feather earrings

I know you've seen them everywhere and I wasn't feeling it at first, but feather earrings are now one of my new favorite accessories for summer. They're a little tribal meets Steven Tyler but I love the natural trendy vibe they give off!

I got short black and white ones from Nordstrom and wear them with either plain t-shirts or sundresses and I loveee the way they look with my fedora!

(Nordstrom $10.00)

If you have longer hair the more dangly, the better! Rock just one so it looks like it's part of your hair, or if you have short hair, just one looks super edgy. If you want a more glam look, go for ones that have rhinestones or metal feathers woven into the actual feather. 

Just be sure you don't accidentally brush them when you're brushing your hair or else you'll damage them :( 

For some reason all the websites I wanted to use were being testy with pictures but stores like Urban Outfitters, Claire's, and Forever 21 all have great selections of feather earrings!

Go channel your inner indian princess! 

vanilla bean cupcakes

I had the day off, so of course that meant cupcake baking :) Nordstrom is currently having its annual Anniversary Sale, where its fall product comes in on sale and then goes back to full price at the end of the month. As you can imagine, it's been pretty busy and everyone's been working super hard so I wanted to bake something for the girls in my department.

I decided on vanilla bean cupcakes with vanilla buttercream frosting, and did the frosting in the colors of the Anniversary Sale logo.

The recipe called for a real vanilla bean, and they are probably the strangest thing I've ever baked with. When you eat vanilla ice cream vanilla beans are what cause the little black flecks in it. Incase you want to make these yourself, look for something packaged like this in the grocery store:

It took ten minutes of wandering around Giant with a lost look on my face before the store manager eventually came over and helped me find them haha.  This is what's inside:

So weird. Anyways, the cupcakes turned out okay, the batter was super thick and I prefer thicker batters to runny ones but I'm not in love with this cupcake. 

I ate three, of course, and in two of them I could definitely taste the salt, I'm not sure if I didn't mix the batter enough or added too much salt by accident, so if I make these again I'll either skip the salt or add an even smaller amount. 

The colors in the frosting didn't turn out as I wanted them to, but since I had to split the frosting into four different bowls I was hesitant about adding more food coloring because if there's too much you can taste it in the frosting. Below you can see the colors I was attempting to imitate and clearly did not create but I tried :) 

Overall, I wouldn't make this cupcake again because I'm not a huge vanilla fan but here are the recipes incase you want to try them! 

Cupcake: http://annies-eats.net/2010/01/05/vanilla-bean-cupcakes/

Frosting: http://annies-eats.com/2008/03/08/happy-21st-birthday-bro/

40% off!

I'm addicted to shopping for going out dresses, what college girl isn't? One of my new favorite websites for dresses is beta.amiclubwear.com and today everything is 40% off!


you're welcome. 


These are my two favorite dresses from there, let's say they're not for the conservative, but the red one was for my birthday so I figured I could get away with it and hey, we're in college and we'll never look like this again!

(black lace one shoulder)

Happy online shopping! 

double chocolate raspberry cupcakes

Today my boyfriend was visiting so I let him choose the kind of cupcakes he wanted me to bake and he decided on double chocolate raspberry, yummm.

I'm a devoted chocolate lover so this cupcake was a huge hit with me. It has a super moist chocolate cake, but the recipe calls for coffee, which gives it a kind of mocha flavor, a raspberry jam filling, and is topped with chocolate ganche and a fresh raspberry. 

I've never made a cupcake with filling before, so it was a little messy and not a lot of filling got inside the cupcake, probably because I was using an icing tube to insert it, so my next kitchen tool will definitely be a filling injector! We used fresh raspberries instead of the frozen ones the recipe called for and didn't filter out the seeds (due to laziness) but the filling still turned out delicious! 

I'd also never made a ganche before, but it isn't hard at all! We found that it spread better on the cupcakes  after being refrigerated for about 15 minutes. 

They turned out absolutely delicious and I can't wait to remake them once I get a proper filling tool! 

Here's the recipe, http://annies-eats.net/2010/07/07/double-chocolate-raspberry-cupcakes/

(Notice the cupcake apron from my very first post! Thanks mom<3)

Happy baking!

basic to bling

I've done it again, tried on something I shouldn't have at work and fallen in love with it only to be totally turned off by the price tag. This week's love interest is a pair of SteveMadden satin pumps, with the heels blinged out in rhinestones. Obsessed. 

Perfect height, platform, and comfortable? Hellooo my perfect party shoe. Ironically, this heel is called "Partyy-R" and comes with a $129.95 price tag. Then I got to thinking, I could totally make this myself! I had a pair of satin black pumps from Wet Seal with bows on the back that are a little bit too low for my taste and I couldn't bear to possibly destroy my favorite platform pumps so I decided to recreate these $139.95 SteveMadden heels instead:

Supplies:

hot glue gun

glue sticks

black heels

rhinestones

lotsss of patience 

Before:

(Don't mind the leftover mud from Halloween)

Glue the rhinestones in the middle of the bow first:

Then I just started on the inner edge of the bow and kept doing rows! 

Personally I think they turned out adorable! The shoes cost $26.00 originally, plus $21.00 for all the supplies, equaling a grand total of $47.00.  Compare at the orignal price of $140.00? Sorry SteveMadden! Plus now I get the bragging rights of saying I made them all on my own :) Happy bedazzling!

red velvet cupcakes

I wanted to make a festive cupcake for the 4th of July because it is my favorite holiday, so I decided to do a red velvet! Red velvet are great cupcakes to make if you're not sure of someone's preferences because the cake flavor doesn't really fall under vanilla or chocolate, and who doesn't love cream cheese frosting?

The recipe called for two tablespoons of red food coloring, so I thought that one little bottle would be enough, but that only gave me one tablespoon of coloring. Hence why the cupcakes are a little more on the pink side instead of the rich red I was hoping for. 

And I topped them with an obnoxious decorations from Giant, but I like to pretend the raspberry makes them a little more classy :) The raspberry goes really well with the cream cheese frosting, it reminds me of cheesecake a little! 

Happy Fourth! 

http://annies-eats.net/2010/09/17/red-velvet-cupcakes/

to splurge or not to splurge?

As you know, I love a good bargain, but with a fantastic price doesn't always come great quality. How many times have you bought something from forever 21, only to wear it twice and then have the zipper break? Don't get me wrong, I worship forever 21, but there comes a time when you're shopping for basic staples that you actually want to last, and that's when you have to ask yourself, to splurge or not to splurge?


Here are my dos and don'ts of splurging, because when you try to stretch your paychecks as far as they can, this kind of stuff really matters.

DON'T Splurge On:

1) Workout clothes - yes, I know, you want to look cute everywhere you go, but at the gym? if people are paying attention to what you look like then clearly they aren't focusing on what they went there to do. Yes I don't want to to look like a total slob when I workout, but I don't need to drop $45.00 on a cute workout top to achieve that.

Soffe shorts are like $7.99 and come in every color imaginable, pair them with a free t-shirt you got on campus, and hello, that's all you need to work out in! If you must, cut the t-shirt to be off the shoulder and match your sports bra to shorts!

But I do have an exception, you NEED a good pair of running shoes to prevent injuries, skip the ones that are mainly to look cute and make sure your arch and ankles are supported. 

2) Going out clothes - this is why stores like forever 21 and charlotte russe were invented! when you go out, you take lots of pictures and go to crowded parties where people spill things on you. Thanks to facebook, what you wear every weekend is documented and no one wants to be called an outfit repeater,  so instead of spending around $70 on a hot dress from Bebe, get three from forever! Plus if your $22.00 dress gets ruined due to sloppiness, who cares? you were really only going to wear it twice anyways :) 

3) Swim suits - see "don't underestimate wal-mart" post for a bikini that was $12.00 and is adorable. swim suits stretch out, fade in the sun, get all fuzzy from sitting on the edge of the pool, you get the picture. target and wal-mart have adorable swimsuits that are $30 and under and at that price you can get three new ones every summer for the price of one designer or victoria's secret suit. 

DO Splurge On: 

1) Good jeans - When you find that pair of jeans that makes your butt look amazing, is the perfect wash, and doesn't give you muffin top? go ahead, buy them. Good jeans are something you KNOW you'll wear and you want ones that will actually last you. I tried on a pair of J-Brand jeggings at work the other day, instantly fell in love and when I put my $17.00 forever jeggs back on, I thought I was actually wearing sandpaper. Yes, the jeggings are $118.00 (originally around $160.00 but marked down for the nordy's anniversary sale!) but I know that they'll last and that I'll wear them twice a week in the fall and winter. Look for ones in a dark wash and that are boot cut, you can wear boot cuts with heels and boots (duh) and they look great with flats and will never go out of style. 

2) Handbag - you can tell a lot about someone from their handbag, I'm not going to lie, when I see someone with LV stamped all over their purse I automatically think, oh they have a lot of money, and instantly see their outfit as expensive, when really they could be rocking a dress from american eagle. a well structured, basic handbag can really make an outfit look more expensive and when they're made out of study material, they'll last forever. I'm craving this longchamp bag, it's only $145.00 which to me is a lot to part with, but compared to other designer handbags is nothing, and I know it'd be great to tote my books to the library in.

3) Hair styling tools - Chi straighteners. once you've used one, you never want to use your con-air $24.99 flat iron again. Around $100.00, chis are expensive, but I've had mine for over 3 years and it still works just as perfectly as it did the day I got it. cheap hair tools can ruin your hair, look for ones with ceramic plates that help protect hair from heat damage, because if you're like me and have been trying to grow your hair out for the past two years, you want all the protection you can get. 

Be smart shoppers<3