I had plans to meet some blog friends to celebrate Jessie’s birthday earlier this week after work at local French bakery Amelie’s. The weather was fickle – sort of hot, sort of cold. Gotta love the summer to fall transition time. Layers anyone?
While I was trying to figure out what to wear, I spotted this stripey sundress that I didn’t really wear much this summer. I decided to add some layers to it to help transition the dress with the weather.
I played dress up for a couple quick minutes to see which layers I liked best, and I took some photos to share with you guys.
Here’s the sundress.
Question for you fashionistas: How do you feel about cinching a dress/top with an empire waist with a belt? The way the belt doesn’t line up with the waistline of the dress sort of drives me crazy, so I don’t think I could actually wear a belt with a dress like this. Thoughts?
Anywho, I decided to add an unbuttoned shirt-dress, cinched with a skinny, gold belt over both dresses. And I went with some wedges since this may be the last day warm enough to wear them. I’m trying to milk these summer wardrobe items for all they’ve got while I can. 
I brought a blazer along in case it was cold inside the restaurant.
Outtakes: I considered just wearing a scarf, but it was a little muggy for that. I did like the look with a shirt dress…and some boots would really make this a great fall outfit IMO.
Ensemble:
Dress: Bee Stitched via Francesca’s
Shirtdress: Converse via Target
Belt: J Crew
Wedges: Aldo
Purse: Ziordia
Necklace: I made it
We got some new Great Harvest bread – Flax Oat Bran and the irresistible Cinnamon Chip. I had 2 slices almost immediately – toasted with butter. Mmm…not quite as good as toasted with White Chocolate PB, but tasty nonetheless.
I met up with my friends and we grabbed a spot in the Atrium area behind Amelie’s.
I hadn’t had dinner yet, and especially since I had the Cinnamon Chip bread at home already, I was feeling something savory. I ordered the soup – a bowl of the Spinach Asparagus – one of my fave soups of theirs.
The soup came with 2 small pieces of bread, but I was feeling carb-hungry, so I ordered an extra quarter of baguette. When in a French bakery, right? The best part of the bread was the free orange marmalade (that they said they make in house) they gave me. It was Not So Sweet and slightly tart. I wonder if they sell the stuff because I would totally buy it.
Reader question: Do you transition your summer clothes to cooler weather? What are your tricks for successful clothing transition?
On Sunday, we took my parents to The Flying Biscuit for breakfast.
They’d never been before, but they loved it!
We wanted to get a semi-early breakfast in so we could hit up IKEA before it got too busy.
IKEA seems to be one of the main things people want to visit when they’re in the area, even for my parents. My dad was interested in checking out a paper lantern that he’d seen online. He’s a big fan of paper lanterns and has had them in our house for as long as I can remember. Unfortunately, he didn’t like them as much in person. Fortunately, he found a couple other paper lanterns to get instead.
Hubby and I were going to scope out furniture for our still semi-empty house.
We liked this china cabinet to potentially go in our dining room.
And we need a new bed frame. I love the ones with under-bed storage, though I did see a neat roll out box that can apparently go under any bed. I’m just big on efficiently using space, and there is so much you can put under a bed!
We also liked these lamps to possibly go in our living room or guest room.
Please note that the lamp is taller than my mom. 
But we couldn’t leave IKEA without one of the $1 cinnamon rolls. Yum!
After our IKEA shopping trip, my parents had to head back home…and just like that they were gone again. I’m so glad we finally have a second bed in the house because I’m hoping more people will visit us…especially our families! I’m hoping we have many more fun weekends like this one.
For lunch, we had grilled hot dogs, sweet potato fries, and steamed green beans (from my family’s garden).
And even though I had a ton of things to do, I took some time to relax with some DVR’ed Cold Case…
…a new Apple Spice IKEA candle, and some hot tea.
We had some more of my parent’s veggies for dinner in salad form. The spinach was from the store, but we sliced up a green bell pepper and some fresh tomato from my fam. Home-grown tastes so good! Maybe because they’re grown with love?
And for dinner…we actually had a hand from Maggiano’s. They’re doing a new deal on their classic pastas where if you order one to eat, you get one to go! My parent’s gave ordered lasagna as their take-home and gave it to us.
I baked rosemary focaccia to go with the lasagna.
And even though the bread took awhile overall, dinner was a cinch. Thanks Maggiano’s for helping us with dinner!
Reader question: Do you make time for relaxation no matter how busy/crazy your schedule is? How do you relax?
After my fun morning of Zumba and unique eats from around the world, I came home to a nice surprise – my parents made it to town and…
…I found out hubby baked me a birthday cake, my fave (yellow with chocolate frosting), from scratch. That’s right. From scratch! He baked the whole thing and even made the frosting. Talk about impressive, right?! 
My parents wanted to go out for an early dinner. I tried to talk them into hitting up a local fave, but they really wanted Maggiano’s since they don’t have it back home. My dad used to frequent the place when he traveled for work, and I think he misses it.
We scored a cool seat in the upper level of the restaurant with a great view of the tables below.
Signature salad
Bruschetta for the table
Spaghetti with meatballs for my parents and the Rigatoni ‘D’ for hubby and me.
Mom and dad had an interesting interaction over their pasta.
I love watching these guys in action.
Aren’t they cute?
Even though we had dessert waiting back home, we decided to share one dessert at the table.
We tried the pound cake, which sounds simple, but was surprisingly tasty. They served the cake with ice cream, chocolate sauce and caramelized bananas. Yesss!
Don’t worry, I saved room for birthday cake for later.
***
I never thought hubby would bake me a cake from scratch. He’s not nearly as into cooking/baking as I am, and a homemade cake with frosting is not an easy project to tackle. I’m so impressed!
Reader Question: What’s the most surprising and impressive thing someone has done for you for your birthday?
by Diana on September 27, 2011
in Eats,Life
Saturday ended up being quite the fun-filled day.
Things started out simple: I sipped coffee, ate breakfast, and made final preparations in the guest room since my parents were visiting later that day.
I made sure to set out towels and a welcome tray with a couple useful items in case they forgot to pack anything…or wanted some tea. My parents are big Celestial Seasonings fans. I pretty much grew up drinking the stuff thanks to them.
While I was waiting for my parents to make it to town, I had plans with my friend Sarah to do a Saturday morning Zumba class (feels good to be getting back into the swing of things!) and then head out to a local event – an International Festival at UNCC. Class was bangin and we totally worked up an appetite for some international eats.
***
Here are some photos from the festival:
Chick pea fritters at the Guyana tent.
These made for a tasty starter.
From the Taiwan booth I tried the winter-melon tea, which tasted like a smoky tea to me, though overall had a similar flavor to Southern tea. It was very unique, though not as much so as the Angel jelly drink Sarah tried out.
We also tried wheatberry salad and savory pastry from the Turkey booth – both excellent. The wheat berry salad had lots of fresh herbs and an unfamiliar spice mixture in it. The pastry was great and reminded me of Greek Spanakopita.
I loved the live music outside. It reminded me of the type of music you hear at spas – so relaxing!
The Cambodia booth’s offerings reminded me of dim sum.
I couldn’t resist a sesame ball, and Sarah tried one too!
Unlike the type I usually get at dim sum, this one was filled with mung beans (pieces, not totally ground) and coconut. Yum!
And I had to show some love for the Philippines booth. After all, my mom is from there.
The lady in the back cooking pancit reminded me of my mom. 
The Philippines booth had their stuff together! They had cute booth displays that were well-labeled. They also had the longest line I’d seen that day for their delicious food. Have you had Filipino food before? It’s goooood!
(I tackled the food before taking a photo…oops)
Sarah and I were going to get chicken satay at the Malaysian booth, but they sold out, so we went with chicken teriyaki (not a traditional Filipino food, but it sounded good) and lumpia (Filipino spring rolls, basically). We held off on the pancit since I told Sarah I could make her some another time. I just need to get the “recipe” from my mom!
The International Festival was wonderful, and I was impressed that there were so many countries represented. Sarah and I had fun checking out the variety of offerings at each booth and noticing similarities and patterns between the foods at various booths. I thought the event was really entertaining and well-organized and would love to return next year!
Reader Question: What is the most unexpected country that you’ve sampled food from? I never thought I’d get to try food from Guyana, but I did, and I liked it!
