Travel Diary: A Quick Winter Trip to South Florida 🌴

       This trip already happened about a month ago, but I wanted to share a recap on the blog before it gets too much further out. I had a wonderful and much needed quick trip to the Sunshine State in late February! My good friend Gentry from Girl Meets Bow had an exciting last-minute opportunity to attend an event for influencers in Miami with LTK, which is the main affiliate link platform that most bloggers use. She was able to bring a plus-one, and kindly invited me! The stars aligned perfectly for me to get off work, and use flight credits that I already had for a free flight! I also extended my trip on the front end a bit, and all-in-all it was a great time. 

Women's Outfit Ideas For The Masters ⛳️

     Since starting my own journey of learning to golf in 2022, I have quickly become obsessed with watching professional golf as well. The pinnacle of all professional golf events of course is The Masters! Held annually at Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, GA,  this is also one of the most exclusive and hard-to-attend sporting events in the world, thanks to the extremely selective Masters ticket lottery.

     I hope and pray that Ryan and I can someday be lucky enough to score Masters tickets in the lottery and be there in-person. Until then, I'll continue to get more obsessed each year while watching at home. This year I am also planning to host my first-ever ladies' Masters viewing party on the Saturday of Masters weekend, and I'm so excited for that! 

      Since I am hosting a Masters themed party this year, Masters style for women has been on my mind a lot as of late. I've found so many great picks, and wanted to round them up! Whether you were lucky enough to get tickets this year to be in Augusta, are also planning to host or attend a Masters party, or perhaps have another professional golf tournament to attend later this year and need outfit inspiration for that, I hope you enjoy these picks! ⛳️   You can also find these collages and more on my LTK page (I'm miss_alk on the LTK app!)

Spring 2025 Shopping Wishlist Picks 🌸

      Something I have been doing well at since 2025 began? Trying to save more money. Something I have not been doing as well at? Fun shopping purchases for myself.

      I haven't been doing a designated "shopping fast" or been forbidding myself from making personal purchases, but it simply hasn't been as much of a priority to me as of late. I've shared this in other recent posts, but 2024 was a rough year for Ryan and I financially, between unexpectedly losing my radio job (and its salary) and our wedding. To end 2024 with even more of a financial bang, Christmas and its gifting obligations also immediately followed our wedding and honeymoon! It's been such a good thing to cut back on a lot of unnecessary expenses so far in 2025, and to actually be able to put money back into savings once again with each paycheck, instead of just pulling savings frequently. 

     With all that to say, I do feel like some personal purchases for the spring season will very soon be on my horizon! There's so many cute styles out right now. But for the meantime, I've had my share of fun doing online window-shopping and curating some wishlists. I love the pieces that I've been finding, so I wanted to share them with you today. They feature beautiful flowy dresses from various retailers, spring shoes from Target and swimwear from Old Navy.  Check out everything below! 

Wedding Wednesday: Our Engagement Photos!

     This is a Wedding Wednesday post that I've been very excited to share!! We took our engagement photos in mid-March, but I have waited share them on the internet until our guests had received our save-the-dates in the mail. I feel like there are so few things these days that are truly a surprise, and I wanted our guests to have the magic of seeing our engagement photos for the first time when they arrived in their mailbox. I have no regrets on that, and would recommend to any other brides-to-be as well. 😊

    Without further ado, here are our photos!! Our wedding photographers are Jake and Jennifer Vinluan from Vinluan Photography, who are based in Virginia Beach. Jenn is the one who did our engagement photos!

The Cutest New Target Shoes for Spring!!

      Over the past few years, I've found Target to be more hit-or-miss for me when it comes to clothing, but I swear that their women's shoe selection keeps getting better and better every year! I wanted to get up a quick post to share a few of my new favorite styles (all under $50!). 

IRELAND TRAVEL GUIDE: What I Wore For a Week in Ireland.

     My mom and I spent a week in Ireland this past spring, and it's been fun to revisit all of my photos and memories to recap it here on the blog. I'm starting to work on a full Travel Guide blog post to recap all the places we went and stayed on our Insight Vacations tour. First though, I wanted to share a little recap of the outfits that I wore! I did a lot of Pinterest and travel blog browsing before our trip to find inspiration for my own Ireland outfits, so maybe what I wore can be a helpful resource for someone as well. 

Lilly Pulitzer Spring 2022 Dresses: Try-On + Sizing Guide! 🌴🌸

     It's been way too long since I've popped over to the Lilly Pulitzer River Road store in Richmond for a try-on session! I was in Richmond last weekend to meet up with a couple friends from Charlottesville, and knew that I had to squeeze in a Lilly Pulitzer store visit while I was up there. One of the many reasons that I love springtime is because it's the annual return of getting to wear most of my Lilly and brightly colored warm-weather clothing items again! So I'm always excited to see the Lilly Spring arrivals each year. 

      I didn't have quite as much time at the store as I usually do (due to a busy and full day in Richmond!), so I decided to focus this try-on just on dresses in the new collection. For sizing reference on this try-on: for my height I am just shy of 5"7, I have a 34C chest, and I typically wear a size 6 in clothing from most brands. If a brand uses letter sizing, I am sometimes a S and sometimes an M- just depends on the fit and the fabric of an item.

What I Wore to Work: May 2021.

       Lots to cover today: my May work outfits and a round-up of Memorial Day Weekend Sales! April and May are definitely some of my favorite months out of the year for work outfits. I just love spring fashion so much! May has been the busiest month that I've had in a long time, thanks to the fact that I'm now fully vaccinated. I went to bed later than I prefer to a lot of nights this month, so you'll notice that I had more very casual or athleisure outfits for work than normal. Ah well! 

Dressed Up Jeans for Spring.

     Hey friends- happy Monday! I've been super busy lately and there's a few things happening behind-the-scenes in life right now... so starting off the week with a lighthearted outfit post sounds good to me. This look was so much fun to put together, and it's honestly making me happy to see a cute outfit like this on a Monday.

    This is also the first outfit post in a long time where I'm using a mix of iPhone and camera photos!! The first three are from my DSLR camera, and the last two are phone snaps. I'd love to know if there's one you prefer or if you can tell the difference!

Spring 2021 Purchases Try-On + Review.

     It is pretty overdue for me to share a round-up of recent purchases and a try-on with you! In full transparency, I didn't do as much personal shopping this past fall and winter as I normally do. Part of that was wanting to save money with a few increased monthly expenses, and part of it was that with COVID going strong and cold weather making it tough to socialize outside, I wasn't going many places for several months. And that didn't really motivate me to buy many new clothes and accessories.

     I have recently picked up a few things for spring that I'm excited about! One of the most common requests I had in my blog reader survey last month was to share more try-ons, so with making some recent spring purchases I thought this was overdue! In addition to share things I'm keeping, in the spirit of full honesty I'm also sharing a few things I bought and have returned. 

     For sizing info, I am just shy of 5'7, and I am typically a size 6, or a S or M depending on the clothing line.

10 Things to Do For Professional & Career Development.

      Last month marked four years since I entered the workforce full-time! My professional career thus far has been entirely spent in the radio industry, which definitely can be a bit unique compared to other career paths (even others in communications and media). But one thing that working in radio does have in common with any full-time job? The ongoing opportunity to advance your career and professional knowledge by seeking out career development and networking opportunities! 

     While employers in some industries are really intentional with paying for or helping their employees seek out professional development education opportunities, that isn't the case at every job or company. I'm a firm believer that there are always things that you can be doing on your own to help yourself network with those in your industry, or gain more knowledge about your field. While not all of these are free ideas, a lot of them are! Since I know most of you aren't in radio, I am going to try to make sure most of these ideas aren't just things that would apply to the radio industry. Most of these are things that I have done (a couple I haven't gotten to yet)... but out of the ones that I have done I've found them to be very beneficial!

What I Wore to Work: April 2021.

       Happy Friday! Welcome to this month's work outfits. Spring is definitely here in Charlottesville. It sure is nice to be able to wear dresses and skirts without tights again. As always, I link either exact or similar details for all of my monthly work outfits on my LIKEtoKNOW.it profile, so be sure to follow me there if you aren't yet!

Cropped Flare Jeans = Yes Please!

     What is it with this whole Gen Z vs. Millennials debate on skinny jeans lately? I'm personally a big fan of skinny jeans and have no plans to take them out of my wardrobe anytime soon... or ever? Haha! But with that said, I am always open to trying out other styles of jeans as well. Long bootcut jeans I don't think will ever be my favorite (they give me middle school flashbacks from before I had my first pair of skinny jeans... *shudder*), but there are some other types of styles I'm willing to give a try. I've been shocked this spring at how much I'm loving cropped flare jeans- I've worn this pair so much more than I thought I would since I got them!

What I Wore to Work: March 2021

      First off- can we take a second to appreciate that it's now been a full year of living and working in the pandemic?! Whew. It was both the fastest and the slowest year of my life- I'm sure a lot of you would agree. Although still physically going to work during COVID has had its pros and cons (it was a bit nerve-wracking in December when we started having cases at work), overall I am thankful that I've still had a reason to get up and get dressed to leave the house five days a week. I think that was good for my mental health this year!

     Here are my work outfits from this March! You'll see in the first photo that I broke a fashion rule that I normally do observe... which was wearing an all-white outfit before Easter! 

Lilly Pulitzer Spring 2021: Try-On + Sizing Guide! 💗🌴

      Hello from the Lilly Pulitzer River Road store in Richmond! This is my first in-store Lilly try-on of the year, and I was so excited to get to see and play dress-up with the new Lilly arrivals in their Spring 2021 collection. 

What I Wore to Work: May 2020.

     Happy Saturday! I don't typically post on the weekends, but I realized yesterday that I needed to get May's work outfits posted before June, and today's the last chance for me to do that. 

     May was an interesting month weather-wise in Charlottesville. You know the saying "April Showers Bring May Flowers?" Well, it was the opposite here this year. March and April were both beautiful and unseasonably warm months in Virginia. May on the other hand was quite rainy, and also cold! We had frost advisories in the overnight for several nights in the first half of the month, which is really weird for Virginia this late into spring. Unfortunately that cold weather wasn't great for our local wineries- many have lost significant amounts of their crop. 

    Anyways, weird weather or not- I did have fun as always with my work outfits this month! See my LikeToKnow.It page for more details on each individual outfit. 

5 Things I've Enjoyed While Staying Home.

     Happy Monday Friends! It is a happy Monday indeed, as the state of Virginia is set to slowly begin re-opening at the end of this week. While I know it will be quite awhile before things fully go back to normal, it does make me thrilled to know we are starting to move to that direction!

     In today's post, I wanted to share five things that I've been really enjoying during these past two months at home. Aside from going to work and occasional grocery store trips and walks in the park, I've spent just about all of this time in my apartment. I am looking so forward to spending less time home in the months to come, but also thankful for the things I did to pass the time.

How I'm Using My Stimulus Check + Ideas For Yours.

     I had to wait a couple weeks longer then some of my friends did for theirs, but my stimulus check finally arrived last Thursday. In today's blog post, I thought I'd share what I'm using my check for, and a few extra ideas for other things you can do with them. And I'm also sharing a fun and preppy spring outfit! 

What I Wore to Work: April 2020.

     April 2020: both the slowest and fastest month that's ever happened. Anyone else feel me? Each hour seemed to go by with the speed of a turtle... but at the same time it was one big blur and I can't believe it's April 30th! 

     I feel very lucky to still be employed at the end of this month. It's broken my heart to hear about so many people, both locally to me and around the country that have been furloughed or laid off. 😥 Please know if that's you that I'm thinking of you and praying for you each day! Anyways, I am still going into work instead of doing the morning show from home. (About half of our staff is still coming in.) Fortunately I spend 90% of my workday in a studio, so aside from being with Marc for several hours a day, social distancing at work hasn't been hard. 

     I have still been dressing up as usual for work, it definitely helps me to feel some sense of normalcy! As always, details about everything I wore to work can be found on my LIKEtoKnow.it page. Here are my April outfits:

Spring 2020 Try-On: Quarantine Shopping Purchases.

    I normally have very good self control with online shopping. However, my normal self control was definitely not showing up during the first few weeks of staying home for COVID-19. 😬The sales that my favorite retailers have been offering online have just been too good! Like, better than Black Friday prices. 

    A disclaimer before sharing all of these things: I know that things are very tough financially right now for a lot of folks between the mass layoffs, furloughs, and other employment hardships right now. I have been extremely lucky to still be employed. If I wasn't, I would 100% not be making these purchases right now. Please do not feel any pressure to buy more things during this time if this is your current situation. I'm sure this all goes without saying, but I wanted to give that disclaimer anyways!

    Everything that I've purchased in the last few weeks was all marked down under $50 at the time I purchased, with many things being under $25 as well! All of these items are things I expect to wear all the time this spring and summer. For me personally, I can justify making impulse purchases if they're 1) 50% off or more and 2) something that I will wear and use all the time, which I am excited to do with all of these. So excited to share with you everything that I've gotten! My sizing info is also listed on everything (and I wear a size 9 in women's shoes- all the pairs I got are true to size).