Organizing my closet

Hello everyone,

As I mentioned on my last post, past weekend I cleaned and organized our closets.

Although organizing is not my idea of fun, I enjoy doing it with clothing. 

I love seeing the different colors, cuts and designs. Item by item I discover new outfits I could make with them, and with some sadly that I can make none.

It helped me to learn that I can buy garments, put in my closet and forget about it. 

It was indeed sad to become aware of that. 

For the longest time I believed that more is better, when I started learning about styling I realized how wrong I was. Quality over quantity. And I thought I'd learned that in high school. The truth is that every time I go to a mall or store, there is a special sale or deal, if I  shop unaware of what I have and what I need I will have a chaotic closet, and nothing to wear. 

Making a closet functional is my passion, and it works. We don't need to have lots of money to do that, with key items you can make less become more, and plus gorgeous. 

I've learned many suggestions from different sources but the one I liked the most was in a book I read called The Little Black Book of Style by Nina Garcia. Nina says "These ten staples transcend time, trends, and travel. They can go from day to night, season to season, and they can still be worn five years from now". This items are: A black dress, the classic white button shirt, a cashmere cardigan or turtle neck, a trench coat, a classic watch, diamonds, a pair of jeans, ballet flats, a classic high heel pump and a great bag. 

Cashmere can be a little expensive, and diamonds for most of us is just in our dreams, but try to see each item for its assets, and with those in mind try to find something that fits your budget. For example for me personally I see the cashmere for the quality of the fabric, so if I find a sweater that feels comfortable to my skin with a good price, I could buy that instead. The diamonds makes me think of beauty and elegance, so some nice jewelry that would bring more elegance and beauty to my outfits would be just as good for me. 

It is important to remember that if you don't own those items right now, you don't need to go to the store tomorrow and buy all of them. Building a wardrobe with style can take time. I'm still in the process of building mine. The key is to start, be perseverant, and ask for help if you need. I'm here to help.

I took some pictures of my last closet adventure, keeping in mind that my organizational skills are in improvement, I hope that it will inspire you to start yours.  

This was the beginning, the part I needed to make the choice of not giving up.

              

Starting to look better.

As you can see I chose clothing hangers with different colors. I separated by category, white hangers for dresses, black for blazers, yellow for button shirts, pink for sweaters and long sleeve shirts.

 In each category I tried to keep same colors or tones together.

If you want to customize your space, putting away clothes for the next season is helpful. I put in a container my spring and summer clothes. It will stay in the attic until next year. 

And off course things to get read off. You can donate, or sell it.

Inward beauty: From the inside out

This past weekend I finally finished my project of cleaning and organizing my closet, I had been postponing it, but was glad when I got it done.

The part of deciding what to keep and what to put away, was difficult.

I wasn’t sure if some of the clothes that didn't look good or fit me now, would look good on me someday by any chance.

Likewise in our personal lives, a lot of times our flesh insists in keeping something that is no longer of good use, it doesn’t fit our lifestyle, or simply makes us feel bad about ourselves.

It doesn’t make any sense, why would we want to keep that right?

Well the problem is that we live in a world that has a distorted view of what is good for us, what is bad can seem good, and what is good seems bad.

For example the media, it is there every single day selling promises of happiness and joy, that just makes as feel like failures in the end when that is not what we find.

They use what we’ve been cultivating inside of us, to make their offer even more appealing. Just think of how many of us go shopping when feeling bad about ourselves, instead of dealing with it and leave the past in the past.

Now I’m not saying it is easy, I had a hard time even with clothing. When it comes to leave behind past disappointments, hurt, mistakes, bad lifestyle, whatever is making us leave in the past, it takes a lot of strength, which we don’t have when we go through those situations. The bad news is that if we don’t do so, it will hold us from living the joy of the present and future, I’m thinking right now of so many woman that are insecure about themselves because someone in the past made her believe that she is not worthy or beautiful, and she believes until today. I was one of these women.

Well the good news is that we have a Father in heaven a King that died in The Cross to free us from those past burdens, and He is also here every single day, with His arms open to us, waiting for us to turn from seeking momentary happiness to eternal happiness with Him. He cleanse our past mistakes, and make us a new beginning, problems will still come but we can endure because He is there for us, and with Him we know that there is a real happy ending.

Let Jesus take what has been inside of you that is no longer good for you or maybe never was, let Him cleanse you and enable you to shine the beauty that has been hidden behind it, it will shine from your inside out!

About Style: Best ways to wear tights

For the longest time I have avoided wearing tights.

I would think it looked amazing on others, but when I put it on, I didn’t like it.

Today I know it was a lack of confidence, caused by not knowing how to wear them.

When it comes to dressing well, knowing what fits your body, and how to enhance your natural assets is essential.

That being said, let’s talk about what can’t go wrong when wearing tights:

The safest bet is to match your shoes to your tights.

If you have short legs like I do, the extension of color elongates the legs. Black tights with black shoes, brown tights with brown shoes and so on. If you can’t match with the exact same color, go for the same tones.

If you are going for bolder colored tights, which you totally can, try to keep your outfit simple, monochromatic colors, so your tights are not competing with it.

Playing with bolder colors is fun, and best done with confidence. Make sure to know which colors looks best on you; you don’t need to do just matchy matchy, different colors together can look amazing. For example I love navy with red, or yellow, and red with black. Sandy Chang has a good example of this on her blog. In the picture bellow, she is using a different shoe color, but the design still allows the longer legs look, rather than cutting them off at the ankle.

http://www.sandyalamode.com/2013/09/15/its-time-for-tights-again/

But don’t forget you are the special key for any outfit to work, keep in mind when choosing it. The outfit will complement your beauty, the assets you already have. That being said, I hope you guys have fun trying new tights in different colors, please share pictures with us. I’m sharing mine, black shoes with black tights!

Quick note: Specially on the winter, we might want to use leggings as a substitute for tights, I do sometimes because they are often wormer. Remember ladies, leggings are not a substitute for pants. It is an accessory that you wear under long tops or short dresses.

Ambassadors for Christ

A lot of times we Christian women can get confused, with how much effort we should put on dressing ourselves well. And there are times that we might even wonder, if we should put any at all. If I have a beautiful heart, it doesn’t matter how I dress right?

Wrong!

While God wants us to focus on our character rather than on our outward appearance, we need to remember that He is also a God of beauty, and we are here to represent and glorify Him.

What is in our hearts is what really matters, but there are many people that we will meet that won’t have time enough with us, to see the beauty in our hearts, but have just enough time too look at us and think “Mmm there’s something special about this person”.

Whether we like it or not, the way we dress sends people a message about who we are, and Whom we represent. As followers and ambassadors for Christ, we need to pray that He helps us to learn to dress in a way that represents and bring glory to him, while keeping in mind our priorities for His kingdom purposes.

Matthew 6:33: But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

Here at Heavenly beauty 101, we will explore this matter of dressing well, seeking to bring glory to the Lord. While I don’t consider myself an expert, I will certainly share what I know with you, and you can feel free to share with us too!