Daily Ensemble: Summer Blues

the happy, fashiony kind!

I am loving this perfect summer dress from Urban Outfitters. Breezy and not to heavy, with a flattering shape.




Bea bought me the vintage 60's sunglasses as a present, I get lots of compliments on them. Coincidentally, both the scarf and belt are from a store I like to call Bea's Closet.




Bea has the dress in white, so we can match, just like the olden days!



The shoes are also from Urban, quite accidentally.




My current summer hobby, while Bea while studies/shops/eats across the ocean, is learning to play the Ukulele. I find it to be a thoroughly enjoyable instrument and highly recommend that you learn to play it. Perhaps when I can good enough, I will make a video for the blog.



Chester Chenpo watches my photo shoot from the garden.



and yawns...

Adorable Baking: Barbie Pies!

Hi Everyone, sometimes blogger, full time sister Leah here. Bea is busy being Italian so I thought I would share what I am up to on this glorious Chicago summer day. As you may know from my last time pitch hit blogging, I am an avid baker. Bea and I are big fans of a blog called Luxirare where they create "killer clothes and fine cuisine." Being complimentary sisters, Bea prefers the killer clothes part and I prefer the fine cuisine part. A couple of months back, there was a post about "Pie Pops," essentially pie lollipops and I was inspired. So a few nights ago, finding myself, as one often does in the summer, with some time on my hands, I decided to experiment.

These are the pie pops I was inspired by

Luxirare owns this photo. I have no claim on it.

So it begins with the crust. Nothing is more important in any kind of pie. Working with pie crust takes a bit of finesse and a lot of people find it very frustrating, but many Thanksgivings had prepared me for this project. My number one piece of advice is use LOTS of flour when rolling out your dough.



I always use Baking Illustrated when baking because they simply have the best recipes out there, so I was using their basic pie dough. I used two circular cookie cutters, one slightly bigger than the other.
Part two is the filling. I made three: apple, peach and summer berry. I made up the filling recipes myself but they are very easy. Just fruit, sugar, a little potato starch to thicken it up, and a few dashes of different spices depending on the fruit. It's all based on taste, if the filling doesn't taste good raw, it probably won't taste much better cooked.




So now we get to the fun part, or the incredibly labor intensive part depending on how you look at it. The general idea is to take the slightly smaller dough circle, put a little filling on it, stick a lollipop stick in, and top it with the slightly larger dough circle. They you take a lollipop stick and do the crimping around the edge that makes the finished product so pretty.






It was fun trying to trouble shoot problems I had since I was kind of making things up as I went along. When I was doing the crimping with the lollipop stick, I was having trouble getting all the way around, so I got out my cake decorating wheel so I could spin each pie around while I was working on it. I felt very clever indeed.





The last thing is to brush the tops with egg whites and sprinkle them with a little sugar. I swear, this is the touch that will have people thinking you bought your pies in a professional bakery. For some reason, that crispy top and sugar sprinkle makes people think you went to pastry school.





And when they came out, they looked lovely! All golden brown and smelling delicious.





So the lollipop sticks kind of half worked. Some of the held up great, but most of them didn't adhere to the crust so they were just kind of wiggling around inside their pie home, so I ended up pulling most of them out. But the pies still looked adorable. I had bought a lollipop kit at Joanne Fabrics, my home away from home, so I had cute little bags and ribbons for my pies, which I christened Barbie Pies. Because they are the perfect size for Barbie!







I hope you enjoyed by Barbie Pies, they make awesome gifts. People tend to react like you just gave them a puppy, Hey, both puppies and mini pies are cute. Happy Baking!

Siena: week 2

Wearing: jcrew headband, tory burch sunglasses, jcrew dress, uniqlo slip, ysl bag, matt berson sandals

This weekend we met up with a friend in Rome. The highlights were definitely a dinner at Taverna Romana (here's a really good article about the neighborhood it is in) and trekking up to the cupola of Saint Peter's while a mass was going on. We were planning on not shopping until a chance encounter with a woman on the street (she literally leaned out of her shop to tell us it was only open from 10pm until 2am) meant a 20 minute detour and the purchase of a bikini from the 1950's (unworn) and a cacharel cardigan decorated with cherries.

Returning to Siena really felt like coming home, and our sleepy little city is quickly transforming into a medieval town as preparations for the Palio are well under way. If you have never heard of the Palio I highly recommend a visit to wikipedia trip. I have decided to route for the chiocciola contrada, their mascot is a snail! (R. thinks I'm crazy but there is something wonderfully ironic about having a snail as your mascot for a race.)


A flag thrower from chiocciola in traditional medieval costume

We also ended up back at Aloe & Wolf today where I finally decided to buy a bowler hat. I also found some very nice vintage Italian ties for my dad, happy late father's day!

Speaking of which, I forgot to give a birthday shout-out to my sister (and sometimes co-blogger) Leah. Happy birthday Wintergreen, you're an adult now but I'm still going to tell you what to do because that's what big sisters are for.

Sono arrivato a Siena!

So far Siena has been amazing. Our host parents are wonderful, they always correct our Italian. Learning a new language is hard, but hugely rewarding. We had our first class at our new school today (which is housed in an old psychiatric hospital). R. and I ate lunch at a very good restaurant close to the Duomo, Taverna del Capitano. We also managed to find the only vintage store (I think) in Siena, Aloe & Wolf Vintage and art gallery.

The owners are a really cool woman, Alessandra Aloe and her boyfriend who I didn't get to meet. Her store is stuffed with the coolest italian vintage, R. and I spent an hour just looking through everything. She has an amazing designer selection which I mostly just ogled. I did try on a Moschino jacket from the 80's, but it was a little out of my price range. In the end I bought a dress and a belt and R. got a tie. I am still debating a bowler hat. I love when Rachel Weitz wears one in the Brother's Bloom but I don't know if I can pull it off!


I was too excited to stand still! Wearing: aritzia shirt, zara skirt, ysl bag

shopping ban update

Alrighty, so I finally have internet in my new apartment though getting it was a nightmare and a half. Comcast, we are in an enormous fight if you didn't already know.

In my last post I promised home improvement and cooking. The apartment is slowly starting to look like a home, but there are still areas that need work. My shoe collection desperately needs a home. At the moment its sitting in a yellow crate that I bought at the elephant trunk flea market. Yup, I finally made it and on the only sunday I could go this summer there was a hurricane warning so there weren't that many vendors or shoppers. I did manage to get a lamp ($5), the aforementioned crate ($7), some glass bottles ($4) and a book on the Palio ($20).

My cheat day has come and gone. I managed to restrain myself at Madewell and got one t-shirt.


So soft and I wear my other three all the time.

Jcrew seduced me into buying a very adorable shirt-dress. Since I am not a giant as this model appear to be the dress is a perfectly respectable length on me.



I resisted the lures of this one. (Indigo-stripe Schuyler dress, $168)


I am still debating the pros and cons of a fedora from jcrew which is not online yet. All in all I think I did very well. I am definitely avoiding urban outfitters at all costs, though I had to walk by on the way to the bookstore today and was almost won over by a sale rack.

A trip to target for household items was a challenge but I made it through.

Summah Posting

So obviously I'm slacking a little bit since it's summer. But soon I'll be back in New Haven to start my Italian class and I'm hoping with a little more routine in my life I'll be blogging more regularly.

I'm also planning on going on a shopping hiatus for these next three weeks, similar to the one that Rachel over at Heart of Light does. After reading her thoughts on last years hiatus (here) I decided to undertake my own with a few modifications. Mine will be 3 rather than 12 weeks and I will be still allowing furniture and thrift store purchases since I am trying to outfit a new apartment. The main thing I want to cut back on is new clothes. As I've been moving from dorm to new apartment and home I've come to realize how many clothes I have that I just don't wear.

I have built in one cheat day because I know R. and I are going to the mall one day soon ostensibly to return get him a new iphone but there is also a Madewell there and I doubt I will be able to resist.

So for the next three weeks I will be focusing more on home improvement and the adventures of learning how to cook. See you soon!

Ready for Siena

It's really nice to be home, even if the weather in Chicago is less than ideal. I've still managed to eat at most of my favorite restaurants (Penny's Noodle Shop, Riccardo Trattoria, and CBA to name a few) and shop a lot.

After a little research on weather.com I am preparing for a hot summer in Italy. So number one on my list was a hat. I have extremely pale skin and I burn red like a tomato with just a few hours in the sun. I found a few good options at urban but went with a cheaper alternative from forever 21 because I know it will probably get shmooshed quite a bit.

Next up on the list of must-haves: a white dress. I live in white in the summer, no matter how many pretty prints I buy I always reach for a clean white dress. I usually choose a simply shift style, but I couldn't resist a slightly more elaborate version from Anthropologie.


Wearing: forever 21 hat, anthropologie dress

I'll be sharing more summer essentials throughout the week, including but not limited to the heart sunglasses I finally found!