Recently I wrote about seeing a lot of mono & dichromatic Polyvore sets being pinned to Pinterest, and how that made me sad inside. So I gathered up a few of my favorite outfits spotted on Pinterest, mixed them up on Polyvore with a nice big injection (heh, dirty) of color and here they are! Let me know what you think, and I’d love to see some of your remixes.

Before

After

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Fashion

Peggy Ornstein is a blogger and author of Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture. She wrote a piece for the New York Times Opinion Page titled Should the World of Toys Be Gender-Free? that I’ve been mulling over recently. In the piece she addresses the new girl-focused Lego sets that come with blocks in pastel hues and svelte looking characters to replace the classic blocky figurine. Lego advises they’ve done their anthropological research and it shows that boys and girls play differently, they’re only trying to be fair to girls by offering them more “girly” sets. Ornstein points out that preschoolers are at a very impressionable age and it’s at this time they assimilate things like gender roles. She asserts that by buying these gender specific toys there may be a “negative long-term impact on kids’ potential”.

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Ramblings

I turned 24 today! Today was like most days, I hung out with the kids and did some work. The kids were very nice to me and were peaceful and quiet all afternoon.

Logan was a bit iffy so he napped the afternoon away. While Claire decided to forgo her late nap (she took a morning nap instead), she did sit and quietly draw and play for nearly two hours. Behind her on her bed you might be able to see that she did tuck Teddy and Violet into bed, and every time I came to check on her she shushed me and told me to be “quiet for the baby”. Crap that kid is growing up too fast.

When Andrew got home from work he ran some errands for me that I didn’t feel like doing, then we all went to the best Chinese buffet by our house, King Buffet. I love Chinese buffets, they’re definitely my guilty pleasure. I usually don’t get to go to them unless my older sister is around, we’re buffet buddies, but Andrew was super nice on account of my birthday and all and let me drag him out. Logan munched on cantaloupe and a ridiculous amount of lo mein noodles, and Claire enjoyed spring rolls and sweet and sour soup. Chinese buffets are one of the few restaurants we can take the kids to and actually sit and enjoy our food. Usually we’re asking for boxes as soon as the entrees arrive and then rushing out the door after leaving a 50% tip as condolences to the wait staff for the horrible mess the hellions left for them. Just goes to show Chinese buffets are magical, wonderful places I should be allowed to visit every day.

I didn’t get a cake, and that’s because I completely forgot about a cake until Dez mentioned it on Facebook. My bad. I did eat an insane amount of those little donuts at the buffet, and that’s all I really need.

Life

I don’t know about all y’all, but I love Valentine’s Day! Seriously, what’s not to love? Pink, chocolate, super cute Valentine cards and gifts, an excuse to guilt trip someone into watching the kids so Andrew and I can go and see a movie that doesn’t feature animated talking animals. Deep sigh, perfection.

Last year Valentine’s Day was rather hectic. Logan was just getting out of the hospital after nearly three weeks and our move from northern Virginia to the New River Valley was finally underway after being postponed during the hospital stay. This year we’re moving again, back up to northern Virginia, but I intend to be completely moved and back to work and the kids starting daycare by the second week of February. Which means I can actually celebrate with cupcakes and stickers and crafts and Valentine’s Day Greeting Cards for every kid at daycare! It’s embarrassing how excited I am, but Tinyprint’s Valentine’s Day pinboard is just getting me even more pumped. Oh yeah, Tinyprints is on Pinterest. I bet I just made your life more awesome.

Picking out cards for the kids at daycare is definitely going to be the hardest part. I mean, how ridiculously adorable are all these cards from Tinyprints? How to choose just one? Or three? Or five?

To get even more awesomeness, like Tinyprints on Facebook or follow them on Twitter.

Holidays

Pinterest, an online pinboard, is pretty darn awesome. Polyvore, an online tool for creating fashion/interior design sets, is also awesome. Together they present a pretty huge time suck in my life, and I love it. Lately though I’ve been noticing an upsetting trend with the Polyvore sets being pinned on Pinterest. Maybe it’s just me but I feel it’s very important to say this: monochromatic is boring. Even dichromatic is a waste of the 4.5 million color percepting cone cells the human eye possesses. You don’t have have to choose one color, and you really don’t have to choose just one neutral and another color. Now, I’m no fashion designer, I just think sharing my opinion would be fun and might inspire someone else. There are option peeps, let’s explore them!

First and foremost your outfit doesn’t need to match head to toe, but it should go together. There is difference between matching and going, and the difference can be pretty awesome. Let’s use neutrals to explain this.

The common neutrals are white, black, brown (khakis and tans included), blue (not always just navy) and gray¹. These colors pretty much always go together and go with other colors, and in most situations can be used interchangably. Let’s take a look at an outfit made up entirely of neutrals.

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1. Some people suggest olive as a neutral, which I suppose could be true, but I’m not a big fan of olive. Sometimes looks good, sometimes looks dank. Go with what you feel. [↩]

Fashion