pants in the summertime

normally a sundress girl, i've really found myself drawn to printed pants this summer. sundresses with no layers just aren't as much fun to wear! i know, this is super counterintuitive, probably. who knows. up until this year, i've only ever owned 1 or 2 pairs of jeans at a time. and even then, i never ever chose to wear them over a dress or skirt. but now, all of a sudden, dresses and skirts are looking boring and jeans offer way more options. this will probably/definitely change when fall weather hits and i can bring my beloved tights out of storage, but until then.. i'll keep loving my weird jeans collection.

i've been having so much fun with my floral pants lately! i had to share these pictures of me wearing them with my favorite shirt. :)

these shoes have existed in my wardrobe since high school. i should definitely replace them.. it's not like they've worn well or anything, but no other black flats ever compare to how cute they are. i'm just so picky about my shoes. :(

i added a new pair of pants that i'm obsessing over to my wardrobe recently, too..

i actually can't even put into words how excited i am to finally own mint jeans! that are comfy! and not high-waisted! and affordable! i'm just so in love. i've worn them 3 out of the 5 days since i got them. it's fun seeing what matches with them (spoiler alert: it seems that i think EVERYTHING matches with them).

i'm also really obsessed with this shirt. austin's brother, bentley, works at a local screen printing company, and hooks our group of friends up with really cool shirts all of the time. this one's extra special because it's austin's band, virginia werewoolf, and it's the only one of it's kind. ;) i could honestly probably say that 90% of my tshirts are c/o bentley, haha. i really, really love all of them. dressing up band tshirts is one of the funnest things to do.

outfit one:
necklace: anthropologie (in store)
shirt: modcloth (available on curator)
cardigan: american eagle (the same one in all of my posts ever)
jeans: insight
shoes: steve madden, circa 2006

outfit two:
necklace: catbird (no longer available)
tshirt: band tshirt, c/o bentley & austin
jeans: bullhead
shoes: converse (i just spent 45 minutes oohing and ahhing over some of the printed converse they have on their website.. geez)

<3

summer style rut

i really hate the summer, you guys.

overwhelming heat, mosquitoes, high school kids in my store ALL DAY rather than just post-4pm, bees, hearing about everyone else's awesome vacations that i'll never be able to afford, spiders, etc..

and also the part where i only know how to look cute when i can layer times a million, and i cannot layer in the summer.

boring boring boring.

i actually did feel pretty cute, today, though. i work with adorable girls who have been inspiring me style-wise. my sister and i are hopefully going shopping on tuesday (gotta keep taking advantage of these sales, y'all!), so maybe that'll help me, too. and have you guys seen the asos sale?! i have four dresses, a belt, and a clutch in my bag for a grand total of $65.. whoa. here's looking forward to learning how to dress for the next 2 months..

necklace: build it yourself via anthropologie
tank top: american eagle
jeans: levis
shoes: target (out of stock, but look at these!)

<3

road trippin' with becca

late last week, becca and i took a road trip to richmond.

sometimes you just need a little bit of a break with your best friend. the actual circumstances taking us to richmond were not awesome, but we made it relaxing and enjoyable all the same. originally planning to leave friday morning at 5am, becca's mom angelically offered us up a hotel room for thursday night, so we got our hairs cut and were on our way.

there were some slight gps setbacks, and we arrived around midnight. i think i passed out in bed soon after, while becca worked on a paper.

the next morning, we took full advantage of the free breakfast, and even though the room was FULL (like every table full) of a family headed to a quinceañera, the coffee was good, there was bacon, and i really like cereal.

after we took care of some business, we headed to a nearby starbucks to talk literature.



not really. kind of. becca worked on a paper, i made notes for the store, and we sometimes discussed literature. then we went shopping! we both got lots of perfect things and took advantage of those big summer sales deals and it was just so good to go shopping with my best friend. i needed some new clothes for my new job, and i'm sure you'll end up seeing some of my spoils here soon. :)
then we left to go home.

the floor at my seat: my shopping bags, my purse, my overnight bag

i'm pretty sure i just say this every time i see becca, but i'm so glad i get to see her as often as i do. she'll be back in town in a month or so, and i'm planning a trip to her for september (for renegade! with bekuh!), so our long distance best friendship isn't actually as dire as it sometimes seems.

i'm mostly posting both of these pictures to show how inconveniently unphotogenic we can be at times. sometimes we're so cute, sometimes we're not so cute. to be fair, we'd been awake since 6:30 am, shopping all day in the heat, and driving for 4 hours when we took these. :) <3

the night the world almost ended

i don't know if you've heard about friday night's storm in virginia (you may have because of this), but it really threw off my life these past 5 days.

on friday night, i was closing the registers at work when the power started flickering. it went out like 7 times before i could get everything wrapped up for the night and we could leave. as we were walking out, we noticed how many people were still in the mall.. sitting in huddles, mostly in hallways. it didn't sound like it was raining, so i asked someone i semi-knew, and they said it was really windy? like.. ok. windy. so the part-time employee that was with me, jordan, and i carried on our merry way to the doors so that we could leave. a security guard had to help me open the door because the wind was pushing so hard (should've been a sign..). come to find out, the security guards weren't supposed to let anyone leave the mall at all that night (until after the storm). but he HELPED us out. :( cool, dude.

it WAS windy, but i have this thing where i'd prefer to be headed home and get hurt than sitting somewhere waiting something out and get hurt. does that make sense? whatever. i got turned around about 8 times trying to get out of the mall area, because so many trees had fallen, and firetrucks had completely blocked intersections. this probably should've deterred me, but i mean.. i wanted to get home. i didn't pass a single traffic light that was still on, i saw torn and bent signs on the interstate (torn metal signs?!?!!??!), i saw a traffic light fall on a car, i saw power lines and trees fall right before i would've been up under them, and there are lil scratches on both sides of my car where i had to come right up next to fallen branches in order to pass through somewhere. i even had to drive in people's yards to get home at one point.

once i got home, there was a dark street, and this:

easily the best goodwill purchase to date.. it's the only reason we had any light!

scaredest, sweatiest, brattiest girl right thurr

we had no idea how long the outage would last or who had power (both of our phones were dead, too). our house was already in the 100s temperature-wise, and i was still shaky about my trip home, so we turned in early.

the next day, i opened at work and found out that the power outage seemed to have hit about half of our town. some people's flickered, others lost power for a couple of hours, and others, like us, were hearing things like 4-6 days until power comes back up. complete and total first world problem, but this is the hottest it's been in virginia for years.. and we live in the upstairs portion of our house. we ended up pulling our roommate's mattress into the tiny downstairs foyer we walk into (it seemed to be about 20 degrees cooler) and hung out down there when it got too dark, which made life more bareable.

we spent a lot of time the past 4 days (mostly 100 degree weather + virginia humidity) on our front porch, reading books day and night:

you guys - the misery is actually not posed. ;)

anyway, i started my new job on monday, unable to shower (hence the bandanna.. that has become a staple, ugh). BUT!!!!

today, austin texted me to let me know that the power had returned. my house feels like pure luxury. like i feel spoiled now. it's awesome. i got home pretty late, and my downstairs neighbor said, "please go inside and feel how heavenly it is." haha! needless to say, we're super appreciative of how quickly the power companies worked.

the only thing i'm still a little bitter about is how much food we're having to throw away and how much money i've spent on cold drinks/warm food this week. but now i know how much worse it could be.

i'm worried this storm is not a one-off happening, and we'll see another this summer. this was a pretty big lesson to me, so i think i'll handle it better, but i hope next time i don't have to drive through it..

<3

greasy fast food dates

austin and i really like sonic. i like their burgers, he likes their hot dogs. i like their strawberry limeades, he likes their ocean waters. sometimes they have half off milkshakes and we both really like that. so, on saturday night, we parked my car, rolled up my windows, turned on the ac and radio, and ate in the drive-in. :)

we've actually been listening to the radio all weekend. since we have totally different, rarely overlapping tastes in music, we're kind of picky and weird about what we listen to in the car together. the radio provides a third party that chooses the music for us. :)

stations programmed in my car: the local standard pop music station, a country station (i know, i know.. but it's so fun sometimes!.. especially 70s-early 90s country), a classic rock station, an oldies station, the kind of "easy listening" station that i think plays at my mom's work, and a local station that plays more contemporary music. we had fun singing along and making fun of some of the more classic songs. we even had a bohemian rhapsody moment (all i could think about was wayne's world)! since the dvds that play at my job sometimes include really new pop music that i'd never hear otherwise, i had fun introducing austin to one direction and never shout never. even though i think we sometimes get caught up being a little bit snobby with the music we listen to, it's fun to just.. let music be fun. one of my most recent favorites is justin bieber's "boyfriend." :)

do you think you turn your nose up at the radio, or do you prefer how much fun it can be?  i'll probably go back to my ipod shuffling tomorrow, but austin and i might stick to the radio when we're driving around together from here on out. there's just something that screams summer about driving around, listening to the radio. <3

most eventful minor league baseball game.. ever

yesterday was one of those days that i wasn't sure i'd be able to fit everything i wanted to do in 24 hours (spoiler alert: i was right.. i couldn't).

because we're back to being a one car family, i had to wake up at 6:30 am to take austin to work. then i came home, showered, fretted over my appearance, and went to my in-person interview (supposed to hear back tomorrow.. fingers crossed!). then i went to visit my grandma, who just got home from a 3-week vacation in colorado, and my sister, avery, and eddie, kendall's boyfriend, stopped by there. we caught up and giggled with avery, and then i had to be on my way to pick austin up from work.

this is where we had to make some choices. there was a graduation party for my cousin, an on the cooling board show we really wanted to attend, and austin's dad had planned a little birthday celebration for his paw paw's 81st birthday at a minor league baseball game nearby. we love the salem red sox games and a grandpa's birthday just seemed to outweigh the others, so we made our decision and were on our way.

source

we bought dinner and got comfy in our seats for a few innings, and then it started raining. hard. and cold. we heard some rumblings of the local news report which said the rain was going to be short-lived, so we decided to wait it out. every covered section of the stadium was PACKED. it's times like these when i remember just how tiny i am in comparison to a normal-sized person, and i get a little nervous (even though i had my cell phone - i also have an over-active imagination). i think it was like a 45 minute setback, but my internal clock is also a little over-active i think most of the time so who knows really but just picture a million people standing under little sections of roofed areas in cold rain for that long! wah.

so we finally get back to our seats (after we dried them off), austin's dad provided us with peanuts, and the game was getting kind of intense when.. the stadium lights went off.

that's what it looked like.

for a little bit, we hung out while they played silly songs (dancing in the moonlight) over the loudspeakers and had a picture of rick flair on the big screen. they eventually called the game, but not before the boys started throwing peanuts at people on the field. lots of giggles.

now that i'm home and in bed, i think we made the right decision about tonight. :) we'll get to use our tickets again, since the game was called early, and i'm excited to pick a night. minor league baseball games always have really funny theme nights (tonight's was the 80s). bingo night is my favorite, even though i'm really bad at it since i have no actual knowledge of baseball, haha.

<3

trying to welcome summer

even though i'm now officially a documented summer-hater, i did a couple of things that scream summer on my day off this week. kendall has been taking little avery to the pool every day, and i've been soo jealous. i finally got to join them!

i love those sweet ladies. <3

(she had something to add to my conversation)

i stayed as long as i could, until i got a distressing call and had to leave for a couple of hours. it was probably just in time, though, because in those couple of hours, i got sunburnt. :( i really, really do not tan (if you can't tell..), my skin turns bright pink and then i go back to being stark white. i'm okay with it, because i'm going to have awesome skin in my later years, but the recovery time super sucks. you have no idea the amount of editing i had to do these to make me not look like a vampire.. and i still kind of do.

after i took care of some car business (that ran upwards of $150! - does anyone else think cars are the number one biggest waste of money? ugh), i met back up with kendall and avery, with kayla in tow!, for some frozen custard from a cute new place in town, chillypop.

she was clearly into taste testing everyone's custard.

obsessed with this picture.

by the end of it, my cone was perfectly avery-sized! the parlor was a tiny space, so the four of us kind of took it over while we were there. avery was acting like she owned the place. ;)

i have to be honest, if summer can keep offering up sweet get togethers like these, i might change my tune. <3