OOTD: Patriotic Robot

This year I wore red, white, and blue (navy) outfits for 3 days around Independence Day. I love this color palette, so it's no hardship to wear it for our celebrations...or in this case, for a very casual work-from-home Friday-before-3-day-weekend workday.

I started with this red and navy striped T-shirt. When I met my future husband Robot in college, he wore red and blue striped shirts so consistently...I mean, literally every day...that he was as identifiable as a cartoon character from his outfit alone. He has long since abandoned that uniform for a different, not as startlingly specific one, but I still gravitate toward these red and blue (in my case, usually red and navy) stripes and tease him that I'm dressed in a Robot costume. The costume jibe is less convincing when the shirt paired with navy floral Rifle Paper Co Keds (which I was waffling about purchasing last summer until Robot persuaded me to buy them because I wear my sneakers into the ground; they quickly turned out to be my happy shoes). Robot also has never worn denim ankle pants, a navy elbow-length-sleeve button up shirt-as-jacket, a red necklace, or...drum roll...one of the world's silliest July 4 scarves on his head.

OOTD 7/2/21

I mean, check out these Uncle Sam owls! They are too adorable. I bought it from ThredUp for $2.40 so it doesn't take much to get a really good cost per wear. (I've worn it 4 times since purchasing it in 12/2019...so worn twice July 2020 and twice July 2021...for a current CPW of $0.60.)

You might be wondering why I call this only "one of" the silliest; well, after buying my owl scarf, I saw a very similar scarf with whales on it! (Hah, I had it favorited on ThredUp and it's still there, check it out.) As a lover of whimsical zoological prints, I was seriously tempted by it, but refrained from purchasing it; truly, even I only need one red, white, and blue infinity scarf with animals wearing Uncle Sam hats. (Though if I ever see one with a rabbit, tiger, or sea turtle motif, caution will certainly be thrown to the wind.)

I'm happy to have my silly owl scarf because a) I love owls and b) it feeds into the Robot costume theme because the college we attended together has an owl for its mascot! I was curious about how popular the owl is as a college mascot (it should be, right, given the association with brains and wisdom) and found this terrific article advocating for a professional American sports team to use the owl mascot. It says owls are the 17th favorite among colleges; bulldogs are #1.

If you're wondering what the deal is with my hair, this is my wet-hair-don't-care style, in which I twist sections of my hair and secure them with bobby pins in a not-entirely-futile effort to air dry my hair without it turning me into a fuzzy lop. The twists of hair tend to hang over my ears, lop rabbit or beagle fashion, so I always use a headband or scarf to pull the twists back so I can hear. I feel like this headscarf with these glasses is giving me a librarian meets Rosie the Riveter vibe that I don't regret.

So I did not buy a new Uncle Sam hat-wearing animal scarf for Independence Day 2021 but I did make a pair of earrings in red, white (clear), and blue beads specifically for the holiday. (Luckily I will wear this color combination any time, so the earrings will not languish unworn the rest of the year.) These earrings using purchased hoops and French hooks are so easy to make. I photographed the back of the earring (right) so that you can see that you just pull the wire loose from the grippy thing at the top on the right side, put on the beads, poke the loose wire back into the grippy thing, and crimp and/or glue it in place. (I glued mine with G-S Hypo Cement...because my crimp skillz are pitiful...and it worked a treat.)

Are there color combinations that evoke a person or place for you?

I link up with:

Shelbee at Shelbee on the Edge (2nd Monday; 3rd Thursday)

Mica at Away from the Blue (Mondays)

Debbie at My Random Musings (Mondays)

Leelo at Beauty by Miss L (Mondays)

Roxanne at Glass of Glam (Mondays)

Laura at I Do deClaire (Tuesdays)

Emma at Style Splash (Tuesdays)

Jess at Elegantly Dressed & Stylish (Tuesdays)

Gail at Is This Mutton? (Wednesdays)

Shelly at The Queen in Between (Wednesdays)

Jodie at Jodie's Touch of Style (Thursdays)

Carrie at Curly Crafty Mom (Thursdays)

Ada at Elegance and Mommyhood (Thursdays)

Jacqui at Mummabstylish (Thursdays)

Suzy at The Grey Brunette (Fridays)

Nancy at Nancy's Fashion Style (Fridays)

Michelle at My Bijou Life (Fridays)

Erika at A Little Bit of Everything (Fridays)

Rena at Fine Whatever (Saturdays)