Blogging Again + A Stunning Lavender Dress

It’s July! How is that possible? This year has been the strangest and it’s flying by. I started this blog at the end of 2019 because I’ve always loved fashion and photography – sharing my style with anyone who was interested was already something I was doing so it seemed like the perfect creative project. I put a LOT of time and effort into planning my outfits, photos and accompanying blog posts those first few months and honestly, it was a struggle. I wanted a good base of content built up so that I could feel like a “real” blogger. I ended up feeling a lot of pressure – pressure to buy new clothes so that I could link them to shoppable pieces, pressure to grow an Instagram audience, pressure to post frequently and engage constantly. Mostly this was from myself and my natural tendency towards perfectionism, but it got to be too much. This was supposed to be something fun and fulfilling and by January it was not.

So I stopped. I felt like a failure quitting after just getting started, but I was struggling to identify why I even wanted to have a blog. After a few weeks went by, I stopped thinking about it all together (mostly) and just went back to life as usual without the pressure of feeling like I “should” be creating content. And it felt good.

Fast forward and we’re in a global pandemic and the world feels upside down. I’m working from home full time (and very thankful to have that option) and naturally, have had a lot of time at home for projects. So far I’ve done a lot baking, a lot of redesigning and redecorating our house, some gardening and even attempted to teach myself how to run! I don’t think I wore anything other than joggers or yoga pants for two months until the weather started to warm up. And lately, I’ve been thinking back to my blog. I started to feel a little more interested in picking it back up, but differently this time. I’m hoping to give myself some grace – be less critical of myself in my photos, take the pressure off of “needing” to buy new things, not worry about whether or not anyone is even “listening” and just have fun with it.

So here it is! We’ll see if it sticks. What better way to kick it off than with a flowy lavender dress I already had in my closet and some fun statement earrings?

This is the first Gal Meets Glam Collection dress I bought. I’ve been a long time follower of Julia Berolzheimer (I first found her when she lived in San Francisco). She’s gorgeous and her style is impeccably feminine and I’ve always been obsessed with her photographs (her husband Thomas really knocks it out of the park every time). She’s recently decided to end her collection and wrote a really thoughtful blog post about it. I immediately went onto Poshmark to see if they had any dresses from her collection in my size and scooped up two news ones (I’ll feature those soon). Check out Poshmark for more styles!

I got these beautiful statement earrings from an artist on Instagram, @laylaguestmade. She does sales through her Instagram stories every once in a while and the earrings go FAST! They’re lightweight and really comfortable and she shipped them out super quickly. I’m already ready for another pair!