Outfit Yourself!

**The colored words are links to the stores**

Ok, so I've had lots of comments & questions about the clothes for our MckMama photo shoot, so I thought I'd "help a sister (or brother, I guess, if you're a guy and wondering how to dress your family for some pictures) out" and post some tips on clothing choices for pictures along with the info on exactly where I got everything you see on us! Tip #1: Start with one article of clothing and build around it. Trust me on this. Do not walk into a store & start looking at everything they have hanging up and try to envision it working together. Don't do it. You WILL get overwhelmed. Pick ONE thing you like for you or one of your children & start to build everything else around it. For instance, for this clothing group I started with my son's shirt.

It's just a simple grayish blue & white check button down. But it was the colors I wanted (more on color schemes later) and I knew he would look good in it. So that was my starting point. From there I figured he would wear jeans with it and I wanted a dark jean to contrast with his light shirt, so I knew we would have some dark denim going on. I then found the grayish blue dress & shirt that my girls have on. They did NOT match his shirt exactly...but close enough. I wanted everything to be coordinating, but not matching. Tip #2: Accessorize, accessorize, accessorize. (For those of you with just boys, I know this can be hard. There's not much you can do to accessorize boys, but just be sure & accessorize yourself!) So for my girls I had Reagan wear tights under her dress just for another layer of color & the jacket over the top of her dress. MacKenzie had on white capri jeans & a dark denim jacket for some more contrast. Instead of me wearing just the grey dress I wanted to have more going on, so I used a simple white cotton shrug, belted (you can't really see the belt in this shot but it's super adorable and purple!) over the dress. Tip #3: Find things that coordinate within a color family, but don't match everything together exactly. I found my gray dress (which was not a blue-gray like the other clothes) at Francesca's, a very reasonable dress shop we have here where I live. And I saw a light blue shirt in the window of J Crew that I knew would work great for my husband. So all in all we had pale blue, a bluish grey, dark denim, slate grey, & white with a tiny splash of purple all working together to create a fun & interesting look.

For this next trip we're going to take down the lane of clothing choices, you're going to have to stick with me. It's quite a windy road with lots of stops, but as you can see the resulting look we have in this picture is SO worth it.

This grouping started with Reagan's pale pink skirt (Remember Tip #1). I knew I wanted a sort of Anthropologie-esque look for these (without, of course, actually having to spend Anthropologie prices) so when I saw the skirt at Gap Kids and it really screamed that look, I knew we would begin our building with that. Actually let me back up. I saw the skirt & really loved it, but for some reason I walked out of the store without it. I went next door to Charming Charlie (If you're not from around here, it's a fantastic jewelry & accessory store. Cheap!) and started finding some great pale pink headbands. I also found the brown crochet head thingy that really spoke "vintage" to me. So I grabbed the headbands and ran back to Gap Kids to see if the accessories I had just gotten would match the skirt I had fallen in love with and left behind. Lo & behold, the accessories & the skirt were made for each other! I mean, truly meant to be. So that's when I grabbed the skirt & decided it would be my foundation. Oh, while I was in Charming Charlie I also grabbed an ivory flower made of lace & other fabrics. Since I was going for a vintage look I wanted my colors to be pale pinks & ivory (instead of white). The flower had a pin & a clip on the back so I knew we would be able to use it on some article of clothing or in someones hair (Tip #2...accessories!). The next step was finding something for MacKenzie that would be complimentary to Reagan's pink skirt but NOT match it (Tip #3). Here's another tip: You don't have to find everything for your kids in the same store. Sometimes they do have great groupings that work & you can do it (like in our previous outfits: everything for the kids was from Gap Kids), but especially for a more vintage look, things should be almost mismatched. So I went to a few stores looking (bringing the skirt with me each time) and I finally found an ivory dress with a tiny touch of pale pink in it at Old Navy. Lucky for me it also had a tiny bit of a faded blue-green color in it, and my son already had a shirt that was that color. Things were starting to come together! My next mission was to find an ivory (not white) shirt for Reagan to wear with her skirt. Boy, that was an undertaking. Everywhere I went the shirts were white. Finally an ivory shirt (the perfect ivory shirt I must add) was discovered at Target! (for $6, gotta love that.) Then it was on to finding something for my boy to wear with his shirt. Again ivory colored shorts for boys...not an easy find, but I finally found some at Old Navy. The scarf Reagan is wearing I literally saw at the last second as I was walking toward the check out line of Target one day. I immediately noticed the pale pink, ivory, & some light browns in it. It was the perfect combination of all the colors I had been building. So I grabbed it, not knowing who would wear it or how. Once I had all the kids covered I had them each try on their clothes and I began to pair different accessories with different clothes to see how they all worked the best. Here's something funny: These outfits were for the kids to have the pictures taken without me & Marty. But for some reason I thought, "You know, I love these outfits so much that I may want to jump in a few pictures with them if I can." So everything I have on is stuff I already had. I got my shirt at Marshall's last summer & it happened to be the perfect pale pink (AND had polka dots...so vintage!). Marty never changed from the first grouping we did. I knew he would not be terribly happy about having to change clothes and let's be honest. it's all about keeping the husband happy in these types of situations, right? so he stayed in what he had on and what do you know....it worked!

So bottom line, start with one thing you really love and build around it. Everything doesn't have to match exactly as long as it coordinates with the other stuff. And do some digging. If you have lots of time before you're getting your pictures taken, start looking early. Leave yourself plenty of time to browse around and find all the different things you need (not to mention being able to go in stores when they're having sales is key). I got that pink skirt from Gap Kids on a day you could take 40% off one item just for mentioning you were a Facebook friend. So because I started putting together my outfits way before the date of my shoot I had time to find all of the right things, try them on & get everything just how I wanted.

Thanks again to MckMama for getting some great shots of my family! We've only seen a few and so far I'm liking what I see....can't wait to see the rest!

Happy clothing hunting!