The deets: Eliza J dress (sold out but this one and this one are similar, more sizes here); Steve Madden heels & bag; Karen Walker sunnies; Knox Thomas Designs custom necklace; Kate Spade earrings.

This is the cute little bell sleeved dress I wore to my VA shower. I loved how retro but fancy it felt. As someone who was lucky enough to have three showers I have amassed a very nice white dress collection. Here's to hoping it's appropriate to wear white to baby showers so I can one day break them all out again!

How lucky am I that I got to have another adorable shower? While I grew up in NJ and my entire extended family lives there, I now call VA my home and most of my gal pals (and fiance's family) now live here so I felt too bad to make that many people travel either up or down. The solution was to have two smaller ones in each state and I honestly can't even take how beautiful and thoughtful and how much love and care was put into each detail. I have to share these photos because you will just die at how pretty this "tea-party" themed bridal shower came together. From the little tea sandwiches, the custom labeled glass milk jars for the cocktails, mini sweets, and all the pretty flowers! They even gave out little "tub tea" favors that are basically potpourri for your bath. My heart can not even take how special they made me feel.

I know I've only been posting wedding stuff but I'm about a month out form my big day so just love me through it please! You can see all my wedding related posts here.

My sister (and maid of honor), along with my sweet family, threw me the cutest wedding shower last weekend and I just have to share some pics from it because they really blew me away. There were hand painted personalized wine glasses for each guest filled with girly beauty/cupcake themed goodies, hand painted wine bottle vases with my wedding date, a fully stocked and gorgeous mimosa bar, sweet treats to your heart's desire, beautiful pink floral arrangements, and little fabulous details  and signage everywhere! I actually can't think of a more "me" theme than sweet treats and drinks, my two favorite joys in life! How lucky am I?! I appreciate them so much and hope they know how loved and special I felt.

The deets: J.Crew dress; GAP hat; Ray-Ban sunnies; Sam Edelman heels; Kate Spade bag.

I have pretty terrible hair, naturally. I am not trying to gain sympathy here, but I have to use heat on it every-darn-day to get it to pick a side (straight or curly). Good products are KEY to doing this to your hair without going bald in the process. My new favorite hot tool is the GHD Marine Allure Professional 1" Styler. Full disclosure, I was gifted the product and extremely skeptical as I have a pretty stacked hair arsenal already, but I truly like it way more than the one I had been using because it just glides over my strands smoother and seems to be less damaging. It also is a less stiff movement about it which makes doing straightener curls easier. 

1. Straight with a little volume. Sometimes you just want something easy that will combat the heat and not go super flat in 10 minutes. To get this look separate your hair in to sections, then run your hot GHD over those sections until nice and glossy and straight. Then take the hair at your crown, spritz with hairspray, then using a fine tooth comb, tease it (some people call this "back-combing"). I also use an anti-humidity spray for this straight look. To keep things even simpler, I just swiped on some mascara to complete!

2. Curls. Use your GHD as a curler. I love wild curls in the summer, especially on vacation because you feel dressed up, but they are really easy to maintain when it's humid. I just let them do their thing and get crazier as the day goes on, scrunching and tossing them this way and that. Section off your hair as you would to straighten, but instead of running the pieces between the iron, wrap it around once so that it makes a loop and pull it down. When you are done use a hair spray to set. Since this is a little fancier, I put on mascara, primer, bronzer, concealer and a little highlighter to pretty myself up.

3. Polished waves. For a fancy night out to dinner or just for any date really, I like something a little more polished but still fun. Follow all of the above steps for curling your hair but tease the crown (like in the first look) and brush out the curls so they fall out a bit, then hit it with the hairspray to set.

See my unmakeuped, au-natural hair below and what this amazing little device can do to transform it!