a fancy outfit for a fancy party.

my middle sister, emily, turned 19 last week and celebrated with a "fancy dessert party" saturday night. and by "fancy dessert party" she meant that everyone was supposed to dress fancy and come over to my moms house for a dessert bar. obviously i was super excited about this because, first of all, dessert bar (and not just any desserts, made by my mom desserts), and second of all i havent exactly had much opportunity for dressing fancy lately with it being summer and us being broke and all. i probably spent the entire week brainstorming outfit ideas, and heres what i wore to the party:

dress: hand-me-down, tights: cotton on, shoes: aldo (purchased at wasteland melrose),  necklace: vintage, bracelet: tiffany, glasses: zenni optical

so this dress. it was in my sisters closet. with the tags still on it. when she gave it to me, i started giving her a hard time about buying clothes and not wearing them, and apparently this dress was given to her by someone else. this dress. this totally super cute and flattering and comfortable and all around awesome (ok, maybe the fabrics a little thin and it needs a slip, but every girl has a million slips, right? or is that just me?) dress was just sitting around in peoples closets not getting worn. how sad is that? needless to say, i was more than happy to take it off her hands and give it a loving and appreciative home. 

but seriously, i cant get over how much i love this dress, especially the teeny little pleats in the skirt:

and how the lace overlay on the bodice went perfectly with my vintage pearl necklace (which i scored at the torrance antique fair for $3):

i also wore heels. which is a pretty huge deal because ive only worn heels like two or three times since alice was born. but lately ive been reading a lot of blogs by other moms with toddlers and ive been seeing a lot of outfit posts with fancy dresses and heels. heck, emily at the freckled fox is a million weeks pregnant still wearing heels all the time so if she can do it so can i. 

and i did:

it actually wasnt bad at all. honestly im not even sure what i was trying to avoid by wearing flats all the time but i think now ill probably start wearing heels more often. these are actually the "real" shoes that i bought for my wedding. i was really sad that i didnt get to wear them then because they looked SO cute with my 20s style lace dress, but my "aisle" was a steep stone pathway and i was REALLY sick the week before my wedding so i could barely even stand up straight in the flats i ended up wearing. anyways, im glad that i still have them and get to wear them now, because i probably would never have bought shoes this nice under any other circumstances. 

now, since my mom is far too modest to show off her amazing parties herself, i also thought id share a few photos of all the wonderful decorations and desserts that she made for the party so that everyone out there can see how great she is.

like this super sweet paper bunting:

and wine bottle centerpieces:

heres the drink table (stocked with my favorite sparkling lemonade, too!):

 and the dessert table: 

which featured (from left to right) cookies, mini apple pies, cake pops, chocolate dipped strawberries, cupcakes, mini peach cobblers, chocolate dipped marshmallows, peanut butter bars, and (just outside the frame) mini strawberry shortcakes. AND all of it was homemade, except the cookies, which were from diddy riese, but thats better than homemade anyway. 

and because my mom is the greatest ever, she even accommodated the guests with dietary restrictions by making vegan cupcakes (also please notice the cake stands, which she made from candlesticks and plates):

 and gluten-free apple pies:

probably the best dessert of the night (even though i couldnt eat it) was the make-your-own ice cream sandwich and milkshake station: 

because diddy riese cookies (if youre not from the la area, diddy riese is a bakery near ucla that has THE BEST cookies EVER):

i actually didnt really take any pictures of people at the party, but thats because my sisters boss set up a super amazing photo booth. i mean SERIOUSLY: 

does my family know how to party or what?

happy birthday emily! 

studio dinners. a lesson in flexibility.

if you dont know me in real life, i feel like i should tell you that im a little OCD and have a tendency to be kind of uptight. and if you do know me in real life you know that what i said was so much of an understatement that it was pretty much an outright lie. i feel like most of the time i do a really good job at hiding this particular flaw of mine (unless, of course youve been in the car with me when ive gotten lost or forgotten something) by doing my best to channel it into something productive. like to-do lists. and schedules. and groceries. 

and if you havent noticed, weve had a rather, well unusual couple weeks (read more here and  here) and this has been a bit more of a challenge than usual. especially in the food department. see, i make my weekly meal plan and buy our groceries on wednesdays, and our apartment flooded on friday. meaning that meals were already planned and groceries were already purchased, and now i had to spend the week in an apartment with an even smaller and less functional kitchen without access to all the supplies id need to prepare said meals (not to mention, several of them were very labor/equipment intensive). and now i had to re-plan almost everything while still using up as much of our existing groceries as possible (especially since the studio didnt have any pantry space). honestly i was more upset about that than i was about spending nine nights sleeping on our crappy futon. 

i seriously contemplated just going to fresh & easy and getting like 700 frozen dinners and just eating those all week, but i knew i could do better than that. instead i challenged myself to make real dinners, good dinners, every night that we were home (which ended up not being that many). i had two main challenges: 1. obviously one big weekly grocery trip wasnt going to work, so i had to resign myself to going to the store  as needed for just a few things (which is terribly inefficient but i just had to get over that) and 2. the physical limitations of the studio kitchen meant that all meals had to use as few dishes as possible, since the sink/counter area was tiny and all dishes had to be washed and dried immediately after using them. 

and now i am very, very proud to announce that i did it! i present to you, for your viewing pleasure, our "real dinners" for the week:

hash brown potatoes with vegetarian chili

salmon with rice and roasted broccoli

mini pizzas with yellow squash

tuna melts with roasted broccoli

so it turns out, the world will not fall apart if i have to re-arrange my meal plan a bit and skip the grocery schedule for a week. who knew?

our week in review. and our favorite cheap date.

probably the best thing to come out of our crappy living situation last week is that we did everything in our power to be at home as little as possible, we ended up having a really fun and busy week.

saturday we got to spend some time with our arizona friends (and they were kind enough to help us move):

then monday we met my old friends from portland at the pier, where we saw a very large pelican:

and alice literally only wanted to play in front of the kite store:

(after that we went to the park and i found $20!). tuesday alice and i went to the beach, then after james got home we all went out for dinner (because that $20 was REALLY burning a hole in my pocket). wednesday alice and i went to storytime AND the park. thursday we had dinner with friends. friday we went to the beach again, because why the heck not? saturday was my sisters super fun birthday party (which was probably my moms cutest party so far, pictures coming soon):

sunday there was after-church potluck, and then monday afternoon we FINALLY started the moving process. wow, just typing all that was draining, and thats not even all the stuff we did. needless to say that yesterday we were all pretty spent, and our fridge was completely empty from me avoiding the grocery store all week, so we went out for our favorite cheap family date:

we started the night at micky finzz in redondo beach, for tacos:

if we didnt have other stuff going on most of the time id probably go there every tuesday, since dinner for the three of us (alice only eats chips and beans off our plates) comes out to only $14 AFTER tax and tip (they raised their prices recently, it used to only be $12, but i still think its pretty great). 

then we followed dinner with ice cream from handels:

because conveniently enough, single scoops are only $2 on tuesdays. and this isnt just any scoop of ice cream, its a huge scoop of super amazing homemade ice cream thats probably some of the best ice cream ive ever had. 

so thats what we did while i was gone. i wish i could say that now im going to go sleep for a few days, but unfortunately ive got work in the morning and weve still got LOTS of unpacking and organizing to do. oh well...