things the same?  I digress...)

Why do I still pursue age-appropriate pretty?

So I can influence the next generation.  There are too many other women, far more beautiful than me, who are using their influence to degrade the very fabric of society.  Us Jesus loving girls have to take what beauty God has given us (and we all have some) and cherish it, respect it, and use it for His glory...not as "the end", but as a means to an end - a mere tool that we can use to take back a whole generation.

You and me?  We aren't just another pretty face.  There's theology - sound theology - lurking behind our mascara'd eyes.

And all these seemingly random pictures of my stumpy (so not pretty) hands are just peeks into a new-ish design.  I will be expanding my leather stack ring set to include gold-tone (yeay!) - since gold tone is all the rage for the foreseeable future.  (So glad I didn't change my wedding rings to white gold or platinum...everything old is new again, except for my laugh lines.)

I've made a new friend in recent months...and boy-howdy is she ever a gate keeper.  (read:  that means she's gorgeous).  She's also a grandmother...because really, why would you get your advice from anyone under 40?  And if she's over 40 and loves Jesus, and is pretty, and a grandmother?

Run, don't walk, run to her and sit at her feet and ask her stuff.

Her name is Honey Holden - fellow preacher's wife and taker-back of a generation and practitioner of pretty.  I think you'll love her.

Wear Your Praise Wednesday {...the lace slip extender, 3 ways...}

Welcome to the third installment in my new series, "Wear Your Praise Wednesday".  

{For an explanation of how it was that wearing cute clothes became a tool for me, in healing from clinical depression...to learn why I "Wear My Praise", you  can click here for the very first "Wear Your Praise Wednesday" - or here for the second installment.}

This blog post will seem counter intuitive to those girls who have, all their lives, felt a sense of shame if their slip happened to show.  But I am here with a liberating word:

Those days are gone!

It is now hereby cool and awesome to let your slip show.  If it is a pretty slip.  To be very, very precise - it is now hereby cool and awesome to let your slip show if it is trimmed in the most beautiful lace or tulle imaginable.

Why is this?  I've been telling you and telling you:  layers are our friends.  That pretty peek of lace just adds another layer to your look.

And, in my opinion, that petticoat also serves a practical purpose...it serves to lengthen an otherwise too-short hem.

Is it me, or have you also noticed that some girls (and women) just did not get the memo that if you wonder if a garment is a short dress or a long top...

it's a shirt.  Girlfriend - trust me on this.  If you have to wonder....it's a shirt.

Suffice it to say, as edgy as I am in most of my life choices, I simply can't wear a dress I can't worship in safely.

Please tell me you can relate.  I can't be the only Charisbyterian in the crowd, whose wardrobe choices revolve around whether she can lift a grand baby onto her hip while keeping one arm high in the air, or jump up and down, or do a hitch-kick, or drop to her knees in worship.

Or maybe that's just me.  And just kidding about the hitch-kick.  But the rest is the gospel truth.

For those reasons plus a few more, if a dress is more than an inch or so above my kneecap, I tend to feel twitchy.

It might be hemline semantics, but when I put a petticoat under it, that extra inch or so of layer puts my mind at a little more ease.  Visually, I feel I look more like I am comfortable with my age, and less like I'm trying too hard.  Mini skirts and short dresses belong to the under-30 crowd, not the pushing 50 crowd.

I was asked to share sources.

The shoes were $8.59 clearance at The Shoe Show {don't hate}

dress:  Marshalls, this year

necklace:  my design 

the slip:  a Target slip that I sewed lace onto

This little linen dress is one of my favorites, simply because on a hot summer day, it literally floats on me - it breathes and is so airy and comfortable.

This is another dress I absolutely adore, but can't wear without a little hemline semantics.  I have to have my petticoat/slip extender on, both for the look of the layer (in my mind, no outfit is complete without at least two layers) and for the false comfort it gives me in bringing the length of this dress down, visually, to just above the kneecap.

sources:

shoes:  Shoe Show, clearance

dress:  Jeanne Oliver

bifocal readers:  readers.com

slip:  plain Target slip, embellished with lace by yours truly

For our last look, the "petticoat" goes up-top and casual....

On any given day, I am never without my bifocal readers, so here is how I actually wear this top:

sources:

shoes:  Shoe Show, clearance

jeans:  "modern straight cropped stretch jean" by Denizen at Target

top:  Target

military-style cropped jacket:  "Lucky Brand Clothing" - Marshalls

Now.  Lest you think that "slip extender" is some silly term made up by yours truly, allow me to share with you a young woman who created a major online business around this very concept...

Meet "Grace and Lace".  I discovered them years ago, and instantly fell in love, back when all they had to offer was a few socks and slips.  Since then, they have appeared on the hit show "Shark Tank", and have grown their business beyond their dreams, I am sure.

It is a new day for the petticoat, and I am glad.  Looking back, I remember one of my dearest friends, who happens to be an elderly lady, came up to me in church with what I could see was an urgent message.  She pulled me aside, and whispered, "It.  is.  snowing.  down.  south."

Which was code for, "Your slip is showing.  Get your act together."

I smiled and explained to her that it was supposed to show.

She shook her head in disbelief as she walked away.  I was 40-something years old, but on that day I felt like an edgy young whippersnapper.