The Terrible Twos

The school/church at Laurel Valley Plantation.

Last week, my best friend Melissa came from Denver to visit me. We had two stated goals during this visit: 1) See some of the local historical sites. 2) Do some serious clothes shopping for her. You might wonder why someone from Denver would come to the little town of Houma to go shopping. It certainly was not for our mall or shops or overpriced boutiques--all of which could easily be outdone in Denver. No, it was the lure of shopping with a friend who knows her personality and wardrobe needs, and who is a little bit more adventurous but won't force her too far outside of her comfort zone that led to the Great Shopping Expedition of 2013.
To be fair, her wardrobe really was in need of an update, seeing as how some of her clothes date back to college and possibly even high school. Her two biggest challenges are 1) she is an engineer and works in an office that is nearly all men, so she doesn't want to look too girly at work and 2) she is a size 2 and tall--really, really tall.....like an Amazon or a sequoia. My biggest challenge in shopping with her is that she is a total chromaphobe. I have to hold back from slapping her little hand every time she reaches for something black or gray.
I admit, I was worried. For the past few weeks, my next door neighbor and I have been on the hunt for a pair of colorful capris for her. (I think she is secretly jealous of my pink ones.) For me, finding colorful capris was no problem this spring, I walked into Sears, and there they were: pink, coral, cobalt, turquoise, yellow...  The only problem was choosing which color I wanted. Now, I admit, the capris this year seem a lot baggier in the butt than the ones last year, but I really wanted fuchsia pants to wear this summer, and since I usually wear longer shirts, I wasn't worried. Finding colored capris for June has turned out to be a near impossibility. It seems that the smallest size most stores carry these days is 4 and she is a 2--and she is a normal height!
As it turns out, we only found one pair of pants for Melissa. They are gray dress pants from Limited that look really nice on her and happened to be on sale. I have to say I would recommend this store for tall thin women, but stick to the clearance section! We had a lot better luck with shirts and were able to meet her husband's request for color, pattern, and maybe some flowers. At the end of the week, we got out her haul and made a "look book" for her since mixing and matching are apparently not skills native to the average engineer. All in all, it was a successful shopping expedition, and just a generally fun time. Shopping with a friend is just so much more fun than shopping by yourself.

The making of a lookbook. You can tell Mel is unsure about this pink cardigan that I talked her into, but it looked great with her gray pants--and her husband liked it!  It was by far the boldest thing I talked her into buying.