summertime favorite: the little white dress.

Dress: Old Navy. (also love this one, this one and this one.) Jacket: Old Navy. (similar here and here.) Wedges: Steve Madden. (also love these ones and these ones.) Bag: Michael Kors. (also love this one.) Watch: Jord (c/0)

I wore this little white dress to the park the other night, while the kids played in the setting sun. It was all twilighty (not the vampire kind) and gorgeous, and I just had all the feelings.

Sometimes I forget how stunningly beautiful Washington is. That’s usually about February when it’s been raining nonstop for months and all the deciduous trees are bare and brown, making the evergreen just look dark and impending. Then spring comes around and everything blossoms and the sun starts shining and then the blossoms turn to green trees and bushes and I’m like, “Oh yeah, I love it here.”

Every night I sing Ava a song before bed and then tell her a story. We read often too, but lately all she wants to hear are stories about a frog named Simon and his sister Alice. Craig actually came up with the characters, he’s such a fun dad, but I’ve been telling her a new story every night about the frog siblings that live in a house next to a pond with their mother Mrs. Frog. They’re always getting into crazy adventures trying to ward off the punky duck gang that likes to come around the pond and cause trouble, or keeping the cottontail bunny out of their garden. And every morning they have tea and crumpets for breakfast, as any self-respecting frog would.

Mrs. Frog is an accomplished crumpet maker.

You can see how into these stories we’ve all gotten. The boys have started begging me to come in and tell it to them after I finish with Ava every night.

The other night, while we were at a particularly fabulous park near our house, Ethan pulled me aside and said, “Mom, this looks just like the place Simon and Alice live!”

Dying.

And then I realized that it does kind of look the way I pictured that little meadow next to the pond in the forest… This is how so many Washington parks are and I love it. They’ve got a little wild woven in to them. Washington in the summer is just about the dreamiest thing you’ve ever seen, and you can tell that everyone is kind of walking around thinking “pinch me, a place this pretty can’t be real.”

Getting dressed in the summer months is so tricky for me because I don’t like wearing shorts (they make my legs look even shorter) and I can’t layer like I want to. So I have a few formulas that work for me. One is a great pair of comfy skinny jeans with a pretty short sleeved blouse (like this peasant top combo I wore last week.) The other is dresses. And the little white dress is my summer go-to. Call it the quintessential summer workhorse. You can pair it with flats or sandals, wedges, flipflops or a pretty pair of heels. Dress it up for a summer garden party, or down for a picnic. Throw on a light jacket on for those cool summer evenings; you basically can’t go wrong with a little white dress. And I’m of the opinion that you can’t have too many LWD’s in your closet so I’ve rounded up a bunch of gorgeous (modest) ones below. Seriously, I cannot get over how gorgeous these are.