Hey Gang,
I’m claiming this new blog on Bloglovin of course I can’t merge my old blog and this new one. Boooooooo! Anyway, I’m trying to take care of the small things before the new blog launch! If you’re following the old blog on bloglovin, come over to the dark side and follow the new one!
-Elle
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The makeover is still being worked on, and I’ve been itching to blog something. I’ll keep it short and sweet. I’ve been trying so hard to eat right, like legit research on food. It’s annoying, tedious, and rewarding all at the same time. I can give you an update on some things. I’ve started the new season on Mad Men … crazy to imagine that men were this gross in the 60′s. My sister is graduating and I’ve been sobbing at how much she has grown since she’s been living with us. I’ve been motivated to pick up my camera again, and of course when I feel like taking pictures, I kinda feel like cooking again ya know? I’ve been redecorating my room, and I got so much sleep since throwing donating a ton of clothes, and bags to goodwill! It felt good to purge.
My favorite thing is homemade alfredo, but with almost a whole stick on butter, and all the heavy cream i refuse to wreck how far I’ve come. That isn’t to say I won’t make it again but I’ve found a fun and delicious alternative while adjusting to wheat pasta. I found this recipe on my boo-boo Waverly’s blog. Creamy Avocado Pasta is so yummy, while it’s Vegan and all that I sliced Roasted Chicken with Ancho Chili Powder on top and i had my dinner in under 40 Minutes which most of that going to the roasted chicken. It’s a new taste to use avocado instead of alfredo, but it’s fresh and healthier.
No Step by Step, this had got to be the easiest thing to make in the world. I’ve grilled shrimp on top before with spices to balance the cool Avocado out. I’ve grilled chicken breast on top as well, I’ve tossed Spinach inl, the combinations are endless, but I’ll say Roasted Chicken is the best!
_Elle
I’m finally following up, Chellbellz.com is a thing of the past, and I’m hoping to have EatStylePlay.com up really soon! Go on and get excited! I know I am!
I promise you I haven’t given up on this blog. I’m currently doing some “redocorating” if you can catch my drift. My new blog should be up soon, and I didn’t see any point in posting a ton of stuff and possibly have something go wrong as I move to self host my site! I’m so excited for you to see the outcome! More recipes of the basic variety and some …not so basic! Yummy in the end no matter how much effo rt is put in. I’ve been testing a lot of things to make, and saving up a ton of Gifs so you know I can express ………myself.
I just wanted to do a quick post and share an awesome picture of myself with Dani Stahl! If I ever had a dream job it would be magically train myself, and then work at a magazine. Nylon is one of my favorites, so much so that it’s included in my stack of magazine subscriptions. I love this magazine for one, I always hear about cool bands, and new and upcoming designers, they have a knack for finding high end and affordable and they are always spot on with upcoming trends!
Editor-at-large of Nylon Magazine Dani Stahl was in DC last night to help us celebrate South Mood Under’s Lookbook. Local Stylist and Blogger Team Spicy Candy which consist of Carla Sanchez and Katya Ananieva were featured and styled themselves!
Dani Stahl’s style is fun, young, and cool! She was super laid back and she might be reading! I gave her my card and we chatted for a little while! I managed to get a picture with her outside! I didn’t have my camera because i’ve lost all of my memory cards! Hopefully I’ll see some pictures of myself floating around to share.
My button popped, and I’m rocking a vintage YSL blazer that I scored at Mercedes Bien Vintage in Adams Morgan.
I found a picture of me at the event taken by Sai of Because I Am Fabulous.
Blazer- YSL
Shirt – Stolen from Mom
Skirt- Asos
Bag – Rebecca Minkoff
Shoes – Gap (2011)
_Elle
Last Thursday I went to La Petite Marmoset’s One Year Birthday Bash! They are a hip and cool vintage shop! I recently delivered some cupcakes to the ladies Katherine and Ash when they had a shoot. Which by the way they made me feel like I was as good as Chef Ramsey in this biotch. I truly had the biggest head walking out the door. They find the best items, and just when I’m all O_o they style it so well that it opened up my eyes to different form of styling. On some days you just feel like throwing on anything, and having it work and pretty much all of my workweeks outfit were fab according to my co-workers after watching the ladies in action. I went to shake my bootayyy…well not really at Tabaq to celebrate one year! I found a really nice picture of me that I liked courtesy of Sai, She is a huge ball of fierce fashion energy and I love her style plus her confidence. I’m figuring my hair out, and it’s WERKING!
Jacket|Gap
Jumper| H&M Basics
Skirt|Forever 21 Plus
Bracelets| Vintage
Bag|Gucci
Necklace| Melody Ehsani
In other news, the weather outside!!! AuhMazing!
_Elle
I hear that whenever I bring a dish to an event, or dinner party.
But first…
I started adding the element of food to my blog one because I love to cook, and apparently according to my mom “I’m a natural”. Two I used to be intimidated to cook certain things from scratch. Meats I had no choice, but sometimes I could doctor up pre-seasoned meats, or fish filets that came already frozen. That was back in my heavily processed food days. I’d even figure out a way to put own spin on things like powdered potatoes (which i hate now) or even Hamburger Helper (which i still crave but can’t eat).
When I started finding food blogs, I thought, “pshh these are too perfect” or “I’m sure they tried like 3 times before getting their pancakes that perfect” or “why do through the trouble when you can just order it”. Then I started looking up those restaurants nutritional values and the issue of salt came into play, oh and lets not forget my bad luck with finding random things in my food like a shiny rock mixed in my eggs (dennys) Lipstick on my coffee cup (iHOP), Old food under my pancakes (iHop), Hair (iHop) , Gum in my Burger (TGI Fridays or one of those places probably iHop), OR my favorite a women trying to drink the overspill from the cup and then serving it to me (random bowling alley in MD) after knocking the drink over and asking for another I was pretty much done and quite frankly I knew that maybe it just wasn’t meant to be and I had no business eating the stuff in the first place. But alas top chef, master chef, iron chef,and kitchen nightmares entered in my life with my Adonis Gordon Ramsey…(with cloudy eyes) I was addicted to learning how to put my own spin on things with the help of Gordon (swoon).
The Food Network had become my bible, and I was off. It started with making meals at home for myself, and my mom “hovering over my plate” finding managing to get a forkfuls of my creations, and then the idea of photographing my work came. I mean I had a DSLR for god’s sake. I couldn’t just take Style pictures with it, so why not. I want to stress that cooking was and still is very therapeutic for me, and when I’m not in the mood it shows. Whether its burning a cupcake, or under seasoning something, it was all about having fun for me. So when I hear people say cooking is hard, I have no idea how to confront that. I think cooking is easy if you are given the right tools and as you learn, and taste, and explore flavors you can move on to the next level. Then again there is nothing like having someone hype you head up to the size of a Hot Air Balloon when they love your cooking.
I’ve received about 4 emails, and a couple of tweets about cooking for beginners. All I can say is this, it really does make a difference to know how to do the basic’s even if you don’t care for cooking, there are so many things you can make with a couple of ingredients and stocked spice cabinet. Trust me, that Omelette Post was thought of merely 5 minutes before grabbing my camera and thinking it was pretty enough to post on here. I’ve taken the liberty of posting my favorite favorite cookbooks that I believe work well for beginners in the kitchen they are informative regarding techniques and kitchen terms, some even have step by step pictures, and they are full of non-complicated recipes. Listen, if my mother can make something taste delicious it’s because I brought her a lot of these cookbooks from Christmas last year. *sorry mom*. But as she lets them collect dust I turn to them for a lot of referencing and ideas! I still consider myself a beginner to intermediate and these books are the best!
Don’t let the title fool you! This book is full of yummy, simple recipes. I think if you love eating out you will love this book. Simple flavorful salad, chicken recipes, and pasta!
Very Simple, my favorite recipe from here is Alfredo, and the Chicken Recipes. It provides a reference to cooking terms, food storage tips, cooking times and nutritional information. Step by Step procedures.
This is go to comfort foods go to book! mashed potatoes, tarts, burgers, lasagna.
I love this book, and it comes with a little DVD to watch that goes hand in hand with the book. It also has a great feature for substituting items as well.
The best cookbook gets the biggest shine.
I LOVE this cookbook. This was one of my first cookbooks that I got when I was interested in learning more.
Hands down my favorite and most easy recipe Peanut Butter Bars.
Chocolate Brownies….yum.
I do have a Cute little Amazon Store with my Favorite Cookbooks. Click Here to see.
So! Are we going to try this?
Say it together!
*Cooking can be easy*
*Cooking can be fun*
_Elle
Eggs are so yummy, so versatile, and good for you. Yolks have gotten a bad rep for cholesterol, but I’ve done my own research and there are still great benefits to yolks, in moderation. The only issue I’ve ever had with egg whites is that they tend to be watery, and after googling my favorite Egg White Flatbread Sandwich from Subway I realized how bad it was for me in my current health condition. Of course I took to my kitchen to come up with a yummy egg white recipe with no salt. NO SALT? Yes! It’s possible! Whenever I can’t use salt I turn to all of my spices and herbs especially pepper. Believe it or not pepper in great quantities makes a difference. When I make Alfredo… PEPPER, Mac and Cheese …PEPPER. This isn’t to say that Salt doesn’t make a difference, but these days I have to change my intake drastically.
I give to you my take on the classic omelette, my secret is using at least one whole egg, and the are rest Egg Whites.
1 Whole Egg
3 Egg Whites
1/2 Cup Spinach (Shredded)
1/4 Cup of Diced Tomatoes
1 TS Pepper
A Few Shakes of Garlic Powder,
Red Pepper Flakes (optional)
Salt (optional)
***Note, I’m sure you can mix any combo of veggies just make sure it’s a decent Egg to Veggie ratio when you’re cooking.***
Scramble your eggs, add pepper and garlic powder. Gently mix in spinach and tomatoes.
** If you want to add other spices including Salt add them first! This is a blank canvas, you can do what you want in regards to making it savory, or spicy! **
Spray a nonstick pan with cooking spray and place on a medium fire. Once your pan is hot, dump the mixture in and swirl your pan so the egg fills out the pan. Let it cook, and don’t be afraid to slide your spatula around the edges of the pan to prevent the eggs from sticking.
Carefully flip the omelette over! Take your TIME and let that side cook, every once in awhile press to make sure there aren’t any pockets of raw egg left. Once your omelet is cooked sprinkle your choice of cheese in the middle and fold the omelet, let the cheese melt a little and remove from the pan.
I used Pepper Jack cheese and I sprinkled crushed pepper on the top because I like my food spicyyyy!
This might be my new favorite breakfast for a lazy Sundays.Which is every Sunday for me 
Have a great week!!
_Elle
P.S. One of my goals for the new year was to come up with original recipes! If you notice this is one of them!!
Also I was really torn over the spelling of Omelette/Omelet.
Apparently the spell check doesn’t want me to spell it Omelette. After looking at it so long I have no idea anymore, it all looks wrong.
I guess it’s okay to share a few of my secret weapons. Night Time Repair Lip Gloss, Mac Black Eye Liner, Homemade Whipped Shea Butter, and Ming Cupcake Recipes. I stumbled across this cool and very simple blog almost 2 years ago. Someone I’m guessing named Ming decided to do the research on great cupcake recipes, and took all these lovely pictures of them. They are simple, and I almost always have everything to make them in my pantry. Tomorrow I’m headed over to a fantabulas Etsy shop owner Katherine’s house while she does a photo shoot for her store. Katherine runs her own blog as well, and has great personal style. Like so many of my new found blogger friends we met through CapFabb. So here we both were at the CapFabb One year Birthday Bash and I mentioned that I wanted to bake something for her and her models, and attend one of her photo shoots that seem so cool when I see the pictures. She was game, and with the invitation extended I decided to do two cupcakes but my favorite ended up being the Key Lime Cupcakes.
It’s a perfect blend of Graham Cracker Crumbs and Key West Lime Frosting. I honestly think these are the easiest cupcakes period, well all of Mings Recipes are, and they make a perfect Dozen which I love. It took a perfect 18 minutes to get these soft and fluffy cupcakes, the icing was even easier.Granted mine NEVER come out as good as Ming’s Photos, they taste good, and people love them.
Well, I’m beat, I had a long draining week, and I got to eat of half of this cupcake, my mom hovered of it like Golem.
It was so yummy, I’m such a sucker for Lime Flavored anything! I savored every little bite of it.
Have a great weekend!!
_Elle
Happy First Day of March! Oh how time has flown!! I’ve got great news, I’m losing weight! My Les Mills Pump is working, so I urge you to try it out if you want great results!
I am developing a crazy obsession with Polyvore, and while it’s been out there for what seems like ages, I totally forgot about it. I compiled a little collage of the things I can’t wait to get my hands on for the spring! I hate how trends work, but love how Mint has been dubbed the “Color or Spring”! I love it only because I feel like we always hype a color that pretty much was always there and known as a spring color. I guess for the first time in awhile it’s popular as a solid stand alone color for an item such as a shirt, or pants makes it fun. There are MINT overloads going on throughout the Blog World. I even saw someone try to call it Highlighter green! It’s MINT people and it’s lovely.
I think it’s safe to say I want the Mint Green Shoes I found, and I would love to try my hand and the Yellow sheer top, but i’m always afraid of looking like a tall, big breasted highlighter! What do you think? Can I pull it off? Come on be honest? Haha!
I thought it would be fun to keep up the “How does it look” series. I’m a big fan of Asos and my closet is starting to overflow with its trendy pieces from their curve collection. I honestly believe that this one of the best retailers that understands the curvy body. They also get that we would love to stay up on the trends, they never fail to me. ~ ASOS if you’re reading this send me some stuff haha~
As I said before in my Lacelovin post, when shopping online you often wonder how it would look on you. As much as I love Asos and their unstable asses (putting things on sale as soon as they arrive to my home) I certainly can’t relate to some of the plus size models they use, yea they have curves, but none of them are walking around with an AMAZING 44H Cup like myself… ( Please enter as much sarcasm as possible) into that last sentence.) What did I do in a past life to deserve such Karma…
Now i’m sure some plus sized ladies can relate to them, and they are perfection and honestly don’t deserve to be labeled plus sized in some cases, but as I look down at my belly and create wierd goo-goo-gah-gah faces at it and then I think my assets compared to the models Asos use makes a major difference in how something will look on me.
SO…….(yeah) that’s a huge intro right? Here are the pictures! With a bit of commentary to back it up.
This is the Skirt in question ASOS CURVE Pencil Skirt In Mirrored Tropical Print , which to me seems a little more tailored on the model.
Beautiful girl…and personally not plus at all…but you know the modeling world, it’s only a matter of time before plus size is a 6. Anyway, cute top too right!?!?
Now here it is on me, please excuse the bathroom picture! I’m at work!
I actually think it’s not straight lol, my flowers are a little off but who cares this isn’t Vogue Magazine. This skirt is in a Size 16, and I stand about 5’8. I’m wearing flats which I don’t think they serve this skirt any justice I think with a good pair of heels or wedges it would give the dress a different feel or look? I’m thinking about having the bottom taken in a bit to get more of a pencil look, what do you think?
The material is very stretchy which isn’t obvious on the site, at least when looking at it. I suppose if you’re amazing and know what most fabrics feel like then you would know when reading the description. Overall I’d give this a thumbs up and can’t wait to wear it outside of work with different pieces.
I thought I’d have a little fun with Polywore and style this skirt, or at least show different pieces I’d wear with it if the weather was better, which for the record it seems like that groundhog was WRONG! This isn’t to say I’d wear it all together…but knowing me I would pair a few of these things together even if it wasn’t someone’s cup of tea! It’s called “Personal Style People”!
What do you think of the skirt? What would you pair it with whether it’s for work or play?
_Elle