Shop Your Closet: Day One

It's August First, D-Day, and my stomach is doing flip-flops. Today is launch day for the Shop Your Closet project. Thanks to everyone who's brave enough to join in! As I learned years ago training for the Chicago Marathon, it's always more fun to suffer together than separately :)

Thank goodness for Angie, who last night offered up a hand-me-down gift of a gorgeous red crinkled patent leather purse. She gives me faith that treasures will find all of us along this journey.

Then, this morning, I came downstairs to find in the pile of mail a nice fat package of information from Augustana College's Swedish Immigration Research Center, another fitting start to the SYC project. The research inside is fuel for my new book, which is inspired by my family history.

The story involves three red-headed girls from Sweden (yes their roots happen to be in Smaland, the same province that Pippi Longstocking's author hailed from) who emigrated to be pioneers in the first successful Swedish settlement in the U.S. They are Ida Mathilda, Annette Jenny and Svea Augusta, my great-great grandmother. I have a lock of Svea Augusta's hair, tucked into her Bible, and can vouch that it is gloriously red! :) Those three red-headed girls went on to have daughters of their own, in America, and that's where my book begins.

As Jean said on www.youlookfab.com, a lot of us use clothing as an outlet for creativity, and that's fab. It has been an incredible two-year journey on YLF! Now, I would like to roadtest the wardrobe I've built, while diverting some of that energy into my writing projects ... and reading ... and transforming two rooms of my house. But I don't want to exchange shopping for clothes for shopping for home decor. I will be trolling our local antique mall, believe me, but think I can do the transforming without spending much at all.

This weekend, in my last-minute panic, I bought black jeggings from Gap, a black cami from BR, and two colorful fall scarves from NAS. I forgot to buy underwear and stockings. Yikes!

Okay my fellow Shop Your Closet crew. Here are the rules.

1. No new clothing, footwear or accessories purchases for yourself through Dec. 31, 2010. Plan to hit the January sales like there's no tomorrow!
2. You may borrow.
3. You may receive gifts. (But, asking your husband to buy you a Marc Jacobs dress and then pretending it's a gift = cheating :))
4. You may have existing clothing altered.
5. You may sew yourself something. Maybe you can even design something. I was such a failure at Home Ec that I am willing to reward bonus points for this!

I will be posting my triumphs and sufferings daily here, a weekly check-in thread on YLF, and starting Oct. 1, will have a monthly story for www.makeitbetter.net.

As Angie would say, over to you! What did you buy pre-SYC? What are your own rules? Do you have creative projects of your own that you're focusing on? Let's hear it!