Photos by Drew
Dress: Ragged Ranges dress, gift from Megan Nielsen
Sunglasses: Karen Walker
Bag: Fieldguided
Shoes: Bold Endeavors in Gain Swedish Hasbeens, c/o Modcloth
For the holiday weekend we decided to get out of Atlanta and go visit Drew’s family at their house on the North Carolina coast, and it ended up being the perfect start-of-summer trip. Well not at first–when we were driving to South Carolina on Friday night it started raining so bad that we had to stop at a Holiday Inn in Florence, but the next morning we woke up early and made our way to the coast and it was all worth it. We had lots of fun spending time with Drew’s family and swimming during the day and eating freshly caught fish and shrimp at night. On Sunday we went to Holden Beach to swim and couldn’t believe how warm the Atlantic Ocean was already, and because I’m still not really used to ocean beaches I couldn’t believe how many shells there were.
We took these photos on our way out. I was wearing the dress that Megan Nielsen gave me and wanted to get some pictures of it, even though my hair was beach-crazy and little Rufus was along and doesn’t like being outside so much. We took blog photos at this exact same spot almost two years ago–I think I wanted to go there again this time because I had Tieka’s lookbook photos in the back of my mind, and because this dress and sandy backdrops go together so perfectly. This dress is so light and airy that I’m sure I’ll be wearing it all summer long.
Today we had to do some work, but after that we got to relax and go to a park for a cookout. You can read all about that on the guest post I did today for the Lulu Letty blog. Hope all of you had a great weekend!
1. 1990s Michelle Smock Dress . . . . . . . . . 2. White Eugenia Embroidered Sun Dress . . . . . . . . . . 3. 1990s Paisley Melissa Dress . . . . . . . . 4. Floral Elsa Flutter Dress.
5. 1990s Liv Cropped Sweater . . . . . . . 6. 1990s Lace Lily Crop Top . . . . . . . . 7. Pleated Catherine Midi Skirt . . . . . . 8. Paisley Stevie Maxi Dress.
This book was one of my Christmas gifts from Drew’s parents, and I love it a ton, but for some reason haven’t scanned in any of the pictures until now. They are warm weather pictures, anyhow. When I found out that there was a book combining William Faulkner’s writings with William Eggleston’s photos I put it at number one on my Christmas list. I didn’t find out much about William Eggleston until last year (my internet is slow), but I’ve loved (and struggled with) Faulkner’s novels ever since college, when my favorite English professor had us read The Sound and the Fury. I won’t pretend that I understood it. Reading his books makes me tired and sometimes makes me depressed, but there are parts in them that are so beautiful that even I get where he’s coming from, and so I can’t help but like him.
Faulkner’s Mississippi has excerpts from Faulkner novels and stories, and there’s some biographical information on him, and if the photos that run alongside the text don’t always have much to do with the man or his books, there’s definitely a shared feeling about them. Slow, dusty roads, overgrown fields, fading signs, everyday scenes that you probably read too much into, looking for bits of Faulknerian symbolism everywhere . . . . Both men were Mississippians, and in a way the book is kind of a love song for their home state, one I still need to go to. I have all sorts of places to go to on my Mississippi list: Jackson and Oxford, the coast, and all those weird roadside attractions Jamie tells me about.
Photos by Drew
Dress: Many Belles Down Dress, c/o Lulus.com
Sunglasses: Karen Walker
Shoes: Madewell
Bag: thrift store
We took these photos on Sunday, and I wish I could tell interesting stories about the things we did that day, but I really can’t. I was sick with allergies the whole weekend, and we still did normal weekend things, but on Sunday it got so bad that the only place I made it to was the farmers’ market and to a little park on the way to take these pictures. Then I went home and back to bed.
Here are some other things I did this week (I won’t pretend that they’re interesting): made muffins (from this recipe, only I substituted oat flour and they were really good!), made homemade Larabars from dates and almonds and dried apples, went to thrift stores, read a ton last night from Ralph McGill’s The South & The Southerner (it’s a good social history/memoir, and my favorite chapter so far has been the one about Fanny Kemble on Butler Island), watched HGTV for laughs (House Hunters is unintentionally hilarious), packed up orders with Jamie, made pizza with Drew, made a gin and blackberry drink that ended up tasting only like gin, ate blackberries, wasted time online and on Instagram, missed Bob Dylan’s birthday by a day. Nothing very interesting, and we have plans this weekend and I’m itching to get out of town.
When Megan Nielsen told me that her spring/summer collection was going to be desert-inspired I knew I was going to love it. Well, I love all her collections. I have one of her dresses from last spring and wore it so much last summer and will probably wear it a ton this summer too. I have this theory that the reason why Megan is so good at designing perfect sun dresses is because she’s Australian. Well, she lives in the US now, but her designs have a southern hemisphere feeling about them . . . simple and pretty and wearable.
Her new collection is called Sunburnt Country, and is my favorite of her collections yet. I’m in love with the pale color scheme and the simple shapes, and if I were going to a desert soon I think I’d go wearing that chambray dress. And doesn’t Tieka of Selective Potential look adorable in these lookbook shots? You can see the rest of them (and visit the store!) right here . . .
