My (New) Obsession with Giving Away Books

In preparation for our move to Seattle, Aaron and I quickly realized that the books we own could almost fill the back of my little car. And since our plan is to go with only my car and what we can fit in it, we had to prioritize. As much as we love books and have prided ourselves on our collections, we are really going to need clothes, bedding, and dishes when we first arrive in Seattle. So we began the task of cleaning out our collections.

To my surprise, this process was mostly easy for me. I developed a hard-line policy (Will I ever read this book again?) and stuck to it. And I found myself enjoying the process.

I'm getting new ideas for books from this picture! 
White Cat sounds like awesome YA fiction.

To start, I pulled the books I wanted to give away off of my shelf and stacked them on the floor. I knew I could only take a minimal amount of books with me, so I decided I had to end up with one shelf of books or less. I found myself tossing out favorites like Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and sequels, Gregory Maguire's Wicked and the rest, even some of my Margaret Atwood books. I let go of my copies of the A Song of Ice and Fire series (though I might have kept these if I had all of them, but I only had physical copies of the middle 3; I have e-books of A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, and A Dance of Dragons). I gave away some of the classics, even ones I loved, like Jane Eyre. As much as I loved reading it, it's available for free (or very cheap) from e-book sellers, and my physical copy doesn't hold much meaning by itself.

The really (unexpectedly) fun part came when a few of our friends came over to take books they wanted. As we went through our books with other people, we were able to talk about which ones we loved and why, which ones we never finished, and why certain authors are our favorites. It was invigorating to see our friends inspired to read some of our most treasured stories.

The books I ended up keeping probably say something about my personality; you may tell me what you think it means. This can also serve as your reading list. If you read my blog and don't hate it, you should probably read some of these books.

The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins

The Blind Assassin and The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (plus I think her novel Cat's Eye is in Aaron's go-to-Seattle collection--bonus!)

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake and An Invisible Sign of My Own by Aimee Bender

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safron Foer

Into the Wood, The Likeness, Faithful Place, and Broken Harbor by Tana French

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink (DVD of the film adaptation also made the cut for the move)

Atonement by Ian McEwan

The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel by Amy Hempel

Shakespeare collection by William Shakespeare

The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan

Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser

Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape edited by Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti

Feminism and Pop Culture by Andi Zeisler

The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women by Jessica Valenti

Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power by Rachel Maddow (haven't read yet but it's on the list!)

Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions by Gloria Steinem


So there you have it! The books that will stick with me across the country. The books that you should read.


You're welcome.

My Obsession with Young Adult Fiction

I love young adult fiction, I really do. I have always loved Harry Potter. (Does it count as young adult fiction? I mean, did the category even really exist when Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was published?) I read, and did not love, all 4 Twilight books, and I have a bit of an obsession with The Hunger Games.

Two years ago, when my boss's wife brought us all lunch during a busy day, we were talking about books. I admitted to having stayed up very late the night before finishing Mockingjay. And then I explained that it was a YA book in a series about kids fighting to the death. They all looked at me with blank faces. I couldn't shake the feeling that my boss, a publisher and an author himself, was judging me for reading something so childish.

But lately, YA is getting more recognition as a genre, and it's less of a childish thing we old adults (ha! I called myself an adult) should be embarrassed by. Maybe my boss would still find these books silly, but plenty of people don't.

And thanks to Bitch magazine and its accompanying blogs, I've been discovering so many more YA books! Actually, I think I discovered The Hunger Games thanks to a Bitch article comparing the strong and independent Katniss Everdeen to the whining, lackluster Kristin Stewart, I mean, Bella Swan. Victoria Law has been writing a guest blog series for the Bitch site, Girls of Color in Dystopia, exploring YA books dealing with dystopic visions of the future. More mainstream books, like The Hunger Games, tend to be pretty much whitewashed (except for Rue, and I'm still recovering from her death); Law seeks out the books with a wider range of characters and experiences.

So far, I've read one and a half books that she discussed. I read, and loved, Cinder, a retelling of Cinderella in the future with cyborgs, alien threats, and, of course, handsome young princes. (Princes, apparently, will be sticking around, even as governments rise and fall and go to war and destroy each other. Princes are the cockroaches of fictionalized dystopic worlds.) I'm currently reading, and loving, Ash, another Cinderella re-telling, this one with a lesbian twist.

I was an English major and sometimes I do feel a little embarrassed for reading books with a target audience of 15-year-olds. Shouldn't I be reading literary novels? Shouldn't I be tackling that Gloria Steinem book like there's no tomorrow? Yes and no. I should, and do, read National Book Award-winning novels like Salvage the Bones (which I highly recommend) and I do read feminist nonfiction whenever I can. But since I've been out of college and working every day with no summer break like an old adult, I've started to understand why my mom has been reading trashy romance novels for so long, and why I'm craving YA books more often.

They're easy. They sweep you up in a story that you can move through quickly. They give you the good story and the drama with simpler language. And as YA is becoming more legit, the books are getting better. Recently, I had a very heated (and I do mean heated) debate about the merits of young adult fiction, specifically Harry Potter, Twilight, and The Hunger Games. Some people thought it was ridiculous to count these books as literature, or even as legitimate. Some thought there was no purpose to books with "literary merit". (Some people also never explained how they might define "literary merit".)

The truth is, I don't care if these books qualify as literature. How do you qualify anyway? There are plenty of books, young adult or not, that are terrible, and plenty that are great. The fact that anyone could try to debate the quality of Harry Potter and Twilight in the same conversation is ridiculous: one is a brilliant series with a vast, detailed world, and one is...not. But The Hunger Games brings so many provocative topics to the young reader: government censorship and control, relationships, violence as entertainment. Cinder shows them the problems with discrimination and Ash asks them to think more broadly about sexuality. How is a book that gets more kids and teens to think and form opinions a bad thing? Why don't teens deserve that opportunity?

YA novels allow readers to explore big ideas in language they understand. They can get non-readers interested in reading. They can open the door to higher brow books, or to poetry, or to literary non-fiction. And they provide anyone and everyone with a story to get swept up in after a long day at work.

That's enough for me.

Moving and Clean Slates

Y'all. I am a little too excited about moving.

I love Oxford, I love my job, but it is time to live somewhere else. And now that we've decided on Seattle, and started making serious plans, I am soooo ready! Aaron found a video about all the great stuff in Seattle, thanks to Expedia, and after watching it (twice), I want to be there and do everything. So I've made Seattle my computer background.

If you hadn't already figured this out, I'm a planner. Big time. It's very frustrating to me that people don't already know which apartments will be available in August--I want to plan 2 and a half months ahead!

Yes, I have asthma, and yes, I Googled the best
cities for people with asthma.

I'm also just really excited about the opportunity for a clean slate. New place to live, new people to meet, new jobs to find (and get!), and, we've decided, new furniture! It hadn't even occurred to us not to rent a U-Haul or use PODS or something to move all our stuff across the country. When talking to my Aunt Genie (yes I'm named for her) about prices, she finally stopped me and said, "Is the stuff that you have worth $1,500 or $2,000 plus the hassle? Or could you just sell it and buy new stuff when you get there?"

Honestly, her suggestion kind of blew my mind. How had this never occurred to me? Well, probably because we are all pretty attached to our stuff, and when we picture new apartments and homes, we imagine the stuff we have going into them. But we are 25, with no kids and no expensive furniture; why should we bother with the expense and difficulty of moving everything? We were all planning to leave a lot of our books in my mom's attic (because we just assume we won't have space for them and the bookcases). I'm pretty sure we can find another $90 couch. And my dresser, which I've moved to three different living locations now, is too small and has had a broken drawer all four years. It's probably easily fixed, but I sure as hell haven't fixed it. So why do I still have it at all?

So now we begin the process of cleaning everything out. For those of you who live in my area, be prepared: we'll be selling some good (and some just okay) furniture at the end of the summer. And this process is really exciting to me. For one thing, it gives me an outlet to focus my excited moving energy while I'm waiting for time to move a little faster so I can get serious about apartment hunting. Plus, it feels really good to finally let go of a lot of the stuff I've been carrying around with me for years.

Books I put aside to keep without taking,
by storing them in Mom's attic

This is a step on the way to not becoming a hoarder. That's always a good step to take.














I will, however, miss this beautiful catalpa tree from the Ole Miss campus.

I just wanted to share this awesome picture.

Organization = Sanity, Part II

So remember when I wrote about loving organization, and wanting to carry all my things with me always? Well, I've taken this to a new level.

I decided to invest in a good backpack. This is because, as much as I love tote bags and shoulder bags and messenger bags and all their semi-professional looking cuteness, I have started having back, shoulder, and neck pain in the past year. I'm sure this is not solely due to carrying my computer and other things on one shoulder (I also sit at a desk all day, then go home and mostly sit, and I don't think the way I sleep is ideal for my neck) but it can't be helping. Plus, I will be moving to a bigger city soon, and might need to carry my stuff not just to the car and into the office, but walking several blocks to the bus stop or, if I get over my fear of other cars, maybe even while biking.

I'm also kind of sick of carrying a purse, especially when I have to carry a purse along with my computer bag. Feminspire, one of my new favorite sites, has a great article about women, purses, the social pressure to carry a purse, and the lack of legitimate pockets in clothing designed for us. When examining my purse, there's really a small amount of things that I absolutely need all the time (debit card, driver's license, cash, insurance cards, phone, keys, inhaler), a few things I need some of the time (tampons, checkbook) and the other things in my purse are occasional use/no use items (hairbrush, notebook for writing, iPod, sunglasses, etc.). I decided that I can carry a small wallet that also holds my phone, and can be tossed in the backpack or used on its own, and everything else can just live in the backpack.

Plenty of reason to invest in a backpack.

But the real reason I'm super excited about this purchase? The real reason I can't wait for my package to arrive today?

COMPARTMENTS!!

This backpack is the epitome of organization. 

So. 

Many. 

Pockets. 

And. 

Compartments!

It has a specific computer compartment. An iPad compartment. Pockets for cords. Pockets for little notebooks and pens. A key chain. A pocket for your phone. Probably a compartment just for extra pockets.

I'm way too excited about this purchase. I've already gotten my little phone/wallet (it's called a wristlet, which is a weird term) and took it out to dinner last night. And when my backpack comes in, I'll toss it into the specific wristlet pocket (I'm sure this exists) and go! Of course, with my luck, once I move I'll probably work somewhere with a designated work computer and I'll never need to carry things with me again. I hope not.

So, here's to my latest attempt at over-organization!

My Obsession with Technology, or, My Confession to Being a Nerd

I am obsessed. I love technology. I fought it for a while. I loved books, and someone who loves books is supposed to hate new things like iPads and e-readers, right? But the truth is I do love technology, and I always have.

Maxwell Nerdstrom...
remember him?

Let me say, in case you haven't figured it out, I was a big nerd when I was a kid. Not the Maxwell Nerdstrom from Saved by the Bell kind of nerd but still, a nerd. I wanted to read all the time. I wanted to be a writer. I started a family newspaper called The Leslie Gazette (and by family newspaper, I mean for my family, because no one else wanted to be involved in actually creating it...or reading it). I alphabetized my books and tried to run a library out of my bedroom for my sisters. I got very excited when we first got a color printer and turned in a paper to my 6th grade English teacher with almost every sentence in a different color (I wish I were making this up).

I think my love of technology started with the creation of my newspaper. We had a computer program designed for kids to write; it turned writing into a sort of game. I remember you could get the computer to read back what you had typed in an automated voice. (We got the pre-Siri voice to read the phrase, "Spectacles testicles wallet and watch" because we heard Austin Powers say it. And it mentioned testicles, so clearly it was funny.) You could write in different fonts, different colors. And you could type in columns. Once I realized that typing in columns was the key to looking like a newspaper, I was in heaven.

And then, then, I discovered 2-sided printing. Oh my friends, how this changed my life. If you printed your story on both sides of the paper, then it looked like an actual book! You just had to staple it together down the left side and, voila! You basically had a book ready to go. (This was still helpful as I got older; printing on both sides of the paper allowed to me save money on paper as a poor college student.)

So, even though I balked when Kindles and Nooks became popular, I was already a longtime fan of technology. Yes, I love the feel of a book in my hands. Just a few minutes ago, I almost got distracted by picking up a copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude that my boyfriend left lying around. It's not an actual Mass Market Edition (you know, the paperbacks that are short and fat and feel so good in your hands) but it's the same size. Anyway, I loved the way it felt and the old, yellowing pages, and I started reading the first page and almost gave up on writing for the night (I'll probably read it after finishing this post). I will never, ever, give up on physical books.

But I still love the idea of e-books and e-readers. I love the eco-friendly, paperless aspect. I love that you can carry tons of books (and magazines!) with you in one lightweight device. And now that so many people recognize how unfair big chains (cough, Amazon, cough!) are to independent bookstores, there are even online stores like Kobo Books that sell their own e-readers and allow you to buy e-books through your own local bookstore. (Square Books is mine; check it out!)

And now that I work in publishing, technology helps me to create books. How cool is that? I've gotten to do the layout on a couple of book projects now, and even though it gets tedious (Why won't that last sentence fit on this page?! Whyyyyy?!?!?!), I love it. I can choose the font, choose the spacing, and make this computer screen look like a book. Then we send it off to a printer and they send it back as a Real. Book. Or we can create an e-book. Or both. It's even better than my 2-sided printing jobs!

So, I will no longer be ashamed of my love for my iPad, or my phone, or my computer. I wouldn't have a job in publishing without them. Hell, I wouldn't be able to blog without them (and then I couldn't force my writing on all of you, and what kind of world would that be?). Embracing e-books, tablets, and smart phones does not mean I have to give up on physical books.

I will not choose. I will have both.

My (Unhealthy?) Obsession with Making My Bed

I try to make my bed every day. Sometimes it's before I leave for work, other days I don't do it until I get home; but I do it most every day.

This isn't a habit ingrained since childhood. My parents never required that I make my bed every day before school. In fact, they never really required that I clean my room, not that I remember. They, or really my dad, wanted the rooms we all shared to be clean. If we left too much of our stuff, too many dolls or board games or Baby-Sitters Club books cluttering up the den, my dad would angrily gather it all, stack it on the bottom steps of the staircase, and yell for us to take it up to our rooms and put it away. Sometimes, usually after a big fight, we would obey. Other times, our stuff would sit there for days (weeks? does my memory exaggerate?) and then, after a big fight, we would carry it upstairs and drop it in messy piles on the floors of our rooms, a slight hidden rebellion in not putting it away neatly.

But my room was my domain, and if I didn't want to clean it, I didn't. I wasn't a total slob. The mess was usually confined to an unmade bed and piles of clothes, books, and CDs in the two wicker chairs my mother put in my room so that I could sit by my window and read. (I always read in my bed. Since I've moved out on my own, she has continued to try to put chairs in my various bedrooms. "Don't you want a chair in your room? So you can sit and read?" No Mom, I don't. And I've never seen anything in your bedroom chair but a stack of books and clothes, so there.) When it came to the important things, I definitely had organizational (OCD?) tendencies. My bookcase was always neat and, often, alphabetized by author's last name. This was especially important for the times I catalogued my books and ran a small library out of my bedroom. (My sisters' lack of interest in checking out, reading, and returning my books ultimately led to the closing of the library.)

It still amazes me that I grew from the child who hated to clean, to the adult who makes her bed every day, who enjoys a Saturday morning with her boyfriend out of the house so that she can sweep, vacuum, and tidy in peace and with loud pop music playing. How did I become someone who feels more relaxed, who feels happier when her home is clean?

Made it up before work this morning.

I think I have come to see a clean space as a sign of a healthy mind. I'm not saying that it actually means that, just that for me, it has come to represent that.

My dad was the one who encouraged the cleaning at our house. My mother is not a neat person; clutter doesn't bother her like it does my father (and, now, me). Her nightstand is stacked with, I'm not exaggerating, maybe 10-15 books at all times. I have one sister who is similar to me as a child: when it comes to the important things, she is neat, and maybe a little more relaxed about everything else. My other sister is a slob. So when my parents divorced and my dad moved out, the house got messier. And it doesn't take a psychiatrist to figure out that a young teenager might see a lonely mother and start to equate her lack of cleaning with her sadness at the time. Somewhere in there, I started cleaning. I couldn't control dad leaving, I couldn't control mom's confusion or sadness, but by golly, I could clean!

And this has specifically applied to how I feel about the unmade bed. I have a friend who has struggled with depression in the past. When she was feeling down, she would crawl into her bed, under the covers, and sleep. It didn't matter what time of day it was, or what she was supposed to be doing, or how long she stayed there; she would literally crawl into a hole to get away. I would come to visit, see her all wrapped up under the puffy blanket, and know that something was wrong. I would know that nothing I said would get her out of that bed.

This, more than anything, has shaped my obsession. I see an unmade bed as a plan to get back under the covers. I see a long midday nap as depression creeping in. Even now, I take naps on top of my neatly made covers, with one small throw blanket for warmth and an alarm set for no longer than 45 minutes. I always hated my father's fastidious neatness, and yet it seems I've developed my own version of it to feel a sense of control, as if keeping things clean will keep me from some day maybe getting depressed.

I know that I'm not depressed; I don't need carefully timed naps or a clean house to remind me of that. I also know that, however I came to be the way I am, there's nothing wrong with liking a clean house. If organization makes me feel better, then I should keep things organized. But there has to be a balance. There's also nothing wrong with occasionally unmaking the bed for a long, warm, crawl-in-a-hole, afternoon nap.

I'll just re-make the bed when I get up.

Feeling Thrifty

Today, on a mission to go the record store, my boyfriend and I ended up at Goodwill. How? Well, last weekend we both cleared out a bunch of clothes and an old set of small wine glasses, and put them in my car to take to Goodwill. And then we had a ton of ice and rain in Oxford, and I never felt like going anywhere but work and home (I didn't even feel like going to work, but you know, I had to). So today, when we got in the car to go the record store (The End of All Music, check it out if you are in Oxford!), I decided it was time to take our stuff to Goodwill. And of course, once we dropped off our donations, we had to go inside and look around for cheap treasures.

I was never really one for thrift store shopping, mainly because I've never been one for shopping. I hate shopping trips, I hate waiting on other people, I hate trying on clothes and them not fitting, and having to go back out and find more things to try on, I just hate the whole process and I'm always grumpy by the time it's over. But at Goodwill (and I would imagine, other good thrift stores as well), the pressure is off. I'm not guaranteed to find anything specific, and I never go there trying to find anything specific (except for once on Halloween and it was a disaster), so it doesn't matter if I leave with nothing. And when you don't care about leaving with anything, you just may find one or two little treasures among all the junk.

The last time I went to Goodwill, I came out with a cropped blazer and an orange purse, each for $6.

 

 

The purse may look a little weird in that picture, but it was weighed down with all my stuff. So anyway, these were both great finds, and made me hate shopping a little less. At least, thrift shopping.

 

So today, I went to Goodwill wearing my cropped blazer and carrying my orange purse. I mainly went in because my boyfriend wanted to, so of course I ended up finding treasures of my own. I've been coveting mint purses online that I want but can't afford, and lo and behold, I found one in Goodwill!

 

 

It's perfect! I couldn't believe it. I can't tell why it was given up. The back has a slight bend that makes it sit a little funny, but I think with my stuff weighing down the purse, the bend will straighten itself out. And even if it doesn't, it was a six dollar purse that looks really good; I'm not complaining.

 

Goodwill was pretty busy today; I guess Saturday is a popular thrifty day. There were lots of people and of course, some of those people had kids. Actually, a lot of them had kids. Kids were everywhere. I like kids fine when I know them and they aren't being jerks. But I did not know the children in Goodwill and some of them were definitely being obnoxious jerks. So I had to laugh when someone came over the intercom and said, "Attention shoppers: Please keep your children with you at all times. This is for the safety of your children. Please keep your children with you at all times. This is for the safety of your children and other shoppers." Yeah right lady, I thought. They are annoying the shit out of you and you want it to stop, and I love you for it!

 

Once the children calmed down a little (or the parents got stricter out of embarrassment), I also found a gray stretchy belt, and a young adult fiction book that Amazon recommended to me (note to self: stop buying books from Amazon) but I never felt like spending $8 on. So when I saw it for $2 today, I thought why not?

 

 

 

So, for $12.81, I left Goodwill with a new purse, a new belt, literature, and I was still in a good mood. Perfect Saturday shopping trip. I may not stop shopping online for closet staples, but I think I can handle a little in-person shopping at thrift stores every now and then. Treasure hunting is fun.

 

 

P. S. Can I do a post-script on a blog post? I'm doing it. I also got these boots yesterday. They were not a thrift store purchase but they were half-price from a store on the Oxford Square. The only time I can buy things on the Square is when there are huge sales, so I was very excited. I got them at Lulu's, and I already have my eye on a mint necklace there that I hope will still be around after February payday.

 

 

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My Obsession with Style Blogs

I am not sure when or how it happened, but in the past six months or so, I have become obsessed with style and style blogs. I don't want to say fashion, because I'm not looking at anything about runways or designers. My obsession is more about looking put together, nice and chic-ish (can I say chic-ish? I just did.) for everyday life.

It all started with my discovery of Putting Me Together, a blog started by Audrey Tom in California. As far as I can tell, it just started with her personal decision to update her wardrobe and put a little more effort into her style. Here are a couple of screen shots from her site.

 

As you can tell from these pictures, a big thing for her is the "remixable wardrobe," a wardrobe full of pieces that can be worn in several different ways, dressed up or down, with dresses, skirts, jeans or trousers, etc. As she says, "One of my hopes with this blog was that I'd be able to build a mix-and-match wardrobe that I could get more mileage out of and ultimately cut down the felt need to buy more.  I wanted to bring depth to my closet instead of continuing to go for breadth." 

I've been wondering lately what it was that drew me to her blog. Why did I, someone who never cared that much about clothes, suddenly find myself shopping online more and trying to put together outfits that felt casual but still stylish? Why did I want to be stylish?

I think it came from wanting to feel a little more adult and/or professional. I'm not a student anymore, but I was going to work wearing all the same clothes I wore throughout college. I work in a pretty casual office, so unless we are meeting with a client, our work attire isn't an issue; there's certainly no dress code. I bought a couple of very professional-looking outfits when I started my job, and quickly realized that I almost never needed an outfit that nice (and then I lost weight and the outfit was suddenly too big and I couldn't wear it even on the occasions that I needed to look like an actual businessperson). So once I realized I didn't need the business clothes, I went back to wearing jeans, T-shirts and cardigans to work most every day. 

But once I discovered Audrey's blog, I realized I could look nice for work without feeling overdressed. I could feel put together and well-dressed without wondering if people were looking at me strangely for overdoing it. And I realized that I could do it without spending a ton of money. 

So for the past six months, I've been slowly rebuilding my wardrobe, taking out pieces that I never wore, or could only wear one way, and replacing them with pieces that can be worn over and over in different ways. I've discovered things I never wore before, like blazers (my new favorite) and dresses (I rarely wore dresses for anything but special occasions). 

Somehow, I started really wanting to start my own style blog. I don't know why I would need to, since I basically do just about everything Audrey does, and there's no reason to copy her blog. But yes, I went as far as taking some pictures of myself and starting a Tumblr that was to be my style blog (I've since deleted it). Also, it's hard to take good pictures of yourself, and after an awkward photo shoot when I asked my boyfriend to take pictures of me (the red dress pictures below), I decided I couldn't make it work.

This picture at least had another purpose: to prove to my sister
that I was wearing the scarf she gave me for Christmas.

                  

 

I think part of my desire to start a style blog is simply that I'm really (pathetically) proud of myself for putting more effort into my appearance. However, I'm also constantly fighting with myself, slightly embarrassed by my new hobby and reminding myself "It shouldn't matter what I look like, my clothes shouldn't matter." The feminist in my head says, "Stop putting so much effort into your appearance! Don't spend money on clothes! Buy more books!" Then the other feminist in my head says, "You aren't doing this for other people, you're doing it for you; you aren't wearing clothes that are uncomfortable because they look good, you are wearing clothes that are both comfortable for a full day at work and make you feel better about the image you present to people you work with. Don't worry so much." Then the frugal woman in my head says, "Stop spending money on cardigans!" (There are lots of people in my head.)

So I guess I'm just going to take advice from all of them. I do need to keep spending in check, but I don't have to worry so much about what my hobbies "say" about me. I'm not a bad feminist or a bad woman for enjoying clothes and style and putting together outfits. As long as I'm wearing outfits that make me comfortable and help me to feel confident, who the hell cares if I look at style blogs to get inspiration?

In case you are interested, here are some of the other blogs I've found. Putting Me Together is always my first stop, but all of these blogs have provided some inspiration (though not always shopping tips, since some of them feature more expensive clothing). 
Blue Paper Lanterns: her blog is based specifically around a budget, which is great!
Wendy's Lookbook: she tends to feature clothing that's expensive, but her looks are great for inspiration. Plus she a fabulous YouTube video on 25 ways to tie a scarf.
Mix and Match Fashion: this is a new discovery, so I don't have much to say about it yet, but so far so good. Seems to feature more affordable stuff.
Kacie's Kloset: another new discovery that I'm still getting to know, but I've seen a few things here that I really wanted (specifically this blazer).