Right now, there are more than 9,200 kids in foster care in Missouri, each one dreaming for someone to grant his or her ultimate holiday wish – a forever home with a loving family.

If you’re anything like me, you love an excuse to dress up. If I could twirl around in pretty dresses all night, I would.

The truth is, as a mom with little ones, my Friday nights are instead spent on the couch in a track suit. But it’s the holiday season - a month of parties and a time to get all fancified. Unfortunately, bedazzling said track suit isn’t cutting it as holiday glam. At least not until I’m 80.

My girls have picked out their costumes for Halloween. Inspired by Jake and the Never Land Pirates and MJ’s weirdly obsessive crush on Captain Jack Sparrow, they’ve decided to be pirates, which is so incredibly adorable it makes me melt like a fun-sized Milky Way squished in a toddler’s fist. They’ve been practicing their “Arrr’s” and “Ahoy, there!” and are totally ready for the big night.

The kids have done a number on my wardrobe. On one hand, they’ve destroyed it directly – the 2-year-old sees a silk shirt and immediately feels compelled to rub a ketchup-drenched chin all over it. On the other, by finishing their leftover ice cream cones and downing margaritas to cope with the insanity, I’ve been indirectly pushed by them into the next dress size. 

If you’re anything like me, you devour issues of InStyle and ELLE, circling the looks you love in red pen and figuring how many pints of plasma you’d have to sell to buy that cute Nanette Lepore lace dress. 

This weekend, I need to start my annual spring cleaning push, which has grown insanely stressful since Toy Story 3 has emotionally crippled me from tossing out the kids’ toys.

But clothing? Yeah, I can handle that. Especially if they can go to a good cause and I can shop for new threads for me and the girls.

With the snow starting to melt away and that big orange thing in the sky finally revealing itself, I’ve been scouring fashion magazines and websites with abandon, trying to get a taste of the trends for spring to plan my wardrobe for the upcoming season.

To get help in finding looks that are both fashion-forward and easy for a busy mom to pull off, celebrated St. Louis fashion stylist and personal shopper, Jan Leach of Jan Leach Style, shared with me five hot trends for spring 2011. And along with Natalie Woods, owner of Daisy Clover Boutique in Webster Groves, explained via email how anyone can pull them off so us moms can look and feel our best.