how to wear a striped dress

How to wear a striped dress

There are a lot of people who don’t like wearing stripes, especially vertical stripes. I love stripes and wear them quite often. But for a petite person like me, there are a few tricks that will help us to pull off this chic look:

1. Pay attention to proportion: For striped dresses, usually an above the knee length is the best for a petite frame.
2. Pick a body friendly cut: A loose, baggy striped dress is a nightmare for a petite person and the whole body will just disappear in that striped bag. Don’t go too far with how tight it is either, the stripes may make your tummy look bigger than it really is when the dress is too tight in that area.
3. Show some skin: Allover stripes are a bad choice for a petite person. Showing some skin will help create a smaller silhouette overall.

Today we are back to my driving story again, enjoy! 🙂

Almost there!

So the good news is I was finally off the freeway. We were on our way to northern Michigan to visit my in-laws and my husband/driving teacher decided this would be a great opportunity for me to get in some freeway practice time. If you’ve been reading along you know that until today almost all of my driving practice had been around our small town and nearby roads in the countryside. This usually meant slow. And I was good with that. During my whole life growing up and living in China, I had never sat in the driver’s seat of a car. So being in control of one while going 70 miles per hour on an Interstate Highway was not my idea of comfortable! This was especially true when I got to play pass and be passed with a huge truck driven by a crazy person! Well, maybe he wasn’t really crazy but for someone who wasn’t used to this kind of driving it seemed a bit like it. In fact, I had only been driving for less than an hour but it had felt like a lot more. You know what they say, “time flies when you’re having fun”. I guess that proves that I was NOT enjoying it. Anyway that was over now. We had gotten to our exit and I had managed to get off the freeway without being run over or hitting anything so I was thinking that things were looking up. At this point we only had another 30 miles to go until we arrived at my husband’s parent’s home.

I had been to my in-law’s home many times so knew that this last part of the drive was actually quite beautiful. Northern Michigan was full of forests, lakes and rivers. And the road we would be on went past all of these. My husband offered to take over the driving but I thought since we were already going I would just stay behind the wheel and get another short driving lesson in. There was never much traffic on these roads and we only had a short way to go, so what could happen? I have often found over the last few years that this is always a dangerous question to ask! We went through the city that the freeway exit directs you into and, after stalling at the first red light, I managed to go through a couple more with no problem. Once through the small downtown area, the next intersection was our turn to go towards the small town my in-laws lived in. I was starting to get enough experience driving that I was finding a few things that I liked because they made it easier. One was a left turn arrow light. At most intersections, if you want to turn left in front of the traffic coming from the other direction, you just have to wait until you get a break. When you are at an intersection with a left turn arrow that means when it turns green you can make your turn and those other cars have to wait for you. I like this system a LOT better! It is pretty hard for me and most new drivers to judge how close and fast those cars are coming towards you. So, I would either wait too long, and make the people behind me upset, or I would go when there wasn’t much room and be too close to the oncoming car, and then they would be upset! But at this intersection, the arrow turned green and I turned onto our road and started to pick up speed.

Once we were on this road it was pretty much a straight drive until we got into the small town where we would finish our trip. There were a few curves and hills but no other towns to go through and the thing I really liked, no more traffic lights or stop signs! This may actually be fun for a change. It was getting quite dark pretty early now as it does in Michigan in winter. Our little car didn’t have many options but it did have a feature where the headlights came on automatically when it got dark enough. Mine were on now and lit up the road pretty well. There were a few cars in front of me and some behind so I could also see the road from their lights as we moved along. Hmm, that’s strange. The road looks a bit wet. It had been clear and dry all the way so far. And of course it was pretty cold out so it wouldn’t be raining. That must mean…SNOW! My in-laws lived “Up North” as they say in Michigan. And it’s not just a little bit north; they live almost 200 miles away from our home near Detroit. A lot can happen in 200 miles. Plus where we were going was closer to Lake Michigan. If you ever saw Michigan on a map you know that it is surrounded by huge lakes: So big they call them Great Lakes. Lake Michigan is one of the five and my in-laws lived less than an hour from the water. These lakes added a lot of moisture into the air and this time of year that could mean snow. So much for my “fun” drive! My “teacher” advised me to slow down a bit and just be careful. I thought that was pretty obvious and I didn’t really need a driving instructor to tell me that! I turned on my windshield wipers, grabbed the steering wheel a bit tighter and kept going into the snowy dark! I would never ask “what could happen?” again! Come back tomorrow to see if we ever make it!

SHOP MY LOOK:
Striped dress @TJ Maxx
Black jacket @Kohl’s
Two toned heels @Nordstrom Rack
Red bag @Michael Kors
Watch @Movado
Bracelets @My Arm Charms

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