How to dress Pear (Triangle) Shape - The Peplum Shirt

Everyone has different body shapes although all body shapes can be often grouped into categories such as apple (round), pear (triangle), and so on. Often I find myself struggling with properly dressing myself in a manner that would flatter my body shape. I would see an outfit that looks absolutely adorable on one person and I am blind to the fact that it does not even suit my body. Or when I see a cute outfit that looks good but just not on me. I like to look at different outfits online to give me some ideas that would help me assemble a flattering look with the limited clothing in my own closet. Hopefully, this will give you some ideas too.

My aunt gave me a a giant sack of clothing from the back of her closet. Very nice clothing but some are not for my body shape but I try to make it work. Normally (correct me if I'm wrong), peplum shirts are supposed to be flattering for pear shaped women. But I think in this case the ruffled area is at the bottom of the shirt instead of at the waist where it would emphasize the smaller waist.

The peplum at the bottom of the shirt emphasizes my wide hips. We want to draw attention AWAY from the hips not towards it. So what we can do here is tuck it into a high waist shorts, normal shorts might work as well but I have not tried it for myself. 

Notice how your eyes are not immediately drawn to the hips. High waisted shorts also create the illusion of elongated legs which is perfect for people with short legs (such as myself) or are petite. 

Athena and the Bow Back Shirt

Tuan brought home a new kitten! She is so adorable and only a month and a half young. We've had her for about two weeks already. Tuan named her Athena but I nicknamed her Tina, Athena Tina. I wanted to name her Ash but everyone kept saying how the name reminded them of Ash from pokemon. I disagree, I named her after her fur color. But Athena Tina is cute too. :)

Above is Athena clinging to dear life on Tuan, poor baby. Below is her rolling around on the rug. She loves to sleep under the coffee table. 

A while I saw a pin on pinterest that had a bow back straight down the middle of a shirt. I then saw a really cute  bow back tee shirt at Forever 21 for like $15. Not happening, I'm not buying that so I made my own. I made it out of an old tee shirt my mom had got me a long time ago. It's supposed to be an athletic tee but the sweat can be seen too easily so I've never worn it until now.

I put on the shirt and measured how much I wanted the shirt to be taken in. Then using that measurement I made 6 bows to fill in the spaces. I cut out the back from the ends of the collar down to the bottom of the shirt. Then I sewed on the bows one by one. I realized that I messed up in the calculations of the shirt so that the arm holes were pulled back too much. So I proceeded to cut off the arms and cut the collar into a v-neck shirt. 

Front of shirt

Back of shirt

So it begins...

After watching about six hours of the newest season of Extreme Weight Loss, you begin to think: "Why not?" "If they can do it I can do it". I've been putting off exercise for a while but my motivation has been renewed, looking at Chris Powell and his firm body. I want to be firm too! I used to go to the gym with my roommates for about 30 minutes whenever they were up for it. Thing is they only want to do it at night. By that time I would have exhausted myself from the day. Working out in the morning is so much better. It makes you wake up early, you're refreshed, and gives you more energy for the day. 

I started the following every other day except Saturday and sunday: stretch, one mile around the track (about 12-15 minutes), strength training (about 20 minutes, mostly walking around and playing with the machines), and then 25 minutes any cardio. Non-gym days: total body workouts (about 30 minutes) and then any cardio (usually just dance or swimming). Along with myfitnesspal to track my caloric intake, I aim for 1200 a day. With the exercise it allows me to eat more and it cancels out the extra calories. I don't stress about going over by a few hundred calories and I eat whatever want but I try to control myself. So far since I started my workout (today was only my third day), I've lost a few ounces that I've been trying to get rid of. So that now my morning weight is 119.8. Hurray! Finally in the 119.
So afterwards to keep my mini going I started to make workout tanks. Below is a shirt that I've had for ages but I don't like to wear it much since it didn't look that cute.

First I chopped off the sleeves and then the neckline. I then zig-zagged around the raw edges of the shirt. My handiwork was not too skillful so it turned out a little ghetto looking but thats okay, it's just a workout shirt. The shirt felt too big for me so I took in both sides of the shirt by getting rid of white stripe in the back, keeping the front stripe. I used one of the white stripes I cut out from the back to use to make a bow and hand sew it onto the back. But when I put on the shirt the top perked out a bit so I cut and sewed a V-shape down to where I wanted the bow to be. The end result is below. 

Front of Shirt:

Back of Shirt: