the time i won some free shoes.

a couple weeks ago i checked my email to find out that id won a super awesome giveaway over at the dainty squid. the prize was a free pair of shoes from shoemint, and i was BEYOND stoked. i had literally JUST told james about how i really needed some nicer-than-flip-flops-but-not-exactly-fancy shoes. i mean, i have plenty of really fancy shoes for wearing to fancy dates and weddings, and plenty of comfy but not exactly attractive shoes for wearing to the park and grocery store. what i dont have enough of are the kind of middle-level shoes for wearing to church and regular restaurants. but, you know, were broke and they would have to wait for some kind of miracle (like winning a contest). 

anyways, after i got my prize credit, i was SUPER excited to find out that they had a bunch of the summer shoes on clearance for half price (summer shoes was really what i was interested in anyways, since i live at the beach and its always summer) and i could get TWO new pairs of shoes with my credit! i ended up picking our the ally in silver:

photo via shoemint

and the patricia in metallic:

photo via shoemint

both of which totally fill my current shoe needs, AND since i got a new pair of neutral flats, that meant i can finally throw out the two raggedy pairs that i only keep around for those times that i specifically need neutral flats (not that often, but often enough that i needed to have some around). i waited very, very impatiently for them to arrive, and now that ive worn them a couple times each i thought id share my thoughts on them with you:

ill start with the pros:
1. shipping was free and fast (all i had to pay for was sales tax).
2. both pairs were exactly as described online (though the ballet flats were a lot less shiny than the picture).
3. the boxes are SUPER awesome and totally reusable.
4. both pairs are very comfortable.

BUT there were a few cons:
1. they seem to run a bit small (not a big enough difference for me to return them, but just something to keep in mind).
2. shoemint doesnt seem to send a shipment notification email.
3. shoemint is actually a shoe "subscription" type site with incredibly complicated policies, and if you dont read the fine print you can get stuck with an $80 charge every month.

and lastly,
4. for the price point (retail is $80, and theyre described as being "sold at a discount"), i was really disappointed with the quality. now dont get me wrong, i am SO thankful to win these shoes and both pairs will be getting a TON of wear, its just that i had much higher expectations. in my opinion, the $40 sale price was definitely appropriate (and if you caught an additional discount they would be a steal), but if i had actually shelled out $160 for these shoes, i would have been really bummed. its not that their cheap shoes, its just that theyre definitely not luxury shoes, the soles are thin and flat and the leather of the ballet flat is a bit thinner than id like to see. but obviously since they were free this isnt exactly a relevant complaint, i just couldnt honestly recommend them as a good value at full price. 

anyways, thanks again to kaylah of the dainty squid for the wonderful giveaway! 

and if youre in the market for a new blog to read, the dainty squid is one of my very favorites, check it out:

sunday sweets. peaches and cream.

yes, i realize that im a day late with my sunday dessert post. this is because yesterday was super busy. we had church in the morning, potluck lunch after that, then our friend neal came over to take our annual family polaroid, and i completely forgot that i even had a special dessert planned. until i started cooking dinner, at which point i remembered what it was and got super excited. 

we had fresh peaches topped with homemade whipped cream. now this may not sound like a very exciting dessert to most people but its one of my favorites. last week sprouts had peaches for 49 cents a pound (!), and they were the biggest most beautiful peaches ive ever seen. the only problem is that they were still rock hard and there was no telling how long they were going to take to ripen. i miraculously remembered to check them on saturday (i have a really bad habit of forgetting about ripening fruit until its WAY too late), and they were PERFECT. i was so SO happy. 

theres not much of a recipe to this dessert, its just peaches and whipped cream, but i have spent the past few weeks fiddling with my whipped cream recipe, and since this batch was by far the best ive ever made, i thought id share that with you guys.

homemade whipped cream
(serves 3-4 as a topping)

ingredients:
1 cup heavy whipping cream (it has to be heavy!)
3 tablespoons powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

start by chilling your mixing bowl and whisk (or beaters if youre using a hand mixer) in the freezer for at least ten minutes. once theyre all frosty combine all three ingredients and whip on your mixers highest setting, stopping immediately once it looks like whipped cream (dont wait too long or it will turn into weird, sweet butter). and thats it. 

i would seriously make this every day of peach season if i could, but i think everyone else might get sick of it. 

whats your favorite easy dessert?

family traditions. the annual meyers family polaroid.

confession: here in the meyers household, we dont really do any of the things generally associated with the words "family tradition". its not that were trying to be cool or edgy or anything, its just that neither of us grew up in a household with a strong sense of tradition. my parents are very young and just not very sentimental, and jamess family moved a lot and had a constantly changing lifestyle. so the idea of doing things just because thats what our familys always done so thats what were going to do forever is just kind of foreign. 

that being said, there is one arbitrary family tradition that we accidentally stumbled upon. our annual family polaroid, taken by our good friend neal, in front of our front door, every year on july 7th. i say "accidentally" because the first one was taken spontaneously when neal and my sister emily came to visit us in prescott and helped us move into a completely ridiculous giant house that we could not afford (thankfully we only lived there for a few months). here it is:

this picture is actually pretty important because its one of about four pictures of me taken while i was pregnant with alice. i think i was around 25 weeks here? maybe a little more, i dont remember. i do, however remember avoiding being photographed because i didnt want to be reminded about all the time i spent as a puffy, miserable, giant, shiny, emotional whale (although in retrospect, i guess i didnt look nearly as bad as i felt at the time). 

just six months after that picture was taken, we had to pack up and move back to la, and when i was unpacking things to settle into our then-new apartment, i found the previous picture and noticed that july 7th was just a few days away, and that our polaroid camera had one more shot left in it. so we called neal over and took this one:

we had accidentally set the camera on the wrong exposure setting, and when the picture came out all blurry, i was REALLY sad that we didnt have another frame, but now i like it, because, frankly, that year was a total blur (we had a small baby, we moved twice, it took us what felt like FOREVER to get settled into stable jobs), and it really fits. 

that day we decided that neal would come over every year on july 7th to take our picture. since last year we used my last frame of expired polaroid film (that im pretty sure i bought when i was 19), the other day we went to urban outfitters for  a pack of impossible project film (even though its REALLY expensive, it was really important to me that the portraits continued to be polaroids). and heres the result:

 

this year was a lot more stable than last year, so the changes are more subtle. alice is bigger, my hairs longer, james has a better haircut, but were still at the same apartment, with the same jobs, and more or less the same life as last time. well have to see where next year takes us. 

do you have any odd family traditions? id love to hear about them.