Bright pink jacket with houndstooth leggingsHusband Ron took this photo despite his aversion to taking my blog photos, bless him. He is now painting the shed as he didn’t like this rustic wood vibe. Next time he takes photos in the garden, it will be all lovely. I did some styling with stuff from my wardrobe this time. My bright pink jacket is quite new (you saw it before with leopard trousers), the houndstooth leggings are old and the bag and boots are 1 and 2 years old. Oh, I forgot, the polka dot top is new (rats, I did add something new). More photos of outfits below and how my colleagues said farewell to me now that I couldn’t have a retirement party.

I saw the photo above and thought: “Hmmm I like it but it is very 90’s. Then again…isn’t that a trend? Revival of the 90’s?” When I tried this outfit two weeks ago, I wore my cream flat ankle boots with it and Ron said: “Oh I love this outfit, it is really good”. I thought that was grossly exaggerated. It is fine, but “really good”? Nah…

Below: With the flat cream boots. The colour of the jacket is too pastel in this light. In reality it is brighter.

Bright pink jacket with houndstooth leggings

Below: Another pose with the high heeled boots plus an image of our dear Watson.

Bright pink jacket with houndstooth leggings

Below: The boots are IRO Paris. My cobbler sprayed them darker but it is still suede.

IRO black suede ankle boots

Below: Close-up of the bag (Nooki Design). It is still available on their website in silver and in gold.

Silver crossbody bag Nooki design

Below: This is how I got the idea for the outfit. Remember I sewed loops on this legging so I could wear it with a belt? When I was trying it on I was pretty pleased with A) my sewing; it works beautifully and B) my reflection in the mirror. I know it sounds bloody vain and I know I am holding my tummy in but I couldn’t help thinking: “At the age of 65? Not bad at all.”

houndstooth leggings

My virtual farewell party

If you follow my blog every week, you know that I am now officially retired. Thursday the 26th of March my colleagues were to throw me a lovely party at the office. The Corona virus stopped that; all my colleagues are working from home, so no party. But…under pressure creativity thrives and they came up with alternatives. That Thursday, from early morning on I received selfies on my phone. Nearly every colleague (51 of them) made a selfie wearing his or her best attire (with a couple of jokes as well) and sent it to me with some lovely words and the theme “Strike a pose”. It was heart-warming. Below a collage:

Colleagues selfies

A cake was delivered to our house saying “Thanks Greetje”. Aaahhhh, sweet. As I need to watch my weight, I shared it with some neighbours even though it was delicious.

Pension cake

The postman brought 53 cards. They had all sent me one. With such lovely messages. If I didn’t know myself so well (and all my flaws) I would think I was God’s Gift to the World haha.

Cards from my colleagues

Then the doorbel rang and a bunch of flowers were delivered.

Flowers from my colleagues

Early next morning I received a photo of my front door on my phone. It took me a while to realize the photo was sent half a minute earlier.

Sure enough, two colleagues from another office building (Leidi and Marjolein) delivered this bunch of flowers to my door.

Flowers

In the end our living room looked like this. Can you imagine how honoured and appreciated I felt?

Cards and flowers from colleagues

I don’t think I could have gotten a better farewell than this.

What happened in my life this week

As not a lot is happening due to Corona, I decided to show you what I wear every day. Don’t think I walk around in jogging trousers with slippers on; that depresses me. And there is another reason, I want to keep my feet and the muscles of my legs trained for wearing shoes, even high heeled shoes. It is like with sex: use it or lose it.
You will see a link to the original post with every outfit, just in case you missed it and want to see more of it.

Saturday outfit. Gosh, that wasn’t easy, going up and down the stairs in these heels. I leaned on my arms a lot. Blog post red and blue shirt.

Blue and red shirt

Sunday. For this outfit I don’t have a link to a blog post as I didn’t show it yet. Normally I would keep the outfit until I had made a blog post, but there you go. I bought this shirt to replace a windowpane shirt of poor quality (see blog post here). Unfortunately the new shirt did not have the same effect and I couldn’t style it. By the time I discovered that, I had already given away the windowpane shirt. The pinstriped shirt made me look droopy and the colours (white and grey) were all wrong for me. Then this Sunday I came up with the look below. A green tank top underneath, green belt, green chain necklace and the shirt tucked in at the front. I like it.

pinstripe shirt

pinstripe shirt

Monday. A day for high heels again. I had to convince Ron that these shoes were not clumpy and heavy but modern. Blog post black, white and grey flower skirt. I did put on a different belt this time.

Tuesday. Ah.. my last workday. I drove to the office and handed in my computer and pass. After that I deleted myself from the department’s WhatsApp groups. That is it, I am officially retired.
As I was in the neighbourhood I stopped by Marianne’s house and changed her watch to summertime. She cannot do that herself. Marianne placed the watch in a bag outside her door, I changed the time, put my gloves back on and drove home to wash my hands. She took the bag with gloves and left it for a couple of hours. We are very careful. The outfit below has been on the blog but with different jeans, a different yellow jumper (sweater) and different boots. Very similar though.

Bright yellow jumper on jeans

Wednesday: A day for my black leather dress. Because one of the studs at the bottom was stronger than the leather, it had torn. Luckily my cobbler has fixed it. The man is worth his weight in gold.
To me, the best styling of this dress is with the snake print boots. More styling with this dress in the blog post.
Apart from calling a friend I didn’t do anything significant that morning. After lunch I was busy with bike riding, a lot of exercises and washing my hair. Which meant I wore the dress mostly during the evening. Oh and my mum (91) is on Skype now. Talking on the phone (every day) is fine. But every now and then it is nice to see each other through Skype. Glad that is possible now.

black leather dress

Thursday: to avoid our help who comes in to clean on Thursday mornings (Corona infection danger), I joined Ron at his allotment (“vegetable” garden). My darling husband offered to take my blog photos again and we shot two outfits. The rest of the day I wore this green leather jacket. The sneakers are an obvious choice when you go to a garden, but I like the outfit so much better with pumps (the second photo).

jeans with green leather jacket

jeans with green leather jacket

Poor Ron had injured his big toe trying to kick a ball while playing with Watson (dog) and was limping. So I did the shopping for him in the afternoon and walked the dog. Watson is still PULLING like hell when he is on the leash (with me), which got me so mad. Totally stupid of course. It isn’t the dog’s fault and becoming angry isn’t going to help at all. It only gives negative energy. This dog is too energetic, he has to be taken to a place where he can run and play with other dogs.

Friday: Thank God Ron’s toe is much better. No doggie walking for me, although we did go together in the afternoon. It was my exercise day which takes up a lot of time. You might think it is boring, this lock-down, but each day is over before you know it. A bit of reading, cleaning house, blog work and administration and hop…it is evening. The only interaction we had, were some chats with neighbours at a safe distance.
When I did my administration I “found” a bit of money on another bank account which I thought I had already used. Hurray. That will go to 4 new tires on my car and a fuel pump filter. The kind of costs you hate because they don’t bring anything new, just preserve what you already have. My father used to say about cars (and it applies to other things too): “It is not the purchase which will kill you as you have a goal; you know what you are saving up for, there is a reward at the end which makes it easier to make sacrifices. It is the upkeep that will kill you; setting aside money to keep on driving a car: maintenance and depreciation.” He said “killing” but meant “is very difficult” and it is so true. Anyway, I wore my jeans again as I quite liked my silver shoes that I tried on the day before. In the blog post I wear this top with a different necklace, different jeans and different boots.

Jeans with fuchsia top by Essentiel

See you next week.

Greetje

No Fear of Fashion

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