August Downtime

Dear Readers,

August is the hottest month in Florida, in my opinion. It's the time of year when I travel and visit family farther north to beat the heat. I also take some downtime from technology and work. I'm not alone. Many Floridians escape during August. 

My blog will not be as active this month, but if you'd like to follow me on other platforms, I'll be sharing some fun things like photos (follow me on Instagram) , short video clips (check out my Facebook page) and vlogs (my YouTube channel). Some of the plans for this month include:

• Time with family and friends
• Vacation in North Carolina
• My Mother's home cooking
• Visiting inspiring gardens and parks
• Tampa Bay Comicon
• Much needed time to catch up on letters
• Working on my garden junk journal 
• Reading books for pleasure
• Shopping for new stationery

I hope you are yours are having a wonderful summer and you are taking time to treat yourself. See you back here in September. 

Well wishes always,

Tams 

Intentional Closet Creativity

I am in the middle of a year long experiment. In an effort to live smaller and with intention, I've been experimenting with a ten item capsule wardrobe inspired by the book Lessons From Madame Chic by Jennifer L. Scott. 

Inspiration: Lessons From Madame Chic

In summary, the capsule wardrobe idea is to choose from only ten core wardrobe pieces throughout a season. The core pieces do not include things like shoes, jackets and t-shirts, but those items are to be limited as well.

I worked with a capsule wardrobe from January to June of this year and I learned so much about clothes and myself. Here's what I found out in the first six months:

• Fast Fashion is not a good thing
• I don't need as many clothes as I think I do
• Layering is best for Florida weather
• Fabric is key - I now look at tags and mostly go for 100% cotton or linen
• Buying higher quality items saves me money
• I should only buy what I know I will wear 
• I love wearing ballet flats so I should make those an investment piece (i.e. spend more on a quality item that will last longer)
• I have much more to learn so I'm repeating the experiment for the next six months

My investment piece this season is a nice pair of black ballet flats. I went with some simple, but classic, Sam Edelman leather flats. 

To kick off July, I built a new capsule wardrobe with more hot weather friendly pieces. I did keep one pair of dress pants and one pair of jeans from the first half of the year. The remaining items were stored away for the next winter season. I had one pair of old jeans that were worn out, thus they had to go. My ten item capsule now consists of the following:

• 3 cotton tops
• 2 linen pants
• 1 dress pant (leftover from Season 1)
• 1 pair of jeans (leftover from Season 1)
• 2 dresses (1 cotton, 1 linen)
• 1 linen skirt
• Extras: 4 cotton t-shirts, 1 light cardigan sweater, 1 pair of black leggings
• Shoes: black leather ballet flats, black leather sandals, brown leather sandals (I also have 2 pairs of heels I can pull out to dress up an outfit)

My extras consist of 4 cotton t-shirts and a cardigan

I'm excited to see how this all works out after a year. I must admit, I like the simplicity of a capsule wardrobe. It makes shopping much easier and my wallet very happy.