More than 30 strawberries in the pot.
Spring Strawberries
Style Soundbite: Big Foot
Overheard while shopping: “I’ve got big feet—I am very grounded on this earth.”
Fine Feathered Trend
Here’s a vendor selling feather jewelry on the boardwalk in Venice—a sure sign that a trend has hit the mainstream (and maybe already peaked?). It’s another ’80s style comeback and I like this one a whole lot more than the return of the scrunchie. When I was a teen, wearing feathers in your hair was all the rage and we wore colorful dyed ones attached to roach clips. (Because I was a good girl, I had no idea about the more common use of a roach clip—neither did my grandmother when she bought it for me at a shop in the mall.) The one I had for my hair was lavender and I clipped it behind my ear so that it peaked out from underneath my permed curls. Now I’m less inclined to wear actual feathers but am still drawn to the feather motif and found some cute handmade and vintage items on Etsy from fellow sellers on the EcoEtsy team to make a “Birds of a feather…” treasury.
Mermaids: Mardi Gras King Cake with a Twist
My friend Rebecca went to college in New Orleans and suggested we mark Mardi Gras with a New Orleans King Cake for dessert following our Sunday dinner party. The traditional version of the cake has a plastic baby doll hidden inside, but I suggested a small plastic mermaid (the kind you find on the side of a cocktail glass; we keep a few in our garden). Our friend Maya was the lucky one who found the mermaid in her piece of cake.
Eyes Everywhere
JR, the artist awarded the TED prize for his photographic murals, left his mark in my neighborhood last week with a close-up of a man’s piercing eyes. Yesterday, I saw a guy wearing a shirt with a print of the classic cover of “The Great Gatsby.” This morning, NY magazine’s “The Cut” blog posted a fashion week shot of a runway model with a Man Ray eye hat. Just purchased from Etsy: this milagro eye charm, said to offer protection from the evil eye. I’ll attach it to a necklace or bracelet.
This Just In: Lucky Irish Accessories
Added today to the Miss Stefanie Etsy shop (in time for St. Patrick’s Day orders): upcycled accessories using material from a necktie with a shamrocks pattern. The two fabric necklaces are made using material from a thrift store T-shirt and the tie; and the hairbands have scraps from jeans, chinos, khakis and the tie.
Beach Art: Paper House
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Discovered during a walk on the beach in Venice, CA.
Kid Rocks: Wild & Crazy Hair
My goddaughter Mary, 9, is a girl who likes to have fun with fashion, often putting together outfits that are unexpected and bold (and not just when she’s playing dress-up). For this look, her equally stylish mom braided her hair before bedtime to give her soft, natural waves and then added a few braids to her ponytail, using hairbands I sent her that have pieces of recycled fabric scraps tied to the band (leopard, grey fleece, camouflage).
This With That: Scarf on Bag
I never tire of my Goyard bag, but I frequently employ the scarf-tied-to-the-handle trick for some added flair. Though I never try to match a scarf to a bag, I like how the pattern on this thrift store scarf has a similar hand-drawn affect.
Rock On: Upcycled Fashion at the Oscars
As a dabbler in creating upcycled fashion and accessories, I love to see something shiny and like-new recreated from something unwanted and old—rescued second-hand pieces from a dusty rack that are given new life. I frequently find items of clothing at thrift shops that look promising until I find a stain across the chest, a tear near the neckline, or some other wear-and-tear defect that makes the garment undesirable in its present form. But then I think, hmmm, maybe there’s hope. While so many eyes were on Colin Firth at the Oscars (smoking hot in Tom Ford), I was particularly interested in a closer look at his lovely wife, Livia, who owns a shop that sells eco-friendly merchandise and writes a blog for Vogue UK on green fashion. Livia Firth has become a stylish ambassador for green, making it her mission this year to always wear clothing at events from designers who use organic fabrics and employ eco-friendly practices in the creation of the garments. She calls it her “green carpet challenge.” For the Oscars, Firth’s Oscar gown was upcycled, created by Gary Harvey with material from 11 vintage dresses. Great detail: the dresses came from the same era as “The King’s Speech,” the movie for which her husband won the Academy Award. Gorgeous.
Leopard Love
My friend WendyB has written frequently about her love of leopard. Take a look at the Patrick Kelly leopard dress on her. She positively roars in that leopard, but I’m more of a fraidy cat (yep, puns intended). I have a fondness for leopard print, but I’ve always been shy about it and stick to a few choice accessories. Best ones: the London Sole ballet flats I wear with jeans (skinny or wide-legged look best) and a black top or sweater; and a long skinny scarf I wear in my hair on good or bad hair days. (See the scarf modeled above on Buttons, my childhood teddy bear.) I’ve been less inclined to wear leopard clothing, but found a blouse during one of my recent thrifting missions for my Etsy shop. It’s got a leopard print with roses and seemed like a good find on the rack, but I wasn’t sure of the shirt’s age or origin and I won’t sell list anything in the vintage section of my shop unless I’m sure of its history. Then I tried it on and it became mine. Another recent thrift store find was a jersey T-shirt in a leopard print, but I discovered a hole in it after bringing it home so I’m using the fabric to make accessories, including hair bands and jersey necklaces like the one pictured. Next up: upcycled shirts with leopard fabric details I’m adding to the neckline. On a roll…. Wendy also posted that fellow blogger Sheila has declared this to be leopard week. Today, I’m representing with my flats.
Leftover Meat Mondays: Pasta with Sausage and Baby Broccoli
Mr. MVP and I talked about being part of the “Meatless Monday” movement. We didn’t have to be convinced that going meatless at least one day a week can be good–for the environment, for your health, for your wallet. So we enjoyed a few consecutive meatless Mondays. But then we had extra chicken from a Sunday barbecue and wanted to make tacos with the leftovers on Monday. And then we had some remaining steak from another Sunday dinner and decided to make bolognese sauce the next day with the leftovers. We grill a lot on the weekends and don’t like to let leftovers go to waste, so now we’re going to try for Meatless Tuesdays or Wednesdays and we’re going to make sure we compose leftover meals that don’t feel like leftover meals–making them good enough to be prepared and enjoyed any day, even if you aren’t trying to use what you don’t want to waste.
Yesterday:
Italian sausage on the grill, part of a mixed grill and pizza dinner
Leftovers:
Sausage
Today’s Leftovers Meal:
Pasta with baby broccoli and sausage
Pasta with Baby Broccoli and Sausage
While pasta of your choice is cooking, cut the leftover sausage into bite-size pieces. In a saucepan, saute several cloves of garlic in olive oil until garlic is soft but not browned. Add 1/2 cup vegetable stock and baby broccoli and cover until broccoli is tender but still firm. Remove broccoli and add sausage bites to the saucepan with a splash of some more vegetable stock and cook on medium until heated. Toss pasta with sausage, broccoli, and parmesan cheese. Enjoy.
Dreamy Inspiration
Photo taken at Will Rogers State Park.
More Purple Love
Even before seeing purple represented so well at the Oscars last night, I have been thinking about how it’s time the color made a comeback in my closet. The pictured book was a gift from my parents many years ago and includes the poem by Jenny Joseph about wearing purple.
Purple Love
Fantasyland Memories
Here’s the ID bracelet mentioned previously in a post on things I wear that make me feel young. I made this bracelet when I was a teen, using the glass turquoise beads from a broken set of rosary beads and lettered beads I got from a shop on Long Island called Fantasyland. My mother shopped at Fantasyland for all her crafting needs—and it was one of my favorite places for tagging along. Mom went to the section with dried flowers and other materials for her wreath-making and flower-arranging; I went to the bead section and marveled at all the colors and varieties. On a counter in the jewelry section was a large fishbowl filled with hundreds of lettered beads and I remember digging for the letters in my name. The first bracelet I made was by stringing those lettered beads with colored plastic ones on elastic thread. Later I taught myself to cut and twist wire to make chains of beads (using rosary beads as my model), but the elastic bracelet was a hit with junior high friends who paid me to make them similar bracelets and necklaces. I was happy for my own reason to visit Fantasyland and to collect some cash for doing something that was so much fun. Making stuff, including jewelry, still ranks as one of my favorite activities. When I recently consolidated all my beads and jewelry-making materials in plastic bins, I found the pictured Fantasyland postcard and other beads acquired way back when—including the remaining beads from the rosary used to make the ID bracelet, which I put to use by making the dangly earrings seen to the right of the bracelet.
Memory Lane: Coach’s Lessons Part 2
I love finding inspiration in unlikely places, like on the side of a cookie box. I posted last week about a Teddy Roosevelt quote I learned from my high school track coach. The quote is printed on a box of Bart’s cookies I found at Whole Foods. I bought the cookies because of the claim on the front of the box that they’re “The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies in the World.” Them’s fighting words—and then I spotted the real fighting words on the side. Good cookies, but I still believe homemade ones are best.
Grown Girls Dream of Unicorns, Too
Wise people say you should do what you love; for those in business, that translates to selling what you love. When I shipped this vintage unicorn locket/pendant to a buyer, I packed it up slowly, thinking a bit woefully about how I liked it enough to want to keep it. When I shop for my Etsy shop—for everything from vintage clothing, jewelry, and accessories to T-shirts I then remake into upcycled styles—I choose what I love. In the beginning, I wanted to keep it all. Now, I will sometimes get to the point of photographing an item when I reconsider—just for a moment or two. I paused with the unicorn pendant. A unicorn pendant! Of course, I’m happy to make a sale and excited that someone out there will wear it and treasure it. But I’m going to be on the lookout for another unicorn pendant to call my own.
Closet-Cleaning: Love It or Lose It
I read about a survey in which the average English woman was said to own more than 20 pieces of clothing she never wears. You know, the neglected items that hang at the back of the closet or get pushed to the bottom of the dresser drawer. I’m betting the same would hold true for American women. I get it. I’ve purchased items that have never gone into heavy rotation—and some I’ve never worn at all. Sometimes I find myself wanting to love an item and trying to talk myself into loving it. It might be by a designer I usually love, it might have been a total steal, it might be perfect except for the way it hangs on my hips. It just doesn’t look right? It’s gone. It just doesn’t feel right? Gone. I have adopted a strict closet admittance policy: I have to love it. It has to fit right and feel right and look right. Love it or lose it, plain and simple.
I am a big thrift shopper and encounter huge bargains regularly and this has made me discriminating—even if it’s a Marc Jacobs top with a five dollar price tag, I won’t get it if it’s the wrong size or in a color I don’t like to wear. (Exception to the rule: if it looks like something I could remake or alter it by employing some simple DIY tricks with a needle and thread, then I might get it…). Because I often find items I DO love while thrifting, I truly believe that what is trash to one woman really can be a treasure to another. I live for treasures. And for the items I have that don’t pass my love-it-or-lose-it test, there’s eBay. I went through the closet last week for another sweep and put the items online for treasure-hunters. A Levi’s jacket with nothing wrong with it? I have another denim jacket I adore and this one simply sat in the closet for a year. But someone else already scooped it up. I’ve got similar stories for the Theory pants, Trina Turk jacket, Barneys New York blouses and more….
Nature’s Inspiration: Pink Jasmine
The jasmine is blooming on the porch and I get to breathe in the rich and sweet blossoms before leaving for work in the morning and when coming home at the end of the day. I love the deep pink buds that hold the delicate white flowers. It’s like the pink of my don’t-leave-home-without-it lip gloss, Jane Iredale’s Cosmo PureGloss. So when I find myself having to refrain from gobbling up the flowers because they smell so good, I put on a little gloss and dab on some of Aftelier’s jasmine solid perfume, another makeup bag staple that comes with me wherever I go.
Stef McDonald 