Look guys, I'm wearing a dress!

Dresses: I love buying them. I feel as though I can never have enough. Unfortunately, as my fiance Mark has repeatedly pointed out to me, don't I have enough of those? The thing is... I don't wear them hardly enough. Why?

I'm not really sure. I think there are many reasons. In the past, I've bought clothes on impulse, not thinking of occasions where I could where things, or what to pair them with. Now it's even tougher finding clothes that are work appropriate, since I pretty much live at work. Woof.

So, I found an awesome, versatile dress at TJ Maxx over the weekend that I loved. Hooray! Despite some problems, I was going to wear this thing, dammit. (and I did wear it to work today!)

Sorry, I have a bad habit of making a goofy face in every photo that's taken of me. 

So the near crisis: I found the LAST dress at the store, which happened to be in my size. I couldn't zip the awkward side zipper in the dressing room, but figured I could buy it and and have Mark help me with it when I got home. After 20 plus minutes of struggling back at the apartment, nope. That sucker would not budge. It wasn't that I was too big for the dress, but the zipper was malfunctioning. So I dusted off my sewing machine (quite literally, it had been in storage at my parents' for awhile) and decided on a complete impulse that I was going to give this awesome dress a functioning zipper. After watching a few video tutes, I used a quilting needle as a seam ripper to take out the existing zipper (NEVER AGAIN) and pinned/sewed in the new one.

The end result isn't perfect or even beautiful by any means, but it works, and that's all I really care about.

I'm just glad it all worked out and I was able to wear it. I think I was particularly inspired to try out dresses again after reading over some frock-friendly style blogs over the weekend... like this one and this one!

I mean, HOW CUTE are these buttons?

Hopefully, I'll be able to bring some of the other dresses I have into rotation. Here's to having more varied style beyond scarves, all black and polka dots! (More on that later. At least I eliminated two out of three of my over played style habits on this outfit.)

Dress: TJ Maxx, Tights: Modcloth, Brown Leather Shoes: Thrifted