remix archives // summer to fall

I don't really believe in seasonal wardrobes. There are a few pieces that I feel like are obviously seasonal, but for the most part I like to think of nearly everything in my closet as wearable in any season.  As fall approaches, I thought I'd share a few examples from my own closet of summer dresses that I've worn throughout fall and winter simply by layering and restyling them.  There's no reason to box away all your super cute summer dresses, there are plenty of ways to make them work for fall and winter.

This first dress has been in my closet for years, I think I got it back in 2009?  It's one of my favorites and I love to wear it all year long.  My favorite way to warm this one up for fall is by layering a top underneath and then adding tights and boots.

 
This bird dress is another favorite.  I also like to wear tops underneath it, but I also like wearing cardigans on top.  And tights, obviously.  Something that makes a dress transition easily into fall is the type of lining it has.  I've noticed a lot of dresses are made of fabric which sticks to most tights.  This is super annoying as I've found this causes the dress to crawl up into my crotch... not really the look I'm going for.  You can always wear a slip which prevents this, but if a dress is already made of a slippery fabric or has a lining that doesn't stick to tights it makes it much easier to style in the cooler months.
 
This pretty dress is a great transitional piece.  It's made of a pretty thick fabric, and the style has a lot of structure, which makes it nice for fall.  I really like how pairing this dress with a cute cardigan put focus on the peter pan collar.  It's important to remember that you don't necessarily have to dress for the temperature outdoors.  Unless you are spending significant amounts of time outside, you just need to be warm enough to go from a warm car to a warm building.  Plus, you're probably going to be wearing a coat anyway, which will provide enough warmth and you can still wear short sleeves.
 

Of everything in my closet, I'm pretty sure this dress gets the most wear.  The amount of times I've remixed it is kind of ridiculous.  With this dress my favorite way to warm it up is to wear tops over it, instead of under.  Scarves are also a great way to not only add interest and pattern to your outfit, but they're warm too!  Bonus.  A dress like this, in a neutral black and white color scheme, make it really easy to pair with any other color, so you can draw from lots of color palettes when you're layering.  
   

tomato pesto bites

It's tomato season people.  We planted, like, a bajillion tomatoes and now we're trying to come up with things to do with our daily harvest of tomatoes.  This is actually something that Dan came up with one morning.  We've been making our own pesto recently, so he whipped up some pesto, and I had some fire roasted red peppers leftover from the zucchini roll appetizers I made for Kristi's party a few weeks ago, which I thought would go perfectly in the little cups.  This is a really easy and quick recipe to make.  It cooks in just a couple minutes, so if you need a last minute appetizer this is a great option!  Or you can be like us and just eat them all as a meal, or snack on them all afternoon.  I saved the innards and Dan used them in a homemade tomato pasta sauce!


Ingredients:
small tomatoes (you can use grape tomatoes, but they might be too small to hold everything)
fire roasted red peppers
pesto
mozzarella or parmesan cheese

1. Cut the tomatoes in half and remove the innards so that you create a little cup.  Cut horizontally across, not vertically down.

2. Dice the red peppers and fill the tomato cups halfway with them.

3. Fill the tomato cups the rest of the way with the pesto.

4. Top with a small slice of mozzarella or parmesan.

5.  Broil on high for about 2-3 minutes.  Until the cups are hot and the cheese is melted and bubbling.

corgi safari

Yesterday I got some new running shoes so I can do the Make A Wish Walk for Wishes and the Seattle Children's Hospital Run of Hope!  I don't think I've ever gotten running shoes that fit me, and I ran track and did basketball in high school.  The shoes I'd been running in earlier this summer were the same ones I had in high school and they were size 6.5... two sizes too big.  Granted, I did have track spikes that fit me for races, but my regular old running shoes?  Nope.  I'm pretty happy to have shoes that fit properly and the folks at South Sound Running were super helpful in fitting my baby feet with some good shoes.  I haven't run since Warrior Dash, mainly because I had no running shoes, so I'm glad to get back to it!  I haven't been running or working out since the beginning of August, so I'm not really excited to discover how out of shape I've become, but you gotta start somewhere, right?  I'm kind of looking forward to the cooler temperatures simply because it's not really appealing to work out in an 85 degree house.
If you haven't checked out my post about the fundraisers I'm doing this month, click here to read more!  This month I'm doing the Walk for Wishes to support the Make A Wish foundation, and then Run of Hope at the end of the month, which supports brain cancer research for Seattle Children's Hospital!  
dress/dear creatures :: hat/courtesy of modcloth :: shoes(similar)/courtesy of blowfish bag(similar)/courtesy of handbag heaven :: photos by dan
This dress is one of the dresses from Dear Creatures' summer collection that I was oogling earlier in the year.  When I saw it was on sale a couple weeks ago I decided to go for it.  It kind of makes me feel like I'm on an urban safari.  With a tiny corgi.  It's not a very exotic safari.  We went to the farmer's market on Saturday with Dusty to pick up our CSA and it's always a pretty funny experience.  Every 10 feet or so, we get stopped by someone asking to pet Dusty or take her photo.   It's like hanging out with a celebrity or something!  All things considered, especially with all the stimulation and attention at the farmer's market, Dusty has been doing great with it all!  It's nice to take her out somewhere like that to socialize her and get her used to more people and dogs.  
 

walk for wishes + run of hope // donate!

In the past few months I've been feeling more and more that I want to use some of my space here on the internet to make a positive impact on the world.  Blogs are already pretty positive and inspiring, but rather than being passively inspiring- simply creating happy feelings and encouragement- I want to create an active inspiration.  An inspiration that tangibly and physically gives back to other human beings.  One of the easiest ways I can think of do to this is by helping to support foundations and organizations which are already set up to do just that.  There are so many amazing organizations out there doing wonderful things, and one of the best ways to support them, besides volunteering, is fundraising.  Most organizations doing great things rely on the support of donors and fundraisers.  Since blogs and blog readers are spread out all over the world, we can't really all come together to volunteer our time and labor, but we can donate some of our money.  I'd like to make this a regular thing, here on the blog, but for now let's just start here: The Make A Wish Foundation's Walk for Wishes and Seattle Children's Hospital's Run of Hope.


This one is a bit short notice because I only just found out about the Walk for Wishes fundraiser yesterday, and it's in two weeks on the 15th.  A major reason I'm glad to start this effort with The Make A Wish foundation is that it's close to home.  My brother is a Make A Wish kid.  If you've been around the blog for a while, you've probably heard some of Ben's story.  It's a long, complicated story involving congenital heart defects, genetic disorders, open heart surgery, more experimental surgeries than you can shake a stick at, a moose stomping which revealed an arrhythmia, a jerry-rigged pacemaker, and, well, you get the idea.  By all accounts Ben is a miracle.  In 2002, at the age of 13, he was granted a wish by the Make A Wish foundation.  As a raging Trekkie, his wish was to go visit the set of the TV series, Star Trek Enterprise.  Our whole family was able to go, and we met the whole cast and walked on all of the Star Trek sets on Paramount's lot.  The movie Star Trek Nemesis had just been released and we also were able to attend the private screening at Paramount's theater along with the crew of the movie and went down to Hollywood to Grauman's Chinese theater to watch all the stars show up for the premier.  The Star Trek club in Anchorage even made Ben an exact replica of one of the dress uniforms from Star Trek.  The entire club showed up in full regalia (I think the Klingons might have freaked out other travelers at the Anchorage airport) to bid us farewell as we embarked on our journey to LA.


While Make A Wish isn't doing medical research, they are giving kids with life-threatening conditions a chance at living one of their dreams while they still have time and I believe that hope and positivity can be just as important for kids who are dealing with life threatening illnesses.  I set my fundraising goal for the Walk for Wishes at $1000, and with only one week of fundraising left, I'm hoping we can reach that goal!  If 20 people give $50 or if 100 people give only $10, it's reached!

I'm also running in the Seattle Children's Hospital Run of Hope on the 29th of September on my friend Anna's team in support of Remedy, a lovely 3 year old gal battling brain cancer.  Ben has also spent many a time in Seattle Children's getting various surgeries, so Seattle Children's Hospital is also close to my heart.  The Run of Hope gives 100% of the money raised directly to support research.  One of the reasons Ben is still around is that he received the most cutting edge surgeries, and medicine had advanced just far enough to give him the live-saving treatments that he needed.  Had he been born just a few months earlier, the medical knowledge needed to keep him alive may not have even existed.  Cutting edge and experimental surgeries are the direct result of brilliant and talented doctors doing research, which needs funding.


If you want to give to the Make A Wish Walk for Wishes, visit my fundraising page here.  If you want to sign up, the registration is free, and you can register here.

If you want to give to the Seattle Children's Hospital Run of Hope, visit our fundraising page here.  If you'd like to run or walk, you can sign up here.  Registration is $30 and your registration is included in the money donated!

I'd love if you would share your own stories if you know someone who got a wish granted by the Make A Wish foundation!  I love hearing about other people wishes granted!

If you can't afford to donate, consider sharing this with your friends and family who may be able to donate!  I'm super excited to share more fundraising opportunities with organizations that are doing great work.  I'm off to go get some new running shoes.  I donated my old pair of running shoes that were too big at Warrior Dash, so I have to get some suitable footwear before I can start running again!

ice cream cone torte

 
If at first you don't succeed, try try again.  That's what "they" say.  It's true though.  Dreyer's sent me their Slow Churned ice cream and I got really excited to try making something super special with it.  I'd made homemade drumsticks last year, so I wanted to make something else and decided on making an ice cream torte.  The first time I tried making this ice cream torte it was a total fail.  It was just a mess of melted ice cream in a pile once I took the spring pan ring off.  Whoops.  I was ready to just give up, and I threw the whole thing back in the ice cream container, toppings, crust and all, and planned on trying something else.  I gave it a few days and did a bit more research on how to make an ice cream torte and decided to give it a go again.  I'm so glad I did because the second time it turned out perfectly!  I was nervous pulling it out of the pan, but as soon as I took it out I knew I'd done it right.  Huzzah!  I've found that once I fail at something I can give it another go, I just need a few days to regroup and get my mindset back into a positive place.  Such a great feeling to have a success after a failure.  And the best part about this success is... I got to eat ice cream at the end of it!  The best successes end in ice cream, right?  My favorite thing about desserts is that they are best shared, and usually for a celebratory event.  It's so great to come together and enjoy a treat with friends or family.  My mom is going to be in town next weekend for a mini visit, so I'm planning on saving this torte to share with her!




The first time I made this, I mixed chocolate and caramel with the ice cream and I'm pretty sure that caused it to not be able to totally solidify when I tried freezing it, so I'd advise against doing that.
Ingredients:
For the crust: 1 pack of graham crackers (there are 3 per box) 6 waffle cones 1/2 cup melted butter 1/4 cup heath bar bits (if you like)
For the torte: 1 1.5 qt container of ice cream (The first time I used coffee, and the second time I used cookie dough.  Dreyer's is coming out with their holiday flavors next week on the 15th!  Pumpkin and Peppermint.  I'd love to make one of these with pumpkin ice cream and a ginger snap crust, yum!) shell chocolate sauce (the kind that hardens instantly) heath bar bits (if you like) 2 waffle cones spring pan foil
1. Put the waffle cones and graham crackers in food processor and chop until no large bits remain.  Mix with the heath bits and the melted butter. Bring the ice cream out of the freezer and let it melt a bit.  Put it in a bowl so you can mix it up a bit and get it into a more smooth consistency, easier for spreading.
2. Line the spring pan with foil.  This helps immensely with removing the torte once it's frozen solid.  One of the many things that contributed to my first failure was not doing this.  Once it's lined, press your crust mixture into the pan.  Make sure it's pressed in, I used a cup to press it flat.  It should be about 1-1.5 inches up the side of the pan.  Place in the freezer for 15-20 minutes.
3. Spread half the ice cream on the crust, smooth it out, and drizzle some of the hardening chocolate sauce on top, then sprinkle some heath bits.  Place in the freezer for 30 minutes.
4. Spread the second half of the ice cream on top of the first layer.  Repeat the chocolate sauce/heath bar bits process on the top and place in the freezer.  Freeze overnight.  
5. When you're ready to serve, release the spring pan and remove the torte from the pan.  This should be super easy because you've lined it with foil.  Peel the foil off of the sides and bottom of the torte.  Use the hardening chocolate sauce, make a line around the top edge of the torte and then sprinkle crumbled waffle cones on top.  To garnish, drizzle some regular chocolate sauce and caramel sauce on, and top with a cherry!
The best thing about this dessert is that you can take one slice, and then pop it back in the freezer and save it for more smiles later!

 

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