My studio’s Apartment Therapy debut!

Apartment Therapy is one of my go-to sources for inspiration and creative solutions for my apartment – it’s the reason I developed a taste for taxidermy (calfskin rug, sheepskin, antlers) and a need to hunt down a stainless steel kitchen island. My apartment is featured on their Web site – you can check it out here.

It was published at the perfect time, a commemoration of my bachelorette pad. I am moving out at the end of the month. As I write this, I am sitting among piles of my belongings that need to be packed but instead here I am sitting with a vodka tonic thinking about how I could live here forever with every single one of my shoes. But there would be no room for Wes, his size 15 feet, and his enormous TV.

All romance aside, I think half the battle of getting married and staying that way for life is overcoming the logistical dilemmas that come with combining two independent people into one home.  For example, Wes casually mentioned that he wanted to bring his La-Z-Boy recliner and I lost sleep for three days. Or, I emphatically denounced carpeting just after Wes hit ‘send’ on an email to me with a link to his favorite place with most of the square footage covered in brand new Berber. We finally compromised on a small 2 BR bungalow with beautiful hardwood floors in a fun neighborhood where we can walk everywhere.

Just as he welcomed my refusal to live with carpeting or matching furniture, I must also compromise about Wes’s need to have a 6′ screen in the living room and a comfy leather couch. I must also stop using my shoes as decor, compulsively buying and killing orchids, and rearranging furniture when I feel restless. More to come on that. RIP Apartment 202. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push([‘_setAccount’, ‘UA-46889504-1’]); _gaq.push([‘_setDomainName’, ‘thestyleheist.blogspot.com’]); _gaq.push([‘_trackPageview’]); (function() { var ga = document.createElement(‘script’); ga.type = ‘text/javascript’; ga.async = true; ga.src = (‘https:’ == document.location.protocol ? ‘https://ssl’ : ‘http://www’) + ‘.google-analytics.com/ga.js’; var s = document.getElementsByTagName(‘script’)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })();

How to wear florals

My mom found this dress and convinced me to try it on. It is not the first time she thought I’d look good in florals (in fact, there are many times she’s thought this and turned out to be tragically mistaken – and I have the family photos to prove it) but I was surprised at how much I loved this one! It had a classic neckline and full skirt, and was just the dress I was looking for to balance out a pair of edgy cutout heels. I love shopping with my mom because we’re so different – she finds wonderful things that I would never have picked out for myself.



I wore it to my friend Kellianne’s wedding a couple of weeks ago, an event that doubled as a reunion with my college girlfriends AND School of Dork Dancing National Championship Playoffs. I’m not sure who won.

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What to get for a wedding gift

After hemming and hawing over what to get my sister and her husband for their wedding after perusing their picked-over registry, my friend Lauren told me she got her friend a monogrammed ice bucket for her wedding because, judging by the registry, they needed one and she wasn’t about to be remembered for a collection of dishtowels and Tupperware. I immediately went online and ordered my sister and her husband a pair of monogrammed Egyptian cotton bathrobes to keep them warm (and coordinated) in the San Francisco cold.

It inspired an article that I just wrote about the guidelines (and gift ideas) for going off-registry. Some amazing D.C. homewares experts gave me some great tips! Read it here. My favorite item was this pillow, perfect for keeping the peace in a newlywed household:

Wedding registries offend me in a few ways, but mostly because I hate being told what to do and doing what’s expected of me. I don’t feel like a bundt pan or all-clad stainless steel expresses love and appreciation. Now that I am getting married, I am being forced into creating a registry. I already have a set of dishes, utensils and tumblers for a party of 12 but have served 1 for the past 5 years. Whisks scare me. I can barely lift my cast iron grill pan, much less heat it up and cook something on it. I have one pan and one spatula that I love, and every once in awhile I’ll go crazy and use a pie dish.

On behalf of my aunts, grandma, and my mom’s friends, I dragged myself out to Williams Sonoma to learn about what a decent first world kitchen should have these days, and found myself spending a good hour with a woman who wanted to “educate” me about pan sets. I learned that there are pans you can buy that will last you 100 years, but you’ll be buying Pam spray for life and other pans that you’ll have for 20 years but you won’t ever need Pam, however you should use a silicone spatula which need to be replaced biannually.

I came out registered for a taco holder, so my tacos don’t fall over; a lunch meat slicer, in case I ever kill and cure my own instead of picking it up at my local Safeway; and a strawberry corer, for which I have no rational explanation. And, just to be ironic, a stone-age-esque mortar and pestle made of granite, only to be used to make guacamole.

Then I came home, deleted them all, and added the all-clad stainless steel pan set the lady told me about.

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Brogue Wedges

 

Spotted these Rag and Bone wedges on my friend Ashley’s feet two years ago and had to have them. She wouldn’t give them to me, so eventually I bought a pair of my own and have been wearing them everywhere lately (even the office – with the most conservative Brooks Brothers sheath dress ever made).

 

These shoes are a closed-toe dream come true for a girl with ugly feet that even miracle pedicures and the cutest sandals on Earth can’t fix. On any given day, my feet are wearing a minimum of three Band-aids and have 13 scars between them, collected from mishaps with a Venus razor, ill-fitting high heels, and run-ins with my bedframe. And it’s not just accidents that make my feet so ugly, it’s genetics: my dad has used the word “earthworms” to describe them.

 

So, the open-toe, barely-there sandal season makes me uncomfortable and these shoes are the perfect solution.

 

Wearing Rag & Bone Salford brogue wedges, Fluet silk dress (had the sleeves removed by my tailor so I could wear it in the sticky North Carolina heat), and Madewell bag.

 

 

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Silk Utility Jacket

There’s something about 90 degrees and 90 percent humidity that makes average room temperatures drop from a reasonable 75 degrees to frigid. Walking into a conference room feel like stepping out of hot shower and suddenly realizing you have no towel. I can’t spend more that 10 minutes in the grocery store, I won’t walk down the refrigerated aisles, and don’t ask me to hold that carton of ice cream because my hands are already blue and shaking. 

 

I dine al fresco every chance I get, guzzle hot tea, and try to be prepared for the worst but have realized that I am being judged for carrying around in June. In Florida. So I need a new jacket that’s more summer-acceptable and I decided on the silk jacket this girl is wearing. And her whole outfit.

 

Now the question is, where do you find a jacket in summer? In Tallahassee?



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Great hair!



 

Meet Ebony Andrews, and upstate New York transplant who I stopped at first because I loved her simple silk shirtdress but have been truly inspired by her amazing hair! It makes me want to dust off my blow dryer and curling iron and give myself a ‘do with some volume and bouncy curls and abandon my year-long emulation of Jenna Lyon’s wash-n’-go style (in my case, more often don’t-wash-wake-up-late-n’-salvage-with-dry-shampoo ‘do).

Did you know you aren’t supposed to wash your hair everyday? All that shampoo dries it right up and what it really needs is some au naturale conditioning treatment, as in a few days of no washing at all. It’s my new favorite dirty habit, and I’ve been carrying dry shampoo around in my purse as a crutch to ward off moments of weakness. (I might be more convincing about this healthy break in personal hygiene if my hair looked more like Ebony’s but one step at a time.)

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