Cranes L'amour

Hello there! Ah, one more day of work to get through for the week. Today I went out to lunch with my boss and two co-workers, which was nice. I've never gone out to eat with a boss before. It's cooled down a bit here, and the humidity has also gone down somewhat, so that's been a relief. 
This week's been pretty quiet, but Friday night Bob and I will be going to my parent's for dinner (my grandparents are coming too), and Saturday night I'll be meeting my friend for a drink.
In the below pictures I'm wearing my new Trashy Diva dress. This cranes print was released last Thursday, and I love it! Trashy Diva has been coming out with prints so much more frequently lately than they used to, and I love almost all of their recent prints. This is my third dress in the L'amour style. It's a comfortable style, and I think it's a little more on the casual side than a lot of their dress styles. It zips easily too, which is always a plus.
 The shade of blue in the dress goes perfectly with my Mak cropped cardi in viola. I wore this dress paired with that cardi to work today. I don't have shoes other than black ones that match this dress, unfortunately, and surprisingly! I'm glad my green Splendette bracelets match quite well, though. 
I love this print so much, I was even considering ordering it another style, as well, but decided to hold off on that. What makes this print even better is that a portion of the sales are donated to the Gulf Restoration Network!

Dress: Trashy Diva
Necklace: Modcloth
Bracelets: Splendette
Heels: BAIT Footwear

~Bye bye for now!

Cupcake Skirt

Hello there! I didn't do much this weekend so far, and am just staying home today, which is fine by me, since we were just away on vacation.
In the pictures below I'm wearing my new Unique Vintage cupcake skirt. It's the same skirt style as my Unique Vintage watermelon skirt. I ordered this skirt two months ago, during the Memorial Day sale, when it was only $56. It originally said that it'd ship by June 15. Well, June 15 came & went, so I did an online chat with their customer service, and they said it was supposed to come very soon. I did another chat a couple weeks later, and the same thing happened. You think they'd just sent a general email to anyone who ordeed the skirt to update them on estimated date changes for shipping. Well, finally, in the beginning the skirts came in. I got a call though, saying that since I hadn't been charged originally for the skirt, they needed me to pay for it now. So, they sent me a Paypal request for payment, I paid immediately. I was told my skirt would ship that night. I went on vacation, and while I'm on vacation (a week after I was told the skirt had shipped), I get another voicemail, saying I need to pay for the skirt. What the hell?!?! I was so mad! I checked my bank account, and the funds had been taken out when I paid for it the week before. I ended up emailing them, explaining, and they still didn't get it. After more back and forth, they finally understood what happened, and shipped it, and it arrived yesterday. It was so frustrating! It makes me not want to ever order from them again, especially not pre-orders.
Anyway, I do LOVE the skirt! It's soooo cute, and my shoes are perfect with it! The skirt is decently thick, too. 

Top: Pin Up Girl Clothing
Skirt: Unique Vintage
Brooch: Erstwilder
Earrings: Etsy (Scrumptiousdoodle)
Flats: Shoe Bakery

~Bye bye for now!

Southern Road Trip, Part I

Hello there! It really is SO nice to have off Fridays in the summer, and I appreciate it very much . It may be a little tough to transition back to a five day work week, but it's not like I'm a teacher who goes from having NO work for a couple of months, to then back to a regular work week! So, it could be much worse, ha. It also shouldn't be too tough, since I like my job! I'm just doing some cleaning, laundry, working out, reading, and what not today. 
I'm going to do this post on the first two stops of our vacation: Richmond and Charleston. We stayed in Richmond for one night; it was our first stop. With the bit of traffic we hit, and the rest stops, it took about 7.5 hours to get there. We first went over to Carytown (which is a cute section that has a bunch of little mom & pop shops and restaurants). I had been planning on going to Bygone's Vintage first, which is a clothing shop there. We got parking right in front of the shop, which was great, and I got a Trashy Diva dress there! I hadn't bought anything in the ruffled feathers print before; it came out about two or three months ago. I hadn't been sure about it, and wanted to see it in person before deciding. They only had a couple of sizes left in the two styles they had, the sarong and l'amour. The sarong I tried on fit, but I liked the l'amour on me better. The l'amour is a little roomy, but I still think it looks good. They didn't have the next size down. We walked around more after that, and went in a few shops. We went back to the hotel then to check in and get ready to go out to eat. 
We went over to another section of Richmond, which was really nice. The roads are cobblestone there. There's some restaurants and bars over there, and we went to an Irish pub called Seine. We love Irish pubs, and we this one didn't let us down. Dinner was good, and during happy hour I ordered my usual vodka crans, not knowing the happy hour price. It turns out they were $2 each! After dinner, we walked around the area, but didn't see a bar we wanted to check out, so we came back to Seine for awhile to have drinks at the bar.  
We moved on to Charleston the next day. We left in the morning, and got there in the afternoon.  We were there three nights. We were a little let down by Charleston, Bob especially. I mean I did like it, but was just expecting more. A lot of the stores there were chain mall stores, which I do not like. My first dinner there was bad, too, and I'm almost never disappointed by food I order. I ordered a side of mac & cheese, and it just tasted like burnt garlic! 
After we got there and checked into our hotel, and started walking around, we went into a bar at a restaurant called Toast. After we were there a little bit, the guy sitting at the bar started talking to us, and we ended up staying for hours, talking to him, and his wife who showed up later. He was really funny and easy to talk to. So, that was definitely a good experience.
There weren't really any bars or restaurants we tried that I LOVED. It also rained a couple of times in the afternoons we were there, so that was annoying. We checked out a place called Husk that  Anthony Bourdain recommended on his show "Parts Unknown". But, we weren't impressed with the food we tried. Granted, we only tried a small "bar bites" dish, and not a regular dish at the restaurants itself. 
We did venture over to a beach, which was about a 20 minute drive away (you have to drive to get to any Charleston beach). We hadn't originally planned on doing it, but when we were at Toast, we heard good things about the beach towns. We checked out a bar/restaurant that was recommended. It was right on the beach, so that was nice. It was a very casual place, which we definitely like that, but it was nothing exceptional. I think if we had gone at night, when it'd be a lot busier, it'd have been more interesting. We were the first people in there that day, ha. We walked along the beach after hanging out at the bar awhile, and waded in the water. It was SO warm! We had heard on the news that it was 87 degrees! It was nice to get to check out the beach.
The first two pictures below are from Richmond, and the rest are from Charleston.

 

The dress I got at Bygone's Vintage!

 

Mums The Word

Hello there! Anyone else seen "Luther"? I'm so into it. Bob and I started watching it on Netflix recently. At first, he didn't pay that much attention to it, but now he's drawn in, too. We just started the second season. It's a show about a police detective and his cases and personal life. So, not the newest subject matter in the TV world, but it's really good; lots of twists and turns.
So, it's back to the grind. Luckily, I caught up at work quickly. This is the easiest it's ever been to come back from vacation; by that I mean that I wasn't dreading and super anxious to come back to this job, as opposed to all my other jobs I've had. That means a lot! I've been there a month, and my initial impressions were spot on. I'm now feeling a lot more comfortable with the job itself, and my boss is just as great as I initially thought he was. I've had my shade of insane and AWFUL bosses, and it's so nice to not have to deal with that anymore!! It's simply priceless. It's a huge load off of me to finally not have to job search and be miserable and bitter about the job I am stuck in! 
In the pictures below I'm wearing my new Bernie dress. It's yet another in the Kelly style. 
I first saw this mums print a year or so ago when it was released in the Paris style. I wasn't in love with it then, and never went for it. As soon as I saw she released it in the Kelly last week, I snagged it. The colors are SO good, and even better in person than online. My favorite brands are killing it lately with their releases! So many gorgeous new items that have been coming out! If you check out her site and see something you want, use coupon code: 25dress for 25% off!

Dress: Bernie Dexter
Heels: BAIT Footwear

~Bye bye for now!

Lipstick Dress

Hello there! Well, I'm back safe & sound from the southern road trip I took with my husband. We got back last night, after ten hours on the road yesterday. Vacations always go so fast, don't they?? It was great to get to explore four cities we had never been to before. Our favorite of the four was Savannah. We were only in Richmond & Raleigh one night each, but found both to be smaller than we had anticipated, so it turned out well that we only had one night in both. I only bought on piece of clothing the whole trip; a Trashy Diva L'amour dress at Bygone's Vintage in Richmond.
The big downside to the trip though, was the extremly hot and humid weather in all four cities. I knew before we went that it'd be like that, but that didn't make it any easier, ha. 
I tried wearing my hair down during the day in the beginning of the trip, but quickly found out that didn't work so well, since I was constantly sweating, and my hair would look end up looking like crap before too long. It was better to wear it down later at night, when it cooled down a bit (it never cooled down too much). Other than that, I had a fun trip. I'll write more about the trip in later blog posts. 
For now I'm going to post pictures of my newest Bernie dress. The dress arrived while we were away. It runs tighter in the bust than my other Bernies in this same style and size. It's very hard to zip it all the way up. So, that's annoying. If I had known ahead of time that it ran smaller in the bust, I definitely would've sized up. Maybe, *hopefully*, it'll stretch out a bit with wear? Fingers crossed. At least it does zip though. But, man, do I love this print! I love a great red lipstick, and the dress has varying shades of red lipstick, and also an orange shade. I'm not normally one for gold, but I don't mind it on this dress. I love Bernies lipstick prints so much, that I'm considering getting the one with the black background, too. I'd obviously size up in that one. 

 
Dress: Bernie Dexter
Necklace: Francesca's Collections
Heels: BAIT Footwear

~Bye bye for now! 

Green Gingham

Hello there! Two more days of work to get through, and then I am in full on vacation mode! My mind is already somewhat in that mode I must admit, ha. I'm seeing my friend Thursday after work for a drink, but other than that don't have plans between now and when we leave Friday morning. I did a lot of packing over the weekend, so I don't have much more to do for that.
In the pictures below I'm wearing my new Bernie Dexter dress I snagged during the Pin Up Girl Clothing 20% off 4th of July sale. I thought about getting this dress ever since it came out on Bernie's site months ago, but never went through with it. The Kelly is my favorite style of her dresses, and I can't resist a Kelly with a good print! I'm also a big lover of gingham, and green gingham is not so common. I sized up a size in this one because I wanted more room in the bust (my other Kellys are all a size smaller). It's definitely much easier to zip over my chest in this size (and bonus: I can zip it without the help of my husband), and is bigger in the waist, but the belt hides that.

Dress: Pin Up Girl Clothing (Bernie Dexter)
Necklace, Brooch, Earrings: Etsy (Scrumptiousdoodle, Luxulite, IncredInedible)
Flats: Shoe Bakery

~Bye bye for now! 

Under The Sea

Hello there! We're not doing much today, just staying at home, like a typical Sunday. We have one more episode to go for season 4 of "Shameless". I can't believe that's it, and then we have to wait until whenever Netflix gets the next season. This season has NOT disappointed! Yesterday was much cooler out and a lot less humid than it had been this whole last week, so it was a much needed reprieve. I'm not sure how long that's going to stick around though! 
I started packing for our trip yesterday. It's so close now, and I just want to be en route already!
In the pictures below I'm wearing my Hell Bunny seahorse print dress I got from Modcloth over a year ago. I don't wear pastel clothing too much, but I really love this adorable print. It's a really comfy dress, too. In the order pictures below are my new BAIT shoes! I actually returned the green, because it was too dull for me; they are more of an olive green. I really LOVE the Roni style I got; those are the round toe ones. The blue ones are such a pretty shade of blue, and it's a new shade I didn't have any other styles in. I'm going to pair them with my Trashy Diva red fans dress that was in my last post. They don't match perfectly, but it's close enough for me. 
BAIT is my favorite shoe brand, if you hadn't noticed. They are so cute, retro looking, and comfy, and I love that they've been releasing more options of new colors and styles lately.

Dress: Modcloth (Hell Bunny)
Necklace: Etsy (Luxulite)
Brooch: Gift from Atomic Lucite
Heels: BAIT Footwear

~Bye bye for now!