business-casual-fun

So this post is a bit later than I wished but I am no less excited. It's a bit intense keeping up with three jobs and a life, and I should probably be working right now but alas, I favor sanity. And procrastination. Anyway.

So by means of an introduction, I am in no way a fashion guru, I don't have any designer, uh, anything really, but I enjoy I guess what you would call the art of putting an outfit together and I have fun with it. I'm not really sure how I would define my style, but I am basically obsessed with lookbook and I'll be the first to admit I steal ideas from there. A lot.

The cool thing about getting a decent job is that I now have more money to buy clothesss (and save of course. I love saving) but what I thought was going to be a bummer is the business-casual wardrobe thing. I'm going through a 6-week training period right now, after which I will telecommute most of the time, so for that reason I didn't really want to buy more business-casual stuff. Thus, I've been trying to get creative with what I've got. I have enough basics to get me through Monday-Thursday (Friday is casual-casual), but I try for at least one outfit a week that makes me feel, well, fashionable. It makes business-casual a lot more fun than I thought it would be. (The daily commute in metro-Atlanta traffic is still not fun though. If anyone has any tips to make that fun, Captain Impossible and I would love to hear it.)

I was actually pretty proud of this one, because the skirt here is actually a tube dress (f21) that I "remixed," which is a term I just affectionately stole from the ever-inspirational Amanda over at chailoveyou.

I was really excited to find a new way to wear this dress, because a tube dress is really only appropriate in the depths of summer, but I feel like the amazing color and peacock print deserve more stage time than that.

I love the print and light-airy feeling of this little off-white dress, but the best and worst feature is the black braided top-strap area (should've gotten a detail picture). But I can't for the life of me figure out whether the designer intended for it to go above or below the bust, which I know sounds really weird, but I don't know how to better explain it. Anyway, in a more casual setting I would probably just wear a cami under it but here I tried on a black T-shirt with it and I kinda love the shape it made.

Anyway, here my black tights (life-blood) make their second cameo appearance but instead of black heels I paired this outfit with these baby wedge shoes.

The awesome part about these shoes is that they are the love child of dressy wedges and adorable/comfy flats. The crap part about these shoes is that the sole is made of the loudest material on planet earth and even though they pretty much look like flats they make me sound like the principal coming down the hall, terrifying the inner-child of everyone around me. Embarrassing. But look at the button!

I have two more outfits to post but I don't want to overwhelm anyone with too much awesomeness so I'll tone it down for your own good and save them for another post.

amateur

I am very happy to see that dear blogger here has a little photo uploader thingy where I can post pictures straight from baby black macbook instead of uploading them to a million-year-old photobucket and messing with HTML like in the olden days. Laziness abound!

To celebrate this momentous little bit of technology for making my life easier, I've decided to share some photos.

Now, the story here is that one of my BFFs Lauren, is a very talented and professional wedding photographer. (Those are actually my little feetsies on the front page there-- no, I am not married; yes, it is a super adorbs picture, thanks.) Anyway, so one of my other BFFs Christina often assists her in shooting weddings. Well, this weekend sweet Lauren was on a cruise (jealous) but got a rather last minute call for a rather last minute wedding. So guess who got to sub (with Christina) --ME.

I was slightly terrified, because despite the fact that I knew it was going to be a very small, relaxed, planned-on-short-notice wedding, it was still someone's wedding day, aaand I have basically no experience. Fortunately with the help of (okay pretty much all the credit goes to) my mom's Canon DLR, I think I did pretty okay. It was a refreshingly creative way to spend an afternoon, and it was fun, too!

So without further adieu, I present to you a few of my personal favorites:

I am basically obsessed with this one. I'll even venture to call it my very favorite. The bride was

getting ready and not only did I love the little silk flower detail on the back of her dress, but check out baby puppy watching everything transpire. This combination = most presh photo ever? I think yes.

Here's a detail shot of her ring and bouquet at the church.

The happy couple being presented.

And their own little celebratory moment. D'awwww.

Seeing as it's my bedtime, this post ends here. But, I have taken a few fashion-related photos as well, so I imagine my first fashion-related blog post will be coming very soon. (Preparations and nail-biting sponsored by get-pumped.com)

aaand we're off

So once there was a girl. This girl wanted to start a blog but couldn't in good conscience do so while her layout was still a hot mess. So then this girl (finally) found possibly the most adorable theme of all time which didn't even ruin her widgets and God noticed and blew some fairy dust all over her computer and said that everything was good.

Alright so introductory summary, here we come. I'll (try to) keep it short since I'm sure anyone initially reading this already knows me. I'm Toria. I'm 24 (still not used to that at ALL) and I have been graduated from college (KSU) for over a year (still makes me feel weird to think about). I'm struggling to be a grown up, because I thought that stuff came naturally but surprise, it doesn't. I still don't know what household product to use on most stains, I probably couldn't correctly do my taxes without my dad walking me through it, and I still haven't gotten my career situation nailed down quite yet. But I'm working on all of those things and more.

I graduated an English major with a minor in Film and my dream is pretty much to be an editor of some sort somewhere. In my fantasies this involves books of some kind, but in reality I'll take what I can get. I recently landed a decent job all on my own without any foot-in-the-door contacts through my parents or anyone else, which I am frankly rather proud of. I know that so much of being hired at most places is about who you know, but it feels good when you are hired based on your resume and personality. Anyway I am enjoying my new job and though I probably will not do it forever, it is really working for me right now. I work for a company that (among many other sales/PR/whatever functions) handles secret shoppers. My job is in the Quality Control department and I basically look over the reports that the secret shoppers submit and make sure everything makes sense, the points are right, etc. before sending it on to the companies. I get to proofread a bit, so at least it's kinda in my field. But like I said I am enjoying it so far and after my training period (another month-ish) I will get to telecommute most of the time (SCORE).

Oh, and if you're wondering about the name, Vulpyx is just sort of a handle I have that stems from one of my characters in WoW (World of Warcraft) because a] Vulpix was taken and b] I love pokemon. Did I mention I am a huge nerd? Seriously. Not sure what else to say about myself so I think I'll wrap it up for now. I'm totally down for answering questions though, for the record.

Soon I hope to make a fashion-based post, basically about what I wear (trying not to sound conceited here) but I'm pretty pumped about that.

Beginnings

Alright, so the desire has been growing in me for a while now (that's what she said) to start a blogger account, but to be completely (and rather embarrassingly) honest, what's been holding me back is that I felt I'd be betraying dear Livejournal. Yes I still own an LJ. Yes, it's the same one I've had since middle school. No, I don't really write in it much anymore but I do still follow some people. LJ has been a notable part of my adolescent life and I have felt a great sense of community there at times I needed it but let's face it: I am 24 years old. I feel like I've outgrown LJ. And frankly, blogger is just prettier.

Also I really like to talk about outgrowing things I did in middle school as I sit here eating a peanut butter sandwich and chips for dinner.

Anyway, I feel like here is where I am supposed to state some sort of theme, so prepare yourself for the inspirational part: hands on your hearts everyone. My general goal here is mainly to inspire myself for day-to-day creativity by documenting my life (the hopefully interesting bits at least), thoughts, and ideally a bit of fashion as well. So please feel free to journey (journal?) along with me here, and hopefully I won't wander off into the land of the dreadfully boring and we'll all stay friends (or become such) along the way.

Next time I'll do some sort of introductory entry to get things rolling. If any of you seasoned bloggers have any blog-starting traditions/suggestions/entry ideas/layout tips/etc. I should know about, let me hear (read) them.