Lookie Lulu's

When I saw this top while browsing Lulu's new fall look book the other day, I instantly fell in love. It's light and flowy with ruffles and a unique print-- it just screams me!

Until I saw the price that is. $113!! Talk about sticker shock. I may spend too much money on clothes, but if I'm going to drop a C-note, I better be getting a couple items, not just one blouse! I don't even spend that much on jeans.

Despite this disappointment, the rest of the Crossing Sunset look book is definitely worth a flip. Here's a few of my fave ensembles (note: It looks like not everything is available online yet, but we can still look and drool, right?):

Love this boxy jacket with a flouncy skirt.

Aren't those oxfords adorable? (These are pretty cute too, and maybe more wearable.)

I'm kind of obsessed with WkShp's tees (I have this one and want this one) and this Rising Sun Grey Crop Top is pretty fabulous, especially with the Mink Pink Mozambique Print Maxi Skirt. So easy and breezy to throw on for a casual weekend running about town.

These fringe shorts are amazing! Not sure I could pull them off in real life, but I love them on the model all the same. I'm totally on board with the fringe trend and have eyed many a fringe purse. And I have a scarf that looks just like that feather-printed sheer vest.

Even though this is a fall look book, the photos still seem warm and sunshiney to me. And really, in Southern California, our summer seems to last until October so that's alright by me. :)

xoxo,

Uh oh...

I better hit the gym quick because I just bought this...

Retro Push-up Halter Top and Foldover Scoop Bottom, in carabi dot

Man, I must have been feeling bold to buy a bikini! Too bad I couldn't purchase the model's body and her perfect golden tan to match.

Oh, well.

But I did pick up some yoga pants to help encourage my jiggly self to get on the treadmill.

Yoga Foldover Crop Legging and Yoga Foldover Legging

But... I also bought this.

Paisley Cover-up

Just in case. :) Plus, it's pretty!

I can't believe summer is here! Schools are out, temperatures are creeping up ... and I'm having a shopping spree with my Victoria's Secret card! Haha.

Hope you're having a wonderful week~

Lush looks

Have you seen the March catalog for Anthropologie? The photography is as gorgeous as usual. I never expect anything less. But I am in love with the feeling of the images too. They have me dreaming of warm, lazy summer days, preferably in a tropical locale. They have me wishing for sunlight streaming through windows, using the light only to curl up in a chair with a good book. They have me wanting to throw on a breezy colorful dress that is perhaps too dressy but completely perfect for taking a stroll through a garden. Oh, and they have me wanting to dive into this impossibly cheerful ruffled bedspread. Sounds nice, doesn't it? :)

Well, if you haven't checked out the catalog yet, take a peek at these beauties, my favorite lush looks:

Wishing you sunshine, no matter what the weather outside or how hard the wind blows...




P.S. I got a 15 percent off discount card in the mail from Anthro, a little birthday present from them to me. So if I am really good, perhaps one of these lush looks will be mine. Which one would you choose? (If money wasn't an object, of course.)

Food, Wine + Zooey

Two Sundays ago (but who's counting?) my bestie Marielle and I went to the inaugural Los Angeles Times Celebration of Food & Wine. After seeing a full page ad in the Times about a month or so prior, I immediately marked my calendar, invited Marielle and then like a good friend pestered reminded her to buy tickets. (And gave her a discount code, yippee!)

Well, it turned out to be a beautiful day-- the day before Labor Day, in fact-- and not just for the obvious, gluttonous reason. It was so wonderful to spend a carefree day with my best friend in the whole world, indulging in tasty treats but also catching up on each other's lives. We're both so busy all the time that moments like those don't happen often, so I cherish them when they do.

The actual event didn't fail to deliver, too. Though trying to find parking in L.A. always proves to be challenging, especially when thousands of people are all going to the same exact place, the venue itself was pretty spectacular: the backlot of Paramount Pictures Studios. While browsing around, weaving between people and hopping from booth to booth, I would occasionally stop to look around and think, "Wow, it looks like we're on the streets of New York!" Which of course only made me remember my unfilled yearnings to visit the Big Apple. But never mind that...

All told we spent about three hours sampling various gourmet foods and wine. Mostly wine. (I have to say, I was a bit frustrated to see that many of the vendors-- especially the food trucks-- we're charging for food as opposed to giving away free samples, as I had expected. We did pay, after all, to get in. That would be my only complaint of the event.)

During our journey around the outdoor fest, we devoured lots of sweets: salted caramel ice cream from the Cooking Channel's Ice Cream truck, cake balls from Delicious Wishes of Beverly Hills (toffee for me, and I think peanut butter for Marielle, or something similarly divine), and a zeppole (basically an Italian donut, covered in powdered sugar) from Rosa's Bella Cucina. We had to fork over a $1 for that last one, but it was sooo worth it.

We balanced out the sugar with a few salty bites: spicy yellow curry (made with coconut milk, potatoes and carrots) from Sedthee Thai Eatery, some bread and cheese (I ate the bread and gave Marielle my cheese) from La Brea Bakery, and a surprisingly delicious mungbean patty but I don't quite remember who from. Blame the wine.

Speaking of vino, there were tons of wineries to taste, and though we had eight drink tickets each (plus extras from a kind lady who gave me hers at the gate), the vendors didn't much care to take them. We sure didn't mind!

First there was a refreshing Sauvignon Blanc from Dutcher Crossing Winery, then a nice, light Syrah from Farella-Park Vineyards, followed by a crisp Pinot Grigio, from the LA Times Wine Club (who we liked for their hearty pours).

Our favorite at the festival, though, was Pech Merle Winery. They won points for taste and experience, because unlike the other wineries, they gave us a true tasting, letting us try several of their vintages. We loved them all!

We also tried Korean black raspberry wine from Kook Soon Dang that was dangerously good, as in, it tastes so much like juice you would get drunk before knowing what hit you. Similar to that was VeeV Acai Spirit. I'm not one to sip straight liquor-- I'm a cranberry and vodka kind of gal-- but with this I'd make an exception. Pour VeeV into a martini glass and you're good to go.

Lastly, we tasted Evan Williams Honey Reserve Bourbon. This would be the one thing we tried that didn't win us over. Too strong, we both tossed it-- but kept the cute plastic shot glass it came in. Guess we're not bourbon girls.

With all that alcohol flowing, and a bit of a buzz going, we took a few silly pictures. Who can resist posing with a Sake bottle or ... doing whatever it is we're doing in that second picture. Oh, I know what we're doing. We're making fools of ourselves! Gotta love it.

As the sun began to set, we made our way over to the Hollywood Stage for the evening attraction. No, not food or wine-- but a concert by She & Him. You know-- Zooey Deschanel!

Even though I had never heard Zooey's music before, I was uber-excited to see her, because she is just so darling. (I finally saw "500 Days of Summer," well, this summer.) Though I had told Marielle who would be performing, she didn't realize who I was talking about until we got to the stage. And then she was just as excited as me! We talked about how beautiful Zooey is while swaying to the music... Her voice sounded as sweet and as lovely as she looks.

Even the back-up singers were adorable. All the ladies were wearing fun, colorful dresses with black tights. Perfect! (And check out that guy's white hat in the audience... too cool!)

The whole gang... Matt Ward, the "Him" in She & Him, is on the far left. And isn't Zooey's green dress pretty? The layers fluttered up and down when she jumped to the music, shaking her tambourine.

Closing out the show, Zooey and Matt tackled the piano, pounding the keys together.

The crowd shouted encore after the band left the stage and a few minutes later, She & Him obliged with one last song. With the last notes hanging in the air, the crowd began to break up. As we were leaving, I noticed that the Crepes Bonaparte truck (if you've watched "The Great Food Truck Race" on Food Network, you'll recognize this truck) was still open for business. Even though I was a tad full and it cost a couple more bucks out of my pocket, I couldn't resist.

I ordered my usual-- Nutella and banana-- and Marielle tried a savory Ranchero crepe. We devoured them on the walk back to our car... Both got two thumbs up!

So there you have it. My first food and wine fest. I consumed many, many calories that day but overall, I'd call it a culinary success.

Labor Day bits

Hello everyone! I hope you enjoyed your Labor Day weekend! I know I sure did, even if it did make going back to work today a tad more difficult. (Isn't that always the way?)

This three-day weekend was perhaps more needed than usual. Last week was, in a word, miserable at times as I felt my emotions buckling under stress (and nature's hormonal "gift"). But the light at the end of the dismal tunnel was the long weekend ahead. So once those 72 hours of freedom began, I wanted to squeeze every last drop of fun and sunshine out of them.

Here's the rundown:

Saturday was spent lazily at first, catching up on sleep and relaxing in pajamas while watching TV. But soon enough we (the boy, Hazel and I) busted out of the house and into the outdoors, taking a quick drive up to Santa Barbara. Well, the drive wasn't quick thanks to some slow-moving holiday traffic but we still got there in time to walk Hazel along the boardwalk, get some pecan praline ice cream on the pier and watch the sun set over the water (see photos above). On the way home, we stopped for pepperoni pizza. After polishing off 2 1/2 slices, I got a call from my bestie, Marielle, that the gang was going out for drinks and dancing at Cisco's, a popular hangout in Westlake Village. I hurried back to my house, got gussied up in record time and joined my friends for what turned out to be a fabulous night out. One that ended at about 3 p.m. with me watching "Law & Order: SVU" and another slice of pizza. (DiGiorno this time, if you must know. So bad, but so good!)

On Sunday, Marielle and I attended the inaugural Los Angeles Times Celebration of Food & Wine. I'll share more on this later but for now let's just say it was a highly caloric day. Copious amounts of wine were consumed, with a bit of food sampling mixed in for good measure. The fest finished with a concert and a crepe-- sweet for me, savory for Marielle. Fun times all around. But it didn't end there-- afterward we headed to a friend's house where a group of us chatted about life and played Catch Phrase! Yep, fun times, indeed.

Monday was just as eventful but still laid back. It was Labor Day, after all! I celebrated at a barbecue with friends. We munched on chips and dip, drank ice cold beers (as well as a couple margarita-flavored wine coolers for me) and played several tournament-style rounds of Cornhole. After a few tries, I became surprisingly good at tossing the little bean bags onto the board and into the hole, shocking most everyone at the party since it's safe to say I have no skills whatsoever at Beer Pong-- usually the game of choice at gatherings like these.

All around, it was a fantastic weekend spent with good friends, good food and good drink. Which always equals a good time in my book.

How did you spend your Labor Day weekend? I'd love to hear.

Colorful summer bounty

It's true. Fruits and vegetables always taste better when they are in season. And summer is one wonderful season, don't you think? The warm sunshine offers up ripe freshness perfect and primed for picking. Goodies like cherries, tomatoes, oranges, peaches and strawberries. And that's just what I bought when I stopped by Francisco's Fruit Stand in Fillmore last Sunday. (I'm eating some of my cherries right now, in fact. They taste like little plums to me.)

There was an abundance of other vibrant fruits and veggies, too. If I had unlimited funds and an ability to make my selections stay fresh long enough for me to use them all, I would have bought more. As it was, I satisfied my urge to shop through photography, capturing all the colors of summer's bounty.

Crates of bell peppers...

A rainbow of peaches, plums, nectarines...

Don't you just want to take a bite?

Huge melons...

Sweet stacks of California berries...

This has me dreaming of apple cobbler.

Tomatoes, on and off the vine...

It's funny. A couple months ago, I wasn't a big fan of tomatoes. I mostly just liked them in cooked form: pasta sauce, pizza, ketchup. But recently, I have discovered that tomatoes are actually amazingly delicious, even in their natural raw state. I've been eating slices of them on club sandwiches and hamburgers, and I absolutely adore pairing them with fresh avocado, scooped right out of its shell.

Since I bought a vine of eight campari tomatoes from the roadside market, my task became figuring out what to transform the red beauties into. Luckily, while catching up on my blog reading, I came across this super simple bruschetta recipe from Analiese over at Tulips & Tea. All you need is tomatoes, a couple cloves of garlic, a few basil leaves, olive oil, salt and pepper.

A little chopping, a grind here, a drizzle there, a quick mix and ta da! Fresh and delicious bruschetta-- as good as the kind you'd get at a fancy Italian restaurant. Maybe even better. And I was so proud of my creation. I spooned mine atop thick, toasty slices of ciabatta bread. So good and good for you. I can't wait to hit up the farmer's market again.

So when's the last time you went to a farmers market? (This was really my first time ever buying anything.) And have you discovered a new food recently? Maybe one you hated that now you love? It's interesting how our tastes change over the years... that's why every so often I take a nibble of something I don't think I'll like. Because sometimes I surprise myself!

Well, I'm off to dinner to catch up with a long lost sorority sister. Hope you had a delicious weekend,

Weekend recap

Ok, ok. I know it is Thursday and you are probably already thinking about what you are going to do this weekend, but I still want to share with you what I did last weekend! (It's the boy's fault. He took some of the pictures I wanted to share on his iPhone because I left my camera at home, and he finally sent them to me today!)

Anyway, I want to share because I'm still sort of amazed at all the things I did Friday through Sunday. Unfortunately, my weekends can be pretty uneventful sometimes so it was such a treat to really get out and make the most of my stress-free days off.

First up: Friday. That night I went out with a group of pals to the North Hollywood location of Big Wangs, a packed sports bar with a juice head (yes, that's a Jersey Shore reference for you) rooster as its mascot, slogans like "Size matters" and "Don't feed the chicks," and large flat screen TVs wherever you looked-- all tuned to, you guessed it, sports. We were there to celebrate a male friend's birthday and I found out I can hang pretty well with the guys. And for those of you who are my Facebook friend, you know that I came to the realization that night that, while I do love the vino, I also am, in fact, a beer-and-wings kind of gal. (My beer of choice was Stella.)

See, Big Wangs' claim to fame, as its name might suggest, is its chicken wings. I ordered nachos-- which were okay but nothing like the ones I had in Vegas-- and the guys took care of ordering the wings. Oh yes, they ordered "the three some." With 50 wings and three pitchers of beer, it can feed far more than 3. My boy wasn't digging the hot hot sauce and the other guys gave him a hard time about it at first, but pretty soon they couldn't stand the heat either. And there I was, the girly-girl I am, chowing down and lapping up the extra sauce with french fries. Classy, I know. All in all, it was a great night. And hey, sports aren't that bad when you've got a glass of beer (and maybe a shot of Patron, too).

On Saturday, I woke up surprisingly early given the previous night's festivities but I didn't get out and about until later in the afternoon. First stop: My bestie's house to pick up my cell phone. I left it at the bar! I told you I had a shot :)

A little while later, I met up with the boy. I had high hopes (no pun intended) of going to a hot air balloon festival in Santa Paula but it didn't quite work out since we had Hazel with us and we were told no dogs allowed! Boo. So we ended up driving back through Fillmore where we stopped at a roadside farmers market. While it may not be as large or glamourous as the ones in Los Angeles, I was super excited because I really have never been to or bought from a farmers market! In between snapping photos (which I'll share more of in my next post) I picked up fruits and veggies.

For $20, I got three pints of strawberries, a bunch of campari tomatoes on the vine, two oranges, one peach, a bag of cherries and a sack of caramels-- obviously the boy's addition to the basket.

Once we got back to the boy's house, I was starving, so we soon left again to go to dinner at La Cocina Bar & Grill, a Mexican restaurant that is a local fave in Santa Clarita. For dessert, we stopped at none other than Baskin Robbins where I got single scoop of pralines 'n' cream in a cone. So good.

On the drive home, between licks, we saw a concert in the park going on. I convinced the boy to stop and we did. Central Park, as they call it, was crawling with families, teens and dogs, and nearly half seemed to be playing a game of catch. My favorite part is when the band performed Cheryl Lynn's "Got to Be Real." It always reminds me of the Sex and the City episode where Carrie is asked to be a runway model and she falls flat on her face. Why? Because at the end of the show, as the credit role, "Got to Be Real" comes on as Carrie sashays into her bathroom... you know the part?

Well, as the band played the song, I sashayed around the park, singing "woo hoo, woo hoo, woo hoo" much to the boy's chagrin.

Now onto Sunday. As is classically us, we got in the car late in the day unsure where to go. And then decided on the Queen Mary in Long Beach. I'd never been so why not? (Well, the ticket price may be one reason, but nevermind about that.) We had a lightning fast lunch so that we could make the 4 o'clock Ghosts and Legends tour. It was so un-scary it was hilarious! And our tour guide was creep-tastic. I couldn't help but laugh at his monotone voice, silly jokes and failed attempts to make us jump, or me, anyway.

Then we explored the ship, though we abandoned the self-guided route and took our own path-- and randomly found an old school telephone booth. Did someone say photo op?

We wrapped up the day with a hour-long pitstop at Ikea-- I bought a new pillow and pair of cute bowls, but my kill joy sidekick talked me out of buying anything else-- and a pass through the Krispy Kreme drive-thru (maple doughnut, yum!).

Oh, and then I made bruschetta with my campari tomatoes at 9 o'clock at night. But more on that later.

So now that I've told you all about my past weekend excursions, tell me, do you have any plans for the weekend up ahead? If you haven't noticed by now, I'm not much of a planner. I kind of just wing it... and see where the wind takes me.



Weekend image via we heart it
Big Wangs image via its website