Another 2017 Challenge

Because reading 117 books isn't enough...

In 2014, I attended a women's retreat with our church, and I was thoroughly unimpressed by the theme "Be-you-tiful You"...until I heard the message. Shari Braendel of Fashion Meets Faith was the speaker, and she was fantastic. If you've never had the opportunity to attend one of her seminars, please do. She has a powerful testimony, and she really opened my eyes to what I look like.

Having grown up in South Texas (farther south than Corpus Christi!), I grew up as a shorts and short-sleeved shirt kind of gal. I'm not super confident with color and trends and all that, so I kept close to the "basics." In fact, I didn't realize how plain my clothes palette was until I overheard my friend Kristina of PWC Moms (a great resource if you live in Prince William County, VA) tell my eldest daughter, "Well, honey, your mom is a black, white, and grey kind of person." I have no idea what they were talking about, but in the years since, I've discovered my closet is pretty close to Kristina's description. So you can see how Sheri's seminar was useful to me. She is sweet and funny and all about celebrating who YOU are, not in turning anyone into a fashion plate.

I bought Shari's book Help Me Jesus, I Have Nothing to Wear, which is a fun, easy read and good reference guide. Shari breaks people into general body types and makes her recommendations for best fits based on that. She also recommends color schemes based on your skin tone, hair color, and eye color. Her free color analysis will give you your color scheme. Thanks to her, I manage to look reasonably presentable on a regular basis. I still wear shirts and shorts (like today), but they're nice, well-tailored pieces that a) are comfortable and b) look nice on me. As you can see, I still like black and white.

Anyhow, the point of this post is this: Lately, Fashion Meets Faith has been advertising Shari's new online program: 27 Hangers. I haven't attended (because even though it's only $27, I can't justify the expense to myself), but the idea intrigued me. One of my friends from two moves ago wanted to do a yearly challenge with just 12 pieces of clothing. I wasn't brave enough for that. So when Shari and FMF rolled out 27 Hangers, I thought, "I can do that." So I finally did. Yesterday morning, I took every single piece of "regular" (not sweaters, jackets, etc. because they're too bulky to store) clothing out of my closet, and I was really surprised by how many clothes I have. I selected the 27 most useful pieces of clothing for this season (as you can see, I'm in shorts now but a cold front may roll through at any moment-Louisiana weather is nuts!) and hung them up dutifully. I intend to live in these 27 clothes for the next three months. If I like the challenge, then I'll go ahead and switch things up for summer and so on.

So, what did I keep? Surprisingly, 27 pieces of clothing is a lot. I have four dresses, three tunics, two leggings, two pairs of jeans, two pairs of shorts, one pair of capris, and the rest is tops. I think. That's going off the top of my head. As you can see from the picture, I'm on hold on the phone and need to be at my computer to reference the issue I'm calling about. But so far, I'm happy with my choices.

Mind you, this is "daily" clothing only. I did go through my workout clothes drawer, my personal clothes drawer, and my pajama drawer as well. I kept five pieces of workout gear and pajamas, and I won't tell you what I left in my personal drawer. We've no need to be that personal.

All the other clothes are in a bin in our storage room under the stairs. I may break, and I may not. If I make it, then I'm going to do my best to give away at least five unused pieces of clothing from the storage bin. This will be hard because I love my clothes even if I don't wear them very often. Maybe absence will make my heart even fonder of them. Who knows?

I hope to keep you updated with a weekly picture of what my 27 hangers produced. We'll play the "She wore that last week" game. LOL.

Blessings to you, my friends.

P.S. I did not receive any compensation for this post. I just really like Shari Braendel's message and hope her knowledge will be useful to you. After all, it's the new year-out with the old!