Outfit post

What to wear on a cold, windy, rainy, NW day?

boots, jeans and a sweater, of course!

Sweater ~ Gap $30

Tshirt ~ Old Navy $10

Jeans ~ Old Navy $19

Boots ~ $30 JCP

Thanksgiving Post

My family and I went up to Michigan to celebrate Thanksgiving with my parents and siblings who still live in the area - Mom had prepared a beautiful dinner, and gorgeous dinner table with her fine china.
We had a lovely dinner and are so thankful for all our many blessings!

Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Food Post: Homemade flour tortillas

I grew up on homemade whole wheat flour tortillas, but must confess, since marriage, I have not made them myself.

We were having some friends over last night and I had a hankering for chicken burritos. We had no tortillas in the house so I decided to make some from scratch. Very simple to make, just a bit time consuming to roll out. The tortillas turned out great! Warm, yummy, fresh tortillas are the best! I used this recipe.
The filling was chipotle lime shredded chicken, black beans, corn, mozzarella, cream fraiche and lettuce. We also had a fabulous side dish of mexican rice that my friend brought over (I was told it was rice, chicken broth and a can of diced tomatoes with chilies)
Hope you all had a fabulous Thanksgiving!

New Hat!

I bought this hat on sale yesterday (Black Friday). I had to show it off! This is my first hat, and I am loving it!

Hat - $7.25 - Charlotte Russe

Thanksgiving

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!

I'll be back to my regular posting next week - but Missi might have a few posts for you before then!

Food Post: Cashew Chicken

My in-laws have been on a 10 day cleansing fast. The past few days they have been slowly adding certain juices and fresh foods back into their diet. Saturday night was the first night that they allowed themselves to eat a full meal, so my husband and I invited them over to dinner to celebrate!
I love having an excuse to pull out my china and crystal!
I made cashew chicken in lettuce cups - a recipe I found in the Real Simple magazine, and I absolutely adore!

I cooked the rice in coconut milk for more of an exotic flavor. The fruity taste with the nutty grain was fabulous! I usually use Jasmine rice when I cook rice with coconut milk, but their fast restrictions would not allow them to include white rice in their diet yet, so we chose the healthier option of brown.

I made a spicy sauce to go with the dish which added just the right amount of zing. The sauce was one part soy sauce to one part honey. A teaspoon of mustard, a teaspoon of grated ginger, garlic powder, and a teaspon of horse radish. Delicious!

Outfit Post: Fatigue and Cream

I recently received a question from a reader about tucking capris into boots, or wearing them untucked out of boots. I haven't had much luck with this look, so I referred her to this post of Angie's over at You Look Fab. Nevertheless, I decided to give the look one more try with these pants today.
I have them tucked in my boot, and like it a lot! They didn't look good untucked, but I think I might try this again with these pants.

And then just as I was finished with these pictures, I remember I had a hat that matched these pants...I love wearing hats!

Hat - Old Navy - $.97

Top - Wal-Mart - $3

Pants - Gap - $7

Boots - Aerosoles - $29

Earrings - Target - gifted

Belt - gap - $24.50

Cami - Lunaire via Dillards - $4.99

Outfit Post: Stretchy Dress

Thank goodness for stretchy material that stretches as you grow! My wardrobe is becoming more limited as I get bigger and bigger. This dress stretched in all the right places, so I'm glad it gets to stay in my wardrobe for a little while longer!

Dress - B.Moss - $15

Boots - Jessica Simpson - gifted

Bag - Coach - gifted

Earrings - Kohl's - $.50

Home Style Post: Stylish Solution to Temporarily Covering Damaged Plaster

When my husband and I moved to Northwest Ohio from a very small town in Maryland, an hour or so north of Washington, DC, we were so excited to see more reasonable prices for homes out in Ohio! In Maryland, we were living in a very small townhome. We bought it a couple of months before we married, while my husband was still finishing up college. Prices out there are very high, so we chose an unfashionable area of town to get the most for our money.

Once we got married and moved in together, we immediately started renovating it. Thankfully, I married a man who used to work for a home construction business, so he can practically build a home from scratch!

Our little townhome looked pretty good once we finished. We kept the updates modest, because the housing market fell, and we didn't want to invest much money since we weren't sure about getting a return. But in the end we were pleased with our work and we're now renting it out.

House shopping in rural Northwest Ohio was exciting at first, since we could afford so much more in Ohio, compared to what we could afford in the DC area...but we still didn't find anything that wowed us - and we really wanted that wow factor.

Finally we found THE home. A very old house built in 1876 right in the downtown area of one of the rural small towns here. The ceilings in the main rooms are almost 12 feet high! However, we are going to eventually have to renovate this house, the same as we did our last...it will just be quite a bit more expensive, since it is double the square feet!

As we make some updates to this house here and there, I thought I'd start blogging about it. You might get some ideas, or could pass some on to me as I go!

So here is one of the first updates we've made. This was what our dining room looked like when we first bought this house:
A month ago, I tore down the wallpaper, only to find damaged plaster walls underneath. To re-plaster a wall is extremely expensive. To put drywall up is not so expensive, but can be quite a hassle. My husband wants to eventually re-plaster to keep with the "old" feeling of the house, so he wouldn't allow me to hang new drywall.

Our solution was to embrace the imperfections in the wall by highlighting them with a metallic glaze over semi-gloss paint, so that our walls would resemble beaten metal.

We added some texture in the paint as well, to give the walls even more interest.

I need to cover the wallpaper above the chandelier with a ceiling medallion, add more crystals to our chandelier, and get some updated sconces (the scones on the wall right now are the original sconces that were added to the house once electricity was installed).

We plan to add crown molding, too, but my husband wants to strip all the paint on the woodwork and bring it back to the way the house used to look. The woodwork in this room is oak, and he wants to stain it back to that.

The paint we used is from the Brilliant Metals collection from Valspar at Lowe's. The color is called Green Lame.

Outfit Post: Gold and Tweed

Top - Simply Vera Vera Wang - gifted
Corduroy jacket - H&M - $20
Pumps - target - $6
Earrings - gifted
Hat - gifted
Bag - Coach - gifted
Jeans - Old Navy Maternity - $25

Food Post: Trying Something New

Missi and I have decided we'd add a new dimension to our Domestic Sophisticate blog...

"Food Posts."

I've been in a rut with cooking lately and needed some new inspiration. I've been cutting recipes out of magazines, watching the Food Network, and reading food blogs, and have a stack of new recipes and ideas now to try. Having this new angle with the blog is great incentive!

Style and sophistication for a stay-at-home-mom is not just about dressing your best...it's about having sophistication in every area of your "home" life. We'd like to start adding posts on food, home decorating, and more do-it-yourself projects on top of our regular clothing style and beauty posts.

So here's my first food post:

Last night I made this quinoa toss salad from the Better Homes & Garden magazine.

The first bite was amazing! So many flavors, and it tasted so fresh! Even my 4-year old liked the first couple of bites. After the first bites, though, the flavors were so strong and so different from each other, that it was almost too much. This dish would have worked better as a very small side dish to something a little more bland, I think.

Perhaps it was too strong because I used red onions instead of sweet, and pickled beets instead of freshly cooked beets.

The herbs were great, but I think if I made this again I would forego the basil. The parsley was the right herb and was enough.

Outfit Post: Sewing up pockets...

I've not worn this tunic since the pregnancy because the pockets started to pull at the side as my belly got larger. Today I decided to do something about it. I sewed them up!
Check out that side seam...you'd never know there were pockets before! I'm so proud of myself! ha ha!

Wearing my trusty chain necklace. I could wear this with everything, I think.

Out for a lunch date with a good girl friend!

Dress - Express - $14.99

Leggings - Wal-Mart - $1

Boots - JCPenney - $9.99

Hoop earrings - Premier Jewelry - $21

Jacket - F21 - gifted

Chain necklace - Target - gifted

Outfit Post: Black Corduroy and Kelly Green

Pants - Gap Maternity - $7
Clogs - Colin Stuart (thrifted) - $4
Hat - Target - $6
Shirt - Banana Republic - $11
Sweater - JCPenney - $9

Five days of outfits

Last sunday my kiddos came down with little coughs. After a few months worth of my kids having tiny colds on and off, I decided I was going to stay home for a week and make sure they were 100% before subjecting them to my normally busy schedule.

I found that staying home all week allowed me more then enough time to tackle many projects I had been putting off. One of which was organizing my clothes closet. My daughter helped me arrange my summer clothes and winter clothes. Clothes that needed to be repaired, given away or just thrown out. While going through my closet I decided to create outfits for the remainder of the week, that I would wear.

Now, I have tried from time to time to pre-selecting my outfits and then haven't been able to keep with what I created. So I figured if I took pictures every day and told myself by the end of the week I'd post them on the blog...I'd stick to my preselected wardrobe. So here ya go!

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

We went out to coffee at Batdorf and Bronson on Saturday and I drank the most delicious latte!

Sunday

I decided last minute to switch out the booties for my brown tall boots...really gotta get a pair of black tall boots!
Cooking on Saturday night was inspired by a package of pancetta and some brussel sprouts that needed to be cooked. (Oh, and I almost always cook one handed, as my little 7mon old likes to see everything!)

and some crumbled Pecorino Romano to sprinkle on the top of it all.Finished product was ravioli's crumbled pancetta, brussel sprouts, romano, a bit of butter, salt and pepper...very yummy!

Outfit Post: Church Dress

Dress - Target - $7-9?

Tights - Wal-Mart - $5

Pumps - BCBGirls - $21

Pearl earrings and necklace - gifted

Outfit Post: Park Day with the Boy

I finally had a chance to get these pants hemmed and figured I better start getting some wear out of them, since they are new maternity pants I bought before I was pregnant.
I have Thursdays off of work and decided to celebrate Veterans Day at the park with my little man. After we finished some preschool school work, we walked down to the park with picnic basket and story books in tow. We had such a good time! It was almost 70 degrees today - rare for Northwest Ohio.

Top - American Eagle - $1

Pants - Gap Maternity - $7

Flats - thrifted - $3
Earrings - Kohl's - $.60

Shades - Target - $3

Flower pin - gifted

Bag - Coach - gifted

Outfit Post: Playing Mary

Tonight is our first get together to go over the Joseph and Mary skit that we're doing for the big Christmas Eve Celebration at our church. I decided to make sure I was wearing something tight on my belly so I could prove to the drama director that I look pregnant enough for the part! lol! Of course, I'll have to move my scarf and jacket to really prove it.
I didn't crop my snack out of this photo. So typical of a preggers gal to always have food nearby, right? I was enjoying some honeycrisp apples with almond butter and whipped cream cheese for dipping. Yum!

And here's a cool belly shot. I messed with the pic in Microsoft editing just a bit before I settled on this - but I really like this photo. The lighting puts all the attention on the baby belly and those bags under my eyes. I was going for just having the attention on the belly, but oh well.

T-shirt - J.Crew - gifted

Knit skirt - Old Navy - $.97

Scarf - Target - $6

Jacket - Hydraulic - gifted

Earrings - Premier Jewelry - $21

Boots - Aerosoles - $29

Outfit Post: Brown and Red

Pants - Gap Maternity - $7

Jacket - Macy's - gifted

Brown suede ballet flats - Target - $3

Earrings - Target - gifted

Top - Banana Republic - $3

Scarf - gifted