Shoes: Part 1

Okay, I started this blog a while ago, and while I was looking back at it, I realized something important. I've neglected to even mention the most important ligament in the fashion world! Shoes. I think on this blog, there's so much to cover with shoes, we'll go in sections. But before I say anything more, let's take a moment to honor the importance of shoes in our daily lives. Look at this: You can wear the most glamorous, shiny, gorgeous dress to Prom and totally ruin the look with a pair of muddy sneakers. You can be going for sharp look and wear a smart business suit, and then take away the whole point by wearing your fuzzy slippers. (Not that I have anything against slippers.) My point is, shoes are the complete soul of  the outfit. You can throw it off with bad ones, show it off with good ones. SO... you have to be totally careful when choosing the shoes you wear.



      This is the first shoe topic we'll cover: what shoes go with skinny jeans and leggings. Okay, look people. Listen carefully: TENNISH SHOES DON'T GO WITH SKINNY JEANS OR LEGGINGS! It looks weird! I don't know why this is so hard for people to grasp, but you just gotta accept it: it doesn't look good. Trust me, I've tried it. It does not go well with ankle length leggings. Nor does it go with skinny jeans. Tennis shoes are comfortable, but they make your feet look fatter and wider because of the cushioning, while skinny jeans and leggings highlight the skinniness of your legs, same with leggings. Do you see how these two items of clothing don't fit? Your tennis shoes almost always make your foot look bigger and your ankles scrawny if you wear it with skinny stuff.
       However, skinny jeans and leggings do go with lots of other things:

                                                                             Flats:

                                                                          Stilettos:

                                                                        Wedges:

                                                 (or basically any kind of heel),

                                                                   Sandals (or flip flops):
                                           
                                             
                                                                   
                                                                  Sneakers:

                                             

  Boots (Ugg boots, heel boots, cowboy boots, dressy boots, even snow boots). This is an example of cowboy boots, but any of these would work:

Pretty much any kind of shoe except tennis shoes. When I say sneakers, I mean cute converse, high tops or low tops, or other slim-fitting  sneakers that don't make your ankles look knobby. Boots are totally glam, same with heels. There are also Toms, the kind of canvas folded flats that cover part of the top of your foot:

         
                                              These also look great with skinny jeans.

If you follow these rules, the outfit can be completely cute. Just remember the thing about tennis shoes!
     

Peanut Butter Balls

      Earlier I said, wrongly, that besides chocolate and toffee the best flavor is lemon. I was forgetting one important factor in the flavor world: peanut butter. The yummy, nutty stuff of life. Peanut butter is delicious. These balls are delicious. Do you see where I'm going with this? The rice crispies give these peanut butter balls a crunchy, crackley kind of texture when you bite into it, and the peanut butter, as always, gives it a yumminess hard to obtain with other ingredients. I recommend this recipe for anyone who's a peanut butter fanatic... like me.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup crunchy (that part is essential... okay, not essential, but pretty AWESOME) peanut butter
• 1/4 cup + Tbsp butter/coconut oil, melted
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 2 cups rice crispies
• a pat of butter
• 1 1/4 cups chocolate chips
• mini muffin wrappers

Directions:

1)  Mix peanut butter, melted butter, and powdered sugar together in a medium bowl.

2)  Add the rice crispies and mix till they are equally combined. Taste. If you like it really crunchy, add more. 

3) Now put chocolate chips in a bowl with the pat of butter. The butter helps the chocolate to melt. Microwave 30 seconds at a time, stirring between each stop. This keeps the chocolate from burning or changing consistency.

             Repeat this pattern till it is a liquid, about the same consistency of peanut butter like this:

         

         

4) Finally, you dollop spoons of peanut butter mixture into mini cupcake holders and put a blob of chocolate on top. Cover the peanut butter with the chocolate and spread it around if you have to. (The chocolate on top kind of holds the peanut butter together when it starts to melt later.) Put them in the freezer to harden and take them out and any time. You can cover the plate with plastic wrap or something to avoid freezer burn.

The Final Product:

Christmas Bling

A holiday look is hard to come by. What makeup with what clothes, and which shoes to put with it? We all know there has to be something you can put together to fit the holiday, but where are the right clothes, and for what occasion? With this outfit, we're going for a formally glamorous look.


First, fancy. You want to start with the outfit. Figure out something that looks Christmasy and festive, but not too showy. You don't want to pop too much. One of the best colors to go with is gold. Gold is a formal but chic way to  look Christmasy. If you use bright red or green, even though they're Christmas colors, it can ruin the whole formal thing.

Now, lace is a good way to go when being formal. It's pretty and fab. White lace also goes well with lots of different things. And guess what, we're in luck, because lace is totally in right now. You can use almost any fancy shoe choice with a dress like this. Flats, boots, heels. I went with boots, giving it a western accent:

          To top off the western look, you can add a denim jacket (that's not too casual or sloppy):

Now makeup. You want to choose makeup that will compliment you, but also compliment the outfit. You might like right purple eyeshadow, but does it really go with the outfit? You have to be careful. After you apply your usual foundation and blush, you go to your eyes. First, the eyeliner. Use a color that's festive, but under control. Again, you don't want to use bright red or green (especially red. You know what, just to be safe, never use red around your eyes). A good suggestion for a color is a deep, understated green, that's noticeable but not dramatic. Also, make sure the shade you use doesn't clash with anything on your outfit. If you go green on the eyeliner, you want a calmer color for your eye shadow, something like a sparkly gold or bronze that gives it a little bling. We used shimmery, metallic gold that was somewhat neutral:

One of the rules of makeup is that if you go bigger on the eyes, you go smaller on the lips. A great shade of lip gloss to go with this makeup is a glimmer pink with a hint of gold that doesn't look too flashy. It goes with your eyes but doesn't distract from them. Also, it gives your lips a really cute accent:

Add some bling with fashionable jewelry. You don't want to put silver and gold together, so if you wear gold, wear gold jewelry. I chose off white earrings that match the lace of the dress, outlined with a base of gold, because gold looks great with lace:

Pearls (especially when sparkled up with little jewels) also combine fabulously with lace, because it has the same creamy color:

 I didn't wear a necklace because this certain dress has a collar, but generally, if you wear a necklace with lace, you might want to choose a delicate chain that matches the delicate fabric. Not something really chunky and heavy.

Finally, hair. Really, you can do anything with hair. Poofy hair looks good with the western look, tied back with braids or twisted strands in the front. Hair long and down looks nice with lace, so I recommend using that to your advantage (you can see the twisted side):

                             

   

In this photo you can see how my hair is kind of big and poofy:

 The finished formally fancy look (sorry, me and Ella were just messing around, and this is the only complete picture of my outfit):

Sporty But Cute

Okay, so a style crisis has come to my attention. I've seen quite a few high schooler girls in their "trendy" outfits, which consist of: messy bun, sporty headband, lots of eyeliner and mascara (but that's usual, people), a sweatshirt, and sweatpants half tucked in and half falling out of Ugg style boots. In a way, this sporty- but cute look has a lot to offer, but it needs some touching up here and there, mostly in the 'but cute' spot. Let's look at it (sorry I had to do a mirror selfie):

Starting at the top, shall we? Okay, first of all, the hair from the messy bun is all frizzed to one side of the head, and second, all that hair looks like octopus tentacles. I see the tentacles sticking up from the top of the heads all the time. You can have a little bit of those, but not so much you look like a kid's version of a sunshine. What you have to do is wrap the strands around the bottom of the messy bun so those don't fly everywhere. Messy buns work a lot better with wet hair straight from the shower, unbrushed so it's wavy. Also, make the bun a lot higher, so you can see it a tiny bit when you look in the mirror, and so it doesn't droop sadly. The sporty headband's fine, that's cute, just don't let it slide to far back.
       Next, the sweatshirt. (We're skipping the makeup, I just don't go there). Okay, this is one of the things that makes the outfit sporty is the sweatshirt. It's cute, and defines the outfit. But maybe, instead of a sweatshirt, use a jacket with a zipper and zip it up halfway or leave it hanging open so you can see a cute shirt underneath. I would go with a striped or zig-zagged shirt underneath, or maybe a solid stretchy shirt, just make sure the jacket and the shirt don't clash colors or designs. Also, roll the sweatshirt sleeves up, that looks cute too. If you still want to keep the normal sweatshirt, wear a cute solid shirt underneath and wear a sweatshirt with a V-neck or bigger neck, so you can see a bit of the shirt.
      And can we please get the sweatpant thing straight?! Do not wear baggy sweatpants that hang loose and make your legs look baggy, too. Wear tighter sweatpants that slide right into the boot without hanging out. Leggings/yoga pants work too.
     The boots look cute no matter what, and they can totally go with the sporty look. Even if the sweatpants hang out, the boots can fix it. Just don't, repeat, don't, wear tennis shoes with leggings, because that always makes ankles look so knobby. But maybe that's just my ankles, because mine are pretty knobby anyways. So let's look at the new look:

Raw Lemon Balls

So my mom and dad are doing this crazy thing where the whole family can't have any refined sugar for a month, or, in other words, the bleached, crystalized stuff. I wanted to scream because it meant no more baking for a month, and that was not an option. But then Mom revealed that refined sugar just meant brown sugar, powder sugar, white sugar, really just the processed stuff. I'm still allowed to use honey, syrup, unprocessed cane sugar, or basically anything that hasn't been through the machines. I've kind of adapted to these restrictions and this is one recipe my mom asked me to make, which calls for syrup or honey instead of sugar:

Ingredients:

Dry Ingredients:

1 1/2 cup almond flour

1/3 cup coconut flour

A couple sprinkles from the salt shaker

Wet Ingredients:

1/4 cup + 2 Tbsp. sweetener (honey, syrup, coconut sugar, cane sugar, of, if you don't happen to be going off sugar, normal sugar)

1/4 cup lemon juice (it's definitely better with juice from real lemons, not the stuff you buy from the store)

2 tsp. vanilla

1/4 cup + 1 tsp. melted coconut oil

Instructions:

1. Add all the dry ingredients to a bowl and mix it together.

2. Add all the wet ingredients to a different bowl and mix that together.

3. Pour the dry ingredients into a food processor. Then turn it on and slowly add the wet ingredients through the opening in the lid. You have to let it go until it's completely combined, but stop it every once in a while to scrape the sides with a spatula.

4. After the wet ingredients are completely applied, do the same with the melted coconut oil, feeding it through the top until it's combined.

5. Roll little balls with your hands and roll tem around in anything: coconut, powdered sugar, or just leave them plain. I prefer coconut flakes.

6. Place the balls on a plate and put them in the freezer to harden. When you think they're done, put them in a container, like the picture above. Store them in the fridge, and make sure to put the lid on the container so they don't start tasting like refrigerator. 

So, I know that I already put a recipe on for lemon squares, but this is just a different kind of lemon, with no oven included. They're always cold because you keep them in the fridge, and I think they're a bit more refreshing.

Brownies

I am really specific when it comes to brownies. Brownies aren't called cake for a reason, and that reason is: They're not supposed to be cake. They're not supposed to be thick, squishy, or puffy. Though we like this in cake, brownies are different. They're supposed to be flaky, crusty, thin, and most definitely, certainly, without excption, unfrosted!
So many people with their brownie recipes also add on the recipe to the frosting. Every time I see it, it's like, what the heck?!, because frosting is for cake, and brownies aren't cake! I especially hate when people make perfectly good brownies and then ruin it all by putting an inch and a 1/2 more frosting on top then there is brownie. I don't know how many people are with me on this one, but seriously, try it without frosting for once! It's good, I promise.
I love this recipe because there is no frosting included and it's the best brownie I've found in a long time:



Ingredients:


1/2 cup butter


1 cup sugar


2 eggs


1 tsp. vanilla


1/3 cup cocoa powder


1/2 cup flour


1/4 tsp. salt


1/4 tsp. baking powder



Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Then grease (Pan cooking spray or something like that) an 8 by 8 pan. (I doubled in this example, so it's a bigger pan.)

2. Melt the butter in a large saucepan, not one of those tiny pots. Remove it from heat and stir the sugar eggs, and vanilla into the saucepan.


3. Add in all the dry ingredients and beat the mixture with a whisk.


4. Once it's fully combined, pout the batter into the greased pan and tip it around till it's spread evenly.


5. This step is my personal step. It's what I do instead of frosting. Take a bag of chocolate chips and sprinkle them all over the top of the batter, as much or little as you like. Then put it in the oven.

This is what it looks like after half your family digs in:

The Flower Nail

So I know how frustrating nails can be. I started attempting to do my own nails at age 10 on Christmas day, still wearing my new Christmas Eve jammies. I had found a bottle of sparkly red nail polish in my stocking, and after I opened all my other presents, I decided to try it out. My left hand went okay. It was gloppy and drippy, but that was because it was my first time. But when it got to painting my right hand, I slathered it all over the place with my unusable left hand. Of course  a shiny red droplet dripped right onto my pajamas. I still have a pink stain there on my pants.

My point is, nail polish is tricky. It took me forever to master painting with my left hand, and that was just the normal, boring, one color thing. I learned a few tricks that can make nails more interesting if you can't do anything fancy or swirly. Ella and I were doing the one below. I painted hers, but you can do it to yourself too. This one is the flower.

First step: File or cut your nails into a nice round edge. We used the filer this time, but you could use both. Try to file off any snagging edges on the sides, just to make it look neat. I only do this once in a while. If you don't have any need of it, don't bother.

Choose two colors that look good together. We chose the light green below and a purpley sparkle. Paint the more dominant one on all of your fingers. (If there's one thing I've learned about painting nails is if the color's light, then don't lay it on thick in one coat, just do two thin coats. It looks loads better.) Then, get a knitting needle or pin with a round head and dip it into the second color:

                                                 

Choose a finger to put the flower on and a corner on that finger to paint it. Make one dot in the middle, which will be the center of the flower. Put 5 all around the sides of the middle dot.

                                      

                                 This is what it will look like:                                     

So, the flower's really easy to master because all you do is make dots. 1 dot in the middle, and 5 around the edges. One thing you can do to make it look more flowerlike is to make the center dot a different color than the petal dots. You can do it either way. As you can see, we didn't do it on Ella's nails. Also, you don't have to do the flower in a corner. You can just do it in the very middle of your nail, or on the top right, top left, bottom right, or bottom left. You can do it o any finger, but I think it looks best on the ring finger or the thumb. Maybe the pointer too.

Vah lah! The flower nail!

Sockless Sock Bun

Hair. Men are soooo lucky! They swipe a brush through their short little bristles maybe once a week and it still doesn't look terrible. Us girls don't have this fortunality. We are left alone to tend to our mane. When we try, it more often than not fails. If we leave it down at all, we need to carry a constant brush to smooth it down every few seconds. If we put it up, we have to make sure we have extra hair ties and pins to fix it later. Especially girls with thick hair. Mine is really thick, so it takes an hour to brush it and then another to pull it up. My friend, Anna, has long but thin hair. She never pulls it up, leaving it down all day, and as long as she brushed it that morning, it looks great. So many times I have found myself wishing for that kind of advantage.
I discovered this convenient hairdo over the summer at my cousin Mia's house in Washington. She's amazing at these, truly... mine, on the other hand... well, I'll do my best.

Make sure you have 2 hair ties on hand.

First, you pull all of the mop up into a high ponytail at the crown where all the hair comes together at the part with your first hair tie.

Then, you fan it out all over your head like this:

Next, you start pushing up each side into a ball until most of it (with a few strands hanging down) is up, like this :

Okay, now, while your holding the ball in one place with our hand, wrap the remaining strands around the ball. 

Now, stretch the second hair tie around the whole mess:

Ta da! The sock bun! I'm not really sure why they even call it a sock bun.

Extra flourishes: If you want, you can put on a head band or a folded up bandana; both of them look super cute with this. You can also bobby pin the sides of the bun down to make it flatter and not as floppy if you like it better. It looks really cute with the bandana and makeup you put on the day before, so the mascara's kind of of smudged up around your eyes. I did that once. Anything would work though, and it stays in real well, especially with the bobby pins. Try it out! :)

S'more Squares

In the summer my sister and I go camping as much as we can in our old army tent, and the awesome part, obviously, were of course, s'mores. I mostly like just roasting the marshmallows by themselves, but the occasional graham cracker sandwich can sometimes be the best treat in

 the world, especially when it's already dark out.

 The next version of s'mores: s'more bars.

S'more bars are a different type of recipe. It's actual baking and mixing and pouring, and it's one of those recipes you can't resist licking at while you do the baking and mixing and pouring. It's a lot like a cookie bar, except it tastes like a s'more. I don't like the type of s'more bar recipe you look up and it calls for fudge brownie mix and JetPuff cream, because that's not a real s'more. With this recipe, the layers are the real deal. So you s'more fanatics out there who feel like adding baking to it, this is definitely the way to go.



Ingredients:

1/2 cup or 1 stick of softened butter

3/4 cup sugar

1 egg

1 tsp. vanilla

1 cup crushed graham crackers (you can just use a bowl or a hammer to crush them in a large Ziploc)

1 1/3 cups flour

1 tsp. baking powder

1/8 tsp. salt

Chocolate: can be candy bars, chips, even m&ms, just some form of chocolate

Marshmallows: Minis, cut up big ones, just smaller

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and grease a 9 in. square pan.

1. In an electric mixer with the beater attachment or just a normal big bowl with a whisk, cream butter and sugar till it's about the consistency of a cloud.

2. Add the egg and the vanilla to the cloud mixture and beat it thoroughly.

3. In a separate bowl, mix the graham cracker crumbs, the flour, the baking powder, and the salt.

4. Gradually shake the flour mixture into the cloud mixture while the cloud mixture is constantly beating in the mixer bowl, or, if you're using a normal bowl, dump it all in quickly and start stirring till the mixtures are completely incorporated.

5. Set 1/2 cup of the dough aside and press all the dough that's left evenly into the pan. Spread your chocolate over the dough until the dough is about all covered. If you want less chocolate, take some away; if you want more, heap it on till you think it's good.

6. Sprinkle the marshmallows over the chocolate till it's completely covered and more. I usually add more marshmallows then just covered, and if you added chocolate, then definitely add more marshmallows. This is what it looks like before the oven:

7. Crumble the extra 1/2 cup of dough over the top. It doesn't really crumble, but just kind of break it and piece it on. 

8. Put it in the oven for about 25-30 minutes. You want to get the marshmallows to the perfect heat. Let them roast until you see the mallows goldening and slightly bubbling a bit. Then, later, when you eat them after they cool, it gives it the perfect crunch (the squares after the oven):

A closer look:

Don't mind the red stuff; that's just m&ms leaking through. I used those this time. 

Have fun!

Maxi Outfit

School's back! Something I always look forward to with a new school year is a reason to look cute. It's a time to show off your new outfits, people! You have to look good! The other day, my friend and I scrounged around trying to pick a first-day-of-school outfit. I put together a bunch of combinations and had her try them all on for me. We got some pretty cute outfits put together. Now I know for a lot of you this is more like the 5th day of school, but at the beginning of a school year, every day is like the first day with clothes, because you haven't run out of things to wear yet.
My friend I talked about, Ella, had gotten a new Maxi skirt, one of those stretchy, long ones, like this one:

This next one is mine:

Those things are so long, they'd work as a dress. That thought gave us an idea of how to wear the skirts, and we tried it.
First, she pulled the skirt up to the length of a sleeveless dress. It'll probably fall at about mid shins or just below your knees. You might think this is an awkward angle, but trust me, you look great! Then  she pulled on a light, solid aqua sweater. She wrapped a braided white rope belt around the sweater and the skirt at waist length. You can always put a jean jacket on instead of the sweater, just don't put the belt with that. If you have a patterned Maxi, like the one above, use a solid color sweater, so the designs don't clash. Ella had black and white striped skirt, so she used the solid aqua sweater, which is also a great color to go with it.

This is Ella:

                                                     
                                                      This is me, attempting the same look:

                                                     If your skirt is solid, like the one below,

then you can wear a patterned sweater if you really want to, or if that's all you have. Mostly, I would go with the solid one, though, if you have that option. This is me doing it with my jean jacket being ridiculous:

It's kind of fun, and super cute with some wraparound-ankle summer sandals. Some Maxi skirts are shorter up front and flow out long in the back, a veil. If you have one of those, they're super pretty for this outfit. If you live somewhere cold, though, you're running out of time for airy outfits like these, so hurry up!

Lemon Squares

Besides chocolate and toffee, what is like the best flavor around? Lemon. Lemon perfection is amazing, but so hard to get to. Take this recipe for example: these lemon squares have a yummy, flaky, shortbread crust, and a sweet, lemony curd, but I think they're too eggy. That may just be that I am like the most picky egg-eater in the world, a trait I inherited from my mom. Also I don't typically eat any eggs at all, so the taste pops out for me. My sister calls me the egg cop, because if I can taste the tiniest bit of egg when I'm not supposed to be tasting it, it's a nuh-uh. With this recipe, though, the eggy taste I picked out was very slight, and my family couldn't taste it at all. But just a warning, if you're like me, add more lemon juice to the liquid mixture and then taste test the lemon mixture to perfection. You can also do that if you just really like lemon. I got this recipe at a bake sale.

                                      

Notice the thick, shortbread crust. That part is delicious.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups + 3 Tbsp. flour
• 3/4 cup powdered sugar
• 1/2 tsp. salt (any kind)
• 2 sticks butter (salted or unsalted)
• 1 1/2 cup sugar
• 6 eggs
• 3/4 cup- 1 1/4 cup lemon juice
• Food Processor w/ blade attachment

Instructions:

1. Turn oven to 350 degrees F. Spray a 13 by 9 in. pan with cooking spray or butter.

2. Put 2 cups of the flour, powdered sugar and 1/4 tsp. of salt in the food processor bowl (make sure blade attachment is already in there).

3. Cut the butter pieces up into about 1/8ths (more or less) and sprinkle them over the top of the flour mixture in the food processor. Pulse this combination for 20 or so pulses, or just until you think the butter is mixed in and the dough has formed.

4. Dump the dough into the prepared pan and press it flat and even with your hands. Put it in the oven. (You can reduce the temperature to 325 degrees F if you want the crust a little doughier, but I don't usually do that.)

5. While the crust bakes, mix the rest of the flour, the rest of the salt, the sugar, and the eggs in a medium bowl with a whisk for a while, until you think it is mixed in well enough.

6. Add the 3/4 of lemon juice first, taste it, and if you think its good, leave it. If you want more lemon, just keep adding, mixing, and tasting till you think it's right.

7. When the crust comes out, pour the lemon curd over the hot crust and put it back into the oven. If you reduced the temperature for the crust, put it back at 350 degrees F. Bake the bars till you think they're ready, or if you want a specific time, maybe 25 to 35 minutes.

8. Take the lemon bars out and cut them into squares. You can cut when the bars are still hot, or while they're cool; it doesn't matter. (Sometimes I cut them into triangles, just for fun.) You can also sprinkle powdered sugar over the top to make them look fancy. Sometimes I do that, but it doesn't make a difference.

                                                   Ta Da! Your squares are ready! Yea!

Hi!!!!

Welcome to the Chic Café, baking in style. I'm pretty young, but please don't immediately think, it's not worth it, because trust me, your time is well spent. Don't worry... I got style, and style can be sweet. My mom was the first one who introduced me to clothes. She taught me not to like sloppy tees with weird words or static hairdos. She told me when I was in pre school that she didn't like things with letters plastered all over them, but things with cute designs. When she did my hair Mom said that she liked done-up curls or braids instead of messy-falling-all-over-the-place, ratty, uncombed hair. So, automatically, like every kid does, I followed my mother and liked it too, and it stuck. As for baking, 5 years ago, my best friend Bella taught me her favorite recipe: puppy chow, a chocolate peanut butter mix. I fell in love with baking. Since then, I've made dozens of treats for any willing taste-testers, shaping recipes into a familiar version I eventually bring to perfection.
So there you have it: Chic Café. Enjoy!