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2019 Intentionality

Hey you. Yea you, reading this! You made it through the first week of the New Year. Congratulations, you’re kind of a big deal. Isn’t the first week of the year always like no man’s land? I can’t tell you how many times I heard “I don’t even know what day of the week it is,” repeated. Maybe you had a long week, worn down by all the people hyped up on their resolutions while you felt sluggish at best. Or perhaps you were one of the ones riding that tidal wave of good energy and a fresh start into the new year. Regardless, it’s a new week and another chance to carry on with your fresh start. If you avoid resolutions like the plague, I say all good by me!

Caitlin and I have been discussing intentions recently. Being an intentional person specifically. A lot of times we let our lives be dictated by our routines. If we’d stop and evaluate for a second if something is actually serving us in a positive way, we might find some surprising answers. We’re constantly bombarded with noise. Whether it be our own doing, or just living our lives it’s pretty hard to avoid aside from staying in your house with the TV off! Heck, even at the gym avoiding a TV is pretty much impossible if you’re doing any cardio machine. I know people rely on TV to distract them into staying on the machine. Lets be honest, you can’t really tell the 50 other people around you to turn the channel!

For me, I’ve limited tv/Netflix/Hulu etc, and I haven’t really looked back. Another thing I could improve on though, would be the mindless shopping website browsing, and Instagram/Facebook browsing. I’m sure if you have an Iphone, you’ve heard of their screen time settings. Despite running this blog/Instagram page, I still make sure I have my settings on to limit how much time I can spend scrolling. Hah, speaking of, I just came back from some mindless scrolling and organizing my virtual shopping carts. Definitely low on the priority list. But obviously a work in progress on intentionality for me as well.

That carries over into marriage as well. It’s easy to get caught up in your everyday mundane schedule. Too quickly we forget to take time to be intentional about our marriages. It can also be applicable to any relationship or friendship etc. With our lives being more pseudo connected than ever, are you actually connecting with the people you love/like/cherish? When you set aside time to get together with people, are you doing more than taking up physical space in their vicinity?

Just some food for thought on my mind recently. It’s fitting because I wore this outfit on my anniversary date night out with my husband. I had this top in my saved items for a long long time before I saw it go on sale. Tall blouses are always at the top of my list. Many stores that carry “tall blouses” are still not long enough in the body/sleeve or broad enough in the shoulder. Plus we have to contend with the already limited offerings because they provide a fraction of the mainline items.

I can’t jump on every beautiful blouse, especially staying on budget. Thankfully Asos had their Black Friday sale and I was able to snag it at a reduced cost. I was crestfallen to receive a completely different blouse in its place. I recovered quickly and hopped online to try and order it again. This time I had better luck.

As you can see, it fits pretty well. I would appreciate the sleeves being slightly longer, but I liked everything else about it enough to hold onto it. This is the perfect dressy blouse that I’ll be able to wear in a professional setting. Clearly based on this outfit, I’ll also be able to wear it to a social gathering. Plus, black is always an easy thing to grab and mix and match! Unfortunately it’s now sold out on the site, but I linked a few similar blouses from Asos.

One of my new favorite pair of jeans is this dark wash denim from Express. They are high waisted which is always my preference, and they look completely sleek for a night out. It doesn’t hurt that they are super comfortable either. If you’re in between sizes I’d say size down. I’m usually between a 10 and 12, I got these in a 10 and they have still loosened up.

Lastly, these booties have been such a great purchase for me this winter. They are so sleek and streamlined. I love that they have the studs for a little extra visual interest at the sole. I also love that they are reasonably comfortable to walk in, for having a three inch heel. Ladies they come up to size 13, which is what I wear!

Last thought I’ll share is an interaction we had while taking these pictures. A lady passed by us, took one look at us and asked if we are sisters. You know we obviously get asked often. She then proceeded to tell us, “you belong on a basketball court,” as she’s continuing to walk away. I just smiled and said I did play. As I turned around to Caitlin; I said, “I belong right here where I’m standing.” Intentionality is highly applicable in how we treat others as well. Although I could have resorted to snarkiness, instead I smiled and shared a laugh with my sister.

So hopefully y’all got a little bit of food for thought on intentionality. Are there any specific words or goals you’re reaching towards this new year?

Outfit Details

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When You Know, You Know

For those who have been with us for a while you have probably gathered that at this point when I know I want something, I know. You can probably quote me on this blog saying “I saw this and knew it was coming home with me” too many times for my own good. It’s a blessing and a curse if you ask me.

On one hand it causes me to impulse buy. Yes, I usually love my impulse purchases and feel confident in them. However, I could still be a tad more mindful at times. And on the other hand it has helped talk me out of a few items. The items where I am thinking “I like that” but “I would have purchased it already if I knew I needed it.”

In a very long winded manner, that was me telling you that when I saw this jacket I knew. It was pretty much everything I didn’t know I needed and more. After Jenilee and I both got this Teddy Jacket from Long Tall Sally (which is also just under $150 now!), my love for the teddy trend grew. See how we styled it here, here, and here. This was a fun twist on it for me. And I love that it is completely different than our other one. I ordered up one from my true size for a more generous fit and I am glad I did. My normal size would have definitely fit me but I like that it’s just bigger and cozy!

The coat itself is extremely soft and much warmer than I expected. I wore it as my actual jacket with a white short sleeve underneath it walking around Milwaukee in January and I wasn’t cold once. However, for as warm as it is, it is still very lightweight. The pockets are in an interesting spot on the front but I still found myself using them frequently throughout the day. The one thing to note is if like you me you wear white underneath, it may shed a bit the first few times you wear it!

And in true The Real Tall budget friendly/ remixing fashion you have pretty much seen everything else I am wearing before. In fact, you have seen an almost identical outfit in this post here. Jeans, a white tee, and a black coat of sorts might just be one of my favorite go to grabs. It’s classic, comfortable, and I just feel like it suits me. The difference here is that I threw on my killer Karl Lagerfeld booties to be a little bit more trendy for a day downtown. The rest of the outfit are all from one of our favs, Gap!

I have to drop a real moment here – sometimes these jeans just do weird things to my legs. Are they a little too small? Not the right fit? Am I too curvy for this style? I don’t know. But either way they sometimes pool weird and fold on one of my thighs and I HATE IT. Jenilee knows this from a past posts/shoots/me whining.

So as I am taking pictures asking “how does this look” she told me, “well it’s good except your leg is doing that weird thing there.” So I proceeded to laugh about it, cover it with my hand and my purse. UGH! Why are we so hard on ourselves? I see it, hear it, and well aware when I am doing it, but you just have to laugh sometimes and wonder why you are hard enough on yourself that it has made other people around you adapt to telling you when something “doesn’t look right.” (Peep me laughing as I use my purse as a shield!)

On a not tall fashion related note, I just need to express my love for some recent makeup purchases. We are all about the Naked Palettes. Our brother bought Jenilee the original one many years ago and since then we have acquired the Naked, Naked 2, Naked 3, Naked Heat, Naked Smoky and Naked Cherry. Okay, I probably could have just said we have acquired all of them, hah!

But the most recent of them is the Cherry and we are smitten. I love the shades of pinks and think it completes most of my looks. Especially since I love wearing a pink lip! One other product I am new to but am sold on now, is the Urban Decay All Nighter. WOW! I feel like I have been sleeping on this one. It is incredible, my makeup stays all day, all night, and sometimes when I am lazy until the next morning.

We are in no way close to wanting to be or trying to be beauty bloggers. I figure if we love something enough to want to share it, then so may you! Also Jenilee complimented my makeup this day and it made my day. So it inspired me to share it even more!

Do you all like the idea of this? Or should we stick to what we know? And to bring it all to an close, don’t forget to compliment someone today. It could do more good than you know!

When people walk by and stare….

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We’ve Arrived

2019 is here y’all, who else is raring to go! We had a great rejuvenating day off to kick start the new year, and now the week is already half over. That’s the way we like to start out, with a short work week! We set out our intentions for the coming year, and revisited how 2018 went if you want to check it out here.

Most people like to enter the new year with a fresh outlook. We just have to say, it is SUPER hard to enter the gym at the beginning of the year. We’re regular gym goers, so it’s painful when it’s at twice the normal capacity. Lots of people are new, who maybe don’t know gym etiquette as well. We’re completely supportive of people trying to reach new goals, but please be aware that you’re sharing a public space with others! Just a pet peeve of ours, don’t hog equipment and put your stuff back when you’re done. It ends up being not so common courtesy.

Conversely, if someone is new at the gym and looks confused; instead of brushing them off – offer to help them out. Sometimes they’re embarrassed to be there and uncomfortable. I don’t want to ever be the cause for solidifying someone’s feelings of not belonging. I think especially as tall women, we’re more self-aware than some, and we know the feeling of not fitting in. We’ve taken it upon ourselves to not make anyone else feel the way we have before.

Ok, enough of gym talk for now. We’re so excited to introduce a brand new brand by our friend Melissa Smith called Arrive Market. Y’all we feel so blessed to have been connected to Melissa through instagram. She is a kind, genuine soul and it shines through her page. When she announced that she was launching her own business, it was music to our ears. She is one stylish lady! Suffice to say, we couldn’t wait to see the offerings.

We haven’t even mentioned the best part yet. This is a company that is founded on the right principles. What does that even mean, you’re probably wondering. They are connected with artisans from third world countries, which provides them a dignified job opportunity! Some of the other items are part of their give back program, which donates 10% of the sale to the charity of the week. Talk about feel good shopping, right?!

The next thing on your mind is probably, but are they for tall women? At 6’1, Melissa IS a tall woman! So while they’re not labelled exclusively for tall women, they are completely cognizant of our #tallgirlstruggles and are totally here for us with some great options.

Melissa was kind enough to send us these gorgeous cardigans to test out. We were SO thrilled when Caitlin put hers on first and the sleeves were a beautiful length. Then when I put mine on, it was love, as I realized it worked on my longer arms as well! They also hit at a great length, and are super versatile. Unfortunately they’re sold out as of checking the site this morning, but we linked a couple of other items in the last paragraph.

When I was considering what outfit I wanted to style my cardi with, I could think of no better idea than to channel my inner Mel! I grabbed a striped turtleneck and a beaded necklace, and then I finished it off with my leopard loafers for some fun print mixing. I added in my Madewell jeans, which we know Melissa is a huge fan of as well! Mission accomplished, and I even had a little extra pep in my step from feeling so comfortable AND cute! Check out our instagram stories for me channeling Melissa further.

Caitlin wanted to play off the neutral vibes of her taupe colored version, and she grabbed another necklace of hers that reminds us a lot of Arrive Market’s gorgeous jewelry options. She layered a white long sleeve underneath to really make the necklace pop, her new favorite Madewell jeans, and some older Franco Sarto booties that we usually find at Nordstrom Rack.

If you haven’t heard of Arrive Market yet, now is your time to go check out their fun options! We’ve been eyeing up this gorgeous top with the beautiful button back detail, and all their fabulous jewelry to add to our collection. Don’t sleep on this high quality stuff, they’ve already got lots of items that have sold out! The best part? Melissa gave us a coupon code to share with y’all for 20% off! Use code THEREALTALL to try it out!

https://www.arrivemarket.co/collections/clothing

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2018 – A Year to Be Thankful

They say time flies when you’re having fun. Well whoever “they” are, hit that on the head. 2018 has come to a close, and that’s alright by us! This year has been an amazing year of new opportunities and firsts for us, and we wanted to spend a little time reflecting.

Our very first outfit post!

We started The Real Tall officially in 2018. As we’ve referenced before, we have sat on this idea for a couple of YEARS, before bringing it to fruition. That was truly a proud moment. Even if nothing ever came of it, knowing that we put ourselves out there is a win! Our first Instagram post was on February 28th! We hit publish on our first blog post on April 2nd. Since then we’ve shared 84 posts with you!

Highlights

Some of the biggest highlights of our year were working with brands we’d only dreamed of collaborating with! Long Tall Sally was definitely an unexpected dream that we couldn’t believe. We still pinch ourselves about it! We are super excited to share more small business tall brands with you this year, and we won’t make you wait long!

On a different note: hearing from any of you on struggles you may have overcome, how we have helped you gain confidence, come out of your shell or any way, is one of the biggest highlights we could ever ask for. That is solely why we are here. We love that we have a community that feels comfortable sharing these things with us.

Improvements

On the flip side, we definitely had some struggles this year as well. Caitlin and I are both pretty busy, whether it be extra jobs or extracurricular activities. We are constantly coordinating our schedules to meet up and shoot content. This meant an evolution of what our vision was, for both our Instagram and blog together. If you’ll peek back into the archives, you’ll notice we did a lot more coordinated looks as well. We had a lot of fun with that and we loved it, but it wasn’t always conducive to what we were each buying. Plus it meant taking up more of someone else’s time to have them take our pictures.

With the schedule struggles came consistency issues. We hope to improve on this for 2019, so y’all know when you can expect content from us! As always, we’re looking for feedback on what you’re looking for from us, so we can help you out in the best way we know!

Goals

We’re constantly looking ahead to what value we can bring to the table. The top goal for 2019 is growth, and not in the numbers sense. We’re looking to improve ourselves within the scope of posting consistently and bringing quality content to the table. Dependability is a good alternate title, although not particularly sexy! We hope to launch a couple of smaller series that will be posted regularly.

Another we mentioned above, is sharing more tall retailers with you. We have been introduced to a couple of new brands that we can’t wait to share! Our eyes are definitely on some pieces from brands we already know, but haven’t prioritized yet. Always, the goal is to remain true to bringing you budget friendly tall items or tall friendly items, to make your shopping experience as positive as possible.

Thank yous!

We’d certainly be remiss if we didn’t take a moment to say thank you. We’re so grateful for you, our readers! Whoever you are, we hope you’re getting value out of what we share with you. Special thank yous to Sarah, and to Tim. Both of them have spent many of their own hours helping us with pictures, and we couldn’t have done it without you! Thanks as well to Sophia who has provided valuable insights and feedback to us. We appreciate the love and support from our parents, our Aunts, and the rest of our extended family and friends. And one last big thank you to our group of tall ladies we have become intertwined with. Your knowledge, support, suggestions, corrections, etc. have been invaluable to us as we started this journey. We love you all!

  • Tim
  • Behind the Scenes – #gramhusband
  • Nick
  • Sarah

We would love and so greatly appreciate if you would leave a comment, DM, or email on how you think we are doing, suggestions you have, ideas for content you may want to see in 2019 or anything else you may want to share. Thanks for being here with us!

  • We’ve enjoyed having our Mom join us on many occasions as well!
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Lux Domes

I hope you are all hanging in there, as we coast through the rest of the holiday season. I know the two of us are looking forward to a mostly low-key New Years Eve. We always prefer to try and stay off the roads and spend time with close friends for this holiday. Maybe because we are just tired because we both typically have to work that day. It could also be that we just aren’t into the crowded expensive NYE bar scene. However, we did get out a little bit last weekend for some fun and a very unique experience.

I think we have mentioned a few times now that our family is migrating away from copious amounts of gifts, and more towards quality time and experiences. I am personally so down for this. After the last few years of consuming, buying, overspending, and over receiving; it just started to feel excessive and the joy of the true meaning of Christmas was wearing off.

For the most part we have switched to going on a trip as a family. Which if you ask me, is a win win. We get some warm weather, family time, and some great memories. This year in addition to this we added in a fun smaller experience in Milwaukee with our entire family as well as Jenilee’s in-laws.

As Jenilee and I were perusing the web, we stumbled upon a link that seemed to keep popping up in our feeds. It was for Lux Domes at a restaurant downtown that we like. This is new to Milwaukee this year and we were pumped to see it! To begin with we don’t have that many rooftop bars or restaurants to enjoy throughout the summers in Milwaukee. To see a winter attraction on top of the limited options was so fun! They are private heated domes that seat eight people. They then allow for you to choose certain drink packages and appetizer packages.

The two of us kind of booked one on a whim. You have to put down a bit of a hefty deposit in order to reserve one. We were reassured to  read that you can cancel if needed, so we figured why not? We locked in our date and time and then inquired with our 6 guests. We found out shortly after we booked ours they had sold out extremely fast! They are now releasing a few more time slots after their initial great response. It made us even more pumped to have one locked down once we heard that.

I was especially excited for this night, for a couple of reasons.  It provided an opportunity to have my family over for some drinks, apps, and to see my Christmas decorations. Being the only one in a duplex rather than a house it doesn’t usually make sense for me to be the host for evenings. Luckily, my place is the closest to our destination, and everyone was happy to meet there.

After a few hours of hanging out we headed downtown. Typically i wouldn’t include minute details like this in a blog but I need to paint a picture. Rather than calling an Uber, eight of us (with me at 5’11 being the shortest) piled into one mid-size SUV. We were laughing so hard seeing people walk past doubletake as people just kept piling out and unfolding themselves. We’re not the ideal group to be cramming into cars-but we make do!

They have you arrive fifteen minutes early to assure they can stay on schedule and make sure people are getting their money’s worth and full experience. We waited in the bar area for a bit before and got to soak in a plethora of “I feel so short” comments as people walked by. It really never gets old! We headed up to our dome and settled in. They made them so cozy with lights strung, blankets and faux furs laid on the chairs and an extra basket of blankets for use as well. However, the little heaters they had inside worked wonders! I didn’t even wear my coat inside.

Our waitress (I use that term loosely) stopped by to explain the food and drinks that had already been set out and explain when she would be back again to see if we would want to add anything on and then again with a 15 minute warning as to when we would have to exit the dome. She also pointed out some of the games they had under the tables which we all thought was an awesome touch. We sipped and noshed and then grabbed for cards against humanity pretty quickly. Many laughs later our waitress told us we needed to start winding down. All in all this was an extremely fun experience and if you have the opportunity I highly recommend checking it out!

Also peep these outfit details below if you would like! I absolutely recommend layering the green turtle neck if you get itchy and it is the perfect fit to wear with jeans or leggings!

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