lack of posts

I know I haven't been around much. This past weekend was Labor day and our last weekend down the shore (sad face). It was an amazing awesome super fun relitavly drama and fight free last weekend. I took off work last Friday and headed down Thursday night. On Friday afternoon, the weather was kind of crappy so me and my friend checked out the Atlantic City outlets. They were all kinda blah except for the BCBG. AHH MAZING. The whole first room was filled with pretty dresses at highly discounted prices. The other room was all lovely separates and more business-y outfits. I got a strapless flowy dress, a polka dot tank top (which now I regret because it looks really weird on..), a brown silk shirt (I have it in teal from last year at full price and I wore it constantly last winter, so I had to get it in another color) and this really pretty navy blue short sleeved dress for going out in the winter.

The rest of the weekend was filled with eating homemade healthy Mexican food, dancing like idiots, taking boat rides, laying on the beach and drinking all sorts of delicious and not so delicious drinks (note: a Twisted Tea with a shot of flavored vodka may taste amazing, but don't drink more then 2 (or 1 to be safe)). We spent all day Monday cleaning the house, which ended up looking pretty great. Hopefully we'll get some of that security deposit back... so we can put it towards a pretty house on the bay next summer.

I was completly ready for summer to be over, mainly because I am excited to get back into a normal exercising schedule and honestly, drinking both weeknd nights is kind of exhausting, not to mention I always felt sick and unhealthy. Wow that was a long sentence. Don't get me wrong, it was a wonderful summer and I'm already signed up for next year, but I think it came to an end at a good time for me. Anyways, while I am ready for fall I will definitely miss the shore house and the people in it and going out and dancing a lot. But it will be nice to not have to live out of my car and to maybe get to the gym a few more nights a week that I have been.

This week I've just been busy with work and catching up on my sleeping. My car is a mess, it is filled with all my summer clothes plus all the other random stuff I had down the shore. My room is also a mess from the lovely Wardrobe challenge (still going on by the way, what are we on? Day 4? Updates to come). I need to get my life in order, so the postings will probably be minimal, unless I find some great stuff to share.

Oh yeah and I'm running a half marathon in ooohhhh 2 week and a half weeks. Crap.

Peace and getting back on track,

TheFashionHead

ibproufin and tilt

I didn't post yesterday but that's because I had a great day at work and wrote code all day. And most of it even works. Which is pretty neat. Then right after work, I met my mom and we drove down to the Philadelphia Art Museum to do the loop. I ran about 6 miles of the 9ish mile loop, walked the rest. I came home, ate dinner, and literally passed out. Surprisingly, my legs do not hurt as much as I thought they would. But my left hip is in some serious pain, causing me to walk like I have a limp.

I haven't decided if I'm going to take a vacation day tomorrow... I was contemplating saving up my vacation days and staying in Europe the week after Luxembourg, but I don't have anyone to travel with and I'm pretty afraid to do it alone. But I really don't want to pass up a free plane ride to Europe and back (and in first class too, swanky). So I don't know if I should still try to save up my vacation days. AH I hate making decisions...

Anyway, onto more positive thinking: Things I Love Thursday.

Running and the energy it gives you

My parents for everything they do for me

(and no I did not just put this in there because you're reading Mom)

My sister getting into a new school and becoming more independent

Smoothies of any flavor (well, almost any flavor)

Ladder logic and actually understanding what I'm doing at work for a change

A possible day off tomorrow?

And updates on the Wardrobe Taming... I have been trying to wear things from the pile but it's kind of hard considering I can only wear jeans and tshirts or casual shirts to work everyday. Plus I never do anything fun during the week at night to get dressed for. I got rid of all my basic tanks (that I've had since high school) and went to Old Navy to pick up replacements. I've just been going through the pile every night and putting stuff I know I definitely do not want or that does not/will never fit into a trash bag to donate. I'm just trying to work the pile down since it's so huge and taking over my room (oh, when I did my drawers, the entire bottom two drawers ended up in the pile, ops).

So I suppose I can move onto Day Three. While you continue to try to wear items in the pile everyday, now you try to assess whether or not they are worth keeping. Do they make you feel lovely? Or uncomfortable? Could you wear them in different combinations? If any of your 'pile outfits' are outfits you would never ever wear again, and you can't imagine wearing them any other way, then get rid of them. Also, you're supposed to start to think about what items you need that would help you wear the item you already own (like you need a plain grey tank to wear under a certain blouse you have, or long black pants to wear with that patterned sweater you own). Make a list of these items and go out and BUY them! (Sounds fun).

So I guess tonight, if I'm not at the shore, I'll be making a list of items I need to make my current wardrobe more more fantastic, fabulous, versatile, and wearable.

Peace and long weekends,

TheFashionHead

wardrobe day 2

Wardrobe Taming Day 2 can be found here. In this phase you have to really look at your discarded pile of clothes. Aside from the pile that needs to be altered or repaired, try to figure out why you're not wearing the items in the pile. Gala suggests trying to wear one item from the pile every day for the rest of the challenge. If you come to find that you really don't like it, or it doesn't fit right, get rid of it. But you have to at least try to incorporate some of these items of clothing back into your wardrobe. You did buy whatever is in that pile, after all.

I'm still kinda in Day 1 since I haven't tackled my drawers yet. I was going to start Day 2 by wearing something from the pile to work, but I woke up 30 minutes later then usual so there was no time for picking out an outfit. Maybe tomorrow.

wardrobe taming a la gala

Well, today is just beautiful. The weather is lovely. It's such a shame that I don't have any windows in my office. Actually, the bigger shame is that I'm actually in my office at 3:30 on a Friday. My family is already down the shore, but I didn't take today off because I only have 4 vacation days left for the whole year... I know, I know feel sorry for me, right?

It seems as if the inspiration for quite a few of my recent posts has come from Miss Gala. Read her blog, if you're not doing so already. Anyway, I was reading through her archives awhile ago and I came across the 8 day 'Wardrobe Taming' series. At first when I read it, I thought it seemed like a lot of work to put into organizing your clothes. But with fall coming up, it seems like the perfect time to thoroughly go through my wardrobe. By figuring out what I already have, what I need and don't need, I think I will be more efficient in my fall shopping sprees.

Read her day one entry here. She instructs you to divide your entire wardrobe into two piles: 'Things I Wear' and 'Things I Don't Wear'. That should be pretty simple. I know I'm going to have a ton of stuff in the 'Things I Don't Wear' pile. I mean, I have a ton of clothes, but I feel like I usually wear the same things over and over. You're allowed to put the 'Things You Wear' back into your closet. Then you have to try to figure out why you don't wear the things in the other pile. Gala suggests making more piles, like 'Things that need to be hemmed/taken in/let out', 'Things I have no idea what to wear them with', or 'Things I don't have the confidence to wear'.

That's it for Day One. I'm hitting up the shore tonight (after some laundry and maybe a run) so I won't get to Day One until probably Sunday night, but I'll try to take pics along the way. I'm excited for a nice organized simplified wardrobe, with plenty of room for new fall clothes. (Oh, and I guess I might have to do this with shoes too. I wear approx 4% of my shoe collection....) So if your wardrobe needs an overhaul, do the 8 day challenge with me and let me know how it goes!

Hope everyone has a peaceful weekend!

Peace and sunny days,

TheFashionHead

in case anyone cares...

I'm still sick. Sad face. Stuffy, red nose. Thoughts are foggy. Want to be in bed. All the time.

But! I found out I'm going to Luxembourg for a week for work!!! It's not until November, but I have already started to mentally pack and make a list of adorable fall business casual/just plain casual/fancy clothes I need. And, I feel like a fashion blogger zombie because after I saw those studded booties on Karla and Rumi, I had to check out the shoe selection at Victoria's Secret (who knew?). I was tempted to just order the same ones, but I found other ones that were more my style. I ordered 2 pairs of boots. I just took Nyquil so I obviously can't do anything crazy like post their pictures now, but maybe tomorrow.

Peace and healthy vibes,

TheFashionHead

sick day

I think all these crazy shore weekends are starting to catch up with me. I woke up Saturday feeling pretty crappy. Stuffy nose, sore throat. I stayed down the shore Sunday night with the family to go to happy hour. Yesterday I was sneezing and coughing all day. So today, I took a sick day. I'm at home eating food and watching awesome tv shows like Full House. This whole 'having a job' thing is highly overrated.

But anyways, the point is no fun fashionable updates today because it's hard to type when you're laying on the couch and it's hard to think of things to write when you're taking cold meds. Although I am getting pretty inspired by the Full House sisters outfits... Maybe it's just the cold medicine thought...

Peace and tissues,

TheFashionHead

ug

Went to Melting Pot tonight with my BFF's. It was amazing. That place is nuts. I was dressed adorably and I made my sister take some pics of me when I got home. Too tired/full to post them or write anything significant, but I just wanted to give you something to look forward to. You're welcome.

Peace and Oreo covered marshmallows dipped in marshmallow chocolate,

TheFashionHead

shake shake

Quick updates:

The nail polish on 2 of my fingers is already majorly chipped. So it lasted about 4 days. Grr.

This weekend was super fun and seemed like it lasted forever. The weather was lovely until Sunday, when it poured like CRAZY all afternoon/evening. The shore got so flooded there were people swimming and canoeing in the streets, for reals. We all stayed down an extra night and went to Sunday happy hour, which is way more crazy and crowded then you would expect a Sunday happy hour to be.

I had two, yes TWO, birthday cakes. So much birthday love. :)

I re-wore old dresses but I still managed to look adorable - I guess you don't really need a new dress every weekend...

I took a half day at work today and came in at noon. It was lovely, but it means I have to actually get some work done now....

Hence the quick post. More tonight...

Peace and dancing in the rain,

TheFashionHead

fffffriday

I'm actually wearing a semi cute outfit to work today. Friday's always get me a little excited so I tend to spend a little more time in the morning getting ready (think 7 minutes instead of 4). I'm wearing jeans, black ballet flats, black tank, white button down with ruffles, that pretty red belt on top of ruffly shirt, black sweater (cause my office is unnecessarily cold). I was thinking of putting the belt over the sweater but I didn't have time, plus I wanted to be able to rip the sweater off in case of a freak office heatwave.

Last night my mom treated me to a birthday mani/pedi. I haven't had a manicure in about 4 years because I they chip so easily but I couldn't resist a free one. Hopefully it will last a little longer this time.

I got into work a little after 7 this morning, which shocked all the old engineer men in my office because I usually don't roll in until close to 9. But I wanted to be able to leave for the beach today at 3 guilt free. I am very excited about the shore this weekend. Tonight we are going to celebrate my birthday, which means it will probably be like a regular night out but with people randomly yelling 'Happy Birthday!'. And maybe there will be a birthday crown involved. Tomorrow is the high school reunion for most of the people in my shore house, which means they will all be out of the house for happy hour I'll have a nice relaxing afternoon. Our plan is to sun ourselves all morning and afternoon, while drinking the perfect amount of wine to make us giddy and then sleepy. Then we're going to take a really bitching nap until the drunk kids return from the reunion.

I am trying to think of something with pictures to post in order to keep your attention. Can't think of anything at the moment. Maybe it will be a two-post kinda day...

Peace and fashionable Fridays,

TheFashionHead

guess what today is?

I'll give you a hint...

1. birthday cake candles, 2. Birthday Cake and 28 Candles,

3. birthday cake 001, 4. Birthday Cake - Candles

More birthday updates later today - I just wanted to give everyone enough time to buy me a present before the day is over..

Peace and birthday fun,

TheFashionHead

an aggressive savings plan

It has been over a year since I started working at my full time high paying electrical engineering job. While my closets are full and happy, my savings account is not. I have paid off my student loans and put some into my savings account, but the majority has gone to clothes, the shore house, booze and generous presents for my family and friends (I'm such a giver). My 401k is maxed out, so I have that going for me. I was going through the numbers and it is kind of ridiculous how much money I could have easily saved at this point but didn't.
I still live at home, which I really don't mind at all cause my parents are pretty awesome and its a great savings opportunity that I haven't taken full advantage of yet. However, I would like to eventually move out and ideally I would like to buy a place instead of rent one. Renting annoys me and often the rent price is pretty similar to a morgage price and after renting, you end up with nothing. So my plan is to live at home, probably until next year around this time, and save up a ton of money so I can buy myself an adorable little place. I know it's going to be hard to change my shopping mindset (from buying pretty much whatever I want to actually thinking about what I'm buying and trying to not spend as much). The fact that I have built up a pretty fantastic wardrobe over the past year will hopefully make it a little easier. I definitely have enough pretty dresses to last the rest of the summer. And this is going to be the first winter where I am actually looking forward to wearing all my winter clothes (sweater and jeans and boots and scarfs and LAYERS yay!) from last year. I hope it won't be as hard as I think it's going to be. I don't want to be on a 'budget' really, like I don't want to allocate a certain amount of money each month for certain things, but I am just going to focus on putting more cash into my savings. I'm working on changing my direct deposit to put a certain amount of each paycheck directly into my savings. Out of site, out of mind. Can't buy whatever you want when all of your cash is in your savings account rather then your checking, right?

So what this means really is I'll probably have less 'look what I bought' posts and more creative reworking of old clothes, thrift store visits and DIY posts. Oh, and maybe even more furniture and home accessories posts.

Peace and aggressive savings plans,

TheFashionHead

technical difficulties

In an attempt to further improve this already amazing awesome blog, last night I bought the domain www.thefashionhead.com. I am hoping to learn more about domains and hosts and all that kind of stuff. As of this moment, I still have not figured out how to get my .blogspot blog to appear under my fantastic new domain name, so I'm still using the old name. This whole Internet deal is confusing, no? If anyone has any helpful hints on using this new domain name, please let me know!

This weekend was awesome and fun, as usual. I skipped out of work a little early and picked up Courtney in Philly. We hit some traffic on the way down but it wasn't too bad. We arrived around 6, packed a cooler, and headed to the beach where some of the girls already were hanging out. It's lovely and peaceful being on the beach in the evening. We had it completely to ourselves. I cooked up the chicken nugs for dinner and they were a big giant hit. I wore my new black F21 dress with my new red belt and it looked better then I thought it would, so that was a pleasant surprise. After a significant pregame, we danced the night away at the bar and hit up Wawa on the way home where I purchased a wrap and baked chips (a very healthy end of the night meal, if I may say so myself). Saturday was BEAUTIFUL. We literally spent the entire day on the beach with the exception of eating meals and refilling the cooler. I took a shower in our outside shower and it was lovely and refreshing. Showering indoors is highly overrated. On Saturday night I wore my new gold F21 dress, which also looked better then I remembered (maybe the Forever21 dressing room is to blame...). Another night filled with drinking and dancing but unfortunately not healthy meals (mmm... pizza...). We got some beach time in on Sunday before we had to leave. I finished the book I was reading, Rant by Chuck Palahniuk. Next weekend I'm going to start another Chuck P. book, Choke. AND I did not feel sick or hungover at all. All in all, a pretty fantastic weekend!

Tonight's plans include going to the gym and making my sister take some pictures of me in reenacted weekend outfits.

Peace and my expanding blog empire,

TheFashionHead

i'm a hypocrite.

Allow me to explain.

I got down to the beach Thursday night. The traffic wasn't bad but that's only because I have such good car karma (I usually always let people in, I never speed down lanes when I know they are going to end soon, I'm a very nice driver and therefore I don't get caught up in as much traffic as regular drivers because of karma. Duh). There were a few people down at the house. We decided to stay in and drink on the porch, which was a lovely idea since I didn't really feel like going out anyways. We were all just hanging out waiting for everyone to get down. This one kid on our house showed up with... American Flag bandannas for everyone. I immediately grabbed one, I was pretty excited. Now, I just re-read my last post, where I alluded that wearing an actual American Flag would somehow be classless. So I'm not sure why I was so excited for this bandanna. Anyways, the guys were discussing the various ways to wear it (like a full covering bandanna or folded over a la Bruce Springsteen). The girls decided to wear theirs tied around their arms or ankles. I was pretty sure I wanted to wear mine on my head like the guys, but I have no why...

We woke up on Friday feeling refreshed and ready to go. I went for a 5 mile run (well, I ran 2.5 miles then I stopped at my uncles house for water and breakfast, then I ran 2.5 miles back to my house). We got the party started around 3 (well, some people started around noon...). I decided to wear my new Free People dress. I wasn't sure if it would be a good nighttime dress but I think it was. The only problem was it's a tad see-through and I did not bring the proper underwear so I think people probably saw my blue flowered underwear under the dress but I figured it was ok since the dress itself had blue flowers on it (don't you just love drunk reasoning?). After drinking pretty heavily for a few hours, we headed out to happy hour around 6. I decided to wear the bandanna as a bandanna... Maybe not the most classy decision but at the moment I thought I looked ABSOLUTELY ADORABLE (don't you love drunk wardrobe choices?) So I threw on the bandanna along with my white aviators and headed out to the bar. It was pretty hilarious, a lot of pictures were taken but none by me so I have to wait until the photographers decide to put them up before I can share. We lasted at the bar until about 9 at which point most people came home to eat and drink for free (geez, those bar drinks are way overpriced). Mostly everyone passed out and did not make it back out. For some reason, I made it back out (and I also managed to put the bandanna on again... ), which was probably not the best idea. I was so sick the entire day Saturday. All I ate was Tums until about 7pm. It was awful. I did not make it back out Saturday night. I really need to work on better pacing. Goal for this weekend: go out both nights.

Next weekend we might have a little golf pros/tennis hos party so I'm on the lookout for a cute tennis or golf outfit that is not only adorable and fashionable, but also ho-ish. Gotta fit in, ya know.

Peace and tum diets,

TheFashionHead

oh boy

So you may be wondering where I've been. Here we go: drank too much on Friday, had to wake up and drive home from the shore on the verge of vomiting, got home and ate a piece of cold pizza, tried to take a quick nap, couldn't, left for the Jimmy Buffett concert, threw up the pizza (sorry), drank a lot of water, hung out with drunk parrotheads, forgot the camera (sorry again), danced to Jimmy Buffett (he's awesome), slept in the car ride back, woke up and went into work from noon - 6 (on a Sunday! Boo!), came home and ate dinner, didn't vom (!), went to bed, worked on Monday from 7:30AM to 5:30PM, came home and took a quick nap, worked again from 8:30PM to freaking 3 in the morning, went to bed, woke up, gave myself the day off. So here I am, watching What Not To Wear and blogging at 1 on a Tuesday. It's kinda strange having a day off during the week. You know what else is also strange, working 16 hours in one day. Crazy steel mill.

In fashion related news, I got my Bloom order in the mail yesterday. As you can imagine, I didn't have time or energy to open the box and try on my new dress or cuddle with my new purse yesterday. It was kind of an (super expensive) impulse buy so I have to take a look at them again to make sure they are worth it. 

Other then all that, I've been really just spending time thinking of High Fashion Haiku's to enter DaddyLikey's contest. 

I was going to blog some crazy fashion-y things today but I think I might just watch WorkOut and lay on the couch instead. My tiny little brain is tired from spending so much time working on computers yesterday. I need a break.

Peace and working doubles,

TheFashionHead