Hi guys! Sorry again for the little unplanned hiatus, things have been CRAZY around here. First off, I'm planning on having a post tomorrow to discuss this, but my cat Kalliope had to have emergency surgery last Monday night; she's doing fine now but it's been a lot dealing with that and managing her after care.  Then, day I picked Kalliope up from the hospital also happened to be the first day of a new work project where I now have an hour commute (but it's a great project and I like my new co-workers so I'm really happy about it).

All of that, coupled with going to D.C. for one of my college bestie's birthday and getting ready for our big trip to France on Friday made for some really hectic days. Anyways, I do want to get back to blogging and posting more regularly! I love reading all of your blogs and commenting on them, so I'm sorry for not being around!

Today, in preparation for the last holiday weekend of the summer, and the last official beach weekend of the year, I thought I would share six great beach reads to throw in your bag for your next trip! All of these have either been read by me or are downloaded on my Kindle to take with me to the beach next week.

ONE // The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo by Amy Schumer - because who doesn't love Amy Schumer. This is next up on my books to read and I can't wait to read it.

TWO // Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter - This is also in my queue to read. I have had a lot of people recommend this to me, especially people that enjoy dark mystery thrillers!

THREE // The Light between Two Oceans by M.L. Stein - I'm in the middle of this book and really liking it so far! It's actually being made into a movie as well which I just saw the trailer for, and that looks good too!

FOUR // Big Little Lies by Lianne Moriarty - I finished this book at the beach two weeks ago in Delaware. I really enjoyed the plot and how it keeps you guessing right up until the end. The premise is a murder has occurred at a school event, but you don't know the victim or the murderer, and trust me there's lots of good twists!

FIVE // The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware - This has been recommended to me by a lot of friends and I'm looking forward to reading it! It's another dark thriller mystery (if you can't tell I love those types of books), set on a cruise ship! Possibly the perfect vacation read, unless of course you're taking a cruise.

SIX // The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty - Another Liane Moriarty book! This was the first book of her's I downloaded, per recommendation of Grace. I really enjoyed the book, and read it so quickly! I prefer Big Little Lies if you're going to start with one of her books, start there, but I honestly would suggest both as fun beach reads!

Have you read any of these books? What are some of your suggestions for fun beach reads, I'm always looking for new books to read!

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Life Lately [8.16.16]

Hi everyone! Happy Tuesday! I'm sorry for my little unplanned weeklong absence from the blog. I love blogging and I've really enjoyed creating content, working on my blog, and growing it over the last 11 months (one year blogging anniversary is in September - crazy!). However, sometimes I just find myself busy with work and personal life and feeling a little uninspired to write - I'm sure other bloggers reading this understand.

Anyways, I decided last week that if I wasn't feeling it I wasn't going to force it. And so I took a week off, and now I'm feeling refreshed and excited for upcoming new content! For today I wanted to share a couple of photos from the past two weekends, the first few are of my trip to Dewey Beach in Delaware for the weekend with Alex's family. They don't live close to us to it was nice to get to see them and spend a weekend at the beach.

This past weekend we went back to the beach for Friday night and attended a wedding for two of Alex's college friends and former crew teammates, it was fun since all of his friends were in attendance; not to mention the venue was 50 stories above Philly, allowing us to have awesome views of the city. I snapped the picture above of the beautiful sunset over the city.

We also have a lot of exciting things coming up, first off tomorrow I'm starting a new project for work! I was on my NYC assignment from December until this past Friday so I'm excited that we were able to complete it and now I get to try something new. This project is local, but may involve a little bit of travel to subsidiary companies. I'm actually really excited to have a stable schedule working with a local company, hopefully this allows me to have a better gym schedule too -- I've been falling a little behind! This upcoming weekend I'm heading out of town to visit some college friends and then our big trip to France is coming up in less than two weeks! So much to look forward to, I'm so excited for everything to come! Be sure to keep checking in on the blog as I plan to have some new content related to all the exciting happenings, and follow along on Instagram and Snapchat (sorry I'm not into Instagram stories) for more frequent updates!

I hope everyone is having a great summer, enjoy the last few weeks of it!

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TGIF & Friday Links vol. 12

image via

Happy Friday everyone! I feel like I was way to absent from the blog this week, sorry about that! With it being the last month of summer I've been staying busy and unfortunately fell a little behind on blogging. This weekend, Alex and I are headed down to Delaware to go to the beach with his family. I wish we could go for the whole week, but I'll take any little tastes of the beach I can get. 

Anyways, I wanted to share some fun things from around the internet this week to coast you into your weekend:

1// Any other Bachelorette fans out there? I thought this article on how long will Jordan and Jojo last to be pretty hilarious (and probably true)

2// In other TV news, does anyone else watch Big Brother (guilty), well CBS announced a season 19 will air this fall on CBS all access. Read all about it here.

3// I'm beginning to think about what I want to bring to France, I liked seeing what Grace wore for her 5 day trip to France recently!

4// If you're in the blogging world or love reading blogs then you've probably heard of Julia Engle of Gal Meets Glam. I liked this interview she recently did with LaurenConrad.com, read it here.

5// I really want this skirt, and it's an additional 20% off!

6// Which Harry Potter house does your cat belong in? Because why not. Kalliope is apparently a Ravenclaw. Take the quiz here.

Also, if you missed it, I wore a really cute little gingham skirt on the blog this week. Check out the post here!

Have a great Friday and a fun weekend everyone!

Follow along with Laura on Bloglovin, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, & Twitter

Little Gingham Skirt

Somehow July has come and gone and it's already August 1st today! August always was a big month for me when I was still a student, it often involved back to school shopping, moving to a new dorm, starting a new semester, seeing old friends again, and all together big changes.

One of the biggest adjustments post-college is that there's no big "new start" every year like when you're in college and even grade school. All the same, I still like to savor every moment of summer, and that includes dressing the part.

I scooped up this cute little gingham mini skirt from J.Crew on sale in July and I'm so happy I decided to bite the bullet and buy it. It's the perfect piece to wear to dinner, going out, or hanging out on a hot summer afternoon. I wore this outfit on Friday night when we had our friends Laura and Kevin from my work over for dinner, I liked the combo of the white cropped top with the high-waisted gingham skirt so much I wanted to share it here on the blog.

How were your weekends? Are you enjoying soaking up the last "real" month of summer? 

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