In Flight Fashion

When I fly, I like to look good and feel comfortable.  Remember some of my tips for in flight fashion and comfort for passengers in this previous post?  I took my own advice and wore a pair of black cigarette pants with some stretch in them with a gray tank top and matching Tory Burch cardigan on my flight to Mexico.  It's incredibly comfortable, yet understatedly elegant.  Going through security was a breeze. 

As soon as I got out of customs in Mexico City and was in the general aviation area of the airport, I immediately noticed the most incredible flight attendant uniform.  It is so retro, so Pan Am.  If I could have bought it off the flight attendant's back, I would have done so in a heartbeat!  Since my efforts at trying to find one of these uniforms for sale while in Mexico were unsuccessful,  I'm scouring ebay auctions to see if I can find one of these uniforms for Halloween next year.  Don't judge.  It's never too early to shop for a Halloween costume and a retro flight attendant is never out of style!

Mariana Luna designed the 50s retro style uniforms for Volaris airlines.  The pinkish-violet tones of the uniform are stunning and incredibly fashionable.  The hat is the best part of the uniform in my opinion. 

Aren't the uniforms fabulous?

xoxo

A Nice Ride

This chauffeured car dropped me off at one of my favorite breakfast spots in Mexico City. Do you spy Saks Fifth Avenue in the background?

What a great start to the day!

Stay tuned for lots of Mexico updates and adventures.

Have a great day!

xoxo



P.S. Congratulations to Equine Girls. You're the lucky winner of the Lemon and Line flash giveaway!

Lemon and Line: Flash Giveaway!

Here's a special weekend treat for you! When David from Lemon and Line told me about the newest addition to the spring/summer collection, I was so excited. The Kelly Green and Pink bracelet is not yet available online and will be released in a few weeks.  I could wear this bracelet Every.  Single.  Day. 

The nautically inspired Lemon and Line bracelets are handcrafted in Newport, Rhode Island and are available in several sizes for a perfect fit. David says, "In the smallest of nutshells, I grew up boating and have been fond of all things water since day one. I have seen too many "nautical" accessories that just are not all that authentic."

Lemon and Line makes real nautical bracelets. The gorgeous and colorful bracelets are made of marine grade materials that are actually used on boats. Offered in a variety of styles and colors they'll complement any style or outfit!

My friends at Lemon and Line generously agreed to sponsor a giveaway for Maryland Pink and Green readers.  One lucky reader will receive a Kelly Green and Pink bracelet in the size she chooses.  To enter, simply "like" Lemon and Line on Facebook and leave a comment below this post.   Share this giveaway on Facebook by using the like or share tab for an extra entry.  Leave an additional comment for extra entries. 

The contest ends at midnight on Sunday, January 29, 2012.

xoxo

Free Personalized Valentines

Are you looking for classroom valentines for yourself or someone at home? With this special offer from Vista Print, get 10 Free Personalized Valentines . Since there are three valentines on each card, you'll have enough for a class of 30 students.

You'll even get color printing on one side and free envelopes. Shipping starts at $4.50 and there are lots of other free items on the Vista Print site. I always choose the least expensive shipping option and my items have always arrived long before the expected date.

These are two valentines that I designed on Vista Print.

Sock Monkey

Valentine Hearts

Be sure to order your Valentines ASAP. This offer is only valid until 1/27/12.

xoxo

Treats For Your Sweets

Do you buy special treats for your favorite sweet peeps at Valentine's Day? I love Valentine's Day and love to celebrate it with family and friends. Anyone can be your valentine, whether it's a romantic or platonic relationship.

Hammond's Candy has the best lollipops and wonderful customer service. I love the Hammond's 2 oz Wild Cherry Heart Lollipop. It's a perfect and simple valentine treat. One year, I attached these lollipops to the minnies' valentines and their classmates were thrilled.

Another delicious option comes from Williams Sonoma.  I love the x and o s'mores from Williams Sonoma.

This hot or iced chocolate is the richest that I have found outside of Mexico and is so delicious.  The Aztec Hot Chocolate and Aztec Iced Chocolate set from Marie Belle makes a great gift for anyone. 

Do you remember playing Mad Libs as a child?  I used to love Mad Libs on long car rides.  Valentines of all ages will love playing with and eating the Conversation Hearts Mix a Message from Dylan's Candy Bar.

What sweet treats do you like to buy for your valentine? 

xoxo

Après Ski Chic

This weekend, we had our first real snow of the season. Although I enjoy warm weather more than cold temperatures, snow is a pretty diversion every once in a while. But what do you wear in the snow and still look chic? Here’s a look at some après ski chic from some of my favorite style icons.

Charade is one of my favorite Audrey Hepburn movies. In the beginning of the film, Audrey Hepburn’s character, Regina Lampert, looks cool as she stays warm at the jet set ski resort in Megève, Switzerland in this chic ensemble.  So simple and elegant. 

Princess Grace helps young Princess Stephanie on skis.  Great sunglasses and neutral tones are a perfect look.  You could channel your inner Princess Grace with this outfit on the slopes today and look fantastic.  Good style is timeless. 

Jackie Kennedy wears what looks like a boiled wool jacket, turtleneck, and slim pants to keep warm while she's skiing.  Caroline's fair isle sweater is something that my twincesses could wear now.  Isn't it amazing that styles that were perfect 40 or 50 years ago are so timeless? 

What do you wear in the winter to stay warm while you are skiing or enjoying the snow?

xoxo

Luxury Travel Perks

Luxury travel these days is about much more than a suite with high thread count sheets.  A difficult economy makes travelers even more discerning than normal and expectations are high.  So what are some perks of luxury travel today?  As I'm preparing to embark on another exciting journey, I am thinking about some of my favorite travel indulgences. I figure that I deserve a little something special after making it through security without shoes a full body scan at Dulles International Airport. Here are some of my favorite things away from home.

House Car: The Rolls Royce parked in front of the Plaza hotel? It does not belong to a celebrity or diplomat. It's yours to use during your stay. Many luxury hotels offer the use of a chauffeur driven house car during your stay. Have the house car drop you off at Dylan's Candy Bar or C. Wonder in style during your next stay in New York City. The hotel where I will be staying next week has a fabulous house car and I'm so excited!

Amenities:  Lately, I try to travel with a carry on bag instead of checking luggage.  It saves time in the airport, but one thing that I often miss are my favorite soaps, shampoos, and shower gels from home.  L'Occitane amenities are my favorites!  The next time you're booking a hotel, be sure to inquire about these luxurious extras. 

Pool Butler:  At Las Ventanas in Los Cabos, Mexico, a pool butler will spoil and pamper you as you soak up a healthy dose of Vitamin D.  Your pool butler provides you with everything from thick, fluffy towels to slushy drinks with umbrellas.  There's even Evian mist to spray on your skin.  I'll stick with my Coca-Light-con-hielo-y-un-popote-por-favor.  Allie from Summer is a Verb knows how good this is! 

Private Pool: If you want to get away from the scene at the main pool, many hotels offer villas with private pools. At Las Brisas in Acapulco, Mexico, fresh hibiscus flowers are carefully placed in your private pool every morning. The view of the bay from the hillside villas is truly stunning.   This is one of my favorite places and is reminiscent of the Old Acapulco that Slim Aarons adored so much.

Rainforest Shower: I dream of luxury showers. At home, my shower is a very basic, ordinary shower. At the El Tamarindo close to Manzanillo, Mexico, the shower in the private casita is a true experience. A rainforest shower head is complemented by multiple jets on the sides of the walls. Love!

Keswick Hall Baby Butler: When the minnies were infants, I was fortunate enough to travel with a nanny on many occasions. A nanny certainly makes it easy to enjoy dinner for two or a night on the town with twincesses in tow. Keswick Hall offers baby butlers to new mommies. They’ll heat bottles for you in the middle of the night and will place pink, blue, or yellow sheets on the crib in preparation for your little one’s arrival. They'll help make a vacation a little bit more relaxing for new parents.  Maybe you'll catch up on a little bit of sleep!

What are some of your favorite luxury travel perks?

xoxo




Rolls Royce Coca Light Shower

Stamp Pretty Papers

Recently, I was contacted by CafePress about some of their wonderful products.  CafePress offers Custom Stamps and Custom Stationery, which go hand in hand for your correspondence and crafting needs.

The are hundreds of options for your Custom Stamp.  See all of the varieties that you can choose.   Make your mark on stationery, gifts and letters with their custom snap stamp collection. Purchase one snap stamp base, then buy multiple interchangeable faces, choosing from almost a thousand customizable designs. 

Now you only need one stamp base.  Easily change your stamp face with the season or for a special occasion such as a shower or party. 

As a Marylander, I love the crab motif stamp. 

Get your Greek Letters on a stamp!  The stamp would be perfect to make rush posters, book marks, or invitations for recruitment parties.  Show your sorority pride with this unique stamp.  A great gift for a big or little sister or a friend who has just received her bid.  

The stamp also makes a perfect gift for a high school graduation.  Send your favorite student to college in style and encourage her to send you snail mail!  Pair the stamp with some CafePress custom stationery for a wonderful presentation. 

Everyone loves a monogram! These stamps are unique and add a special touch to your letters.

This set is a perfect personalized gift for someone who is able to choose the custom stamp and lettering of choice.  Simply give them a gift box with the stamp base and code with instructions for ordering.  You can even add on the option of a colored stamp pad.  Pink and green, anyone?

While you're browsing the CafePress site, be sure to take a look at the custom valentines and invitations.  They're perfect for any party from a childrens' party to a gathering of friends.  Take 20% off your order with the code 20JAN for an even sweeter deal!

CafePress has a special treat for Maryland Pink and Green readers!  One lucky winner will receive a Custom Snap Stamper Kit.  Use the code included in the box for you or a gift recipient to go online and create a custom masterpiece. Includes: 1 Snap Stamp Base, voucher for custom stamper face, black ink pad.

Use the widget to enter the giveaway. You must leave a comment to enter the giveaway as well as being a Facebook follower. There are options for many extra entries, too! You can tweet the giveaway every day for an extra entry.


a Rafflecopter giveaway


Thanks to CafePress for their generosity and best of luck to everyone who enters.

Outfit of the Day

Today's outfit from Kayce Hughes is perfect for work or play.  Both of these pieces are on sale right now, so you can get this look for a great price.  Remember to enter to win in the Kayce Hughes giveaway.  The contest ends tonight at 11:59 p.m. and the winner will be announced tomorrow. 

I'm planning a packing list for a trip next week.  Where do you think I'm going?

What are you wearing today? 

xoxo

Red Velvet Whoopie Pies

"It's like an Easy Bake Oven for Mommies!" According to Natalia, the Babycakes Whoopie Pie Maker is an advanced Easy Bake Oven for Mommies. She's actually correct in her assessment of this easy to use toy. This weekend the minnies and I were at Wegmans and saw the Babycakes Whoopie Pie Maker. It looked like a lot of fun, so I purchased it on a whim. I think I must have been hungry or something because I don't normally buy things like this, but I'm thrilled with the purchase and plan to use it often.

The whoopie pie maker only needs to preheat for a minute or so and it is ready to use. The instructions say to preheat while you are making the mix, but I found that it gets too hot if you do this. You’ll get better results if you preheat just before you need to bake. Just wait for the little green light, and you're ready to go.

The whoopie pie maker is easy to use right out of the box and has all of the tools you will need. It comes with a cooling rack and little two prong fork to help remove the baked whoopie pies. There's even a recipe book with different types of whoopie pie cakes and icing.

Since this was our first attempt and somewhat of a fun experiment, I just used a regular cake mix for the whoopie pies. Here’s what I had in the mix: 2 cups of red velvet cake mix, 4 tablespoons of butter, 1 egg, and ½ cup of water. It’s so easy to make, that I mixed it by hand.

Once you have your whoopie pie batter mixed, you’ll need to work quickly. This was the only challenging part of the process. Since the whoopie pies cook so quickly, it’s important to get the batter in each little space in a relatively short period of time so that your first little pies don’t burn.

The instructions said to use about a spoonful of batter. This is about right, but basically you need to fill the bottom space entirely to get good results. For the last batch, I actually squeezed the batter on the griddle using a pastry bag. It was lightning fast and none of the little whoopie pies burned.

Play with the baking times a little bit. Again, since these bake so quickly, it is best to be ready and organized. I set a timer for two and a half minutes, but the whoopie pies were a little too brown for my liking. For the next batch, I shortened the time to two minutes. Just right.  We also tried a batch at a little bit less than two minutes, but the texture was too spongey and not firm like a whoopie pie. 

By the way, you'll have a lot of whoopie pies from the recipe I posted. We had 3 batches of 12 individual pieces...that's 18 whoopie pies in less than 20 minutes from start to finish, including mixing and icing. It's easy to make many different flavors of whoopie pie because the process to make them is so fast.

Here are the delicious whoopie pies we made! 

The possibilities with this are endless. The whoopie pie maker also works well to make silver dollar sized pancakes using regular pancake batter. Mini whoopie pies would be adorable on a candy buffet or as a little treat at a baby shower.

Later this week, I'll share a family secret with you. My mother is going to share my Aunt Jan's semi-famous and very delicious homemade recipe for Pennsylvania Dutch whoopie pies and icing.

xoxo

How to Tie a Murfee Scarf

You probably have at least one Murfee scarf from Lilly Pulitzer in your closet, right? Up until recently, I only had a few ways to tie my Murfee scarves. I could wrap it around my neck to have the ends fall in the front or the back. It also looks great in a simple knot, either low or high on the neck.  Probably my favorite way to wear the Murfee scarf was to fold the scarf in half lengthwise and then slide the ends through the loop.

One day, I accidently created a new way to tie the scarf and love it! Here's what you need to do. First, fold the scarf in half lengthwise and wrap it around the back of your neck.

Then pull one of the ends of the scarf through the loop.

Next, pull the other end of the scarf through the loops, weaving it in the opposite pattern as the first end of the scarf.  You'll notice that you should either start by going over or under the loop depending on how you pulled through the first end of the scarf. 

Finally, adjust the scarf so that it is comfortable around your neck and so that you can see the woven pattern of the tied Murfee.

How do you normally tie your Murfee scarf?

xoxo



P.S. Sorry for the quality of the photos. My 10 year old fashion consultant, Alexia, wanted to help me with this, but since she's at least a foot shorter than me, she took the pictures on a non-flattering up angle, giving me 7 chins!  Ugh!

Pageant Fun and Commentary

“Here she is, Miss America…” The familiar song lyrics bring back memories from my childhood. Like many other girls, I grew up watching the Miss America Pageant every year. It was quite the event at our house. My mother and I would take notes on our favorite (and not so favorite) contestants as we watched the pageant and make our selection for the winner.

50 Contestants pose in white dresses for Life Magazine in 1956.

Today, I still enjoy watching pageants. Last night, it was fun to see social media commentary while watching the Miss America pageant. You can see my twitter feed from last night to see what I had to say. While all of the participants prepared for this competition, it is easy to see who truly has talent and poise and who has been coached. My preliminary picks were Miss Virginia, Miss New York, and Miss Texas. After some of my favorites were eliminated, I supported Miss Oklahoma, who was the first runner up.

Some observations from last night:
1. Judges: I’m not sure how judges were selected, but I’m not sure that these people recognize poise, talent, and character. Kris Jenner as a judge?

2. Talent: The talent portion of the evening is always interesting. We had quite a few dancers who looked like they had spent 6 months preparing for a dance recital. Only two, Miss Oklahoma with her Irish Dance, and Miss California who danced on pointe, demonstrated a high level of skill in their presentations. Someone needs to tell the other ballerinas on pointe that regular shoes would have been sufficient. I had high hopes for Miss Texas on the piano, but was disappointed with her posture. 

Then we had the singers.  During the song about Disneyland, I actually laughed out loud at the lyrics.  "I still believe in Disneyland, maybe it's all fake, but that's a chance I'll take."  Really?  No pageant is complete without someone putting on a red dress and singing Memory from Cats.  The twist on this song was that it was sung in Italian. 

3. Tidbits and Fun Facts: Some of the information about each contestant that ran across the bottom of the screen was just strange. Knows how to give a manicure to a cow? Afraid of windmills?

4. Miss Wisconsin needs to invest in some waterproof mascara.

Just this week, one of my friends posted something about a pageant for her elementary school daughter on Facebook and it elicited many, many comments and opinions, including quite a few negative ones. People have very strong opinions about pageants. In my opinion, pageants are no different than any other sport or extracurricular activity for a young girl when they are handled correctly by the parent. Overzealous parents exist in every sport, dance, and activity. When parents don’t handle things correctly, they can push their child into difficult schedules, activities, and affect their general well being and self esteem through activities that are not necessarily age appropriate.

It’s up to us as responsible parents to allow our children to participate in activities that they enjoy. It’s up to us to instill good character and values in children while emphasizing the importance of education. Any extracurricular activity, whether it is pageants or soccer, requires a proper balance. Ok, so I’ll get off my soapbox now.

My girls love to watch a good pageant as much as they enjoy watching a high school girls’ soccer game. But we’re certainly looking forward to the Miss Universe competition.


Until then,

God Bless America

xoxo



image via Time