On The Road

soruce
For the next few days I'll be cramped up in a U-Haul eating junk food, listening to Podcasts, singing along to The Gaslight Anthem songs with Nick as we move to Washington DC. I've lived in Iowa my whole life, so this is really exciting and really scary! I'll make sure to take so photos on the road, but in the meantime I've scheduled a few posts for the next few days. Hopefully we'll find an apartment quickly and I'll be back to normal blogging soon!

Take the good with the bad.

It's been a really intense week with a lot of highs and lows for me. Thursday was the last day of my internship so I'm super excited because now I'm done with my bachelors forever!! It's so exciting but scary to think about what's next. We are in the middle of packing up our apartment to move out on Sunday. We are just hitting the road to DC without much of a plan. I'm not the most spontaneous person and I like things planned out so I'm just trying to remain calm.

Things that are making me happy this week: Pretty purple flowers from my internship advisors for my last day. The excitement of moving. Winning a Ruche giveaway from Jen Loves Kev! Putting my designs out on the rack at Vitae! My pretty new hair color and bangs from Hannah at Trixies. We turned my standard ombre look and tried it with a bright red and more subtle ends. I'm in love with it! It feels great to have my bangs back. Growing them out was a mistake!

Things making me sad this week: The power going out for 12 hours today at my apartment and all our food spoiling. Stress from packing,moving, cleaning. Realizing that I need to find a job pretty quickly.


As you can see the good outweighs the bad! I want to be transparent on my blog and have it be therapeutic for me. I don't want to tell all my dirty laundry, but I don't want to be fake! Even though my blog is called "Reasons to Celebrate" and is geared towards the good happenings in my life, I can't just ignore the rest.
How do you relieve stress?


top- heitage
jeggins- American Eagle
wedges- urbanog
belt- F21 from a skirt

Photoshoot: Fun Dresses

Yellow & White Stripes
Cute dress with stripes and flutter sleeves.
*


Navy Dress with Collar
Polka Dot navy & white knit dress with peter pan collar.


Heart Cut-Out Dress
White dress with blue polka dots and blue bias tape edges. Heart cut-out detail in back. Cute dress with surprise in the back!



*




Photos: Photos marked with (*) taken by Angelica Guerrero, otherwise by Mackenzie Burger
Outfits styled by Angelica Guerrero & Mackenzie Burger
Dresses by Mackenzie Burger
Models: Bethany Strand & Rose Sires


These are the final pictures from the photoshoot. I love the pictures of Rose and Beth together in the polka dot dresses, they are so beautiful! A huge thank you to Angelica, Rose, and Beth for helping me out with this shoot, I couldn't do it without them and their talent!

Photoshoot: Skirts

Saffron Skirt
This skirt is great for everyday wear and could be worn with many colors. It can be carried into the fall and winter with colorful tights and a cardigan.
*

Aqua Scalloped High Wasited Skirt
This skirt has a scalloped waistband that's so dreamy. I will be making more of these babies with a more wrinkle resistant fabric in the future.



Floral High Waisted Pencil Skirt
Fun vintage fabric with a classic floral print. This skirt looks great with a burnt orange top or even black or white.



Photos: Photos marked with (*) taken by Angelica Guerrero, otherwise by Mackenzie Burger
Outfits styled by Angelica Guerrero & Mackenzie Burger
Skirts by Mackenzie Burger
Models: Bethany Strand & Rose Sires


Skirts! These skirt's were the funnest to style since the possibilities were endless! I tried to make designs that are versatile so you can wear them often without repeating the same look. What do you think?

Photoshoot: Pretty Dresses

Pale Pink Girly Dress
Whimsical pale pink dress with baby blue bias tape on the neckline and a vintage pink and blue floral short sleeves. Looks cute with a longer slip.


Just Peachy Dress
Peach and lace. What more could you want?!



Lavender Mist Dress
Sheer lavender dress with vintage embroidered collar and open back.


*


Photos: Photos marked with (*) taken by Angelica Guerrero, otherwise by Mackenzie Burger
Outfits styled by Angelica Guerrero & Mackenzie Burger
Dresses by Mackenzie Burger
Models: Bethany Strand & Rose Sires



I'll be posting the skirts tomorrow, and some more dresses the next day so I don't over load the posts with pictures. I had so much fun making all these dresses and photographing them my friends. I hope you like them too. Which pretty dress is your favorite?
xo

Stripes or Dots?

I'm in love with this dress I thrifted the other day. It reminds me of a lot of newer dresses I've seen this summer with the coral hue and midi lenght. Well actually, it's a few inches longer, but I tucked some of it under the belt so it would hit just below my knee. I wore it on Sunday for the photo shoot we did for the collection I made for my internship. Obviously these shoes arn't practical for running around in the grass and by the river so I changed into flats. I'm so excited to post the pictures later this week. I'm going through them and editing currently, but there are so many good one's it's hard to narrow them down. I suppose that's a good problem to have though!


The other day at my internship my advisor and I decided that you have to be either "team stripes" or "team polka dots". You can like both, but everyone has a preference. My preference is obviously polka dots. I'm finding myself gravitating towards them while shopping for clothes and for fabric. It's just a fun print that's very flattering. Are you Team Stripes or Team Polka Dots?


Dress- Thrifted
Glasses- Zenni Optical
Bag- Vintage from Mohair Pear
Shoes- Yonkers

Interview on Koi Story

Check out the interview I did with Meanz from Koi Story last week here!!

Thanks again Meanz for featuring me!

Getting ready for the photo shoot..

This weekend I'm spending some time back home in Cedar Falls doing a photoshoot and tying up loose ends before leaving the state. I met up with my best friend Angelica and we chatted and played with her adorable dogs and guinea pigs for awhile. She's currently interning at this great boutique in Cedar Falls called Mohair Pear and she's organizing a D.I.Y. craft fair! She's really dedicated to trying to make Iowa cool, I love it! We've been BBMing about our internships but this is the first time we got to see each other all summer. She's also an aspiring designer and I'd love to share her designs with you guys when she's finished with her newest collection. We have such completely different points of view so it's fun to bounce ideas around to get a new perspective from her.

We headed over to our friend Rose's house to get ready for tomorrow photoshoot. Both Helica and Rose have excellent style so I'm lucky to have them helping me out. (I'm trying to get them both to make blogs!) Seeing the clothes on a person got me so excited! Now I've got the itch to work ever harder on making new designs. I'll be sure to post photos from the shoot on the blog but here are a few preview shots we took tonight.


Rose has the cutest house and the most amazing collection of vintage I've ever seen. We went through her boxes of fabric and she was nice enough to let me keep the pretty orange and gold fabric. Holiday collection maybe?

Treats, vintage slips and lace, and a box of Blythe clothes and Barbies.





Hope you're having a wonderful weekend!

Abandoned Warehouse (and a little D.I.Y)

Today was just one of those days. It started off on the wrong foot since I was up late last night trying to unjam my sewing machine. This morning I brought it into work and tried to mess with it some more there. I cleaned it, I oiled it, and it just won't work right. The wheel is really tight and now won't turn at all. Anyone know how to fix that? To make matters worse I accidentally got my finger stuck under the needle and it broke my nail! Ouch! Thankfully my boss let me borrow hers for the day so I could get some stuff done. After work I decided that it was margarita night. So we turned my day around and had jumbo lime margaritas on the deck of this cute Mexican restaurant with plenty of chips and salsa!



We stopped to take these photos afterward. We knew of a little gravel road just outside of downtown so we headed down there. There was a huge abandoned lot and building that turned out to be a great setting! I'm really happy with these photos. I was a little afraid of being chased away because of the large "no trespassing" signs, but we made it out alive.


Shhhhh don't tell anyone! Here's the easiest D.I.Y. in the history of ever. Seriously. All you need is tape, a necklace, and a chunk of feathers (of a leaf, or a flat paper flower, or anything you can think of!) I wear this flat stone necklace all the time but decided to go for a little change today so I took two pieces of scotch tape and just taped some feathers over it. Voila! A whole new look! I got these feathers from Hobby Lobby for a few dollars. Sure it's a little noticeable up close but you could always use a bigger chunk of feathers, and honeslty no one looks at your necklace this close. What do you think?


Dress & Belt- F21
Boots-Kohls
Necklace- D.I.Y. (F21 & Hobby Lobby)