over at Femme Rationale!

I know I promised a makeup post but this week turned out to be way too hectic and we are getting ready to leave for Cabo so I will do the post when I get back.

In the meantime, go check out Femme Rationale for her feature on me and my answers to the Proust Questionnaire! Thanks so much Nina!

(comments disabled for this post)

The new style-ish.com!

As I've mentioned previously, J and I are starting a photography and design business and we are ready to launch our new blog-website! We would love it if you could check it out and help us pass on the word of our new venture.

We recently had a fun engagement shoot at the Seattle Public Library so click on over to see Colleen and Nathan's pictures.

style.ish

Thanks so much for all your support everyone! We are so excited to start this new adventure in our lives and am grateful for all the encouraging words you've given us.

p.s. I know that this blog is called style-ish but it has always been the intention to be style.ish. Unfortunately you can't have a web address with a "." so it went to style-ish. Just in case you were wondering what the difference was.

update: thanks for the readers that let me know that the covers weren't showing up. It had something to do with Internet Explorer but they should be fixed now!

Q&A: Vacation Clothes

I've had several requests asking me to post what I'm taking to Cabo with me and then my friend Jen (who is also going to Cabo in a few weeks) wrote me an e-mail with a similar request.

Jen writes: so being the new mom that i am and considering i haven't been to the mall in ages, not to mention kept up with any trash mags lately to see what celebs are wearing, i was wondering if you could do a post on your blog about outfits you're taking to cabo! i have no idea what people are wearing these days and if what i have is still even considered "fashionable!" hee, hee! i don't want to be the frumpy mommy in cabo, so i thought you could give me a few tips or show me some outfits that i could easily (and cheaply) mimic possibly from forever 21 or the like that would be perfect for cabo.

I completely understand wanting to look great on vacation but not have to spend a lot of money. I have clothes that are just for beachy vacations because I will never get the chance to wear them here in Seattle so spending a lot of money on clothes like that just isn't practical.

I used to be an over-packer and bringing everything in my closet for a "just in case" until I started traveling like crazy for work and finally started to understand the fine art of packing for trips and that bringing less is actually a good thing.

My essentials for a beach vacation are easy to wear dresses, pretty tops and tanks, a lightweight scarf/shawl/pashmina, a nice pair of black shorts and a few pairs of shoes, mostly flats.

Here are my picks for what to bring on vacation, each item under $100!

Dresses

All dresses from Lulu's

#1 - perfect for walking around during the day with cute flat sandals and then transition into a dress for dinner by adding heels and some bangles.
#2 - cute swimsuit coverup that you can easily wear out to lunch or out shopping
#3 - Fun basic dress with a bit of flair so no other accessories are necessary. I tend to not wear jewelry during vacation so I look for dresses with interesting details.
#4 - a fun white dress to show off your tan! (but please always remember to use sunblock! sunburn is not a good look.)

I actually just bought this dress this past weekend to bring with me. It can convert from a dress to a skirt and is perfect to wear from the beach to dinner. Dress from JCrew - $78

Tops

All tops from Forever 21

When I feel like going a bit more casual, a pair of black shorts along with a fun top is my solution to still looking stylish.

#1 - No matter where I go, even if it's hot during the day, I almost always get cold at night so I like to bring a thin cardigan that I can pair over any outfit. This is perfect to go over any of these tops or any of the dresses above.
#2 - A graphic tank and flats sandals is such an easy but cute outfit. You can even layer this over dress #3 to create a different look!
#3 - The ruffles of this tank is just too cute and can feel dressy but not too dressy.
#4 - Sometimes I feel like I'm revealing too much in a tank top so I like to have fitted t-shirts with me as well in case I don't feel like showing off my shoulders.

The key to all these things is that the color scheme all matches so that no matter what you bring, you can mix and match and not have to worry about bringing things to match just one outfit.

Shoes

#1 - French Connection from asos #2, #3 - Delia's #4 - Boden

You all know I love heels but I'm also practical enough to know that heels and beaches do not work. I do a lot of exploring when I'm on vacation so I need shoes that I can wear to walk around for long periods of time. I seriously detest those rubber flip flops that are quite popular. I see them as shower shoes and so very inappropriate to wear out anywhere. It is possible to find cute beach shoes without resorting to "shower shoes".

#1 and #2 I love these simple thong flats that you can wear to the beach but also look great with dresses or shorts.

It is fine to bring heels with you if you want to get dressed up for dinner and know that you won't be walking a lot to get there, however if you think you will be doing lots of walking and still want height, wedges are your answer.

#3 - I love the wooden heel wedge which makes it a bit more classy and appropriate for dinner. #4 - These espadrilles are casual but cute and can go with so many outfits.

I also wear items that I will want to wear on vacation on the airplane so that it's one less outfit to pack. So I would wear something like the #3 dress with leggings and the #1 cardigan and some Tory Burch flats.

Hope my tips have helped give you some options for your vacation. Happy Vacationing!!

Update: I just wrote this post this weekend and it seems that Lulu's has sold out of some of the dresses I chose! I can't seem to find the links for them either but if I do, I will include the links.

Lookbook: Miranda Kerr inspired

I bought these grey skinnies a few months ago but haven't worn them because I felt a bit like my legs looked like sausages in them. Dark denim and regular denim skinnies I'm fine with but the light grey skinnies seriously do not hide anything. I got over it though and decided that I bought them so I had to wear them and actually throughout the day, I ended up liking them.

What I'm Wearing:
Blazer: Juicy Couture
Shirt: Halogen
Jeans: Levi's Eco
Shoes: Christian Louboutin
Scarf: Macy's

Are skulls on the outs or already out? I don't know but I still like this scarf that I got a couple years ago. It's actually a long scarf that I wrapped around twice and knotted together. Apparantly people are telling me that skinnies are also on the outs but ah well, I tend to wear what I like so skinnies will stick around with me!

My outfit was inspired by this picture of Miranda Kerr. I love how she's coming from the airport and still looks so chic. I hate those pictures of the celebs coming off the plane in shlubby sweats and Uggs. If you know you are going to get photographed, put some effort in it. Plus, I hate the general excuse of looking awful while traveling. Miranda shows us that it IS possible to look stylish while traveling without too much effort.

source

The entire outfit is made up of basic pieces that I'm sure most girls have in thier closet, a blazer, a t-shirt, skinny jeans, scarf and heels. So easy to go into your closet and recreate this outfit. The one thing is, even though it's a simple outfit, I made some adjustments that made it work for me like wrapping the scarf around and cuffing my jeans. The important thing for me is to make sure your proportions are right so that you look balanced. The cuffed jeans and the cuffed sleeves work for me because I have short arms and legs and in doing so makes me look a little taller.

I bought these jeans long purposefully to cuff them but when I put them on I discovered just how long they were so I had to play around with them before I decided to go with a cuff with the edges rolled over.

My hair has been a mess lately. My curling iron broke (that's also why my hair tutorial still has not been written) and I had to look around for a replacement which I ordered this week, so until my new one arrives I'm just going with this slight wave. Since you can't see my makeup very well in the picture above I wanted to show you my look for that day which was a dark brown/taupe eye with a pink-almost orange-ish lip color. I just bought a lip color pallete that I am in love with and the colors that came in it are a bit surprising but oddly, work well with my skin tone.

More info to come on the pallete in my next makeup post (this week!)

NYC Recap

My trip to NYC was fun but exhausting. We were go-go-go the whole time and I barely got any sleep. It's no wonder when I got home I caught the terrible flu that had been going around.

Our days were full of...

Yummy food

Lunch at Jojo on the Upper East Side, a beautiful restaurant built inside a home with lovely chandeliers all over the place.

Seriously yummy food. Especially that crab cake. It was to die for.

(that's my sister's sparkly iPhone in the background!)

Wedding Dress Shopping

As I mentioned before, we hit up quite a few places. We did two a day which was seriously all we could take. Pronovias was a lovely store where they actually allowed pictures!

A sampling of the beautiful dresses my sister tried on...

They were all of the ruffly variety which is totally not what she ended up with!

Shopping

And when we were full up of wedding dresses, we did what we do best... shop, shop and shop some more!

More Yummy Food

Dinner was always at another spectacular place, it's a miracle I didn't gain any weight on this trip! If you've never been to Peter Luger Steakhouse, you should go (if you like steak) it's quite the experience!

I will spare you the pictures of all the meat we ate...

Family

And then back home to spend time chit chatting with my mom, my sister and her fiance until it was time for bed. And of course, to play with my sister's adorable pup, Louis!

And then we woke up and did it all over again each day until my mom and I had to get on the airplane back to Seattle.

But the good news is that we accomplished our mission of finding my sister her wedding dress. Where else but at our last stop, Kleinfeld!

They were filming "Say yes to the dress" that day but we didn't get on TV. (it was CRAZY that day, so many brides).

All in all, a fantastic trip and good girl time with my mom and my sister. I heart NY!

Lookbook: Butter by Nadia

Following up from this post, I debuted my Butter by Nadia dress on Valentines Day. I had been sick in bed for the past 3 days and the only thing that got me out that day were the pretty flowers and presents that my very sweet husband got for me. I felt bad that my husband had to put up with nasty sickly me, so decided to get dressed up and put on some makeup so I could at least look a bit normal for him.

What I'm Wearing:
Dress: Butter by Nadia
Tights: DKNY
Shoes: Christian Louboutin

So, do you like how I ended up styling it? I went online to check out the very handy videos on the Butter by Nadia website and picked this one because I liked that it was shortened and had sleeves. Most of the ways they style the dress is like this.

Which ends up being a bit long on me. I was still a bit self conscious because of the way it wraps, you can't wear a bra, so to prevent any terrible wardrobe malfunctions I put on a very tight tube dress underneath to strap my boobies in. I felt much better having something underneath.

My sweetie got me the prettiest baby roses. Baby roses are something that goes way back in our relationship as the very first flowers he ever bought for me was a plant of baby roses. They are actually pretty hard to find around here so it's always nice when he finds them and brings them home to me.

We had a very low-key Valentines day since I was sick but I didn't mind. We're not big on celebrating Valentine's day but I have to admit that it's definitely nice that he still spoils me!

P.S. Did you know it is Barbie's 50th Anniversary? Go here to read my post on all the fun events going on to celebrate Barbie!

Lookbook: Minnie Mouse

I wanted to wear a dress this day but I was not into wearing tights so put on leggings instead. It's a different look for me and not my favorite, but I didn't hate it either. My husband calls this my Minnie Mouse outfit because he says I look like I have Minnie Mouse legs.

What I'm Wearing:
Jacket: Club Monaco
Dress: Forever 21
Leggings: Forever 21
Shoes: Jimmy Choo

I like to organize my closet by season so I had moved all my summer dresses to the back of my closet and I haven't looked at those dresses in awhile. I was sick of my winter dresses that morning so I decided to see what I could put together with a summer dress and pulled out this bright one with faux rosettes.

The shoes, I adore because they make me extra tall. I love Jimmy Choo because the details are always so beautiful. The design is so simple, but the snakeskin on the platform and the straps make for a perfect accent and give the shoe an extra little something.

This picture was the last time I had worn the dress. Ah, I miss bare legs and sandals. I need some warm weather ASAP. And look at how green those trees are behind me compared to what they look like now. ::sigh:: winter are you ready to be over yet?

back from NY

Hi all! I'm back from New York but feeling a bit under the weather and I came home to a completely dead MacBook. All I get is a gray screen with a flashing folder and a question mark. NOT GOOD! My husband is taking care of getting me a new hard drive or whatever else he needs to do to fix it and hopefully get my little computer back to working form. So sad, I feel a bit lost without it! It's not even that old, like a littleunder 2 years so all of you with a MacBook make sure to back everything up all the time! I never dropped it and wasn't ever that rough on it and it just died on me without warning.

I can use my work laptop (or my husbands Mac) but it's so much easier to do everything on my Macbook so I will be responding to e-mails but posting is going to be light until everything gets fixed.

For now, here are some pictures from New York. As I am a Louis Vuitton lover I could not resist taking pictures of the window displays. I did not buy any of these as the fluorescent is not really my style, but they are still pretty to look at.

I also wanted to thank Emily for featuring me on her blog! Emily, you are such a darling, big kisses to you! Go visit Modestly Chic for great posts on how to be stylish without sacrificing modesty. Something that I highly live by!

Have a great weekend!