I have found it hard to care about Fashion over the years. I was not confident enough to dress above a certain level of "niceness" (whatever that is) because I didn't feel I deserved it, or I didn't feel pretty enough, or I was too big.

The irony is, I would have felt pretty and worthwhile and happier in my appearance had I made more of an effort. It's taken me a few months of really working hard at appreciating my body's capabilities through yoga, meditation, healthy eating, and purposeful prayer to really get the idea that how I feel on the inside affects how I look on the outside; consequently, how I look on the outside affects how I feel on the inside. The two can't be separated.

So here I am, in the slightly awkward position of wanting to wear nicer clothes and dress up a bit more, but I almost literally have nothing to wear.

Until I reach a stable weight, which is who knows when because I'm kind of doing this without any measuring, weighing or firm idea of what my end point should be. I can't really use sizing as a guide, because I have clothes in all manner of sizes that fit me. One of my favourite shops seems to have suddenly succumbed to vanity sizing (Next - anyone else noticed this?), so I can't reasonably extrapolate what would fit me in other stores.

I am mostly planning to ride it out over winter and see where things shake out in the spring. Layers can save me from needing to own very much variety, so a couple of sweaters/jumpers over t-shirts should be okay.

In the meantime, I have dusted off my Pinterest account for window shopping purposes, and watched a few old episodes of Trinny and Susannah. I came across a fabulous idea on some other blogs about creating a new wardrobe themed around a simple colourscheme. The colour wheel is a great help with this plan. Basically, choose two colours that are opposite each other on the wheel, and base your clothing choices on those two colours. They will naturally match, and you can expand your mix-and-match options exponentially. Obviously, not everything in your drawers need to be those two colours; there can be a wide variety of shades of each colour and you need a few neutrals thrown in.

My plan is to have tans, camels, whites and creams as my neutral shades, with all manner of blues and oranges as my main colours. For many years, I loved purple, but recently I've gravitated towards blues. I am a warm spring, and wouldn't you know it, blues and oranges are on the list. All right!

I'm actually getting really excited about fashion now. Before, I would just randomly choose clothes based upon if I liked them at that moment or if they fit a basic set of criteria - fits without flashing, comfortable, and easy to wash. That gave me a wide variety of clothes, or sometimes all of the same style, but very few items mixed and matched, so it actually limited what I could wear each day. This plan seems to make so much sense - I can throw on whatever (is clean..ahem) and have a high probability of looking put together and NICE. Amazing!

This is my Pinterest board, in case you are interested. I will be buying my clothes a little at a time, because replacing everything at once is insanely expensive. I'll still be hitting the charity shops for sure!