Two Vacation OOTD: Beach Stripes and Porcelain Paisley

Hello everybody! I am back from our short beach vacation. We had wonderful weather (after a rainy start on the morning of the 4th) and I feel like I have been away for at least two weeks! The highlight of the vacation was definitively watching the fireworks on the beach in Montauk (it was the first time that I watched fireworks on a beach if you can believe it) but more that the fireworks themselves it was the atmosphere of the evening that struck a cord with me, with all the people people flooding into the streets towards the beach and some sitting on the roof of their cars parked along the road, at the highest point. It felt quintessential american to my foreign eyes, and I felt like I was in some Spielberg movie (E.T., specifically).
I was also lucky enough to pick the perfect book to keep me entertained while I was tanning on the beach (this year we took MIL with us so my husband and I could relax for long stretches of time as we didn't have to take turns to play with our daughter). I read "State of Wonder" by Ann Patchett and I highly recommend it as a read that has both an adventurous side and page-turning pace but also more literary substance than the usual thriller or romantic beach read.

I don't have much time today but I just wanted to post quickly a couple of outfits that I wore during the vacation that showcase two JCrew items that are currently on sale and I just love.

The shorts in the pics below are called simply beach shorts and even if they are currently sold-out they might popback. I ordered them when they went on sale a few days before leaving, but I had tried them in store and almost bought them fp (the only reason why I didn't buy them fp is that my budget that day had been entirely used by a big-ticket sale item that you will see soon on the blog). These shorts are adorable and even if shorter than what I usually wear in the city, once on the beach you don't really care (after all a bikini is shorter than the shortest shorts). I have always been a shorts-and-a-tee kind of beach girl more than a cover-up one and the perfect beach shorts are not easy to come by. The fabric must be flexible enough to allow for any kind of movements (in case of impromptu beach volley or beach tennis game) and easy to get on/off but also not too delicate (in case of splashes of water). If you also want to look cute, that's almost mission impossible. These are perfection, they are 100% cotton (poplin, I would say) and sooo comfortable thanks to the elastic at the waist.
In these pics I am wearing a size 0, I would say that they are TTS (if you want more comfort in the legs, size one up). The white shirt is actually the Oxford-cotton tunic from a couples of years ago that is one of my beach staples and the green tee is Calypso (this was $4.50 during their recent crazy sale):

The other item that I brought with me and I wanted to show you in action is the Ella dress in porcelain paisley. As you know it was love at first sight between me and this dress but I couldn't justify the initial price tag for a dress that won't receive a lot of wear. I waited for it to go on sale and it paid off because in the end I got it for less than $100 which for a STUNNING dress like this one is more than acceptable. I also got used to the double zipper that was almost a dealbreaker for me. I simply don't zip the internal corset (that's impossible to do alone, as someone said on the JCA if you need to have a maid to get dressed you might want to reconsider your purchase) and I just zip the external back zipper, that is more manageable.
That night (Friday) we were going out for dinner to a lobster place to celebrate my birthday. The shoes are my Tory Miller sandals in white patent (perfect to dress down the dress), the bag is my gold Thompson tote (a white bag would have been better but I haven't found the perfect white bag yet). Of course my daughter had to be in the pictures, she was incredibly cute:

That's it as far as vacation pictures go, I will be back soon with my birthday present (don't try to guess, it isn't JCrew, for a change).
Anybody else has the beach shorts or the Ella in porcelain paisley?