Tools of the Maid (or Matron): A Lady's Laundry

Cardigan: Merona, Target; Skirt: LC Lauren Conrad, Kohl's; Bag: Current Mood, Dolls Kill; Belts: Belt is Cool, Amazon

Top: LC Lauren Conrad, Kohl's

When does a fashion fiend not want a belt?  When that belt is actually a belt sander.  Let me explain:

Once upon a time, I read a magazine article about men liking to buy power tools and women liking to buy shoes and feeling vaguely insulted.  I mean, why couldn't a woman wield a drill, or a man work it in wedges?  Or, why couldn't a man or a woman work the drill while wearing the wedges?  It was all so antiquated.  Then the other day, I opened an Amazon box bearing my Chinese Laundry platform peep-toes and another containing some hardware store-looking doohickey for the husband (in my excitement to get to the shoes, I opened his box by mistake).  And I thought, huh, maybe our retail rampages do reveal our gender roles, traditional or otherwise. 

That said, there's nothing wrong with women foaming at the mouth for footwear and men enraptured by everything that comes from Home Depot.  Just as long as everyone's happy and heard.  Also, as long as the men don't cut the women down to size with their hacksaws and the women don't walk all over the men with their stilettos (unless, of course, that's what the men are into).  As for the husband and me, even we can't be pigeonholed by our purchases.  The husband knows his way around an entrée better than I do (except for mac n' cheese; I make a mean mac n' cheese), and I . . . well, I'm good with paperwork.  Which is still supposedly feminine, but oh well.  

Anyway, here are the pumps.  I'm not going to show you the doohickey, because, frankly, who cares?  (Somehow I think that even that drill-wielding woman would eyeball it and shrug.)

Also, here's the box they came in:

I've always loved the Chinese Laundry packaging.  I know it's kind of hard to see, but the elegant eeriness of the face peeking out from the foliage and -- if you look very closely -- shoe-shod feet is what accessory artistry is all about.  If accessory artistry were a thing and if accessories were about weirdness.  But then again, for me, they are.  

Speaking of which, let's take a look at what I've got today, shall we?

Sublime Lime Necklace

Sublime Lime Earrings

I plucked these lime finds from the tree that's my box of finished-but-forgotten projects.  They're the last of my fruit loot for a while, and now that I think of it, not all that weird.  Unless you count the lime in winter thing.  

Which I don't, when it comes to dessert.  Key lime pie over fruitcake?  Um, does a peep-toe trump a power washer?

This lady says yes.

Maybe, some day, I'll make it to that monster truck rally.