Holiday Family Photos

December 6, 2016 No Comments A Well Crafted Kid

We try to get family photos a couple times each year to really capture the growing boys and important moments in our family. Holiday photos have become sort of a new tradition for us since having kiddos so that we can have a new set of image for our holiday cards. Last year Macey Snelson Photography joined us as we picked our Christmas tree out. This year we decided a trip out to Mt. Hood to play in the snow was in order. What I didn’t realize is that both my husband and I wore the SAME SHIRTS two years in a row. HA!

Even with the same shirts on two years in a row we managed to get completely different images and really wonderful memories from Macey Snelson Photography. Here are some of my favs:

At the end of the session Macey also snagged a couple of new headshots of me for the holiday season. Snow made them magical.

I’d love to see YOUR holiday family photos! If you’ve posted them drop a link or share your profile with me so that I can see them!

A Well Crafted Lady

Post Baby Body Love with Olga’s “Flirty” Intimates

December 1, 2016 4 Comments A Well Crafted Lady

I’m now nearly a year postpartum and am still learning to work with the new shape of my body. While my weight is the same as when I got pregnant and my size is the same, my clothing does not fit the same. I was excited to partner with Olga for their new intimates collection Flirty as the biggest discovery I’ve made this postpartum experience is how important it is to love yourself and feel comfortable in the skin you are in at the moment. This post is in partnership with Olga an intimates company that specializes in intimate apparel for curvy and busty women. All opinions are my own. Olga’s Flirty collection may be found at Macys and Kohls.

How having kids has changed my physical appearance

Having a baby does some pretty crazy things to your body. It is basically stretched, pulled, swollen and deflated all in the course of a year or so. My body bounced ‘back’ a little easier after baby number one than it has with baby number two. Though I have technically lost the weight gained during pregnancy, my body is different than it was after my first pregnancy and certainly different than it was pre-kiddos.

I can’t blame ALL of these changes on the kiddos, because, in fact… I have AGED over the past six years. It is funny. In my head I’m still 25, but when I look at myself in the mirror I now see my mother and grandmother looking back at me. Between my changing body due to both aging and having babies, I really need to learn to love my body all over again. This holiday season I am really working on taking steps to feel comfortable in my new skin while making efforts to be healthier overall.

Tips for Loving Your Post Baby Body

There has been so much this past year that I’ve struggled with both silently and pretty loudly depending on how well you know me or how close you’ve been to a melt-down. One of those struggles has (obviously) been appreciating my body as it is now and feeling good about myself in total. I’m gonna be totally honest, the tips below are from someone who doesn’t have it all together. These tips have worked for me in the past. These tips have come from friends who have dealt with these same struggles. But, they are from a totally imperfect person who is still trying to follow them all.

1. Appreciate what you have now, stop dwelling on what you had then.

There have been so many times this past year where I’ve ran across a photo of me five, ten, or more years ago and have been caught up in wishing I still had the slender frame I had then. At some point I even broke down in tears for not really appreciating what I had then when I had it! Then it hit… that is the key. We are getting older. As much as I would love to not get another wrinkle or roll of funny mole on my back I also really, really want to keep getting older. (The alternative is really not a fun option.) So, my biggest tip is to take a moment and appreciate what you have right now in this very moment in time. Do you love your eyes? Think your ankles look great in those shoes you bought? Find the things about yourself that you LOVE and celebrate them. Focus on them. Appreciate them.

2. Dress in a way that makes you feel good about yourself

A bit of TMI here (though, isn’t this whole post really?): I wore my stretched out underwear and old nursing bras WAY past their expiration dates. When your panties are falling off you while you walk because the elastic doesn’t work anymore it is time to get new underwear. I had been waiting. I’d been waiting for my wonderful sleek figure that was just gonna suddenly appear. I was waiting until I had time to hit the gym more often or for my thyroid meds to finally make a difference. At some point I thought, It is time to STOP WAITING. Finding beautiful, comfortable, and well-fitted underwear, bras, and clothing items made me feel so much more comfortable in my own skin.

I don’t care if you feel best about yourself in a pair of yoga pants or some heels and earrings. Dress in a way that you can really feel comfortable and beautiful.

Side note: I have always had difficulty finding bras that are actually comfortable in my plus size figure. I even threw down way too much money at a popular plus-size clothing retailer to NEVER wear the bras that they custom fit to my body. They pulled and pinched and were so HEAVY. Enter in Olga’s Flirty Collection. I loved the look of them when the team at Olga sent over the lookbook, but was still weary that I’d actually like the selection. I can’t even begin to tell you how happy I’ve been with the quality, styles, fabrics, and fits of the Flirty bras and underwear I received. If you are looking to buy yourself (or a loved one) some really nice (yet affordable) intimate wear items then I’d highly recommend this brand. The sizes range from 34 C to 46 H.

3. Make healthier choices

This is the part I really, really struggle with on a day-to-day basis. I know what is good for me. I know that exercising and eating healthy will go a long way in making me feel better. I do overall make fairly good choices. However, I also know that when I am feeling down and out about things it is SO much easier to make the unhealthy choices. No judgement from me here and I will take no judgement on this as well, thank you. This is human. Sometimes we don’t always act in our own self-interest. I feel that moms especially don’t take enough time focusing on their needs because they want the needs of their family to be fulfilled first. So, whether it is committing to drinking more water, walking more steps, cutting certain indulgences… making a commitment to your health with invariably help you feel better about yourself. It is not going to fix it all right away and I really stress BALANCE in this area. Going into extreme lifestyle changes with high expectations is a sure fire way to get burned out and feel worse about things.

4. Get in the photograph

One of the hardest parts of these changes for me is not so much seeing myself in the mirror, but seeing myself in photographs. I’ve cringed and cried at the site of me in photos with my sons. I’ve focused on those rolls of fat or the swallow looking skin. I’ve made myself get in the photographs anyways. I’ve made myself STOP focusing on what I deem as imperfections in me and instead focus on how HAPPY I look or how beautiful my family is in that moment. I don’t want to get to sixty to look back and not see me in my photos of my family. I’ve found that making myself get in more photos and making myself look at the good in those photos has had the side effect of me actually liking myself in photos more and more often.

Well, now that you’ve seen my underwear and quite a bit of the most vulnerable side of me at this moment in time… tell me, what do YOU do to make yourself feel wonderful about yourself?

About Olga’s Flirty Collection:

With the launch of Flirty at mass department stores, Olga now provides sexy solutions for curvy women everywhere, encouraging and empowering women to be #FearlesslyFlirty because “sexy comes in every shape and size.”

The collection features four bra styles ($45 each) – deep plunge, balconette, unlined underwire, and deep plunge with lace. It also features coordinating hipster panty ($12.50) in playful colors and prints. I chose a deep plunge and balconette bra and coordinating panties to test. I am in LOVE with both though the deep plunge is worn more often simply because I got it in the nude shade.

Olga’s Flirty collection may be found at Macys and Kohls.

A Well Crafted Lady

Party Style: 10th Anniversary Party Attire

September 28, 2016 2 Comments A Well Crafted Lady

I love getting dressed up every now and again. Planning out my outfit, and let’s be honest… my husband’s outfit, was both fun and a little stressful. I’m thrilled with what we ended up pulling together for our 10th anniversary party attire.

I knew I wanted to have a fun party dress but I wasn’t attached to a certain color or style. I was approximately 7 months post-partum and not feeling my most slim and attractive. Searching for a dress ended up being my least favorite part of the whole plan– though, my shopping partners and the eventual finding of the dress made it worth it.

A little background, let’s go back ten years or so to the time when I was searching for “the” dress, my wedding dress. I love clothing, but I do not like the type of shopping that goes with finding a once in a lifetime outfit. I really disliked needing help getting in and adjusting myself into a way too expensive dress. After trying on a few dresses at two different bridal shops I ended up hopping online and purchasing a dress online. If it wasn’t perfect I didn’t care. Thankfully, it pretty much fit perfectly and I didn’t need helping getting it on. Looking back I realize that it wasn’t the most flattering for my shape, but I felt beautiful in the moment and that is what matters.

I originally planned on wearing a white party dress or a brightly colored cocktail dress for the party. I thought it would be a fun way to coordinate with the event. I went to several shops before trying on dresses at Macy’s. While at Macy’s I loaded up my arms with dresses in my size (there were not many) and tried them on with more than a little disappointment in how they looked. I found one that I liked enough if I ordered a larger size online and began to reserve myself to doing that when on a last minute decision to walk through again put a beautiful black and white striped dress in my hands. I gravitated to the black and white stripe mainly because of the black and white striped element in the party invitations and paper goods I had designed. I fell in love. The dress was a tiny bit snug and didn’t completely hide my baby belly… but, I felt fantastic in it!

The idea of coordinating with the invitations was then implanted in my brain. I figured my husband would wear his grey suit, but I didn’t know what style of tie to go along with it. I dreamed for a little bit about making him a custom tie using the design I had on the invitations. I knew I could order custom fabric, but didn’t think I’d have time to actually sew a tie. That’s when I thought to google “custom printed ties” and found that there is a whole world of custom print items out there! (This is very dangerous!!) I was able to have a tie printed through Zazzle in the design I created and it didn’t cost an arm and a leg. While he wasn’t stoked at first about the brightly colored floral tie, he ended up liking it in context with with party.