les queues de sardines

well, yesterday i woke up too late to take photos, and today i had my tripod all set and realized that my camera had been switched to 'on' all night long and, subsequently, died. so once again no outfit today; and i ate leftover chinese food, so no food post, either. what i DO have is this incredible tights brand that an old friend from chicago sent me over the weekend and i have been ogling ever since.








they are hard to find in the states; the websites that carry them here only seem to carry a style or two, and those are often sold out. your best bet, i think, is to check out enigmatic smile - they're based in the UK but have free international shipping, so you may be able to convince yourself it's a reasonable idea.

have a wonderful friday, and enjoy your weekend! sam and i plan on stealing away to connecticut to meet with wedding vendors and relax in the comfort of a real house, complete with tv and washer/dryer. what are you guys doing, anything exciting?

until next time,

xo audrey

tory burch, two ways

hello! happy monday (oxymoron?) monday is actually my tuesday, which i think lessens the blow a bit. how was your weekend? mine was really nice, if a bit exhausting - my parents came into town on friday night, so we went out for really good senegalese food and then came back to my place for fresh fruit galettes. (a recipe i've been meaning to post for some time, actually - i have this amazing recipe now for really buttery, flakey galette dough. will post this week.) (in fact, as i think over this post, i'm pretty sure it's going to remind me of several recipes that need posting asap, so stay tuned!) saturday afternoon my mom and i met up to do some bridal shopping. i was so happy to get to see her and getting to do a bit of wedding shopping was really wonderful, since i just bought my dress online and didn't get the experience of dress shopping with my mama. we checked out the j crew bridal shop first, which i have to say was a bit of a disappointment - very small, with a very limited selection. i'm letting my bridesmaids choose their own dress, and i already have mine, so there wasn't much for me to see there. my shoes, i think, will be a challenge; we're getting married outside, in my future in-laws backyard, in fact, so i want to be careful to get shoes that won't turn their lawn into swiss cheese - but sam is a good 6 or so inches taller than i am, so a little height will be helpful when it comes to that whole "you may now kiss the bride" part. any suggestions?

we DID find a perfect place to get a veil. bridal veil falls is run by a very sweet woman named margaret who makes all of the veils and headpieces herself; i walked in there with no clue what i wanted. i showed her my dress and she immediately showed me some lace that matched it almost perfectly; within twenty minutes we'd come up with a design for a perfect little veil. i'm super excited.

stayed up late last night baking stuff for a meeting i had this afternoon with tory burch. the meeting went really well and i think (and hope!) i'll be working with them in one way or another soon. here's a peek of what i made. . .



malted vanilla cupcakes with white chocolate buttercream and a sprinkle of peppermint



cinnamon thumbprints with caramel apple kisses



apple pie lollipops

along with some others. coincidentally (or is it?!) this is national women's business week, and i want to mention the tory burch foundation. the non-profit helps provide loans to women who are trying to open their own small businesses, which is certainly a cause i believe in; take a look, shop or donate, and just leave a comment below to be entered to win their cd.

okay. so much more to come, i promise!

xo audrey

hot child in the city

i don't mean to suggest that i am "hot," at least not in any sense except the sweaty, sleepy, sticky one. my apartment has no air conditioning (which i suppose is normal in new york, but it shouldn't be) and sam attempted to do me a solid and install an ac unit yesterday only to discover after lugging the thing a couple of states, up a flight of stairs and into the back room, that it doesn't work. so, i sweat.

i also jump. i write this while lying on my bed (and, to be honest, catching up with lost [i have no tv so i had to wait for hulu,]) and my favorite bedspread is falling apart, releasing little bits of feather all over the place; the fan i have set up keeps blowing them and out of the corner of my eye it looks like my bed is being consumed by white, furry spiders. oh, hello summer. nice to see you again.

but, not to complain. i know i've been away awhile; so what have i been up to? mostly just the usual - working, sleeping, hangin' with my man, cooking, hanging, shooting hoops. yes, sam and i have taken to playing some one on one, and i even win a few games! which sounds impressive when i tell you my fiancé is 6'2" and much less impressive if i told you what my handicaps were. but i digress. i am coming to terms with the fact that having a job where you a. start at 7 am, b. work for 8 hours with no breaks, and c. spend the entirety on your feet, lifting things, mixing things, and pulling things in and out of a hot oven, you are bound to be pretty damn exhausted after, and that's okay. so i'm going to continue to blog, as flakey as i may be, when i really wanna blog. and i thank those of you who've stuck with me.

thursday night is my friday and this past one i had a dinner party for a few friends i hadn't seen in awhile; i spent the days beforehand preparing a menu (with much input from sam,) and then making as much ahead of time as i possibly could, which led to much more enjoyment of the party itself and much less time spent in the kitchen than usual. the food turned out pretty damn good, too: a beet salad with a mini tomato tart, homemade basil goat cheese ravioli, and acai berry ice cream. of course i had a few drinks while the night commenced (ahem) and didn't take as many photos as i should have, but what can ya do.




man, sloppy pictures. i hate that. the dessert was so pretty, too.

perfect pasta.

1 1/2 cups semolina flour
2 eggs
2 T water
2 T olive oil
1/2 t salt
some all-purpose flour for dusting

whisk together the semolina flour and the salt. make a well in the middle and add the eggs, water, and oil; mix with a wooden spoon until it's all come together. add a bit of water or a bit of flour as needed; it should stick together but not be super sticky. wrap in plastic and let it rest for about 20 minutes, then knead it on the ap flour for about ten minutes, until it's stretchy and elastic. use a pasta machine (i have a pretty cheap-o one from amazon.com and it works awesome) to cut into whatever size and shape you want. you can also easily add a couple of tablespoons of chopped herbs of your choice to this for a bit of flava.

and now for clothes! huzzah! i must apologize for the silly pose. most of you have blogs - do you ever try to take an outfit picture only to realize after the shutter's gone off that the only picture that isn't blurry or otherwise unwatchable is the one where you're doing something kind of stupid? this is one of those.



i've been looking for a good pair of shorts for awhile now; somehow i've ended up with only very brightly colored and VERY short shorts from last summer. i happened into a j crew outlet this past weekend and found two pairs that are great colors and the perfect length, so i'm hoping to get a lot of use from them. this is a dress i bought back in the dorms in college off a roommate of a friend of mine, and then shortened - unfortunately, a bit too much, so now i am forced to wear it as a kind of tunic-top. the necklace is one i've had since high school, i think, but broke awhile back; it was always shorter than i wanted it so today i just attached another necklace to the opposite side and voila, problem solved. i am noticing my overuse of semicolons, by the way, and i swear to do something about it in the next post.

dress: purchased off a girl in college
necklace: off a small and now out-of-business shop called kaleidescope in carbondale, illinois
shorts: j crew outlet
shoes: pour la victoire

all right. that's enough from me for now, although i promise more soon - i have a pretty free week ahead and lots i still want to share.

xo audrey

dr. shopaholic (or, how i learned to stop shopping and walk away from the herve leger.)

good morning! today's post is mostly a day of catch-up, as i have pretty much been going non-stop since sunday morning. that afternoon amy and i moseyed up to a mexican brunch place with unlimited mimosas (and terrible coffee, not the best tradeoff) and then headed to williamsburg to see grizzly bear and beach house. shit was crazy. i thought getting into girl talk the week before was insane; the line to see 'two weeks' live was at least 7 hipster-filled blocks long. so instead we loitered on the street for awhile, listening through the fence, then headed into union square so amy could do some proper new york city shopping, 5th avenue style. in fact, we spent so much time in anthropologie we didn't make it anywhere else; but amy got some cute tops and i bought a pair of circus pants.


fitting room fancy.

after they kicked us out of anthropologie, we went to pret a manger and got some sandwiches and salads and walked to the park and sat and talked and talked and talked. dear god, but i love this girl. i don't really consider myself a 'girl person' - i have a few girl friends whom i am very close with, because it is so rare for me to find a girl i feel like i can really connect with, but when you find a good one it's the best thing in the world. we packed up our goods and went to hotel delmano (brooklynites, if you haven't been here, do, it's fabulous,) and imbibed a few cocktails over some more great conversation. home, bed.

monday we woke up reasonably early (i for some reason woke at 7 and couldn't get back to bed, so i downloaded the new madmen and double-watched it like some kind of junkie) and walked to choice market around the corner from my place for fresh pastries and good coffee, then walked to the train and headed back into union square. j crew, banana republic, aldo, h&m, and several hundred dollars between us later, we staggered away from the stores with arms full of bags and once again had salad in the park before heading down to soho for red flower, which amy had been dying to visit, and a stop in a vintage designer shop where i fell in love with a herve leger that i can never, ever afford. i've been wanting to try one on forever, since seeing them on gilt a few months ago and how fabulously tight they are while still (somehow) being so flattering. so i tried one on and snapped a sneaky (somewhat blurred) dressing room photo.


on the left, the herve leger. drool. it fit like a glove. and on the right, a near miss at h&m; i felt a little bit too much like a rollerdisco girl. i may go back and rescue it later.



finally, what i actually wore:
pants: anthropologie
sweater: gap
necklace: bluberi brooklyn
pants: devotte
belt: anthropologie

i felt a bit like a gap model than usual yesterday. wearing pants makes me feel like i'm going to a job interview, but it's been so perfectly fallish in new york that warmer clothes are kind of required. so many purchases this week (i really. have. to. stop.) that will be making cameos in the coming days.

and the countdown to the weardrobe conference! holy shit. this friday - monday; sadly i'll miss some of it due to class and my trip to chicago, but i am sooo pumped to meet everyone and see what they have in store for us.

until tomorrow,

xo audrey

antiquing

good morning! i got an early start this morning with some breakfast at the french place near my apartment (iced latte and a baguette with jam and butter), sorted through the unemployment mess (i think i fixed it, cross your fingers for me), and decided to play a little dress-up to show some of the things i got at the antique fair and make up for the laziness of last night's post.

first let me go through the weekend a bit. i had a nightmare of a time getting to newark airport - i've never so much as set foot in jersey before, but was told that it would be easy enough to get to penn station and then just take any NJ-bound train from there. my flight was super at 6:30 am, so i decided to just leave early in the morning/late at night and get to the airport early to sleep, so i was sure not to sleep through my flight. of course the trains to jersey didn't start running out of penn until after 5 am (a fact i unfortunately discovered upon arriving at the station at not quite 4 am) so i ended up barely making my flight on time and getting about 2 hours of sleep in the process. sam picked me up from the airport and we went to his parents' to pick up the pup and then went straight to sleep. noon-ish we got up and headed to jam, a new brunch place right near sam's apartment. it was incredible (and sam's buddy alex designed the logo, and sam the menu, so we ate for free.) i had an eggs benedict with pork belly and spinach hollandaise; it was the first of much pork belly to be consumed this weekend. i'm kind of obsessed.

after breakfast, sam took me to the antique market on randolph. somehow during my five years of life in chicago i never made it out there - it is incredddible. sam says it's usually bigger than it was this weekend, too. of course my stupid camera died before i had a chance to take any photos of it, but i did pick up quite a few gems, and here's an outfit to show it.



hat: vintage, bought at antique fair
shirt: quail
skirt: actually a dress from h&m, i folded in the top (and i like it much better this way)
shoes: devotte
gloves: vintage, antique fair
clutch: vintage, antique fair
brooch: vintage, gifted from dee

there's more, too, but too much to involve in one outfit. and there was a woman there selling vintage fancy schmance purses (can purses be couture? what do you call fancy purses? this from the girl who seriously, until about 6 months ago, thought haute couture was pronounced "hot coacher.") not realizing how much gems such as these can cost, i picked up this miu miu and inquired about the price; upon hearing it i quickly set it back down. but it's amazing. and for a split second, i was tempted.


this bag was nearly impossible to find on the internet - i think it was only a concept bag never released in the US (or so it seems from my googling.) maybe it would have been worth the investment after all. . .


last, a quick post to tag the clothes i wore on the way to chicago: they're new, and new favorites as well, so they need to be labelled.



shirt: interlud, from smith & butler
pants: rodebjer, from dear fieldbinder
shoes: jeffrey campbell, from oak
belt: anthropologie


much love, muchachos -

xo audrey