A Big Bench and Some Not So Little House on the Prairie Dresses

Top: Self Esteem, Macy's; Skirt: LC Lauren Conrad, Kohl's; Shoes: Impo, DSW

Bag: LC Lauren Conrad, Kohl's; Ring: Making Waves, Ocean City; Barrettes: Goody, Target; Necklace: The Tote Trove; Sunglasses: Wild Fable, Target; Embellished bangle: Now-defunct mall boutique, Blue bangle: So, Kohl's; Yellow and red bangles: B Fabulous; Pink bangle: Say What, Zulily

Socks (because everything else gets billing below!): St. John's Bay, JCPenney

Skirt: Modcloth

Top: Derek Heart, Macy's (now with blue and green tissue paper!)

Boots: JustFab; Bag: Nine West, Ross; Purple Potpourri Necklace; Belt: Belt is Cool, Amazon; Sunglasses: Target; Arm warmers: Gifted; Purple flower barrette: Claire's; Rings: Express; Blue flower barrette: Gifted

Dress: POPSUGAR, Kohl's

Bag: Apt. 9, Kohl's; Bangles: B Fabulous; Maple Mix Barrette Brooch; Saguaro Central Necklace; Belt: Belt is Cool, Amazon; Ring: Charlotte Russe

Top: Jessica Simpson Collection, Belk

Shoes: Jessica Simpson Collection, DSW

Boots: Apt. 9, Kohl's

Zigzag bangle: Strawbridge & Clothier, Mint bangle: Decree, JCPenney; Floral bangle: JCPenney; Yellow bangle: Silver Linings, Ocean City; Red bangle: XOXO, Ross; Rings: Mixit, JCPenney; Bag: Delia's

Dress: LC Lauren Conrad, Kohl's

Llama Mama Necklace, Other necklaces: The Tote Trove; Belt: Belt is Cool, Amazon

Bag: Dolls Kill

Belts: Belt is Cool, Amazon; Yellow bangles: B Fabulous; Fuchsia bangle: Mixit, JCPenney; Blue ring: Delia's

Fabulous Felt Cactus Barrette, Fabulous Felt Sweet Strawberries Barrette

Dress: LC Lauren Conrad, Kohl's

As you can see, I've finally, (insert groan-slash-drum-cymbal-sound), fallen for fall.  I started out in sandals and ended up in boots.  Just yesterday, I was getting dressed to go out to buy beads when I realized that the purple LC Lauren Conrad dress I'd planned to wear (and that'd been waiting in my closet all summer) would be little comfort against the cool air.  No matter; I just layered my trusty black and white pin dot turtleneck underneath it!  It too is from Kohl's, and I've had it for fifteen years.  I distinctly remember buying it along with two pairs of l.e.i. jeans (who else had those?), one red, one royal blue.  The jeans are long gone, but the turtleneck remains a true blue outfit saver.  

Anyway, autumn often means prairie skirts and dresses, and I had fun making the most of both.  It was also good to finally bust out two unworn Jessica Simpson pieces, namely a top I ordered from Belk's and shoes I got free from DSW.  Well, they were free in the sense that I used my Rakuten rewards to buy them.  Which isn't really free, since I had to spend to get the rewards in the first place.  Still, it was nice to slip on the patchwork-print peau de soie pumps with my green POPSUGAR dress knowing that they were a "gift" I got for shopping. 

And now that I've babbled on about my wardrobe ad nauseum, it's time to explain what I'm sitting on.  It's a bench -- complete with sliding doors for storage -- that the husband made for a customer!  He's since moved it from our office to its new home, and the customer was so impressed that she thought the husband bought it.  I was a little affronted by that and said I should've taken video of him slaving away at it so we could send it to her.  But the husband felt no need to provide such proof.  A calm soul through and through, he just took the compliment.    

I'm sure Pa Ingalls would've done the same. 

Exchange Rate Fate, Fresh Clean Slate: The Price of Peace of Kind

When the movie version of Pay It Forward came out in 2000, it looked like something serious I didn't want to see.  The other thing I remember is that it starred the kid from Forrest Gump and The Sixth Sense (Haley Joel Osment).  I didn't even know that it started out as a book until earlier this year, when I read Love & Other Words.  The two kids in it had bonded over Catherine Ryan Hyde's heartbreaking novel.  Which made me curious, as I sometimes enjoy having my heart broken too.  So when I started to read it, I thought, okay, I get it. It's about a sweet, naïve kid who thinks people are good, but life keeps proving him wrong.  

Twelve-year-old Trevor McKinney hasn't had it easy.  He has no idea where his dad is, and his mom is a recovering alcoholic.  Yet despite this, he believes that people can change.  So when his closed-off yet kind social studies teacher, Mr. St. Clair, assigns the class an extra credit project posing the question: How would you change the world?, Trevor comes up with this: What if one person helped three people, and then each of those people helped three more people, and so on?  Soon everyone would be helping one another, and bad things would stop happening.  Trever calls it Pay It Forward -- and all of his classmates laugh.  But Trevor remains undeterred, giving one hundred dollars of his paper route money to a homeless man.  As Trevor's project progresses, there are ups and downs -- mostly downs.  Especially because one of his goals is to help Mr. St. Clair, an erudite Black Vietnam vet missing an eye, and his mom, a beautiful woman insecure about her lack of education, fall in love and get married.  (Here I must pause to interject my reaction to the movie, which I watched after finishing the book: How could Trevor's teacher be a white guy with two eyes?  And how could that guy be Kevin Spacey?!)  At first, the story is a little hard to follow because it's interspersed with interview excerpts from the future.  Yet eventually I realized that they're there to show how the Pay It Forward project -- or movement, as it came to be called -- gained traction.  I sensed that if I stuck it out, then it would, ahem, pay off in the end.  And it turned out that I was right.

Poignant and stirring, Pay It Forward shows that we're all vulnerable to the whims of the world, and that our only defense against it is decency.  It also shows that we're all connected, and that even the smallest kindnesses can add up to make a big difference.  That it does so by making the ultimate sacrifice to help humankind is unsettling.  But this is the way that it has to be to deliver the book's moving message.

On that note, my copy of the book is the fifteenth anniversary edition and includes a new introduction by Hyde.  In it she explains how she got the idea for the book.  One night when she was in her twenties, she was driving through her not-great neighborhood when her car began to smoke.  So she pulled over.  This was before cell phones, so she couldn't call anyone.  That's when she saw two men approaching her car.  This is it, she thought.  This is how I die.  But to her surprise, they popped the hood and helped her.  By the time the fire truck arrived (because where there's smoke, there's fire), they had gone without a word.  Hyde felt bad about that.  If they had exchanged contact information, then she could've thanked them properly, even sent them Christmas cards every year.  But her inability to do that, coupled with these Good Samaritans' anonymity, made her wonder, what if?  What if a stranger did something nice for you, and you had no way to thank him except for doing something nice for someone else?

It makes you wonder.  And just maybe believe in the miracle of the human spirit.

Except when it comes to Kevin Spacey.

Space Cowgirl Pearls: Cacti and Aliens

Cactus pillow: Kohl's

Sunglasses: Nordstrom Rack; Purse charm: The Tote Trove; Fuchsia bangle: Mixit, JCPenney; Green bracelet: Parade of Shoes; Blue bracelet: Cloud Nine, Ocean City; Ring: Making Waves, Ocean City; Yellow and green bangles: B Fabulous: Bag: Xhilaration, Target; Shoes: Katy Perry Collection

Albuquerque Alien Barrette Brooch

Top: Amazon

Blue and Yellow Blooms Necklace

Skirt: Vylette, Kohl's

Shoes: Katy Perry Collection; Bag: Betsey Johnson, Amazon; Sunglasses: Amazon; Bracelet: Amrita Singh, Zulily

Cactus Cassette Necklace

Top: Bar III, Macy's

Shorts: Nine West, Kohl's

Yellow bangles: B Fabulous; Mint bangle: Decree, JCPenney; Striped bangle: Kohl's; Beaded bangle and rings: Mixit, JCPenney

Colorblock Cactus Barrette Brooch

Top: Collectif X, Modcloth

Beauty Is In The Eye Of The Boulder Necklace

Shoes: Katy Perry Collection, Amazon

Skirts: Amazon

Bag: Betsey Johnson, Boscov's

Top: Mighty Fine, Kohl's

Boots: 2 Lips Too, Zulily

Top: Marshalls

Blue belt: Mixit, JCPenney; Silver belt: Boscov's; Big beaded bracelet: Francesca's; Green bracelet: Cloud Nine, Ocean City; Rainbow bracelet: Zulily; Blue bracelet: Arizona Jeans, JCPenney; Small beaded bracelet: ZAD, Zulily; Ring: Charlotte Russe

Purple top: So, Kohl's

Fabulous Felt Desert Barrette

Saguaro Scene Necklace

Skirt: Bongo, Sears

Cartoon Cacti Necklace

Shoes: Nine West, Kohl's; Bag: Olivia Miller, Amazon; Barrettes: The Tote Trove

Top: Mighty Fine, Kohl's

To anyone thinking, what's with this Jersey girl cranking out all these cacti?, I say this: if I knew the answer to that one, then I'd switch to pine trees.  But there's just something mysterious yet comforting about the signature shape of the saguaro.  It's like a three-fingered hand waving hello, a seasoned survivor of the sun-scorched desert signaling that it's going to be okay.  And that goes double for its little green friend.  Yes, this here almond-eyed alien head knows a thing or two about being tough.  

Albuquerque Alien Barrette Brooch

Appearing at a Phoenix funhouse near you, the Albuquerque Alien (which, I realize, makes no sense, since extra-terrestrials are meant to frequent Roswell, not Albuquerque, and Phoenix is in Arizona.  As for the funhouse -- just, yeah.  I'm powerless when it comes to alliteration), is primed to party.  And for the purposes of this post, so am I.

And by party I mean, of course, read.  I ordered Jenn McKinlay's Wait For It just because it had cacti on the cover.  This bright poolside scene depicts the desert of my dreams: lush, exotic, and heavily hydrated.  

The story itself was enjoyable too, a haters-to-lovers romance with some spot-on office politics mixed in.  (To be clear, the haters-to-lovers don't work together.  Their particular brand of tension stems from a landlord-renter relationship.)  Freelance graphic designer Annabelle Martin flees Boston -- and a marriage proposal -- to take a creative director job in Phoenix.  While the warm weather is a welcome change, dealing with conniving coworkers -- as opposed to just her couch -- isn't.  Still, extrovert Annabelle gamely takes on this added stress for the benefit of workplace camaraderie.  Although I didn't relate to her on that level, I did find her to be fun and colorful and wanted good things for her.  Also, I love that she took her cranky landlord to the desert to see a meteor shower.  Never underestimate the magic of moonlit cacti.  

And now for some vegetation found right here in Jersey:     

Yes, it's red leaves wreathed by pine needles!  It doesn't get much more Pinelands than that.  Seeing it last weekend in a parking lot made me 1) happy because, the wonders of nature and all, and 2) sad because it was a reminder that soon, if I want to make it to this or any other parking lot while it's still daylight, then I'm going to have to leave the house before four o'clock. 

Mother Nature -- cacti notwithstanding -- you are a cruel mistress.