At last year’s Paul Smith friend’s & family sample sale, I had the great fortune of stumbling upon this exquisite collection vest. It was a small fortune, even at the greatly discounted sale price, so I hid it deep in a box of slightly irregular t-shirts and decided to sleep on it. Of course, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, dreaming of how fabulous I would look in it as I pranced around New York City, so I mustered the resolve (and the cash) to buy it the next day.
By the grace of a power higher than myself, the vest still lay, undisturbed, in its cottony tomb of tees. And by the same power, and the superior haggling skills of my fella, I bought that bad boy at an insanely reasonable price!
I brought it home, lovingly cradled in my arms, hung it on a fancy cedar hanger and admired how beautiful it looked hanging in my closet. And there it remained. For many moons. Then I moved to California, where it continues to rest in my closet, unworn!
Until today.
Can I get a woot woot for the maiden voyage of this sartorial wonder of the world?
I had a lovely time this past weekend, despite my lifelong aversion to Los Angeles!
The weekend was a whirlwind of tasty restaurants, wrong turns, endless bus rides and glimpses of marginally famous people…
Still working through L.A. piccies, but I just couldn’t wait to share process piccies of the chocolate cream pie I made last night!
I was feeling a little under the weather (travelling usually does that to me), so I spent much of the day laying around on the couch, watching movies. Of course, I ended up watching Julie & Julia again and was immediately entranced with the chocolate cream pie the awful Julie character made. So entranced, that I ran over to Safeway, bought a delicious 4 oz bar of Ghiradelli 100% cacao and set to making the following:
Let’s back up a bit… how did this glorious slice of chocolatey perfection come to be?
Woot! L.A. and the Grammys were unbelievably fun!
I’m still in the process of sorting through my piccies (practically none of which were actually taken at the Grammys since cameras were strictly forbidden), so please enjoy these snippets of lovely things I saw whilst in the City of Angels…
My friend’s heartbreakingly adorable dog, Ms. Esther Demue…
So please enjoy these ridiculous “celebrity matches”…
Oh, there’s more…
It’s been cold & rainy for a week and mama needed some chowda. So I made some!
Thanks to RealSimple magazine (which we lovingly refer to as “RealSquare”), I finally came across a recipe for Sweet Corn & Shrimp Chowder – one of my favorite chowders! Yay! I modified it just a bit, on account of RealSimple’s ingratiating habit of under-seasoning, and it turned out super delicious! And relatively inexpensive to boot!
First, I started out with some good hearty ingredients:
1 lb of potatoes (I like red potatoes, but it’s all about preference!)
I used to thrift… a lot. Practically every weekend I was scouring the Goodwills & Salvation Armys & Value Villages of the DC metro area. Then I moved to NYC where thrift stores are overpriced and completely picked over by fashion insiders. Now I live in San Francisco where there are great thrift stores with great prices, but I have no money. So I’m forced to go digging in the back of my closet to find things I don’t wear often in order to satisy my ever present desire for new clothes.
Today, my closet digging resulted in the re-discovery of one of my favorite thrifty finds – this giant orangey red wool kilty type thing that looks like it wouldn’t be out of place during Axl Rose’s unfortunate (yet kinda hot) foray into kilts in the early 90s:
