Calling all Boston Fashionistas

Marilyn is a huge Red Sox fan. She saw these super cute shirts on all the Red Sox wives in the parade yesterday and now she wants one. Has anyone seen this shirt? For that matter, has anyone seen a better picture of this shirt?
Follow up:
Thanks Flutterbyblue! The shirts were made by Chix Appeal Inc. They will shortly be announcing a contest to give away 10 of these shirts! Check here for contest details, soon to be posted.
Image from chixapapeal.com

Fabuless: Budget Wedding Dress

The Dress: Ann Taylor Regal Jacquard Shift Dress for $178
The location: Chic Urban Budget Wedding
The veil: Birdcage
The rationale: Why spend $1200 on a polyester dress that you will wear once, when you could buy a polyester dress you might wear again for $178? Spend the extra $1022 on some kick ass Manolos, extra bling and Cristal for the wedding party!

The 411 on Sophia

Is Sophia your real name?
No, it is a nom de plume, which I currently choose to write under.

Why write under an assumed name?

• Why not?
  
• I decided early on that I wanted to maintain some level of privacy, because one never knows where life will take you. I correspond with fellow bloggers that I interact with on specific projects with under my real name, because I feel like I have a little bit more of a relationship with those people.
• My real name is actually kind of a common blogger name, I feel like "Sophia" is different and fun and reflects my Chic and Charming persona.
  
• As Sophia some of my opinions are a little more extreme than they maybe in real life, but I find hyperbole almost always increases entertainment value, especially in storytellings.
  

Why did you pick Sophia?
Sophia was inspired by Sophia Loren. I admire the fact that she is feisty, has curves and was able to turn down Cary Grant. My favorite Sophia Loren quote is "Everything you see I owe to spaghetti.” My sister, the major source of gadget guru, writes under the nom de plume Marilyn, after Marilyn Monroe.

Image from italophiles.com

Halloween Cocktail Party II

Several weekends of being out of town or having guests in town wreaked havoc on my house. In fact, I had to recruit my sister to come over and help clean things up. I must have the best sister ever to drag her butt out to the burbs and clean my kitchen in exchange for Indian food. SO, my house is finally clean and my favorite new diptyque candle is burning, while I plan my party menu for my little Halloween fete.

Drinks

• Cosmo punch made with black vodka
• Pink Champaign
• A selection of Belgian beers
• Shirley Temples
• To go cups filled with hot caramel apple cider at the end of the night

Premade Snacks

• Chocolate covered pretzel bites sprinkled with little round rainbow sprinkles
• Dean and Deluca Creme Brulee Almonds (they are to-die-for)
• D&D Dark Chocolate Rum Balls
• Kookaburra licorice in Mango and Strawberry
• Red Fire Pecans from Vosges
  
• Humus in two flavors with D&D spiced pita chips
• Chips of some sort
  

Heavy Hors d'oeuvres

• Cheese Fondue with different veggies and breads for dipping, including rosemary breadsticks
• Pumpkin risotto topped with roasted pumpkin seeds served on individual spoons
• Butternut squash soup topped with spiced unsweetened whipped cream served in individual cauldrons
• Bite size insalata caprese served in mini phyllo cups
• Mini quiches in 3 flavors
• Sweet potato steak fries topped with caramelized brown sugar, served with a bacon creme fraiche dip

Dessert

• Warmed chocolate and caramel sauces with chocolate marshmallows, dried strawberries and miniature apples (a melon baller is used to scoop little spheres out of a normal sized apple...I saw it on iron chef) for dipping into the sauces and then into crushed nuts or crushed cookies
• A friend might supplement dessert with some red velvet cupcakes! Yum!

All of this is to be prepared in about 2 hours on Wednesday after work...oh to be an unambitious hostess.

Halloween Cocktail Party I

I am having a few friends over for drinks on Halloween, and I've been obsessing over the menu. I was out of town in North Carolina this weekend and took the opportunity to partake in some foodie tourism...one of my favorite tourist activities. At Dean and Deluca I picked up some dried strawberries, which are totally black and are therefore perfect for Halloween. I also picked up some creme brulee almonds and chocolate rum balls...delish! My other foodie stop was Fresh Market, where I picked up some rosemary bread sticks for dipping into fondue and a variety of candy, including Kookaburra Licorice in strawberry and mango. Yum!!!
Image from crescent-bakery.com

The scent of winter

I love-love-love Diptyque's Essence of John Galliano. I recently received it as a gift from my in-laws and as with all diptygue candles the scent fills my living room for days after I've burned the candle. As the weather turns cold, I think this candle is perfection. There are strong undertones of burnt wood, with delicious spicy and incensey overtones. This candle is even more fabulous because it is non-girly, so my husband loves it too (in fact, he picked it out).

Image from eluxury

Male Restroom Etiquette

This is completely hilarious, although I've now been told by several men these rules do not apply to restrooms during sporting events.

Obsessed with J.Crew

Over the last several months I've become completely obsessed with almost everything J.crew makes, with the exception of anything with a trapeze cut. I am currently loving the frilly necked shirts, but when I tried them on last season I ended up looking kind of like a clown. I'm sure I will end up trying them on yet again becuase they just look so darn cute! I am probably most obsessed with the accessories. These purses and shoes are absolutely to die for! In the end I predict I will purchasing both of these purses, the red suede clutch and the pink polka dotted silk purse. I think each is timeless, extremely versatile and would be part of my accessories arsenal for years to come.
Images form Jcrew.com

Animal Art!

If you had to guess if the above art was painted by a human or an elephant, what would you guess? I was pretty shocked to find out that this art was created by an elephant! While discussing art with friend at work, she revealed that she has always wanted a piece of artwork created by an elephant or gorilla. She professed that she is intrigued by these artists, and appreciates the fact that by purchasing the art she would be supporting the care and protection of these magnificent animals.

The elephants receive some training on how to paint from the Asian elephant art and conservation project. The Asian elephant is endangered, and much of the remaining population is domesticated. Ironically, these domesticated elephants were used by the logging industry to destroy their own habitat. Following a crack down on the logging industry in many parts of southeast Asia, these elephants and their trainers are out of work. The AEACP was designed to provide a safe and natural environment for the elephants, and some "work" for elephant trainer teams to keep them from illegally logging or having to joining the circus. After some initial training the elephants are let loose with their canvas to create! Elephants don't have to paint if they don't feel like it, and they are rewarded for their efforts. Each elephant has a very different style. I was completely amazed by the quality of the elephant art! The proceeds from each peice of elephant art is used to fund the conservation project.

The other project that my friend directed me towards was Koko and Michael's gorilla art at the Gorilla Foundation. The Gorilla Foundation's is "dedicated to the preservation, protection and well-being of gorillas through interspecies communication research and education." The foundation teaches Gorillas to communicate through American sign language. While the gorilla's art is more abstract than the elephant art, the gorilla's can communicate the meaning behind their artwork through sign language. I found the story behind "APPLE CHASE" by Michael to be really sweet.
Image from Asian Elephant Art and Conservation Project

Experiences on the "Sugar" network

So, I decided to test the waters over on Team Sugar, to perhaps pull new readers over to chic and charming. Frankly, I felt it was kind of a downer! I posted my rules for wearing foot jewelry post and got feedback from a total of two people who were both unhappy with what I had to say. One person criticized my rule about avoiding anklets if you have cankles as it might damage a young girl's self esteem. I think they missed the hint of humor that I try to inject into my "how tos." Bummer. I tried posting a handful of other posts from chic and charming tonight to see if they are better received. Anyone else have any experience with Team Sugar?

Manvite needs some tech support

So, I was going to write a little post lauding and lampooning Manvite.com, a new evite like service that produces online invitations for exclusively manly parties (football, cigars, cougar hunting). Tragically, when I tried to sign up as a new member AND when I tried to enter email addresses to send my manvite to I was told that my email addresses were invalid?! At first I thought they had some sort of girly email address detector and were rejecting the email address "chic.and.charming" because it was not manly. Then, I tried a different gender neutral address and was again rebuffed! Perhaps manvite should spend a little more time debugging their product and a little less time playing beer pong in the executive dining room. Anyway, I have captured a screen shot of the invitation building page above for your personal amusement. There were some extremely chauvinist adverts down the sides of the manvite, which I originally posted with this post. I could not deal with seeing a bunch of half naked women on my blog, so I cropped them out.

Image is a screenshot from manvite.com

How to fold those pesky fitted sheets

For Lazy Martha I usually offer tips for how to cut some corners in your home keeping, but still achieve that magical Martha end result. Today I reference Martha heself on how to fold fitted sheets. Martha's method for sheet folding doesn't take much more time than sloppily folding those fitted sheets into a lop sided bundle. The end results from properly folding your fitted sheets are beautiful to the point that you can fearlessly stack your linens on an open shelf. As an added bonus you will find that you save space becuase properly folded sheets are much more compact!
Image from Martha Stewart Online.

So Tragic!

I obsessively check my google analytics account throughout the day to see how many people have come to visit me, where they are visiting from and what they are reading. On otherwise difficult work days, looking at good tracking numbers can make my day! So, after having a very difficult day yesterday I found it very disheartening to look at Google Analytics for today and see that by 11 am on 1 person had visited my blog. One person! That was a disaster! I did better than that the first day I had a blog! It took me several hours to realize that my google tracking script had been deleted when I was playing around with my blog's format last night. So, if you are a fellow blogger user, and you switch templates, be aware that you will have to reinsert your google analytics script.
Image from Chic and Charming's Google Analytics Feed

Project Runway is almost back!

When: Wednesday Nov 14th
What: The new season of Project Runway starts
Challenge Predictions: Design a Halloween Costume for Heidi that makes her look more hot than hag...using only clearance sale Halloween goods from Target

Image from: www.public.fr

A few ways to spend a few hundred dollars

My recent discovery of the fab Ed Hardy Sunglasses has spurred me to ask the question, if I was REALLY going to spend a few hundred dollars on something fab and frivolous, what would I buy?

• A piece of magnificent jewelry from etsy like "Vintage Rock"($140) by Flutterbyblue or "Sweetheart in Goth"($580) by Pequitobun.
• A pair of Ed Hardy Sunglasses (about $250ish)
• Brown Manolo mules from Nieman Marcus Last Call ($200-$300)
• Kate Spade's Feather Wedding Puff ($445)
• Over the elbow white metallic leather gloves ($200+, if they existed somewhere other than my head)
• The perfect pair of driving gloves (Seen in Milan many moons ago...don't remember where)
• Else Peretti Bone Cuff ($575)
• Black Murano Glass Chandelier ($2,000-3,000)~~I do lead a rich fantasy life...this piece would probably eat my entire living room...and require a full time maid to keep it dust free. Don't you just love that in my mind DUSTING is one of the primary obstacles to obtaining a piece that costs more than my entire food budget for the year?
• Framed, matted Source Brault Mermaid Poster (~$150) for my kitchen.
• A sparkley blood red rhinestone cuff from Nieman Marcus
• Diamond solitaire necklace (several hundred to several thousand...depends on the bling factor!)

Alas, I will never spend this kind of money on treats for myself. I did go shopping this weekend with my in-laws and got some very fabulous presents! I have to say I am most excited about jade beads and ruby drops that I plan to make into two necklaces! I know of a local shop that sells 18 k gold wire and chain, I have been waiting for just the right project to use such fine materials...I think I've found it.

Images from images from pequitobun and flutterbyblue on etsy, Tiffany and Design Within Reach (see links in text)

Give me more, more more...opera gloves

The latest obsession, the latest purchase...dove gray elbow length soft-as-butter suede leather gloves lined in cashmere-wool blend. For $80 these opera length gloves are a steal at Club Monaco. I know this is my fourth post on this subject, I just cannot help myself!

Word of the Moment: Disconnected

Disconnected, as defined by The Free Dictionary:

"(1) Not connected; separate or detached.
(2) Marked by unrelated parts; incoherent: described the accident in a disconnected way."

Disconnected, as defined by Chic and Charming:

(1) Being completely out out of touch with the real world, aka living in "fantasy land"
(2) Being unable to relate to those around you, sometimes to such a degree that anything you say seems nonsensical to those around you

Image from www.telcoresumes.com

Styling tips from the street

Diamond solitaire necklaces look so fresh, feminine and classic. While out shopping this weekend I noticed two women wearing dainty diamonds around their necks, and I just thought the look was so pretty and understated. My cousin wore a diamond solitaire necklace at her wedding and even through it was too small to really show up in pictures, it was a very nice touch in person. She had a really amazing dress and the necklace was not competing with the dress, but complementing it. Overall, I think diamond solitaire necklaces are a great investment and a classic piece of jewelry that will always look great with anything from a wedding gown to jeans and a t-shirt. How many things in life can you say that about?
Image from epicjewelry.com

Get Chic and Charming via email!

If you take a look in the side bar down the right of this page, you will see a new feature. You can now sign up to receive Chic and Charming via email! How does it work? I post something new to Chic and Charming on Monday, then on Tuesday morning each subscriber will receive an email containing all of the information and pictures I posted on my blog on Monday! Any comments will be missing, and in order to comment on a post you will have to click back over to Chic an Charming. Otherwise, everything you see on my web page can be delivered to your inbox on a daily basis! I've already tested it out, so I know that it works. It might just take a day or two for everything to be up and running for a new subscription. How fab is that?!

Interested in setting your blog up for email? High tail it on over to feedburner to sign up for their service. They have easy to follow step-by-step directions to set up a new feed and then to set up email delivery of your blog content. Feedburner will even report back to you on how many people are reading your blog as a feed or via email.

Shoot me, please shoot me now!

I'm in a three floor building, one unit per floor. The bottom floor is empty. The fire alarm on the bottom floor is going off, but the building is obviously not on fire. My landlord only leaves us his work phone number and I called to leave a message saying "Come turn off the alarm." Who's betting that I will be listening to the damn alarm going off all weekend long? Bah! Now I have a migraine!

Image from www.elmbridge.gov.uk

Coffee anyone?

I am totally loving these mirrored coffee cups, which reflect words off of their saucer. The words on the saucer are distorted, but when reflected in the cup they magically become perfectly readable! I've not been able to find them for sale online anywhere...has anybody else seen the around?
Flutterbyblue found them for sale online in the UK! Even cooler: you can get custom cups with your own logo or word on them!!
Image from http://normaldesign.net/normal/en/show.php?product=5

Bloggy Gossip!!

Did you know that Sugar just purchased Coutorture? Hopefully they'll make it a little prettier, while leaving it accessible to us little guys!

Lost that Loving Feeling: Daily Candy

Daily Candy is a fabulous website that lists shop openings, cool products, local events and delish food offerings in a city specific daily email. For those not fortunate enough to live in a big city, they have an everywhere version that features similar things online. Recently I have just not been that excited with Daily Candy...it seems to have lost some of it's edge. To be honest, I can usually find a lot of the same city-specific information earlier in local free magazines. Furthermore, many of my favorite blogs clue me in to cool finds and hot trends, many of which are more to my taste than those featured on Daily Candy. I also don't like some of their new formating decisions. They redesigned their homepage a few months ago so that only partial stories are visible when you go to look at the candy of the day. The last straw came today when I was scrolling through Daily Candy Everywhere's Weekend Guide, which is usually my favorite email of the week...and noticed that they've added inline advertising. Now, they already receive advertising revenue from many places including: ads running down the side of each email they sent out, occasional "dedicated emails" which are just emailed ads AND Daily Candy Weekly Deals, where shops get plugged for offering discounts to Daily Candy readers. Did they really need to stick an obnoxious advertisement smack in the middle of an article too?? Get back on track Daily Candy before I relegate you to the SPAM folder!

Image from route1growth.files.wordpress.com

The Ten Rules for wearing Foot Jewelry

Anklets and toe rings…how do you feel about them? Personally, I am not a fan of either for myself. That is not to say that I think they NEVER work…they just don’t work on certain women. For example, Andy in the Devil Wears Prada is shown wearing a toe ring after her wild night in Paris. My reaction “Ugh! Why is she wearing a toe ring!” I mean does she REALLY want to be wearing an inflexible metal band around one of her toes when she is going to be squeezing her feet into some major stilettos? Don’t toes already suffer enough from the restricting corset that is the sexy pointy toe shoe? When do toe ring work? They work with flip flops, slides or any other shoe that leaves the toe completely restriction free. They work barefoot on the beach with your dog on your left playing the waves and your man on your right holding your hand. Perhaps it would have worked on “early Andy” who’s most precious accessory was the smallest Tiffany Lima Bean necklace, but “urban glamazon Andy” in a toe ring was just wrong.

The Ten Rules for wearing Foot Jewelry:

1. Foot Jewelry is always appropriate on the beach and in beach towns. However, if you actually intend on swimming in the ocean you might do well to consider that flashy shiny objects might attract sharks, and plan accordingly.
2. Toe rings are best worn with open toed shoes. I think this was what I considered most wrong about Fab Andy wearing a toe ring…the thought of how terribly uncomfortable a toe ring would be in stilettos.
3. Anklets are best worn with shoes lacking ankle straps, to avoid entanglement and busy-ness. They should also not be worn with tennis shoes…unless you normally dress in juxtaposing styles.
4. Never wear foot jewelry with pantyhose or tights. The event that precipitated this post actually involved an egregious anklet sighting. DO NOT WEAR AN ANKLET WITH PANYHOSE! Don’t do it!! It just looks tacky and it will cause runs.
5. Avoid foot jewelry if you have cankles, as they just attract attention to an unattractive feature.
6. Foot jewelry should be somewhat simple and should not be adorned with stones. Nothing screams I have more money than taste like a pave diamond toe ring. A barefoot beach wedding may call for a little foot bling, or if you were randomly invited to a black tie barefoot on the beach event you might also be able to get away with foot bling.
7. Certain personal styles just lend themselves to foot jewelry, bohemian and surfer styles are especially well suited.
8. Women of a certain age wearing anklets inevitably end up looking like they are trying to reclaim their lost youth OR find a new place to wear gold. These are typically the same group that wears anklets under pantyhose. So, if your natural hair color is now more than 50% grey, you should think hard before donning foot jewelry, especially if you don’t live in a beach community or artists commune.
9. If you choose to wear foot jewelry make sure you keep your feet looking presentable and pretty, that means regular pedicures.
10. Wear one piece of foot jewelry at a time. Multiple anklets just look sloppy.

**All bets are off if your foot jewelry reflects your cultural identity. For example, I’ve never seen a more charming anklet than the Hawaiian lei anklet pictured above!!

Images from www.withouraloha.com and www.jeanasjewels.co.uk

Chic and Crafty: Double Duty Necklace

I bet most of you do not know that I am an amateur jewelry designer. In fact, I got into blogging to promote a shop I had on etsy for about three months...the blogging lasted but the jewelry selling did not. In the end I was just too neurotic. I hated letting go of my pieces because I always wondered, could that wire wrapping have been a bit tighter? Were my suppliers truthful when they told me their product was gold filled, not gold plated? Will the IRS come after me if I don't report this as income? So, I decided to go out of the jewelry making business and just supply myself and my friends. In the end it has actually been cheaper...even though I give the finished products away for free because my supply budget has been cut tremendously.

Anyway, behold my latest project! The actual necklace bit consists of 16 mm Onyx beads which are perfectly polished black perfection. They make me feel glamorous and sophisticated! On a bit of whim, I decided to see if I could clip my sparkley skull and crossbones broach, which I purchased for Halloween, over the ordinary looking clasp. Ta Da! The necklace is transformed from classy and timeless to funky and trendy! It is like having two necklaces in one!

Adobe Dreamweaver, I shake my fist at you

Is anything more exciting than the prospect of a glamorous website redesign? I recently tried to install Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 in order to achieve the perfect new face for Chic and Charming, which I have been sketching out for several weeks. The result? Tragedy of epic proportions (what is life without a little melodrama)! Hours wasted trying trying trying to install the damn program on two different computers, wasted lunch hours searching the internet and reading all of the horror stories from fellow disgruntled techies, hired technoguns trying to make my Dreamweaver dreams come to life!!! The end story: I should (1) uninstall all Adobe products, and then install Dreamweaver, and then reinstall my products...with the understanding that after uninstallation I may not be able to install ANY Adobe products (2) Wait for some ubergeek or Adobe to fix the problem. Since I cannot live without my Photoshop I opted for option (2), so ubergeeks of the world do you hear me: FIX DREAMWEAVER! Fellow bloggers, BEWARE!

Image from amazon.com

File this under heinous

What is Daily Candy thinking? This has to be one of the silliest looking manicures ever. I cannot believe anyone would actually pay money to have their nails painted with two little stripes. I also found the WAY dirty closing of their article on "Racing Stripe" manicures more inappropriate than pithy.

Image from dailycandy.com

Drama

Why are people so mean? My poor husband left work at 10:30 pm last night to find out car window smashed! At least nothing seems to be missing.
Image from fleetcar.com.au

This is no kiddie cocoa

Hot Chocolate is one of the great loves of my life. I'm not talking about that watered down Swiss Miss of your childhood with the freeze dried marshmallows...I'm talking about decadently rich hot chocolate that tastes like a chocolate bar in a cup. I think my love affair with adult hot chocolate began with Starbucks Chantico drink, a beverage which has sadly been discontiuned. Oh Starbucks, why have you forsaken chocoholics everywhere?? Fear not dear chocolate lovers because you can make even more decadently delish hot chocolate at home!

• Be a hard core gourmet--make the sucker from scratch! If you call yourself a chocolate lover and you do not already own "The Essence of Chocolate" by John Scharffenberger and Rober Stainberg...get thee to Barnes and Nobel ASAP! This bible of chocolate contains one of the best hot chocolate recipes in the entire universe. I made it for a dinner party and we adjourned in a chocolate and homemade whipped cream coma.
  
• Not so excited about chopping up a giant bar of chocolate by hand? Both Chuao and Schokinag make fabulous hot chocolate. I have to thank my former roommate, lets call her Ms. Margarita, for keeping me supplied with the very best hot chocolates she comes across. She introduced me Chuao Hot Chocolate in Spicy Maya, perhaps my very favorite brand thus far.
  
• Money to burn? Italy has a pretty decadent hot chocolate with a texture similar to pudding, which comes in a variety of flavors! You could jet down to Mexico for some traditional hot chocolate with Mayan roots and chewy churros.

Images from chuaochocolatier.com and worldpantry.com

Oh Britney!

I'm sorry you had to see this, but I really must profess my utter confusion after watching the music video for the Britney Spears song "Gimme More." I set my DVR to record late night music videos and often pl