holiday series

Holiday Series : Red Check!

This is yet another Holiday Series post simply because what reeks of holiday season better than a red checked flannel dress and a matching sweater? Not much… Therefore here is a Holiday Series fashion post, not to be mistaken for New Year’s Party outfit post as this is not and nor will we have such a post this year because we are 2 and a half weeks away from delivery and we will spend New Year’s Eve on our couch, binge watching a TV show. Next year will be an entirely different story, but this year we will skip the party and the party-related posts.

I am honestly amazed that we were able to take pics this far along in the pregnancy as my contingency plan included a one-month vacation before the baby arrived as I had this fixed idea that in the ninth month it will be impossible to move around and quite frankly I’d be too tired to get out anymore. That did not happen thankfully and thus far we have been able to go to the Christmas Family dinner, tomorrow we will attend a very important event and I have a (positive) feeling that everything will go smoothly until the baby comes. Yes, I did not forget about the name-revealing post, nor did I forget about all the promised baby stuff posts that we bought, but I have a feeling that those posts will work better once we will actually use the stuff we bought and will be more review-posts that presentation-posts thus making them actually useful for future moms-to-be.

On me:

Dress – ZARA; Vest – H&M; Boots – Rachel Zoe; Bag – Atelier Lemnia; Bling – Swarovski and Tous; Watch – Apple

Getting back to today’s business… I am feeling more festive than ever this year and besides the fully-decorated house, I actually made it my scope to get holiday clothes as well – see the Christmas sweaters and the plaid dress posts. For some reason all my past Grinch-y-ness did not emerge this year and I strongly suspect that hormones had a big influence on that. This post is yet another Christmas-infused mainly because of the colour theme and the fabrics (but you can’t actually feel the fabrics so you are going to have to take my word for it). I am wearing yet another ZARA XS dress that I paired with my Rachel Zoe over the knee boots – this winter’s uniform – and the thing that I loved about this dress from the first moment I saw it, was the fabric – both texture and print. This is the perfect plaid, flannel shirtdress! I am telling you, ZARA really outdid themselves this AW collection!

On D:

Sweater – ZARA; Jeans – ZARA; Shoes – Converse x John Varvatos; Watch – Apple

Obviously being a black and red combo, my Atelier Lemnia red clutch worked perfectly with the entire outfit and I seem to be wearing it more and more these days, thus making it one of my best investments of 2016. Also, to keep me and my belly warm I’ve also worn a great investment that I made at the beginning of autumn, my black knitted H&M vest. This one really turned out to be a very versatile piece of clothing during my pregnancy and I have a feeling that it will get a lot of action after I give birth as well.

D also happily wore the black and red combo. His focus piece of the outfit is the red check sweater that he recently found at ZARA – yes, ZARA, again! Right after I saw his sweater I thought of my dress and thus I made it my goal to wear these exact outfits during the Holiday mini-vacation. He paired the sweater with his ZARA black jeans and decided on wearing the Converse x John Varvatos black sneaks. Accessory-wise we both kept things on the down-low, with D only opting for his Apple watch and I only choosing to wear my Crystaldust Swarovski bracelet and my Tous ring alongside my Apple watch.

All in all, I have no idea how long we will be able to post until the baby arrives but I hope to get two more weeks of normal, every-other-day posting until I will probably take a short vacation. I do hope to be able to show you what I will be wearing at a very special event tomorrow, but that really depends on the weather and on how tired I will be. Also, I would like to continue the Holiday Series a bit with another amazingly delicious recipe that we found and that we want to try out. All those post depend on how well I will be feeling and on how energetic the bundle of joy will be as I am telling you, she really is an active baby.

December 28, 2016

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Holiday Series: Christmas Sweater Card 2016!

Another Holiday Series post, this time we introduce you our official 2016 Christmas Family Card – yup, the one featured at the top and bottom of this post. All our close friends and family received one alongside their Christmas present and we can’t be more excited to shoot next year with out bundle of joy in it as well. Yes, I know Christmas sweaters are considered to be a fashion faux-pas, but hey, they are fun, they keep you warm and this is the only time of the year when you can actually wear them and not feel completely stupid. Plus, call me hormonal/emotional/whatever, but I love, love, love mine! D got it for me as a surprise for no actual reason and it perfectly depicts how I feel these days: like a fluffy polar bear, but I guess that is normal considering that in approximately 2 and a half weeks I will be delivering the very important cupcake that has been baking inside my belly for almost 9 months now.

That said, we hope you had a lovely time yesterday because we know we had with all our family. Let me tell you a bit about our traditional Christmas lunch-turned-dinner… Usually we get together at noon (1-ish) and eat for about 7 hours non-stop. One might say that Christmas dinner is a marathon for us and that would be very true. Sadly though, being so close to term, we could not spend more than 2 hours with our family mainly because I constantly feel the need to lay on my couch and relax these days.

On me:

Sweater – Pull and Bear; Jeans – H&M; Boots – Ugg; Bling – Swarovski; Watch – Apple Watch

On D:

Sweater – Pull and Bear; Jeans – Review; Socks – Happy Socks; Watch – Apple

On Nauca:

Sweater – Camon

Anyways, we hope you like our Christmas Sweaters and promise that we will post annually silly pics for the Holiday Series posts with our expanding family!

December 26, 2016

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Christmas Tree Series – 2016: Enchanted Forest!

Just imagine walking through an enchanted forest this winter. All you see are green pine branches and white, glittery creatures that constantly amaze you with their beauty. Nothing makes sense but somehow everything seems to be natural: white pearly butterflies in the winter air, big, glittery white flowers in almost every pine tree you encounter and a white hat that seems to have been lost for ages. Just imagine walking through a such a forest and being surrounded by white rabbits, owls and glistening branches all around. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever but it seems to work so well together and feels so natural.

Well this was the back-story of this year’s Christmas Tree: all-white! Despite this year being the only Christmas that I really enjoy as I did not have to deal with the annoying Bucharest traffic (about three hours daily spent in the car each December), each year I try and think of a back-story for my Christmas Tree because I just love to decorate it. As a matter of fact I already know what theme I will chose next year as well as what colour. Naturally, every year I try and match my present wrapping and present boxes to the theme hence the reindeer on this year’s boxes. This year, almost everything had to be white and evoke so sort of enchanted forest feeling into the house. I enjoy decorating the tree each year with D – no, this is not a one-person activity in our household – while listening to Disney carols and having some sort of sweet treat in the oven.

Our Christmas tradition ever since we had our first Christmas together is to buy one special tree decoration each year and hang it in the tree. This is quite tricky as not all our special decoration match the chosen theme and even though I hate doing this, we do have to hide some of our old special decorations at the back of the tree so that it doesn’t totally ruin the theme. This year, our special tree decoration came from Disneyland Paris. Yes we bough out Christmas decoration in July! That is because mainly we like to get the special decoration from a place we visit each year and we usually take an Autumn trip, but this year we knew by July that we were not going to take anymore Autumn trips this year (9 months preggo, over here!) thus having to buy our Christmas decoration in July from Disneyland Paris.

Next year we will have to do something really special as it will be our daughter’s first Christmas.I cannot wait to buy that special decoration with her name and date engraved on it so that we will remember it forever. But until then, we really hope you like our first episode of the Christmas Tree Series, as well as the theme we chose this year. Have a lovely Christmas Day tomorrow and stay close as we are going to post some more Holiday Series posts soon!

December 24, 2016

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Holiday Series: Christmas Feast!

Starting our Holiday Series late this year as we had tons of stuff to do these days, plus we found out that we do not have five more weeks until the little bundle of joy joins us, but only about three so we had lots to do and lots to panic about. That said, we did do a lot of stuff for the blog as well, a Christmas feast included that will take you two days to make. I think this is actually the most elaborate thing we ever did in the kitchen and this all happened because of D. Because he just loves ribs!!!

To keep with the Romanian Christmas tradition, this time he chose pork ribs and we decided to make them in the oven with a wedge-potatoes side – that happened because I still crave potatoes like crazy! As well as craving chocolate, sweet bread and other fattening stuff, except for meat.That said, I do admit that those ribs were amazing eating them felt like heaven in my mouth. They were just the right amount of cooked, seasoned, moist and they simply fell off the bone. I am telling you D outdid himself with these ribs! Thus I am absolutely recommending his recipe! So this post will go two ways: the ribs and the side with a simple mayo dip.

Part 1: The Ribs!

What we used:

4 racks of pork ribs
1 bottle of Jack Daniels Barbecue Hot Chilli Sauce
4 tbsp honey
1 tsp ground pepper
1/2 tsp hot chilly powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon (you can skip the cinnamon if you do not like it)
10 g fresh basil
20 g fresh chives
20 g fresh rosemary

What we did:

We took a large amount of photos – as you can see this has to be the most photo-infused recipe post.
In a large bowl, mix the barbecue sauce, the chopped herbs, the honey and the spices.
Take each rack of ribs and generously cover them in the mixture.
Cover them with transparent foil and place them in the fridge overnight.
The next day, carefully line a tray with aluminium foil, place the ribs on it covering them with the barbecue mixture.
Pre-heat the oven at 160 degrees C.
Grind some Barbecue spices all over the ribs, cover the tray with foil and into the oven they go for about 3 hours making sure you flip them mid-way.
At the end of those 3 hours, take the covering aluminium foil off and leave them in the oven for another 30 minutes.
That’s it! Despite this one taking 24 hours to perfect, it is very easy to make.

Part 2: The baked potatoes and the dip!

What we used:

1 kg small potatoes
10 g fresh basil leaves
10 g fresh rosemary
10 g fresh chives
30 g butter
3 white onions
1 small pot of Hellman’s mayonnaise (we usually prefer fresh home made mayo but being pregnant, I am not allowed to eat anything unpasteurised)
2 garlic heads
1 tsp barbecue seasoning

What we did:

Again, we took lots of photos – did I mention how much I love food photography?
We roughly cut the potatoes into wedges (no, we did not remove the skin) and we cut the onions into rings.
Chop the greens, mix them together but keep about half of the chopped chives for the dip.
Heat the butter until it is liquified and smash the garlic.
Mix the butter with the greens, the seasoning and half of the garlic – this will be your potatoes seasoning.
In an oven-safe ceramic bowl carefully place the potatoes and paint them with the butter-herb mixture, add a layer of onion rings and then repeat with a layer of potatoes and butter mixture and off into the oven they go at 160 degrees C (yes, you can add them in the oven with the ribs) for about one hour.
For the dip you will need the mayo, the remaining garlic and the remaining chives and all you have to do is mix them together to end up with a perfectly balanced garlic dip.

That is about it! You will end up with an amazing dish for the holidays that is both filling and delicious. And it was all D‘s idea! Since this is a festive time, I will not, under any circumstance think about how healthy/unhealthy this dish is and thus I will not post any nutritional info as I feel this is a time to celebrate life and not count calories and fats.

Stay close by as the next post will be the first one from the Christmas Tree Series that we plan to do every year and we will reveal the theme we chose this year! Until then, just enjoy a full plate of ribs with your family!