Saturday, December 17th, 2011
By Heather Lopez
I haven’t made an announcement about this, but I am a Yahoo! Shine Get It Guide Insider. What’s a Get It Guide? Well it is “Shine’s ultimate one-stop destination for the “must have” items women are talking about.” One of their latest guides surrounded the topic of the most popular jeans.
To have some fun with the topic, Yahoo! sent me and five of my lucky mom readers on a Jean Spree to try on four brands of Jeans: Lucky, Lee, Levi’s, & True Religion. I figured I’d make it even more fun by trying to seek out the NEW “Mom Jean.” Yes, the dreaded saggy butt, high-waisted mom jean seriously needs an update.
Us moms headed over to the Boynton Beach Mall in Sunny South Florida to seek out and try on the four brands. The first brand we found was Levi’s inside of Macy’s. Now my traditional thoughts of Levi’s were that they were really designed for men working in blue collar jobs, but I was pleasantly surprised that they really have taken women into consideration with their current line of jeans. The other moms liked the jeans and one mom even dared to where white. However, the white of the pants and the white of her shirt made her look like she worked in a hospital. I’m sure she would need a different shirt to go with it. On sale the jeans were about $34, which was a good price. Macy’s did not have the other brands we were looking for, which was surprising because it said online that Macy’s carried Lucky Brand jeans & True Religion.
We then headed over to JC Penney where we found Lee jeans. Interestingly enough, we discovered one of our moms was already wearing Lee’s and she didn’t even know it. After trying these on, the other moms generally agreed that they liked the Lee’s better than the Levi’s. However, I was not happy at all with the pair that I tried on. The front area was kind of baggy and to be honest the seam between my legs was digging me … you know where. The moms thought my butt looked great in them though. These jeans were also around the same price as the Levi’s, though I think they were $32 on sale.
When we couldn’t find the Lucky Brand jeans nor the True Religion in the Boynton Beach Mall, some of our moms really had to go on a spree. We found out there was a Lucky Brand store in the Boca Town Center about 25 minutes south of where we were that had the jeans. One of our moms traveled over there to try them on and she said she liked those the best. They even have this Super Stretchy kind, which I have tried on in the past and definitely liked best of all the jeans we tried. However, the price was about 3 times as much as the Levi’s and the Lee’s. I suspect that if we had all tried on the Lucky Brand jeans, we would’ve liked the fit and not the price.
Turns out that the Macy’s that had True Religion in stock was in California, so we started seeking other locations for those jeans. We struck Gold when we found them in the Wellington-Green Mall and The Galleria Mall. Unfortunately the only one of us who could actually get into them was the most petite of the group. Plus, they were expensive. They definitely would not be claiming the title of the NEW mom jean.
Like I said, the favorite of the group was the Lee’s, both for fit and for price. For me, I just did not see how Lee’s would be the New mom jean as they are more like the current mom jean. For me the Levi’s was the clear winner of the four. I think we need a brand that offers stretchy, comfortable, and flattering fit at an affordable price (and no, the pajama jeans don’t count.)
Click here to check out the Get It Guide for Most Popular Jeans or click the image below to check out the most recent Get It Guide.
Disclosure: This is a sponsored post by Yahoo! Each of the mom participants received a giftcard to facilitate the jean shopping spree. All opinions expressed are honest reviews based on real experiences with the aforementioned brands.
Monday, November 21st, 2011
By Heather Lopez
I am not the most domestic of moms. In fact, for the past year I have been planning on embarking on a 15 month personal journey to “domesticate” myself. It seems a daunting task to train myself in less than 2 years to do the things I have not learned in almost 32 of them. As an independent woman, I believe I rejected the notion of domesticity because I felt it subjected me to the role that society places on women and moms. I wanted to be different, so I have always pursued beyond my own front door. However, I am coming to find the desire to be more like a homemaker. It comes from a personal want, not forced on me by my husband or the desire to be seen as the fairytale perfect mom you see in commercials. As Thanksgiving approaches, I have come to a few realizations that supersede the actual turkey dinner:
Of all the times in my life, the time I feel most domestic is during Thanksgiving. This is partially because it is the only time of the year when I really make an effort to cook a delicious and full meal. It is also the only time of year where my family makes a real effort to get together. As I think back on all of the years of Thanksgivings, my eyes are opened to the fact that I truly enjoyed preparing the meal. Maybe it is all of the love that is poured into it that makes is so special? It got me thinking that perhaps the reason I hate cooking is not just the messy cleanup, but because I have somehow forgotten to put in the love. My husband always tells me that I watch so many cooking shows, I should be a master chef by now and yet I prefer to watch the beauty of food over actually creating it. You can copy a recipe and the end result is not as good as the original, and the reason being that the amount of love you put into it makes all the difference in the world. Maybe I need to put in the love in all my meals, not just Thanksgiving? Can that domestic spirit I embody during Thanksgiving be recreated throughout the year? I think that with enough effort on my part, I can make it happen and be happier for it.
Both my mother and my grandmother cater to their husbands and family before themselves and that is okay. My grandmother is approaching her 80s and she still wakes up early every morning to make the family breakfast. She cleans her own house and never asks for help. She does everything with a smile on her face. I used to feel like the era in which she grew up in dictated her behavior and she really did not have a choice in the matter. I am beginning to realize that my independence might also be a product of my generation & I have somehow lost some of the connection with my own family because of it. I also realized that as a god-fearing woman, my grandmother was not just being subservient to my grandfather, but was being obedient to God. It was this realization that helped me to look past the idea of just serving a man. My grandmother shows her appreciation for God through obeying his Word and allowing my grandfather to be the head of the household. That is something I am personally working on at the moment.
I truly want to create the sense of warmth I grew up with in my own house and the house of my grandmother. I used to think my grandmother herself was a little cold as I grew up, but there was always warmth in her home. She always welcomed us with open arms and treated me to special treats like strawberry milk, cantaloupe, grapefruit, and cream of wheat Her awesome butter sauce is the sole reason I eat brussel sprouts today. There was always warmth in my own house as well. I remember loving the fact that my mother would randomly bake cookies or brownies, that she would sew my clothes when the wer torn, that she would decorate the house around every holiday theme of the year, and that she would make hot chocolate with extr marshmallows because I liked them. This warmth is the kind of warmth I feel as I enter my current church, even though it meets in a movie theater. You see, it’s not necessarily the location that contains the warmth, but the hearts of the people in that location. I desire that warmth in my own heart and house, and realize that my grandmother was never cold- she just expressed her love through her home & her food. It is my hopes to express my love not just in words, but through my action and aura that surrounds me.
With Thanksgiving around the corner, my goals are to cook with love, have warmth in my heart & my home, and show m gratitude through obedience to God. Let the warmth, fullness & elation of Thanksgiving Day be carried out daily, not just the one day a year when we get drunk off of carbs and tryptophan.
Heather Lopez, aka The Social Commerce Mom, specializes in relationship marketing both online and off. She is the CEO of Heather Lopez Enterprises LLC, where she is responsible for several events, websites, trainings, and services targeting moms and those seeking to market to moms. Heather empowers moms to create their own financial freedom through business or blogging so that they may have more time for what they treasure most. She is also a 30-something mom to two rambunctious toddlers and wife to one entrepreneurial-minded husband. You can connect with Heather @ http://www.HeatherLopezEnterprises.com
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