Carolina Cup Week: The Holiday

Carolina Cup is the biggest party of the spring in South Carolina!

It's our version of the Kentucky Derby in Camden, SC!

It's a horse-race that starts with mimosas in the morning, party busses to the race course, and popping from tent to tent throughout the day!

Students from almost all the local schools attend, with some making a weekend or entire 24-hour event of the day. It's one of my FAVORITE events each spring and is THE place to see and be seen!

Last year, it started out in the POURING rain, but eventually the day brightened up!

One of my favorite excerpts about the Cup, from Columbia Living Magazine says, "The label “clothes horse” may have been first applied at the Cup; seersucker and madras plaid make new debuts there each year. And Palm Beach shades, especially Lilly Pulitzer’s signature pinks and greens, are sported by sorority sisters and once-preppy matrons who, in the ‘60s, affirmed the venerable Florida designer’s belief that tropical colors and patterns make posh resort attire of simple sundresses."

This Cup week will cover EVERYTHING you can think of about the Cup! Any questions? Tweet them at me @letsbepreppy!!

Will you be there?

xxKatie

Cup Dress Week: Maddie's Dress

...and by Maddie, I'm referring to Just Madras of course!!

Kimberly Dress

Just Madras has so many different madras options that give you SO many different hat/ribbon/shoes combo possibilities!

Mackenzie Dress

Plus, plaid options like the Mackenzie Dress gives your date a ton of different ways to match you! The way I'm envisioning it is: him in kelly green pants, a white button down and add a pink-and-green bowtie and YOU in the Mackenzie dress!

Ellie Dress

I love the versatility of all the Just Madras dresses! Also nice, if it's a really hot day, madras will keep you cool since it's so lightweight! Totally a plus!

xxKatie

Shop It To Me: Round 2

Just yesterday I updated all my Shop It To Me settings and it showed me so GREAT new stuff:

Kate Spade--I am ABSOLUTELY in LOVE with this dress! Ohmygoodness...(remember a few days ago how I said I had a problem with shopping for fancy dresses I don't need...yeah, about that)

Trina Turk

J. Crew

Shoshanna

Trina Turk

Trina Turk

J. Crew

Trina Turk

Want to get in on the sales? CLICK HERE to start seeing your own, personalized list of FABulous sales! You get to customize ALL the settings! Be sure to snag an invite if you missed the boat last time I wrote about my picks!! I love shopping...it to me :) (I think that made sense...?) Start shopping...it to you!

xxKatie

Cooler Painting

Back home at last! We returned home from the beach around noon yesterday after a very successful weekend! A big custom with these fraternity weekends is to paint coolers themed around the weekend or event (formals, initiation, for your littles if you're in a sorority) so that you can bring your drinks, snacks and food easily with you! They are EXTREMELY difficult to paint. Whoever made this custom of painting acrylic paint on plastic was insane. Thanks to modern technology and the aid of several girlfriends who have done this in the past, my process was relatively easy. It started out looking like this:

Standard Igloo $18.88 cooler from WalMart

Then progressed:

And again:

And again:

And again: (it's like a butterfly)

This was the finalized top!! I was SO PROUD! Shane and I often call ourselves "Team Maryland" so when I started painting my cooler I knew I was gonna take the Maryland to an extreme! What's more Maryland-y than Old Bay Seasoning??

This was my madras front. I was most proud of this side. I'd never seen anything like this cooler so I was really excited to be very different from the norms!

This was one of my small sides! For this side, paint pens were key!

This was the back, it was a MapQuest inspired map to where we were heading! 

So now that I have one cooler under my belt, I'm tempted to make a list of things I wish I knew. Anyone have any tips to add? What you painted coolers for?

xxKatie

Highland Fling Dress!

Anyone remember Charlotte a la the Highland Fling episode of SATC? 

I want a dress inspired by THE Highland Fling dress. Red, traditional tartan plaid strapless dress (ideally for Christmas) is nearly impossible to find. The plaid looks emo or there's a belt or it is just plain ugly. I can't seem to find a nice looking Christmasy satin, with a little bit of sheen dress!

This one has potential sans necklace, but it doesn't look like the right material AND I'd pair it with black tights instead.

This one was the best I could find. I know it's Vivienne Tam and the mannequin is from bluefly.com, but I can't seem to actually find the dress anywhere! Oh no!

I like the plaid pattern here, but there is WAY too much volume and the bow is even a little bit too big even for my standards!

This one has a cute neckline and nice length, but I don't really want the belt. That's a little too rocker for this girl!

I actually LOVE this dress, but unfortunately it's a little too summery for Christmas events!!

I guess I'll have to keep looking for my Highland Fling dress for Christmas! One can only hope!!

xxKatie

Care-Package

The other day my mom tried to send me a care package, but since all the snow came, it was TOTALLY delayed. Typically packages from home take about 3 days to get here, 4 days maximum through UPS, so she was not expecting it to take that long. It was chock full of Valentine's goodies and snacks that were very much appreciated! I love getting packages from home and I especially love the cards that everyone includes. My Aunt Patricia always sends me little seasonal presents and I love the cards she sends me. I actually cut up one of the first cards that my mom sent me when I was still having a tough time at school and she signed it "I love you! xoxo Mom" and it's now framed up on my wall and you can see that she drew a heart around the little note and the outline of that is at the top of the frame. It's just a little bit of home that I like to see on my wall.

Included in the most recent package was this fabulous pair of yellow and plaid boat shoes! How much fun are they? I can't wait to wear them with my J. Crew 5'' chino shorts!! I absolutely love these little gems! They're just making me WAY too excited about warm weather and it getting sunny. Today I gave a campus tour and I was freezing in black pants with leggings underneath, tall black Ugg boots, and 3 different shirts on underneath my big North Face Denali fleece. I am SO over all this cold weather crud.

On a completely different note, I want to wish my sister a GIGANTIC "Break a Leg" for her show tomorrow. She's in the musical Good News at her high school (my alma mater!) and I couldn't be more excited for her! Thursday night is the opening performance and I am dying to hear how it goes!! Here's my card to you:

I miss you so much and I wish that I could be at your show!!

xxKatie