In case you stumble across this while it's still a work in progress, hi! I'm Jessi and this should soon become a full portfolio and resume collection. I have too many crazy projects and jobs under my belt to stick to a standard, single sheet resume, so it may take a bit, but it should be finished soon.

Who are floral button-ups designed for?

My family has a tendency to have a lot of girls. While that means a lot of drama, gossip, and overall stereotypical girly fits across my extended family, in the fashion world, it has a lot of perks.

We pass along clothes like it's going out of style....and well, sometimes it is. It's not uncommon for a grandparent from two states over to make a weekend visit, and bring along an entire trunk load of clothes from various grandchildren, neices, and cousins' friends' daughters-in-law's neighbors' kid. Yes, it's that bad. 

For me, it's particularly great because kids grow so quickly....and generally much taller than I do, so I keep getting hand-me-downs long after I hit adulthood. It's amazing how well-dressed some kids and teenagers are! 

The downside is that I'm in the adult clothing exchange now, too, and well, they aren't nearly as well dressed. As the year comes to a close, it seems the "best/worst" lists of the year are everywhere, so I'll jump on the bandwagon. Here's my Top Five Best 'and' Worst Hand-Me-Downs....which shockingly enough, fit both categories at once.

1.The oversized floral button-ups. I don't know anyone in my family that actually wears these, so I think some of the same shirts are passed around the family circles year-after-year until one of us (like me) donates them to a local thrift shop instead. They're surprisingly versatile for dress-up, though. They can be great capes, nightgowns, turbans, and coupled with a belt, transformed into a dress. We've even used them as backdrops or wrapped around a lamp, basket, etc, to immediately have trees or bushes. 

2.  The too-stained t-shirts. If it's too stained for you to wear, why pass it on to someone else? Before quickly cutting these up into a year's worth of dust rags, it's kind of fun to play "name that stain!"

3. The overly-perfumed 'anything'. It's always a blast to get a tightly closed-up bag of various clothing pieces that smells like it's been sitting in a closet for years....and then to cover the old moth ball smell, the person sprayed on the worst possible perfume (that was likely also sitting in the back of the closet). How could this possibly be a 'best'? Because it reminds us to pull out the Febreeze we forgot we had and light all those candles that otherwise sit dormant on the fireplace. 

4. The Hawaiian belly shirts. I don't know when these came back into style, but I received no less than a dozen of them this year. They seem to have shrunk in length, too, so even though some were large enough in size to fit my hips, they were no longer than 4 or 5 inches. These made for a great tropical mummy afternoon where I wore several of them at once, completely covering myself from head to toe in belly shirts. 

5. The 10x-too-big bright pink sweat pants. These are my personal favorite. After pulling them out of the bag, I promptly put them on and spent the next 10 minutes, putting kids in them with me. There are plenty of women in my family who could actually wear these pants (if they could handle the bright pink), so it was fun that they ended up in my selection of clothing, especially considering I could actually pull the waistband over my head and still fit 2 kids in them with me. 

What are some of the hand-me-downs you love or hate getting? Do you get creative with any of your horrible finds?