Thursday, August 26, 2010

Bluefly Delivery

So today the Wyatt dress I ordered from Bluefly came and I LOVE it!

I was immediately inspired to create the following Polyvore set involving some of my favorite fashion inspirations. Enjoy!

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

It's Like They KNOW!

Recently I decided that I would not buy any more summer clothes this season. It's getting to be that transitional time of year and, with the weather being so dreary here in NY, I know I can make do with what I've got until Fall (okay, let's be honest, even if we have an Indian Summer I'll be more than "fine.")

Sales are my weakness, obviously, but since the sale racks are filled with summer clothes at this time of year I figure it will be easier to curb my enthusiasm for spending if I set this little rule in place for myself.

And then I got this in my e-mail:


Oh NMLC, you know me too well (and the rest of your sale-searching population I'd suspect). You know I'm sick of searching through picked-over sale racks, you know that if I haven't bought that Haute Hippie top with the missing built-in necklace yet that I'm not going to - even if you do mark it down to 80% off!

So you found a way to suck me back in to shop for those chunky knits and fabulous wedge boots weeks, even months, before I'm able to actually wear them and foil my efforts to take a break from shopping.

You are a worthy adversary NMLC, touche.

Monday, August 23, 2010

Bag Binge

The past few weeks have been crazy busy with weddings and weekends away so tonight, when I finally got the chance to unpack and organize my room, I realized for the first time that I've been on a bit of a bag binge.

In the last month I've purchase 5 handbags. 5!

Granted not one of them was full priced and 2 of them were exceptionally cheap, but that's still a lot of bags in a very short period of time, even for me.

The Rebecca Minkoff is already mentioned below and that's one of the 5, so here are the rest, each with their various purposes and price points:

Pietro Alessandro 2081 Tote in metallic champagne.
Purchased from: ideeli.com
Original Retail Price: $112.00
Price I Paid: $69.00
Reasoning: I don't have a gold going out bag. Okay, so that's not entirely true. I have a metallic gold-ish bag, but it's from Old Navy, which a bunch of guy friends dubbed my "Members Only" purse because of the fabric. I was due for an upgrade. Plus, this one can be used as either a clutch or a cross body tote. It's a 2-in-1!


Nordstrom Ruched Silk Wristlet in champagne.
Purchased from: Nordstrom.com
Original Retail Price: $48.00
Price I Paid: $22.90
Reasoning: I needed a bag to go with a bridesmaid's dress. This fit the bill.


Barney's Black and White
Purchased from: Barney's Outlet at Tanger Riverhead
Original Retail Price: $120.00
Price I Paid: $19.50
Reasoning: It was so cheap and I have a weakness for bags that I know to be somewhat cheap/cheesy looking (hence the "Members Only" purse mentioned above).


Be&D "Twiggy" Large Tote in green
Purchased from: Saks off 5th
Original Retail Price: $1,080.00
Price I Paid: $125.99
Reasoning: While the markdown is reason enough, this bag is just amazing. I had my "Girl in the Green Scarf" moment, a la Rebecca Bloomwood in Confessions of a Shopaholic, I could see myself walking into an interview carrying that bag and the people in HR would just know that they had to hire me.


So now I'm on a bag shopping freeze. I think I actually have every type of bag I could possibly need at this point... I think... haha

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

But the End is the Best Part!

For the past few weeks I've been using my upcoming deadline as an excuse to not reach one of my "goals:" finishing The Devil in the White City.

Having turned the aforementioned piece into my editor on Monday, I no longer have an excuse not to get on that. Plus I decided that I must finish this book before I start any new ones.

The 2 books on my "Must Read" list are added incentive to get through the end of this one. Those books are:
Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart - A futuristic work and social commentary that's totally different than my normal selections and yet has me beyond intrigued.
God Save the Fan by Will Leitch - A non-fiction book discussing the ways in which "the man" has ruined sports for the average viewer. A few years ago I attended a Mediabistro panel discussion that Will was on and I developed a huge writer's crush on him. He's very clever and he talks/writes about sports in a way that I actually find appealing, I think it's the pop-culture spin. He's also the creator of Deadspin. Google it.

So now I'm sitting at work on this cloudy day and the phones aren't ringing, so I'm reading the end of The Devil in the White City. I'm about a chapter or so back into and I'm pleased to report that the end seems to be better than I remember it, but that might be because the author is finally tying everything up. Either way, the end is the best part.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Today I Miss My Friend



It's overcast and breezy outside and as I stood in the parking lot at work I thought; it's a perfect day to be on Fire Island.

My mind went back to so many summers when, as great as the sunny days were on the beach, my favorite days were always ones like this. Dressed in a sweatshirt and shorts and no shoes, our feet calloused to the point where no splinters from the boardwalk could penetrate, my friend and I would go down and enjoy having the deserted beach to ourselves.

My first instinct was to text or message her on facebook, knowing that she would agree, my second was that she is no longer with us to do so, and then I thought of this song.

But I can still feel the sand between my toes...

MOH - OMG!!!

I was recently awarded the illustrious role of Maid of Honor in my cousin's wedding.

In addition to the fact that my cousin is one of my favorite people in the world, as a wedding enthusiast and a person who loves planning in general, it is not a role that I take lightly. I look forward to any which way I am able to aid in the planning process.

While my natural proclivity is towards the bachelorette (party) arts, I look forward to honing the rest of my bridal skill set if need be; Dresses, bridals showers, flowers, even seating arrangements, I'm ready, willing, and able to assist.

To put it a bit more informally: I'm going to be the best MOH there ever was ;)

Friday, August 6, 2010

Mad About "Mab"


Do you remember when you were little and you got a new pair of shoes and you loved that so much that you just had to wear them out of the store? That's how I feel about the Rebecca Minkoff bag I bought last night at Saks Off 5th.

I literally brought it downstairs with me when I got home and just had it there while I watched TV and then I put it on when I carried everything upstairs.

It's the "Mab" bag with handles and a strap and it's black fabric with black leather accents. The lining is a black and white stripe, which I was excited about because I had also wanted a black and white striped bag, but that's so limiting and this is much more practical. This way I still get the striped fabric in there somehow.

Originally priced at $375, marked down to $259 with an additional 30% off bringing it to $181 and then I had a 20% off Tanger Outlets coupon making the final price $145!

While I don't have any real plans for the weekend, I will somehow manager for the bag to make it's debut. Like in "The Power of Female Sex" episode of S&TC when Carrie gets the Dolce & Gabbana feather boa shoes and just has to wear them out. (Because as my middle sister will tell you, I can relate everything in life back to Sex & The City)

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Pro-active... To a Fault?

We have 2 computers in my office; the one in the inner office, which has Quickbooks installed on it that we don't download anything onto for fear that we'll get a virus and lose everything, and the one in the outer office that we use for the Internet, Microsoft office, and other general purposes.

Since the outer office computer is like an electronic junk drawer, it's been running slower than normal lately. In an effort to remedy this, I though I'd remove some of the superfluous files and programs from the C: drive.

As I highlighted and deleted old pictures and Word documents, accidental downloads and unnecessary shortcuts to programs whose icons were already on the desktop, I felt good. With each deletion it felt as though the computer was responding that much more quickly.

Finally I hit up the Add/Remove section and got rid of a few music players and other such programs we "never" use, according to the Add/Remove task manager, and I felt like a true techie. I restarted the computer with the confidence that once it had rebooted it would fly through the Internet with the greatest of ease... and then I tried to open Firefox.

"Internet connection not detected."

Surely this was incorrect. After several attempts at quick fixes (including an additional reboot, hey, you never know), I admitted that I needed help and called tech support.

Apparently I had uninstalled a program called "D-Link" which supported my wireless router. Awesome. Over the next half hour I located the antennae and determined that the Internet card was internal, removed the side panel to find a solid centimeter or dust, cleaned the machine, had several sneezing fits, determined the type of card I had an downloaded the proper driver on my netbook (thankfully I didn't take out the Internet for the whole office, just the main pass-the-time-machine).

Unfortunately I don't have a CD burner on my netbook, nor do I have any burnable CD's at work, so I'll have to bring in a flash drive to transfer the driver from my netbook to the computer tomorrow. Thankfully I had said netbook and so I'm not totally disconnected for the rest of the day (heaven forbid I read my New York Magazines which are quickly piling up).

So the lesson learned?

When trying to free up space by removing programs from your computer, don't uninstall something just because a program says that it is used "rarely" and hasn't been run since 2006 because you may need that.

Perhaps I'll stick to clearing the browsing history and cookies on my Internet browser from now on when I'm feeling the need to cleanse.

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

GOALS Update

-Deadline passed for the book and I still haven't cracked it.
-No savings update.
-Applied to 1 job last week, 1 job this week, looking to get back on the every day bandwagon.

Sure I could chalk all of this up to my busy schedule and the fact that I haven't been home for a weekend in a month, but yesterday I was reading this article about James Franco and how he takes 3x the regular graduate course load in addition to his regular work schedule and additional projects and I just feel like I've been lacking motivation. So, no, I will not use my busy schedule as a crutch, I will just be honest that I've been slacking and hope that I can get myself back on track.

Also, I have a deadline looming in the next 2 weeks, let's see how this effects things.