by Glitter | Nov 4, 2016 | How To, How To, Inspiration, OOTD
Somedays you just want drown your face in a pile of stuffed animals. On those days I wear faux fur. Then at any time during the day I can sweep my chin against the wafts of plush surrounding my face and feel at ease. I can also reenact 1980s skiing adds ( like down below) whenever it suits me. Look at me I am just having such a fun time at this sky resort, with all my rich friends, in our ski bunny attire and making important calls on our large cell phones. Thanks for asking.
As a super pear I usually belt my fur vests. This is because I like to have a defined shape and often when wearing a fur vest my waist can get lost in swaddles of plushy fabric. I like a cinch to define my curves. It’s a thing.
A Round of Applause for Wearable Heels
I just want to give a quick shout out to heels that feel like flats. A once inch block heel changed my life. I love the way heels make my feel, but for real yo I don’t know how any one survives in 3 inch stunners, let alone some of the crazy stilettos I see. I didn’t train to be in the circus. I have not intention to walk on stilts. I don’t want to paint my face, wear, spandex and entertain you. Wait nope, I actually do want to do that. Just not on stilts.
A block heel makes me feel supported, and the inch height means even if I’m on my feet all day- like Gloria Gaynor- I Will Survive. Plus this red color perfectly mixes the “no place like home” wishes of Dorothy and the footwear that Elvis Costello reminded us only angels can be envious of. Can I make any more song references in this post? Well, woomp there it is (shaka laka shaka laka)
Shop This Look
Want to look flawless in fur and sassy in a sweater dress? You can find the items featured in this look in the links below:
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by Glitter | May 16, 2016 | Inspiration
So basically, Mondays are the worst. I mean that’s the most unoriginal thing to say, but sometimes it’s best just to be honest. You’re basically waking up to one of the following situations.
Scenario 1: You’re hungover and must endure Sally the exuberant spit talker lecture during a 6 hour long meeting on the importance of getting to know coworkers, when the only coworker you want to get to know is the one that lives in the dark space under your desk. Oh that’s a carpet square? Hello carpet square, I am your new best friend. Let me introduce you to my pals hangover bagel, pedialyte and nap drool. We’ll all get along well.
Scenario 2: You had a rough weekend, which Monday reminds you of all the cool things you should have done instead of crying into a bottle of wine, contemplating your existence, while watching Bridgette Jones diary. Your apartments still a mess. You forgot to get groceries . You failed to do your laundry. This means by the end of the week you are 100% going to have to wear that politically charged t-shirt you keep because it’s as comfortable as it is culturally offensive.
Scenario 3: You had a fun weekend. You did some fun stuff. With some fun people. And now you have to be an adult and work. This is not as fun. Adulting is not fun. Monday, fun hoarder… good times thief… happy hoopla hurter…basically the supreme dark under lord of all fun destruction.
So in order to make Mondays just a bit better, I’ve created this awesome playlist on Spotify of my favorite self love motivational jams. So sit back and groove to some sweet sweet tunes, with positive messages and killer beats. You’re gonna make it through today… I promise.
by Glitter | Apr 18, 2016 | Inspiration, Life, Travel
One of my favorite hobbies is traveling. By the age of 30, I had gone to over 35 countries, nearly every continent, and had to have pages added to my passport- twice. While I am hardly a travel blogger, my frequent adventures have taught me a few things about to see the world fearlessly and loving myself more.
1. Know your limits, and push them. What I learned about traveling early on is the best adventures are hard. They involve a little struggle. Don’t be afraid to be uncomfortable. Do something that terrifies you. Sure, you might fail. You also might succeed. Push your boundaries, just a little bit, and you’ll open yourself to a whole new world of possibilities.
2. Focus on enjoying life more, and how your body looks less. It’s amazing how many opportunities I missed early in life because I was afraid of how people would perceive my body. Traveling has taught me that beauty is completely malleable. There is no universal standard. So I accepted that some people would always find me beautiful, some would always find me ugly and all that mattered if how I saw myself.
3. The best adventures are off the beaten path. We are taught from youth to follow the path, to do the ordinary, to behave. Travel has taught me that the most exciting adventures, stories and learning doesn’t come from the average day to day. So be weird, do things differently, get off the path. You’ll never know what your missing as a result of habit.
4. Talk to strangers. Actually talk to everyone. One of my favorite memories is how I met these amazing men in Mykonos, Greece. I literally jumped on a bar at gay club and shamed the crowd for not dancing to Madonna. I then proceeded to show them how it was done. As a result I ended up with 3 amazing travel buddies for the rest of my trip, and no one shamed Madonna again.
5. Friends are important. Taking the leap to do something can be scary, you don’t have to do it alone. Having someone their to support you through the scary and shitty times, matters. This was a hard, but very important lesson for me, an ” I can do anything on my own” girl, to learn.
6. It ok to be basic. Somethings are just fun. Don’t shy away from something because everyone else has done it. For example, I went on a Guinness tour in Dublin, Ireland like every other tourist. Did the fact that tons of people had done it before make it any less fun. Nope. It was still great and ended the way I like most things to end- with free beer.
7. Support your local community. Sight seeing is fun, but my best memories are when I have wandered into a local neighborhood and explored how the people actually lived. For example, playing fetch with this dog in a London park. What makes people who they are isn’t their museums or their monuments, but rather culture and perspective in life. As a global citizen it’s important we take an active role in the community that surrounds us and change it for the better. If we don’t get involved, we cannot be angry when perceptions refuse to evolve.
8. Be yourself. Its amazing how many new people you meet and adventures you have when you don’t try to change who you are. I will always be loud and sassy and, dare I say it, a bit weird. I wore this Mexican wrestling mask all around Miami, creating some awesome experiences while being my weird goofy self. People think you need to be someone else to impress the world, nope. The people we admire most, usually got their by being true to who they are and refusing to let anyone steal their shine.
9. Approach everything with a smile. The more you greet new experiences with a positive attitude, the more fun those experiences are going to be. Even if they don’t work out as planned. Pushing yourself to try new things with a positive attitude pays off. Nobody likes a Debbie Downer, nobody. Plus smiles have a magical power to melt perceptions. I have personally experienced several times in my life where I have been able to change someone’s view of plus size people by being a positive force in their lives.
10. It’s ok to be a tourist. Sometimes in life you just want to try something new and not feel like you have to commit to it for life. Just as you are a tourist on vacation, you can be a tourist in life. You don’t have to commit to a change before you are ready and know its a fit for your life. It’s 100% ok to try something out for awhile, knowing full well you might abandon it later.
by Glitter | Aug 15, 2015 | Fashion, Fitness, Inspiration, Life
I am so so so excited to kick off the first day of my first Instagram challenge! It isn’t a yoga challenge. This isn’t a fashion challenge. It’s a life challenge! The idea is simple. Take something something that scares you, pushes you, challenges you, makes you uncomfortable or might even seem impossible… and give it a try. Wear that crop top. Try that head stand. Talk to your manager about that raise you deserve. Stop lying to the food delivery guy, there is no roommate.
And don’t just do it. Do it with gusto. Do it with sass. Do it because none of us should wait to live. It’s time to make the impossible, possible.
One thing I’ve learned over my journey is that the first step is ALWAYS the hardest. We want to encourage you to take that step with some extra sassy motivation and prizes. Because every body loves presents. EVERYBODY.
We have some super rad sponsors:
So how do you enter?
You don’t have to post everyday for a chance to win, just at least once during the challenge period – August 15-31. Each new challenge you take on is a new entry. Simples!
by Glitter | Apr 19, 2015 | Inspiration, Life
I have a new theory. If a woman needs to love their body or feel better about themselves, they should do a photo shoot. I am not talking about a tripod in your bedroom or an awkward selfies with outfit changes in the bathroom mirror. I am referring to letting someone else take the reigns and giving up a bit of control. There is something about forcing yourself to let go, putting your image in someone else’s hands and getting comfortable being you in front of a camera that is uber de duper liberating. It forces you to stop thinking about working those angles and allows you the rare opportunity to see yourself through the eyes of someone else. I think it’s a genuine recipe for all kinds of self love and Facebook profile picture updates. 
This weekend I had the awesome pleasure of hanging out with my rad friend, Allyson and her adorable nuclear family. I mean look at that little sassafras in the photo. ADORABLE. Look how she works that inflatable dolphin like it’s her job. Anyways, these super amazing friends [read saints] agreed to put up with my insane ideas and help me snap some sassy shots for a little swimsuit company’s competition. Because, Bermuda. Because, vacation. Because, I have sun, beach, and tropical cocktail needs.
I should mention every single one of the outfits I post daily on instagram, I take myself with my iphone on a tripod. I know my angles, and I must admit look uniformly (damn) good. I am a master at working the hell out of that $15 amazon budget photography investment. However, most of these shots are not me hanging out in real life. Sure some of my quirk comes through (there’s a little too much sass in this ole body o’ mine to shut it out), but at the end of the day, it’s the manufactured version of me. The me I want you to see.
I love these photos because they show a side of me I rarely see in pictures. I still look rad… I would even venture to say better then I do in my ooh la la, white backgroundy, artsy selfies. They show a quiet confidence, versus a loud in your face “I love who I am for all the internet to see” version of me. I love how they capture both my insatiable curiosity and my uncontrollable silliness. I didn’t manipulate my body into just the perfect pose and she captured beautiful ways I move and exist on film ( err photo card?) for the first time. As a result, I now see myself a bit differently. And, that’s a good thing.
I think all women to deserve to find a special beauty in who they are. Maybe allowing someone else to take the reigns of how we see ourselves is another step in loving ourselves just lil bit more.
(Both bikinis are from swimsuitesforall.com. They didn’t give me anything for this post, I just have a excellent trigger finger when it comes to cute swimwear.)
by Glitter | Mar 26, 2015 | Inspiration
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking recently. That’s a dumb sentence, we all do a lot of thinking, all the time. That’s what our brains do. Even when we are asleep- we be thinking. Hence why for a brief period of my pre-teens I had a terrifying reoccurring dream about a large dirty mattress chasing me down the street. New readers- I’m weird. Old readers- you should have figured that loooong ago. I digress.
Back to the subject at hand. The internet is now pretty much a mirror of our lives. We all have become the annoying aunt from our childhood who always wanted you to look at the photos she carried around in her oversized pleather pocket book. I used pocket book instead of purse, because it felt more “weird aunt” like. Unlike our dear old Auntie nowadays we have all these amazing tools to make each and every picture of our lives brighter, bolder, better framed, and more “product of an uptight photographer wearing a leather baseball cap” looking.Perhaps our greatest editing tool is the delete button. We have all played the role of “annoying bitch who demands 45 shots until she looks fabulous” in group photos. The 44 other shots? Clickity clack (those are button touches), deleted. We are only are best selves online, and that’s kind of sad.
The reality is the more we show perfection, the more perfect things have to be. We get so used to full faces of make up and perfect hair, that we forget what real people in real moments look like. We lose the memories and focus instead on how fabulous we look in them. Personally I think there is something special and beautiful in stories of the photos that show us at our not so best.
Take the photo at the top which i like to call the potentially worst photo of me ever taken. My hair is a mess. My body is in potentially the most unflattering position it has ever been. This is not the snazzy, sassy, sexy, drop of goddess most people on the internet know me as. But those who know me in real life? This photo is perfectly me. It shows that I am bit zany, shameless, oddly flexible, have great taste in swimsuits, and generally don’t give a fuck what people think. When it comes down to it, I think I should be celebrating this side of myself a whole lot more. I think we all should be celebrating the less perfect, but oh so much more interesting parts of ourselves more.
Help me change this.Let’s make the internet a celebration of all sides of our beautiful crazy ass lives. Commit to post on picture of yourself that isn’t perfect. That isn’t edited. That your make up isn’t done. That your body isn’t perfect. Tag it with #ImperfectlyBeautiful. I don’t care where you do it- facebook, twitter, instagram. whatever.
Lets start a movement and bring the real people with real lives back to the internet. Lets start celebrating multifaceted presentations of our lives and our bodies.
