Day 3 of 30, or I am trying to break your heart

I'm afraid this is another bike-related title post- after two lovely days of commuting via bike, my other tire wound up getting a flat on the way home.  If this city is trying to give me a message it's singing me the Wilco song, "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart."  Two flat tires in one week?  Really city?  Why do you have to be this way.  Fortunately these pictures were taken prior to my ride home, so no sadness.

I had planned on having this up earlier, but there are somethings that are more important than blogging...like watching A Very Potter musical, which someone mentioned to me earlier tonight, since the guy who plays Harry was on last night's episode of Glee.

This is not the outfit I originally put on this morning-after the first round of pictures I decided to take a risk and wear this dress as dress, even though I've only ever worn it as a skirt before, since it's on the short and full side as well as showing more skin on top than I usually do at school.  But this challenge is about taking risks, right?  Paired with substantial leggings, boots, this cardigan and a necklace that fills in a bit of the space up top, I felt fairly okay with the appropriate-ness of this outfit.  And it turns out, I really really like this outfit, and I probably wouldn't have worn it this way without being limited by the challenge- instead of trying a different way of wearing the dress I probably would have balled it up in frustration and worn something completely different.  30 for 30 for the Win!

In an unrelated segue that might eventually tie back to today's outfit post, I wanted to highlight a fairly new site, Average Fantastic.  It was started by Saturday Jane, who's blog I've been reading for awhile and her friend.  Here's a snippet from their About section:

"Hey, ladies.  We have a secret to tell you.  It’s a pretty big deal.  You’ll see lots of evidence against it, but we promise it’s true.

You’re totally fantastic just the way you are."

I love that- it's exactly what I'd love to convey in this blog, although I'm not really sure that I've taken any steps towards that.  One of the ways they're interacting with their readers is by asking them a question every week- today's question:  What's your favorite physical feature?  Mine is my hair.  I grew up hating it and being unable to manage it, and even went through a somewhat unfortunate triangle hair phase that strongly resembled the "before" of Anne Hathaway in Princess Diaries.  I've grown into appreciating it now- it's not the stick straight hair that I wanted when I was younger, but I like the color, it's soft and thick, and even though it's still really not one thing or the other (straight or curly), I like the way it looks as some sort of wild woman in between.  And yet, today's post is one of the very few that's been made with my hair down.  Some of that is practicality, it's hotter than Hades here for much of the year and I've been growing it out for a year, so it's this side of painful to wear it down during the extended Texas summer.  That said, for all that I've grown to appreciate my hair, I don't really give it a lot of opportunities to get out there.  So here's to you hair- you're kinda wild and do your own thing, especially when I'm trying to take pictures when there's wind, but I think you're awesome and I will try to do more in the future to show you my affection.

I also wore today this necklace that I diy-ed last night.  I had already made the flowers during a previous burst of crafting, and wasn't sure what I wanted to do with them, but it seemed a natural step to tack them onto a ribbon and turn into a necklace.  I actually like the unfinished look of the flowers, but I'll need to track down my fray block since it was shedding little bits throughout the course of the day.

How did I celebrate being able to wear something in a new way?  By jumping of course!

Outfit: Dress: Urban Outfitters, Cardigan: Anthroologie, Leggings: Express, Boots: Target, Necklace: Self-made! Bracelets: gifted