Wine n cheese with "the girls", if you know what I mean

I had the opportunity this week to spend an evening at the fabulous Hotel ZaZa in uptown Dallas with a few fellow contributors to Dallas Moms Blog. The suite was decorated with old school Hollywood pinup photos, dark paint, leopard couches, and luxe touches. While we were there, we had wine and cheese and other snacks that I don't get to see much of in my house full of dairy-intolerant toddlers.

Other things that we just don't see a lot of in our house...

...Wacoal's line of bras and lingerie!

Yep, we were there for what was, in my case, a much need bra fitting!

I knew I was overdue for this fitting. Heather from CottonBabies wrote a great post about why we need to stop and take time to get refitted after having children, and just this past fall, Amber wrote about her fitting in NYC while attending BlogHer. After breastfeeding two babies in 3 years, I had very little idea what size I actually am anymore, and honestly I was a bit afraid to find out. This is why they gave us wine.

When I got back into the fitting room, the super hip New York bra fitting expert took one look at me and declared me a 30 band size. This was not a surprise, since I typically get 28 or 30 when I measure myself (at which point I give up). If you are familiar with ladies' undergarment shopping, you will recognize this as an extremely difficult band size to find. You cannot, for instance, just go to Target or even Victoria's Secret. Most brands don't go below 32.

Here's where I learned something, though: did you know that the cup size alters a bit for smaller band sizes? For example, a D cup for a 30 band size is smaller than a D cup for a 40 band size. Makes sense, proportionately. This news made me super excited, because I turned out to be a "larger" size than I thought I would be. All is not lost!

Fortunately, Wacoal bras come in band sizes from 28-46 and cup sizes from AA to HH. Their b.tempt'd line has some super cute styles, with a slightly smaller size range. Both lines are conveniently available at Macy's, Dillards, Nordstrom, and Neiman Marcus.

And now, I will leave you with some compelling facts from Wacoal's Bra Expert, Liz Smith:

Bra Facts

• 8 out of 10 women wear the wrong sized bra 
• A woman should be fitted once a year 
• If you gain 5 – 7 lbs, your bra size will change 
• It only takes 15 minutes to be fitted for a bra 
• Most women wear their bras 1 – 1 ½ inches too big in the band and 1 cup size too small
• The average woman has 27 bras in her lingerie draw and wears the same 2 bras repeatedly 
• A bra should be worn once and then washed to extend her life
• After washing and wearing a bra 100 times she needs to be replaced

Well, if that doesn't make you want to go out and get fitted, I don't know what does...
Good luck and good fitting to you!


NOTE: I was given a free fitting and bra from Wacoal at this event, but I was not obligated in any way to write about them or my experience. Opinions are my own. I just felt like you really hadn't had enough TMI posts from me lately. You're welcome.

7 Quick Takes #47

--- 1 ---

This is going to be really fast because I need to go nap. I'm teaching at 6:30am 3 mornings a week now instead of only 2, and it's really hard for me to get up at 5am 3 days a week if I don't get enough sleep somehow. Naps have really been standing in lieu of going to bed early since we have so much going on most evenings.

--- 2 ---

Speaking of teaching Pilates, if you are in the Plano area and would like to try out our Megaformer Pilates classes, we are running a great special on VOICE Daily Deals here. I recommend the 3-pack deal. Come see us!

--- 3---

vIf you follow me on Facebook and Twitter, you know that I dyed my hair pink. Here's a quick pick I took just now wearing very little makeup.

I have discovered that this haircolor really looks better if I wear some kind of color on my lips but, oops, I wasn't doing that in this picture.

--- 4 ---

Hopefully this will be invisible to you, the readers, but I'll probably be migrating this blog to WordPress (it's on Blogger now) some time in the next few months. I am worried and reluctant to make this move, but there are reasons bigger than my personal preference that are involved. Some of the primary goals are to make the site much more usable for my readers, and make commenting easier.

--- 5 ---

Everyone here is freaked out about the flu, how about where you are? My friend EcoKaren did a great post today about natural ways to prevent the flu, aside from or in addition to vaccination. I highly recommend checking it out! As for handwashing, remember that last week I blogged about how to make your own antibacterial hand soap from essential oils and castille soap.

--- 6 ---

It's January 11 and I have already completed one of the items on my To Do List: making our family blog books for 2011 and 2012. They take about 2 weeks to arrive from the publisher. Can't wait to see how they turned out!

--- 7 ---

Have to give one last shout-out to my sponsor, Happy Feet, Healthy Body! Along the lines of flu prevention, remember that she has hand sanitizer pens made from essential oils. If you've just started a New Year's workout routine (or you take one of my classes, haha!), I highly recommend her Lavender bath salts - lavender soothes sore muscles and will help you sleep at night.


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Well that's all for this week, be sure to visit Conversion Diary for links to more 7 Quick Takes Fridays.

The crazy hair project

If you follow this blog on Facebook or Twitter (and you should), you may have seen that this weekend I posted a link to the following YouTube video of a female drummer with amazing hair:



My husband found this video through one of his friends on Twitter, I think, and told me that it would be super great if I dyed my hair this way. I have to say, I thought it was a good idea. I asked you guys and my personal friends on Facebook and Twitter and got a lot of "go for it"s and no "um, no, you are too old". So if you DO think I am too old (which was my initial fear too), you better speak up now because I am now at the seriously-considering-it phase.

It's a good phase of life for me to do something like this because a) I do not have a "real" job -- just teaching Pilates part time and no one there cares if my hair is pink b) my kids are too young to be embarrassed by me yet, c) I'm not planning on being pregnant or trying to get pregnant in the next 6 months, so it's finally safe to dye my hairs, and d) if I wait much longer, I really WILL be too old.

I'm not going to get all single-white-female and exactly copy her look, I am probably going to keep my same haircut (maybe a little more razor cutting on the ends), and most likely just use my regular stylist for the cut. The color is going to take a little more thought. I am considering these options:

1) Pay for color at a real colorist. This could be pricey. I have several recommendations that I am going to research today. Since I'd have to do a platinum bleach first, I think it would have to be re-done every 2-4 weeks, right? The advantage of a professional is that they can target a shade that will look right with my skin. The disadvantage is that I wouldn't have any control over the toxicity levels of the product they're using.

2) Do it myself. I think I would probably go to the health food store and look for low-toxin bleaching options and then order Wild Streaks Henna in pink to do the highlights. Anyone ever tried this?

3) Some kind of hybrid of both. For example, go to a colorist for the first attempt and then try to replicate the touch-up myself with alternative products. I think the bleach part is the part I need to most professional help with because that's where I'd need to match appropriately with my skin tone.

Either way, Lauren has told me that I'll probably only be able to maintain this hair color for about 6 months before it destroys my hair and I have to stop.

Anyone else tried this, used henna color, or have any suggestions?