Off to the ballet

Saturday was a girls' trip to the ballet to see the Tchaikovsky Permanent Ballet perform
Swan Lake at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley. The company was pretty good although I would
say not quite as good as the San Francisco Ballet. We were able to exchange our
nosebleed seats for some great ones down front since they were running a rush promotion.
It made me miss dancing, something I did for about the first half of my life. Maybe I'll sign
up for an adult class one of these days...


I only got shots of two of our outfits, but all four of us were looking cute. :)

I am wearing:
Halter dress from Anthropologie (I think this is my favorite daytime dress out of all the
dresses I own)
Purple Tulle coat
Grey J Crew Cardigan
Kenneth Cole sandals
Dooney & Bourke bag

A is wearing:
BCBG dress
MNG coat
Hue tights
Chat chat shoes (aren't they cute!)
Coach bag
Vintage purse shaped locket

A is also sitting on an itty bitty bench that we stumbled across while walking past the
hardware store. Cute!

Outfit of the day

Looks like the weather has turned cool again.... it even rained!

On Friday I wore:

Banana republic toggle coat
Royal Elastic shoes
American Eagle tank top
J. Crew Cashmere cardigan
Banana Republic jeans

Bubble Wrap World

No that's not snow, that's BUBBLE WRAP! Ok, so this post has nothing to do
with fashion or even style, but this has to be the most awesome commercial
ever. It features a world covered in bubble wrap (something about how
Snapple's antioxidant water protects you or whatever). Wouldn't that be
awesome! Pop pop pop pop pop pop....

Summer Dresses

"Summer lovin' had me a blast
Summer lovin' happened so fast
I met a girl crazy for me
Met a boy cute as can be
Summer days driftin' away,
to uh-oh those summer nights
Uh Well-a well-a well-a huh ...."

-Grease, Summer Nights.


I am SO ready for summer! In preparation I'm looking for some easy to
wear summer dresses that won't break the bank. In the summer my
dream is to live in dresses everyday, but I suppose that is a far away
goal...

There happen to be a bunch of cute summer dresses on sale right now,
but hurry cause they're moving fast!


French Connection Martinez dress, cute for summer and easy to wear
cotton. This Jersey dress also looks like it would be really comfortable
and great to throw on anytime.


Two dresses from J. Crew a go to shop for cute, preppy dresses,
Ruffle shift dress and beach dress.


Halter beach dress and Island eyelet (not on sale, but I thought they
were too cute not to add).

For a slightly more dressy look:


Francesca Dress.


Ok, this one isn't exactly summery or all that casual, but I really really love
the 20s styling of this DVF dress. I could totally see this on someone with a
classic, elegant look. (I don't know why, but I keep picturing Natalie Portman
wearing this dress my head. Maybe she wore something similar recently.)

Sale items of the day

There are tons of Spring sales on right now! I couldn't decide which of
these fabulous red items was cuter so I decided to post them both (not to
be worn together of course).


Beautiful satin bow shoes from Nine West. I just might have to get a pair of
these myself, 45% off!


Fun and classic red clutch from Kenneth Cole.

Jazz at Pearl's

For a fun Friday night date night, my husband and I went to see
Lavay Smith and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers at Jazz at Pearl's.
Billed as the Queen on Swing, Lavay was quite entertaining, with
a deep sultry voice and the most expressive lips I've ever seen (she
could do the Elvis lip curl to an extreme). The band was also a lot
of fun, especially the trombonist who demonstrated an uncanny
ability for being able to breathe at the same time as he was playing
a note (so he could basically play indefinitely without visibly taking
a breath).


Sorry about the poor quality of the images. Next time I'll try to take
the outfit pictures before we go out rather than after so the lighting
is better.

I'm wearing:

I.N.C. sequined dress - this looked really neat shimmering in the dim lighting
of Pearl's
Black cashmere cardigan
Grey tank from LAMade - there are cute ruffles on this that you can't make-out
in this photo
Grey tights from Assets
BCBG Girls patent leather shoes with leather bow
Bubble coat by Joseph

Easter Brunch

Remains of the brunch:

We had a few friends over for brunch on Easter Sunday. I made this Swiss Easter Rice Tart, scrambled eggs, bacon, blanched asparagus, a wide variety of fresh fruit, and bagels with cream cheese, lox and dill. A good friend made us some fabulous mimosas. Champagne and orange juice, yum! It was quite a spread. The tart didn't taste as good as I hoped from the glowing praise of the New York Times article. It was a bit overly almond and citrusy and I would have prefered if the taste of the rice could have been a little stronger. I think I almost liked the intermediate products better (sort of a rice pudding with warm milk, rice and sugar) that I taste tested as I was cooking.



I didn't manage to get an outfit picture in, but this is what I wore:

Brown linen dress from Banana Republic with striped ribbon sash
Sandals from Kenneth Cole
Orange cashmere hoodie (not pictured) from Banana Republic

Curiously 3 out of 4 girls at the brunch showed up in brown. :) We all matched by
accident, funny coicidence.

Spring sandals!

With spring weather already being felt around the Bay Area, I am looking for
some comfortable, slightly dressy, but not too dressy low wedge sandals.

I noticed that Steve Madden has a lot of fun options. What do you all think?



Go with a simple brown leather option (Flipperr, Killian)?


Or maybe a slightly funkier metalic (Kailee, Jannis)?

Or go all out with a burst of bold color (Knitte, Flirtty)?

Steve Madden shoes can sometimes be uncomfortable or poorly made, so
I would definitely have to try these on in person before buying.



Reefs - for super casual days Classic Reefs are my favorite flip flops of all time!

No one believes me when I say that these are the most comfortable flip-flops
on the planet, not until they try them that is. I even had one friend to whom I
kept singing the praises of my reef sandals. She didn't believe me for the longest
time. Then, several years later she bought a pair randomly and started
recommending them to me and telling me how fabulous they were, forgetting
that I was the one that recommended them in the first place. I thought this was
quite hilarious.

Healthy eats

A few weeks back my brother and I decided to try our hand at
healthy cooking for a change. :) Our usual motto is more butter,
more better, but this dinner turned out rather well. We made:
Soy maple glazed salmon, edamame rice with sesame oil for
flavoring, and pan fried asparagus (yum! spring is here!).

Back!

So sorry for the long absence... I've been traveling and working and haven't had time to post, though I have been thinking up tons of things to write about. Hopefully I'll be able to get to lots of my ideas this weekend. And we now return you to your regularly scheduled programming...


Here are a few pics from my travels. These were taken in and around Stony Brook, a quaint little town on Long Island where I'll be living starting in August. It's really rather suburban, but at least it's only an hour and a half on the train to New York City! So, my shopping shouldn't suffer too much. :)

Donna Karan's Closet

Donna Karan is Selling off personal items from her closet for charity
next week, March 14-15 at the Stephan Weiss Studio (711 Greenwich
Street). I'm actually going to be in New York next week. Maybe I'll be
able to swing by! Items are going to be priced between $20 and $2000
and proceeds will go to the Urban Zen Initiative.

White Elephant Loot

I got a bunch of fun stuff at the White elephant sale on Saturday
(basically the best rummage sale ever!). The sale was humongous!
There were people bumping into you and goods everywhere you
turned. It was actually quite hard to get into some of the more
popular areas like jewelry, but we prevailed. :)


These Salvatore Ferragamo wingtip flats were just too cute to resist.
They look practically brand new!


I love these vintage patent leather bags. It actually looks much better
in person and is made by Lewis.


I got this pretty Schiaparelli scarf from the nice lady manning the scarf
and handbag section. She had the most amazing vintage pink Vera Wang
scarf stamped all over with white elephants, perfect for the White
elephant sale.


I also got some long white cloth gloves.


From the jewelry section I picked up a few things, a hair clip (on
left with green accent), a Hobe necklace (top), some art-decoish
earings (right), and two of the cutest little vintage bow pins (bottom).
My plan is to stick these two pins onto a hair band for wearing.

All about heels

Recently I have noticed that heel modifications and embellishments have
been at the forefront of shoe design. I love all of the interesting and playful
ways designers have been able to turn the sensible heel into a work of art.
Here are just a few examples...



These Giuseppe Zanotti platform cutout wedges (left) created quite a buzz a few
months ago (I saw these in person in paris and they were really quite fabulous).
For a somewhat similar feel, but a much lower price tag, try these Steve Madden
Champyun's.


Cone heels have been on my wish list for awhile now. So far I haven't bought any,
mostly because I'm not sure how well I would be able to walk in such a narrow heel,
but these Chloe Horseshoe Slingbacks (left) sure do tempt me to give them a try.
The Nine West Drazlys (right) are a cute and affordable option.


These Prada flower heels are just plain gorgeous.


For a more extreme heel modification, Marc Jacobs has been creating some
wacky sideways heels (from March Jacobs Spring 2008 collection) where the
heel is actually detached and then reattached sideways to the ball of the foot.


Taking one more step toward the wild side, these shoes -- I'm not sure they can
really be classified as heels since they don't actually have a heel -- by Antonio
Beradi sure give you something to ponder.