As I described in my post about my 2025 clothing no buy year (shopping break), I have fallen behind on blogging about new wardrobe additions from 2023 and 2024. I'm starting to rectify that today with an introduction to a new pair of teal pants that I purchased in fall 2023 and how I styled them for winter.
First, the stats on these pants and how they ended up in my closet. This was an interesting purchase because of how unusually intentional it was! I had owned the light teal pants pictured below since 2017, but I removed them from my closet in (I think) summer 2023 along with pairs of coral pants and red pants that were starting to show wear and fit uncomfortably at my larger size (with zero stretch, they didn't offer much flexibility and were never the most comfy to begin with). But since teal is a color I love to wear, I knew right away that I'd want to find a replacement. And because I'd had good luck with The Effortless Stretch Pant from Kohls in other colors, I started watching the site for a teal pair to appear. It didn't take too long for them to offer the pants in this lovely shade of teal that turned out to be a great match to the "reverie teal" color from Christopher & Banks that I had in a tank, a 3/4 sleeve T, and a striped short-sleeved T. I don't typically pay full price for clothing, but with this item checking all the boxes for fit, comfort, and color, I thought it was well worth the $36.
So far I've mostly been wearing these pants for warm weather, but I do have a winter outfit to share. Now you might think, but Sally, this outfit dates to last March, which is spring...which is a reasonable response. But March is the tail end of winter in the Twin Cities of Minnesota with average temperatures of 43F (high) and 25F (low)...which is the same or colder than average January temperatures in Louisville KY, Portland OR, Raleigh NC, Richmond VA, Tulsa OK, and Washington DC (to say nothing of places that are actually warm in winter). It's roughly the same or just a bit warmer than January in Cincinnati OH, Denver CO, Philadelphia PA, Providence RI, Salt Lake City UT, and St Louis MO...and I think we'd say January in those cities is winter!
I wore my teal pants with a dark green floral print long-sleeved T and a blue denim jacket for a comfortable work-from-home outfit. The teal tone of the pants didn't precisely match any of the colors in the top, but the teal is "in the span" of the green, mint, and blue colors and looks like it could fit right into the print. Especially with the denim jacket layered over the top, no one would ever notice that the teal doesn't truly match any specific color of the print.
My suede loafers in a darker shade of teal coordinates well with both the lighter teal of the pants and the teal-ish green colors in the floral print.
The light pink scarf is another example of a color that coordinates without matching. The floral top has white and bits of lavender/lilac in the print, and the light pink has a family resemblance to those colors (not a twin or even a sibling, but a cousin). And of course a pale pink is always a good match to my skin tone :D As I often do with an infinity scarf, I added a long necklace: my go-to gold tassel necklace from Kohls. As of today (not the date of the outfit), I've worn it 106 times for a cost per wear of $0.19. It's my default option to add when I think my outfit needs a long gold necklace to layer with a scarf or other necklaces.
My all-DIY bracelet stack started with a trio of paper bead bracelets that I made specifically to wear with this top; as you can see from the sliver of T-shirt in this photo, I pulled a color palette from the print to include various green and aqua colors, lavender/purple, and white, with gold metal to represent the bits of mustardy-gold. I already had the two bracelets with teal AB glass beads and the multi-color bead bracelet in my collection, but I created the middle bracelet with green-teal magnesite 8mm disk beads and gold spacers to work with this set. (Of course now that I have it, I can add it to all kinds of bracelet stacks.) {stretch bracelet tutorial} {bicone paper bead tutorial} {tube paper bead tutorial}
The top paper bead bracelet with the flower charm was made from this gorgeous ocean scene in a calendar. A decision you have to make with a page like this is which direction you want to cut your paper strips. By cutting them sideways as this page is oriented in the photo (i.e., from top to bottom of the photo), each strip will have some of the lavender sky, some of the dark bluffs, and some of the blue water/coral so all the colors will be present on each bead. If I cut the strips the other direction, some would be all purple sky, some would be all dark bluff, some would be all blue water...in other words, not consistent at all. Neither option is wrong! It depends on what you're going for. As always with thicker paper, I covered the paper core with marker (metallic gold Sharpie) prior to rolling, which gives the beads a striped effect. I think the beads turned out great.
The shades-of-green paper beads (third from the bottom of the stack) were created from this illustration in The Economist. They commonly have images that are 7" wide and around 4" tall that I use frequently for making paper beads for bracelets because I can get 6 to 7 1" triangular strips from them (the long way). The shaking hands image was nothing special but (1) a large scale image is never visible in the final beads and (2) the light to dark green ombré effect of the color was very promising. This magazine is pretty thin paper so I sometimes layer the strip of "good" paper over a couple of strips of boring paper (just regular text from the magazine) to bulk up my beads. For these beads, I used 3 strips per bead to yield 6mm beads (measured at the fattest point in the middle). Because I only had 6 1" beads, I added a swirly gold focal bead to the bracelet along with gold spacers to reach my desired size.
The last paper bead bracelet (bottom of the stack) came from a page in an alumni magazine that I had been immediately excited to see when the magazine arrived. I knew this page would make great paper beads due to the fun colors and the mixture of visual textures between the suited figure and the crayon-looking scribbles in the background. Even though it wasn't 100% on point with my floral top's color palette, I thought it would be a nice addition to my set, and I wasn't disappointed.
My DIY earrings are a more interesting design than I normally use, and I'm kind of proud of them because I didn't base them on any earrings that I had seen. I mean, I am sure that this is a design thousands of people have independently come up with because it's not that complicated, but since I often stick to the basic, tried-and-true "3 beads on a stick" type of design, I was happy to have tried something that was new to me and for it to turn out so cute! I made them to go with this floral top and bracelet set, so I used a gold metal flower bead and a trio of glass bellflower beads in pink, green, and green-teal for each earring. I was going for that look where some kinds of flowers dangle downward from their stems, and I think I captured it pretty well.
With the heartbreaking fire damage in the Los Angeles area recently, I've been thinking about our trip to southern California just before Christmas in 2017; one of our favorite stops was the Los Angeles Arboretum. It sounds like the Arboretum has taken some damage but was not destroyed by the fires, which was good to hear. I feel like we need every little bit of good news we can get from that area. And I am enjoying this pretty flower reminding me that in St Paul, spring is winter, but in Los Angeles, winter is spring.
Do you have any favorite pieces that you've bought multiples of in various colors, as I have done with The Effortless Stretch Pant? (Does seeing something called a "pant" strike you as funny as it does me? Is "a pant" just one leg of a pair of pants, or...?) Do you ever pick colors that don't quite match but are close enough when putting outfits together? What are the temperatures like in January vs. March where you live? When do you think of winter being over? Have the fires in LA brought up any memories for you?
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