Mixing plaids! And weighting a hem with ball-chain?

I have so much respect for people who manage to post what they wear every day or even a few times a week. I work 60-80 hours per week when in the peak of the theatre production season (as in now), and can't imagine finding time to post every day even if I had a "normal" job working 40 hours per week. I was very excited last night that I had finally gotten around to uploading the handful of outfits that I remembered to photograph over the last couple of weeks, but the files became corrupted when going from my camera to my hard drive. I was SO disappointed. :-(

But wearing this today has perked me up!



I have had a hard time finding ways to wear this plaid jacket and plaid top. I had them both in my hand while deciding what to wear last night, because I've been challenging myself to find new ways to style problem garments such as these, and then I realized that I could probably get away with wearing them together! I just love the idea that I'm wearing two plaids right next to each other. And the print on my scarf (around hair) uses the same colors as the top, even though it's completely different and would look jarring right next to it. I wanted to throw in another color, hence the tacky purple bracelet and Mardi Gras bead necklace (seriously, it's a souvenir from when I attended the 2008 Costume Society of America Symposium in New Orleans in May).

This top has always felt like it needed to be a bit longer or a bit shorter, and also it never seemed to hang right. The hem was always bunching up over my butt, even though it has plenty of room to go around it. So I raised the hem a mere inch and a half, and encased a ball-chain all around the hem circumference, and now it feels like a much more flattering length and the hem stays down because of the weight of the ball-chain. It's a trick I have used in a lot of skirt hems, too. But I better not wear it for going through airport security.

I have tried adjusting every light and color setting I can find on my camera, and still all the pictures I take with it look washed-out. The blues and purples in this picture are so much brighter in person. I'm starting to wonder if the lens is foggy?

Scarf: belt from Old Navy pants
0acket: Loehman's
Top: Body Central (shorted by me)
Jeans: Express
Shoes: Danskos, as usual
Necklace: souvenir from New Orleans
Earrings: ?
Bracelet: Mandee or Body Central?