Fried Chicken

So I am bet your wondering, "What did you actually do today?" Well, I am glad you asked; today, I made fried chicken, brownies, and biscuits (with my mothers guidance of course otherwise the house would be burnt down). I honestly have the cooking skills of Celia Foote, possibly worse. It came out so nice looking (and great tasting too) that I decided to show yall the finished project.

 

I am normally dieting so when I get to eat something like this, I fall in love. I think Minny, from The Help said it best, "Frying chicken just tend to make you feel better about life....Oh, I love me some fried chicken."

 

I don't believe you could truly be southern without knowing how to cook fried chicken.

After this meal today I am going to consider purchasing this Vacuum...

 

 

100 Viewers!!!

Hey yall, I have exciting news!!!! I officially had 100+ page views!!!! I am tickled pink that yall enjoyed my first le bomb shop  dress so much that I am going to post my second in a few minutes. I wore 2 outfits today and will share them both with you as a special thank you for peeking at my blog.

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 My shirt for today's first outfit was a great thrift store find. It was paired with another one of my home made skirts (a close up of the fabric is shown below). The belt is a brown belt I picked up from Cato's. And finally, my infamous cat shoes were bought from Delia's.

Le Bomb Shop dress 2

So finally today, I had a going away party to attend and I decided to wear my second of three Le Bomb Shop dresses. The party is for one of my friends Christine, she is going away to be a missionary for the church. It was a lot of fun and I hope she has a happy and safe Journey.

 We ran out of cooking oil frying the chicken and had to use Crisco. It worked out though, the kids seemed to love them. Some even ate 2 or 3 of them, which is honestly a record with my cooking skills.
One of my most famous incidents was a day I invited over a "passing interest," for a movie night. For fun, I decided to try to bake cookies. The cookies didn't exactly come out as planned since I poured Boiling hot butter on top of chocolate chips. So, instead of having chocolate chip cookies, it looked more like cow pie cookies....yeah it was that bad looking. It actually didn't taste that bad so my mom asked him while I was in the other room, "Would you like to take some home with you?"
He quietly replied, "No thank you, I don't want stomach cramps." I overheard from the other room and burst into laughter.

If I can't run a guy off with my social skills, my cooking skills will certainly do it.

One last thing I want to throw a huge thank you out there for my first 2 followers!!!

My First Le Bomb Shop Dress

Hey yall! I can't tell you how excited I am to tell you about this new dress shop I found online. It is called Le Bomb Shop. I heard of this website from another blogger Kate Gabrielle. Her blog is called Scathingly Brilliant. It is a very cutesy and unique fashion blog, full of bright colors and cats.

So What do I love about the dresses I purchased from Le Bomb Shop?

• The dresses are of a Pin-up style.
• They look like they are very well made.
• The colors are SOOOOOO Vibrant.
• Because of the elastic thread backing (pictured below), it would likely fit any body type and it is especially great for you bustier gals.
• Their descriptions of the sizes are spot on. (Each one is different for each dress so be sure to check.
• I caught it on sale for 20% off!!!!
• Finally, THE SHIPPING IS INCREDIBLE!!! I literally got it 2 days after I bought it and I bought it at night time!!! I was so stunned to see it at my door step, that I looked at it 2 or 3 times to be sure my dad wasn't playing a practical joke on me. (He knew how excited I was over the dresses)

The Back of the Dress

 

 

Okay, so it is obvious I may have fallen in love with this store, but look at how many pros that are going on here. The only thing that I had to adjust was the straps. I have no shoulders so I pretty much have to do that for all my dresses so this was no big deal.

This is only one of three other Le Bomb Shop dresses I have to show you guys. My next one will be posted either Friday night or Saturday morning. I have a going away party to attend and I can't wait to show it to yall!


Okay, so the other Pieces of my outfit...

My white bolero is from One Stop Plus. It is currently buy one get one free, and has several other colors. I happened to catch it on sale for half off with the buy one get one free deal. I then also applied a coupon from Retail me not. So I ended up getting all six color for 37.96 (5 bucks a pop plus 7 dollars shipping). You really can't beat that.

 

My Choker is another thing that is home made. I simply found some really pretty ribbon lace and sewed a pendant in the front. There are little snaps in the back that I sewed on there to hold it on.

 

Finally, my final pair of cat shoes is from Delia's I also purchased this for 50% off at a bogo sale.

 

One last thing, If any of you are interested in Purchasing one of the dresses from Le Bomb Shop they currently have a sale going on where you can get 10% off  orders over 25 dollars, by typing in the promo code SKOOL . But, hurry tomorrow is the last day of the sale!

Strawberry Fields Forever

Today was my second day of school and I have to say, this semester looks like it is going to be less miserable than I initially thought. Politics class looks like it is going to have less to do with Democrats vs. Republicans and more to do with the founding documents. This is a huge relief for me because I HATE talking about politics.

So, now my only worry is Statistics. I am not going to lie Statistics is INCREDIBLY boring! I was sitting in class today and my head was bobbing up and down trying to stay awake. I was practically holding my eyelids open. After class, I asked my professor if he would mind if I recorded his lectures. He smirked and told me, "Sure, if you need help sleeping at night." That would certainly do it.








 Ok so now for my clothing choice for school today...

Today's outfit consisted of another homemade skirt. This one had a strawberry/checkered print shown better below.
The red polyester shirt and the solid black belt are from Cato's.
I didn't take a photo of my shoes today because they were a pair of ugly black rain boots. (I didn't want the rain to ruin my cat shoes.)

Day 2: The Mad Catter

Today I was off from school and work so I decided to go visit my grandmother and do some housework. Since today was a very casual day, I decided to sport a casual outfit and investigate the pompadour and cat eye....unsuccessfully

 This outfit consisted of a lot of cat stuff as you can see. My skirt has hundreds of little cats on it (there is a close up of the pattern below). It was homemade.
The shirt was a simple T-shirt purchased from Walmart for like 4 bucks.

My belt was from Cato's. I don't think they have it online (I bought it in the store). However, they do have a fabulous regular and plus size section.
The hair flower was just something I picked up at a dollar store.
The pattern on my skirt >

These shoes were purchased at the same time the other meow loafers were bought. They are super comfortable and came from Delia's. The best part is I purchased them during a bogo sale with a 50% off coupon. So each pair of cat shoes ended up being 13.50 a pair including shipping.

Day 1 "Radically Retro"

Day 1 of the semester was nerve racking. I certainly did turn the heads of many of SELU's alumni. Although all feedback I receive randomly from students was positive. I felt like a fish out of water. For those who don't know, your average college student wardrobe in Louisiana consist of Sorority shirts, booty shorts, and jogging pants. There are very few people who come to school looking neat.

Why you ask? Well, for one it is expensive. I only buy clothes when they are on sale. I also make some of my clothes. Another reason is college students tend to not care about what they wear or are simply to tired to bother getting dressed up in the morning. College students lead busy lifestyles since they are struggling to balance school, a job, family, and friends.

That is why I stuck out like a sore thumb today. However, as I stated earlier, I had many positive reaction from girls in my classes. They even started a few separate conversations in the hall. While I was walking to a class across campus, a guy stopped me to say, "That is a Radically Retro dress." I think that is guy language for 'I like your dress.' But, I am not sure.

Without further ado here was my outfit of the day...

The dress is the Perfect Pastures Dress Available at modcloth. I got the dress for 70% off.

The shoes were purchased from Delia's on a bogo sale with a 50% of coupon found on
 Retail Me Not.

I doubt you can tell from the photos but I am wearing simple plan of faux pearls  like Betty Cornell suggested in her book.

An Explanation

Okay, before I start speaking about how my first day was, I wish to explain why I call myself the Plush Pinup. It is pretty clear from my previous article that I am going to be dressing as if I lived in the 1950's while attending school and on days when I am off from work. So that pretty much explains the pinup part. The plus part comes from the fact I am not your average blogger; I am much larger than a size 2. I am a plus size woman. Now before people start bashing me saying, 'I am setting a bad example.' or that 'I am unhealthy.' I wish to tell you that you are correct. I am not the healthiest person in the world and if you followed my current habits you probably would be of "FLUFFY PERSUASION." (Shout out to my favorite Comedian Gabriel Iglesias.)

If you enjoyed this clip of him, he currently has a movie out in theatres.

But, I am not here to encourage a unhealthy lifestyle. I am here to let every woman know big or small, you have to be comfortable in the skin you are in. If you are uncomfortable with something then change it. I understand how difficult dieting is and I do wish I could be a smaller size (It would sure make finding clothes easier.) But I am not going to beat myself up over it and neither should you. There were times where I was so obsessed with losing weight that I would go to the gym 4 hours a day 4 days a week and eat very little. And, you know what? I didn't lose hardly any weight. I tested my thyroid and everything was normal. It was when I finally said, "Screw all this I will eat when I am hungry and throw the calorie counters out the window" that I started losing weight. I lost 30 lbs from my heaviest weight. I am still working on it but it is okay to be a work in progress.

Another thing I want young girls to know, ALL GIRLS at one time or another (even those runway models) have stretch marks and/or cellulite. Celebrities and models although they tend to be very fit and slender, have gone through growth spurts or had children. They also have a magic power called Photoshop, makeup, and access to expensive spray tans to hide their flaws. I want to make a point that I am NOT skinny shaming anyone. I am simply using models and celebrities as an example since those the ones young women (including myself) tend to look up to. We are all built differently and every woman is beautiful.

Just to prove my point I would like you to know that every woman in this photo weight approximately 150lbs. They all are built differently; some are tall, some are short, some are larger at the top, others are larger at the bottom. But there is one thing all these women have in common. They are all unique and beautiful in their own skin.

Introducing The Plush Pinup

Hi there, my name is Tara Lynn. I am twenty-two years old and am currently attending Southeastern Louisiana University. Recently I came across two books that I hope will change the way I look at life. The first one is Betty Cornell's Teenaged Popularity Guide and the Other is Maya Van Wagenen's Popular a Memoir: Vintage Wisdom for a Modern Geek.

Betty Cornell was a young model when she wrote her book and it has many topics such as hair, makeup, how to dress, modeling, holding a part time job... However her book was originally written in the 1950's! How could it possibly be applicable to more modern times? Well, that is what Maya Van Wagenen covers in her book. She applied Betty's guidelines to become popular to her life in 8th grade. She talks about in her book how people reacted to the changes she made in her life. Now the book is published and DreamWorks is planning on making it into a movie, how exciting!

I am going to be completely honest, although I have read Betty Cornell's book, I have not read all of Maya's book yet. "Why?" you ask. Well, I would like to try this same social experiment out on a University level. No one in my school has a clue that I am blogging this and I will likely not tell anyone I even have a blog till I am about a year into the experiment. So this will be our little secret. Shhhhhhh...

Background

 

 

 



Now all through high school, I was never really popular. In fact, I was pretty much just know as the choir nerd with a weird fascination with cats. I had a small circle of friends and I still keep in touch with a few of them. But, I am hoping that in trying this social experiment, I can not only get back in touch with my old friends but I will also make new friends with similar interest as I do.

So what is this challenge going to entail?

From this point on, I am going to try to:

• Have my face put on and hair curled/styled before I step foot out of the house.
• Paint my nails at least once a week.
• Dress as a woman in the 1950's might have. (Gloves, girdles, and hats may or may not be included depending on the activity.)
• Attend at least one formal.
• And finally, my main goal for this semester is to try to get out of my comfort zone and make new friends.

Will this work for me? I don't know. It worked well for Betty and Maya, so I am going to try it for a year and see.

Makeup and pin curls here I come...