Merry Merry and all that jazz

Lunch/Snacks on Tuesday:



The Great Gift Basket onslaught has begun. We got a couple of them from vendors this week, one of which was a Trader Joe's basket. Candy Cane Jo-Jo's, I cannot resist you. So I am doubling-down on bringing in lunch as much as possible this week, and making sure on the few nights we are home we are eating from the fridge, not from the delivery boy. So far, so good -- we had a potluck lunch yesterday, and I brought baked (whole wheat) ziti, and everyone else brought salad, veggies, fruit salad...and chocolate cake. But the ratio of healthy to junky was much higher than usual potlucks, so maybe I'm starting to rub off on them!

I only got a quick shot in the mirror in the morning of my outfit. Not sure if it really worked; there is something funky about the proportions of that black chunky knit Kohls sweater on top. I think it's too short for my body, because it tends to remind me of a superhero cape when I wear it. Hmm, it might be time to retire it. It's starting to pill, anyway...



This was the baked pasta I brought. I felt so bad; I mixed together spinach and homemade tomato sauce together with some chopped chicken sausage for the pasta, but as soon as I mixed in the low-fat ricotta cheese the whole thing went from an appealing red and green to a brown goop. Sigh. But it came out pretty well; everyone had some at work, and Hubby polished off the last of it when I brought it home.



Wednesday was a good outfit day.



Nordstrom Babeau teal cardigan, LOFT beaded necklace, Gap polka-dot blouse, Nordstrom patent skinny belt, INC ponte skirt from Macys, Assets tights from Target, and my beloved Vince Camuto boots from Nordstrom. The outfit was completely based on the boots; they are my "flat" boots, so are ideal for this period while my back is healing.





Self-portrait!

Don't know if I'll be able to post any other entries before we leave for Christmas, so I wish you all a Merry Christmas, a lovely weekend, and peace to all.

Long weekend

I worked a half-day at home on Friday, and took a much-needed afternoon off. So sartorially, it was a long weekend, 'cause you know I wore bum-around jeans at home working!



These are the Dreamer Old Navy bootcut jeans; I actually like them better in the long version, but I only have those in faded wash and they were in, well, the wash. :) So I added flats and went with the short, smooshed look. The maroon cardigan is last years from Kohls, the top is a new cream diagonal striped from LOFT, the necklace is a gold knotted stretch from Nordstrom, the purse is also from Nordstrom, and the flats are my beloved Sam Edelmann embellished animal prints.



It was a gorgeous day, sunny and perfectly crispy fall. Since it was later in the morning, I crept out off my patio and snapped a couple of shots in the area behind my house. Our neighbors have cute Halloween decorations out. We have our flamingos. LOL!



I changed before I went out to dinner with my friend Laura, but I forgot to get a picture of that. Which is fine, because I could not hold a candle to her chic-ness. LOVE your new red hair, Laura! She had a great grey cabled cowlneck tunic with grey heathered tights and the best piping-edged boots. We never take pictures when we got out, but seriously, we should.

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On Saturday I needed an outfit that would take me from morning grocery shopping to afternoon babysitting to an night of dinner downtown celebrating a friend's birthday. I think I got one fit the bill.





You know how earlier this week I was all about covering up my dupa with boyfriend cardigans, or talking about wearing outfits in proportions. Sometimes you just gotta channel a little Shakira, cause in this one, my hips don't lie, and I don't care. These are Gap Long and Lean jeans, and they are great for outfits when I want to show off alllllllll my legs, hips and thighs and all. They only work in the tall version with heels (my super-awesome olive green Clarks Vista Vermonts, which you may have noticed in many weekend outfits lately), but they work in a way my other jeans don't.

The jacket is a cotton olive cropped from Gap from last year; it's pretty casual but every once in a while works perfectly. The black long-sleeved layering top is new from LOFT (I scooped up a bunch on sale with a coupon and the last of my LOFT points this week), and the scarf is a great mix of navy, baby blue and olive. With the glasses it kind of looks a little "matchy-matchy" but I think the color combo is so unusual it works.




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Hubby agreed to take my photo on Sunday. He's getting better about not making me a dot on the horizon; I barely had to crop this one!



Another wearing of the Old Navy Dreamers, this time with a new teal LOFT layering top, an older Kohls cropped black sweater with dolman sleeves tied with a black ribbon. The shoes are my Ann Taylor Outlet tweed flats. Functional, and cozy.

This afternoon has been what I am beginning to call Soup Sunday. This week I made another batch of my Babchi's spaghetti sauce; I zipped through the first one mostly due to waste. Fresh tomato sauce goes bad in the fridge after a week (sob!), and I had frozen the rest in too big a container so I had to use it all at once. This time I am following Corporette's suggestions for freezing foods, and storing it in flat pint bags. (A pint of sauce is usually good for one meal.)

The other soup in process is Broccoli Chowder, one of my favorite meals. I did a double-batch in hopes of bringing it into work tomorrow, but I'm not sure I like how it came out. Eating a bowl now, and letting the pot simmer for a bit to cook down. Hope it fixes itself so I can take it in!

I can feel my foodstyle fighting its way through the haze of Halloween candy and work stress; I did a big round of grocery shopping this weekend, and have been busily stockpiling recipe ideas for quick dinners, like these Barbecue Portobello Quesadillas. YUM.

 And Helen, I bought the Cooking Light edition for Thanksgiving ideas; I am still mulling over more veggie side dishes and I would love a new, lighter potato idea, so any ideas are welcome!

Hope you all had lovely weekends, and those of you in the Northwest, hope the snow melts fast and you didn't lose power. First time there has been a storm like that since the Civil War. I can't even imagine!

Earning My Weekend

I just posted on Facebook that this was a week in which I really earned my weekend. You know those rough ones, where you have no idea how you are going to get to the end of it? That was my week. But I made it! And after work tonight, Hubby and I are headed downtown for a luxurious weekend staying at a swanky hotel in one of the ritziest areas of the city. Our fifteenth anniversary (15! It still blows me away) is next week, so we squeezed in some time to ourselves to celebrate.

Well, ourselves, and my trusty camera so I can share it with the internet. And the thousands of tourists. Yay, alone time! :) :)

Anyway, throughout the week, I did get dressed, and I did take pictures most days! This was Monday:





Ignore the dorky smile. The next one is better, but the pose isn't as good.




I liked this outfit; I finally managed to make this new cream Gap sweater work. Instead of going for contrast with a dark piece underneath, I wore a complementary lighter top, also from Gap. But that much cream is not good for my complexion, so the teal scarf broke it up nicely. Heh, now that I think about it, the skinny black pants are Gap too, and the pewter mesh cuff and lariat necklace are Banana Republic. I really do put that Gap card to use! The only non-Gap/BR items in this one are the grey Vera Wang flats from Kohls.




Look at "Bruiser" back there watching the photo shoot. She's the best.


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Tuesday was completely insane. I don't even remember what I wore! But Wednesday was another long sweater/skinny pant combo; I am rather enjoying this new (to me) flop-proof formula this season. It's probably not trendy at all, but if I am wearing skinny pants I have to wear a long sweater over my dupa. I have tried a million tunic tops, and they are just not flattering. This works much better for my short-waist, long-legged, pear-hips self.







I absolutely LOVE this new Old Navy sweater (I wore it with a white undertop last week). It is ridiculously comfortable, and so cozy. The temps have been relatively warm this week, and unfortunately this particular day we went on a ghost tour after work, so I was a little warm in it. But the t-shirt underneath was wearable without a sweater, and by the end of the night I had the sweater back on as it cooled. So it all worked out!




This was fun, pairing up dark blues and black. The sweater is a marled combo of the two colors, and the top was from Marshalls this summer while shopping with my mom. The NYDJ skinnies came out for this, and the Clarks open-toed booties kept me cool when the temps rose. (Good thing I have a dark polish on my toes right now; it's perfect for fall wearing of open-toed shoes.) To keep it a little light, I wore two long necklaces, one with clear lucite stones, and the other with light green and light blue beach-glass stones. Plus my turquoise glasses, of course. I've been wearing them almost every day lately.

Here's a spooky picture I took on the ghost tour. We didn't see any ghosts, alas, but I made a bunch of us line up and recreate in shadows the St Valentine's Day massacre at the original site. The light really was that orangey-red behind us. Like the blood of the victims....spooky!





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Friday was...an adventure in photography.




Um...forget something?





Um...forget something else? Focus, ding-dong!

Unfortunately I did not notice until I downloaded the pics this morning, so that's the best shot of it I have. But it is the cropped Old Navy denim jacket, the Target red peacock-pattern dress, black leggings and black pointed toe flats from DSW from last year.

I did get a clean shot of the bracelet combination I put together. Several are from the Hive and Honey set from Piperlime, and the two shinier silver ones with purple and green-yellow stones are from Charming Charlie's. A new store opened up a couple of towns over. I have a couple of necklaces I can't get to work so will be returning, but I loved these bracelets. They looked way more expensive than they were!





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Have a great weekend, everyone! I will try to catch up on my blogs when I get back; I have many sitting in my tabs on Firefox. :)

Weekend Recap and Recipes

Thank goodness I complain about the weather on the blog so much. I distinctly remember it being unreasonably cold all this spring, and in fact we did not get any real summer weather until late June. So to wake up this week to cooler weather already has been a giant buzzkill. Six weeks of summer is insufficient! For crying out loud, we just started getting good corn at the farmer's market!

The flamingo and I are issuing a protest about this.



Black Target dress, lilac Gap cardigan, black DSW sandals, an assortment of long silver necklaces and my silver Hive and Honey bracelets. It was Friday but I felt pretty dressy.




I've also been wearing my turquoise glasses with everything lately. I just like them, and I always gets tons of compliments.

It was Hubby's birthday on Friday; he never likes to celebrate it, but over the years I've gotten him to soften enough that he will let me take him to dinner. So he went fishing after work, and I got changed, and then we went to Bonefish Grill. Their fish is so good!




Me and George, filled with ennui over Hubby's birthday. Probably the best kind of present for him. :)
Gap polka-dot sleeveless blouse, Piperlime gold chain necklace, random collection of bracelets, light-wash Old Navy Dreamer jeans, orange Clark Long Pond sandals.


Daily Food Tracker: Friday
Breakfast: whole wheat waffle with syrup and strawberries
Lunch: Portillos chopped salad with mini muffin
Dinner: Out for Hubby's birthday. Watermelon martini, pompano and crab in lemon sauce, garlic mashed potatoes, steamed broccoli.

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Saturday was filled with good intentions, but got quickly derailed by good food and a good friend. Jessie and I planned to go to yoga in the park early in the morning, but we were both beat and my back was very stiff, so we bailed and hit the Green City Market instead. We stocked up on some great local treats, including my first ever carrot pickles. (It's very briny. I think I will rinse them off a bit the next time I eat one. But it was tasty!)




 After that, we dropped off six boxes of books for donation at Open Books, and full of goodwill and organic foodstuffs, we...went to the casino to lose some money and hit the buffet. LOL!

When I got home, Hubby was feeling creative, and made dinner. And a new cocktail.





Yes, that is a cucumber.




He made cucumber martinis, with muddled cucumber and cilantro. They were astonishingly good. Hubby also announced that the vodka-soaked cucumber slices were the best cucumbers he has ever eaten. A different kind of pickle, you could say. Ba-dum-bump!



Daily Food Tracker: Saturday
Breakfast: waffle with peanut butter
Snack: 2 hand pies, lamb and mushroom (at the farmer's market)
Lunch: cabbage salad, grilled caesar salad, fried chicken leg, pepperoni flatbread, orange chicken piece and some Chinese noodle/veggie dish, seafood salad sandwich quarter, peanut butter cookie, half cheesecake bite, chocolate covered strawberry (out at casino buffet so it was 3 bites of everything, except the cabbage salad which was crazy delicious and non-creamy!)
Dinner: 2 ears of corn, red pepper and garlic sausage on wheat roll with grilled onions and muffaletta, cucumber martini
Snack: fig newtons, Special K bar, glass of skim milk

Ugh. I had the munchies in a big way. And I was seriously carbo-loading all weekend! Hormones are hell on a diet.

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Sunday was another farmer's market, then chores and errands around the house. As you may have spotted in some of the pictures above, I picked up a mess of heirloom baby tomatoes on Saturday. I'm not really a tomato fan (I know!) but I just could not resist these. They were so cute and summery looking!




I couldn't figure out what to do with them; since they're not my veggie, the thought of a tomato salad did not appeal. But a frittata sure did!




I chopped up the tomatoes, cooked some peppered turkey bacon and chopped it in, and added blue cheese crumbles for the filling. Seasoned with kosher salt and Penzey's Mural of Flavor, added the eggs and egg whites, poured into a quiche pan, and baked for 30 minutes at 350. Doesn't it just look like summer? There's breakfast this week.





Daily Food Tracker: Sunday
Pre-breakfast: Special K bar (woke up hungry.)
Breakfast: honey corn muffin and fresh raspberries (both from the farmer's market. Jessie, the muffin was so good it did not even need heating up or butter. I barely even took it out of the bag before I started inhaling it.)
Lunch: 2 slices seeduction bread, BnPB, skim milk
Snack: tomatoes (trying a few while I was cutting them for the frittata)
Dinner: Heirloom lemon cucumber with rice vinegar and Greek seasoning. (First time trying one; I had to get it, it was a yellow, round cucumber! How weird is that? Result: not that different from regular cucumbers except the seeds were harder. Will stick with Kirby cucumbers in the future.)
Leftover chicken and carrots, re-grilled by Hubby.
Corn on the cob (one eaten, one cooked and cut off the cob for something delicious tomorrow.)
Grilled plums.

I made up for any lack of veggies with dinner, that's for sure. And now that I have had grilled plums and peaches, it is plums that win the battle. They're so rich tasting, juicy and tangy sweet. It's like eating purple. And I'm definitely making more grilled carrots tomorrow; they were just as delicious three days later as they were the day we first made them.

Both the plums and carrots are easy to make; I cut and prep them with their respective seasonings, then fold them into aluminum foil packets, and then hand them off to Hubby to grill. Hee!
Carrots take about 30-40 minutes on the grill, plums are about 15-20. Their seasonings:

Carrots -- Penzey's seasoned salt and minced garlic (don't even need to dehydrate it), few tablespoons of water and some olive oil
Plums -- brush with canola oil and cinnamon (Penzey's again, of course. You can really taste the difference.)

What's been your favorite grilled item this summer? Do you make one that most people would be surprised by? Do you have one I should try? (Please don't say tomatoes!)

30 DoC: Day 24

It's funny, as I am entering the last week of the 30 Days of Creativity, I am finally hitting my creative groove: I want to take photos or make pretty salads or just see the world from new angles, and I am far less interested in using my outfits as my creative outlets. I want to just throw on a sundress or shorts and a tee then go my thing, not even bothering to take a picture.

My creative bent is finally turning outward, and I couldn't be more thrilled. So this weekend I went to the Street Sale in my town, and snapped away.

If I was still young enough, I totally would have gone down the fire pole. Whee!


Kittens! With pink tongues!


This is part of a war monument, but the childish shapes of the planes and boats seem so out of place. Looks like something that would be on wallpaper in a little boy's room, not etched in granite.


I have no idea what this is, and it had no signs around it. A...solar fan?


It's a hunka hunka burning crap.


I was all excited about this until I saw only kids could win. Dang!


Well, alrighty then. But why bring it to an antique auto display?


My friends reminded me it was a plastic display before I got too far. LOL!


Words to live by.


I got tired just watching the Jazzercise. (Jazzercise is making a comeback?!)


Should I get these new sunglasses?


No? How about these?


Hee!

Vegas outfits

So, now that you saw what I packed, how did I wear it? I didn't get a picture every day but since several of the outfits were repeats from the last few weeks (the yellow with yellow-taupe scarf, and the wrapping elf outfit as prime examples) I figured it wasn't a big problem.



I mentioned in the comments on yesterday's post that one of the great blessings of putting together outfits as I packed also allowed me to see which items could get remixed during the trip if needed. This one was a great example of that; I had planned to wear this purple balloon-sleeve on the return flight home, but the weather was all over the map the first couple of days and I was rifling through two outfits a day, which I had not planned for. So I pulled it into rotation early and added my short-sleeved black AT Outlet cardigan. You can see I was also doing the two-accessory idea with the long lariat necklace on and my scarf temporarily tied around my tote bag. The embellished cheetah-print flats and Gap skinny pants finished the outfit, taken by Hubby outside the Venetian.



Christmas Eve saw me wearing this green Max Studio dress with the red sparkly scarf, as seen in this terrible shot taken by my dad. Hmmm, do I have a better shot of this?



Of course! (This was Fremont Street, where we went to see the Christmas light show on the canopy. It was weird, and tacky, and wonderfully Vegas in a way the Strip is not.)



I will spare you the shots of the go-go girl elves dancing in some of the other parts of the light show.

Hubby tried one more time to get a good shot of this outfit, but the first few were so terrible I just started hamming it up.



I woke up Christmas Day and felt the need to go with a more elegant look. So I scrapped my purple sweater with sparkly statement necklace idea and went with some of the gifts and new purchases from the trip: the gorgeous black ruffled sweater from White House, Black Market from my mom, new black Dillards clogs, and the new black WHBM purse. I added in my own black layering top, black NYDJ ponte skinnies, and turquoise glasses.



Oh, and the gorgeous 72-inch Nordstrom glass pearls Hubby got me for Christmas. :) I did the Angie-knot technique, which was a source of much amusement between me and Hubby as I struggled to figure out how to do it in the hotel room. Finally it dawned on me to think of it like making a Jacob's ladder like I did as a kid, and voila! Success.



See how cool it looked outside the Beatles' Revolution Bar at the Mirage?



The last outfit I have photographic evidence of (besides the Red Rocks one) is just a casual "bumming around the Strip" one. Of course, my idea of casual was much different than most of the other toursists, since I don't wear sweatpants and Uggs (together, OMG!!) or sports-team shirts. But I am in jeans, my crossbody, and some combo of cardigan and scarf. This was taken at the Wynn, such a gorgeous, luxurious place.



Lest you think I am the only one in my family with a love of bold colors and great prints, here is a close-up shot of one of Hubby's typical outfits. Microcheck shirt, black tee, and maroon pullover, such a sharp look for him!



And that's what we wore on our trip!

Three-day weekend starts today, so I will be back either today or tomorrow with my New Years Resolutions, and a look back at last year's. I hope you all have a lovely and safe New Years Eve, and here's to an amazing 2011! I have high hopes for the coming year; I think it's going to be great for all of us!