Homemade Brunch and Saturday Productivity

Weekends call for brunching, right?

I had every intention on waking up early and getting waffles and pecan coffee with my friends... but I had a little too much fun by firelight last night, and wound up sleeping until noon. I even missed my family taking off for a day adventure to find burgers, fries and root beer floats.

No big deal, though. I don't mind staying home and doing 12 loads of laundry while sorting my mail and RSVPing to weddings, while also coming up with Facebook content and editing all 16 pending posts in the Urban Cashmere blog.

I guess I really was meant to get shit done today.

I made a cup of coffee and added a tablespoon of this amazingly delicious new vegan coffee creamer I found. The brand is Califa Farms and the flavor is Pecan Caramel. It's actually everything I have ever needed it to be and more, and it tastes so good in coffee and hot tea.

As I sipped my coffee, I paced around the kitchen wondering what I could make that would be brunch-y and all around delicious? I started to settle on a piece of toast and an egg when I realized I had one BOCA Burger left AND an avocado. I then put my creative brain to the test and off we went.

I also made a delicious Chocolate Cookie Butter smoothie which I devoured way too quickly. It was supposed to last me through my editing, and it made it through this sentence.

Amazingness on Toast

Ingredients

1 piece of homemade bread (or whatever you eat for bread)

1 egg

1 BOCA Burger

Half of an avocado

Sriracha

Vegan cream cheese (or not vegan)

Cheese (optional)

Instructions

1. Crack egg over small cooking pan and let cook, try to strategically flip it without getting yolk everywhere. I fail at this constantly so I eat my eggs sort of hard, though runny eggs are so delicious.

2. While this is cooking, cut up your avocado, toast your bread and heat up your BOCA Burger.

3. Put cream cheese on toast, throw egg on top, strategically lay burger on top of the egg, followed by avocado and sriracha. Add cheese if you're feeling crazy.

4. Eat with fork and knife.

Chocolate Cookie Butter Smoothie

(Not pictured, but freaking awesome)

Ingredients

1 banana

Half of an avocado

Half a tbsp of cocoa powder

2 tbsp of Biscoff Cookie Butter (Trader Joe's makes a good copy cat version)

1 cup of almond milk

Half cup of ice

Vanilla sugar (optional)

Instructions

1. Put everything in blender of Ninja and blend it. Then drink it and weep.

Work it Wednesday: NC and Erie Winters 2015

Since I'm currently disabled (I took a bit of a tumble last week and had to get some metal parts screwed into my leg) and can only rock stretchy pants with a leg wide enough to slip over my cast, I figured I could post the outfits I WISH I was wearing.

This week, I wish I were in sunny Raleigh, North Carolina with fellow blogger Courtney Fashionista. In her most recent post, Courtney mentions that Raleigh's typically warm temps have dropped to around 20 degrees. Well, Erie is a balmy 3 degrees so I would kill to be rocking tights and adorable booties right about now.

These looks are all from my Keaton Row lookbook, "Winter 2014-2015"

Here's my ideal North Carolina winter outfit - skirts and stockings! This outfit is perfect for temps above 25 degrees. Add a cross-body bag over your shoulder and enjoy your "chilly" winter day! I'd suggest doing one of these neat scarf styles to really add to your look.

This is a variation of what my day-to-day looked like in Snow Capital of the World Erie, PA before my injury. And, YES, I am well aware that I push beyond the limits of "business casual" by wearing boots and leggings to work every day.

By the way, those Joan of Arctic boots from Sorel are an amazing companion in the middle of a winter wonderland. I got mine from Massey's, but they are since out of stock as is Nordstrom's. A few styles can be found on Zappos so get them while they are hot - well, while it's cold, at least.

Side note: Erie is currently the snowiest city in the United States. Make it stop!

If any of these looks caught your eye, or if you'd be interested in styling with me, feel free to send me a message on Keaton Row! You don't have to fill out the entire profile, in fact fill in the most general facts and then I can take over the rest. I can't wait to get you ready in budget (or splurge) friendly for whatever winter weather you may be facing!!!

Good Friends Are Hard to Find

I am not one to post about failed relationships or friendships. My personal business should not be everyone else's. However, it has appeared to me that the older we get, the more close connections seem to falter and even the tightest of ties are cut. Why does this happen? Why do two people who used to spend every waking moment together, just completely fall apart?

I'd say part of it is friendvy - when you become so envious of your friends life that you literally began to despise them and question their value. Yet, you shouldn't let your covetousness of their life ruin your relationship. Instead, congratulate them and continue to support them throughout their successes. Yours are coming someday.

Sometimes friendships fall apart because of distance. When one friend moves across the state or country, it's hard to see them as often as you'd like. Especially when finances become an issue. To me, this is one of the worst ways a friendship can end. Someone dropping you simply because they moved away is basically a representation of what your friendship was to them - convenient.

Though these are the most comment of reasons relationships fail, in my personal experience, I blame a lot of broken friendship on clearer vision. That is, I opened my eyes and realized what type of people these 'friends' are - and most importantly, what type of person I am.

In the past year, I lost two friends via clarity. These were friends I pictured of having around in my life forever. These were friends I wanted in my wedding, to have my children refer to as "Auntie" or "Uncle", to go on fabulous vacations to Europe with, and to grow old laughing with. In the last 3 months alone, I realized I will never be able to live out those dreams with these people... and here's why - these are selfish, genuinely unhappy people.

I had a friend who I would have done - and did - anything for. I traveled to this person at their beckon call any time they needed me. I took the time to listen to their problems whenever they had any, even those times I was battling my own, in hopes that they would be there for me should I need them. However, this was a one sided relationship. I learned this quickly after shelling out well over $1,000 for a visit and a concert that never happened. A concert that I will never get to see now. A trip that I will never get to take now. Apparently my friendship wasn't comparable in value to another relationship they were invested in at that time, and someone else's needs were chosen over mine.

Another friendship fell apart when a friend moved across the country for an internship. Though the internship left something to be desired, this friend felt it was their star calling, and thus everyone should have been on the same level as them. I was proud of them, but felt my wants and needs didn't match up to theirs. Eventually, they started making me feel bad about myself; that I didn't drop everything to move, or that I was in the wrong, working a 9-5 and going out with friends on the weekends.

It took some time for me to realize that real friends aren't like that. Real friends don't leave their friends stranded across the country because of some guy. Real friends don't make you feel bad because you're living your life differently than they are living theirs. Real friends do the opposite.

In fact, because I didn't get to go to said concert, my other friends planned a night of movies, music, and wine for me. We laughed, cried, and drank until the sun came up. They have never once made me feel bad for the way I live my life, or for raging during the weekend. Nine times out of 10 they are raging with me. Those are the people you keep around.


Stop and smell the roses. Take the time to evaluate your relationships. If someone is bringing you down, regardless of how they once made you feel... drop the weight. After all, a friendship that can end, never truly began.

Flower Power in the 2013s.

"Does this darkness have a name? This cruelty, this hatred, how did it find us? Did it steal into our lives or did we seek it out and embrace it? What happened to us that we now send our children into the world like we send young men to war, hoping for their safe return, but knowing that some would be lost along the way. When did we lose our way? Consumed by the shadows. Swallowed whole by the darkness. Does this darkness have a name? Is it your name?"

It seems like every time I turn on the news, some innocent life is being taken away. It's like this strong, but cruel force of nature that is sweeping over our nation on a mission to corrupt a unity our founding fathers have worked so hard to attain.

Why does this happen? And how do we make it stop? Is our concern for surviving so little that we just look past finding peace? Have we lost hope?

I have been working on this post since the last "great American tragedy," you know, when a kid essentially blew up a school just a few months ago. I remember thinking during election season "how blessed we are to be not a country where we are fighting battles in our streets, or entering each others' homes and killing our children." Little did I know just a few months later, a boy would shoot his way into a school and take the lives of our educators and our future. Four months later, during the Boston Marathon, two bombs went off killing two and injuring many. It makes you wonder if we truly are blessed, or if we just hit a semi-"lucky" streak.

It's scary, you know. Turning on the news and seeing disaster. But it's scarier seeing how some people react. Instead of reaching out our hand to offer peace, we scream and point fingers at one another. When Sandy Hook happened, half of the nation immediately blamed mental illness or guns - while the other half retracted by rubbing their "Gun Owning Pride" in everyone's face. Our country is more divided than ever, and the peacemakers are outnumbered by those who break during chaos.

Can't we all just get along?

I chose to share this photo of Jan Rose Kasmir, October 1967, because it is iconic of the flower power movement.  "Flower power" was used as a symbol of passive resistance, and a non-violence ideology. It originated in protest against the Vietnam War.

While we are currently not overseas in a war (well, "supposedly,") we are in our own homeland at war with ourselves. So where are our protests? Where are our people saying "Give peace a chance," or "Where is the love?"

Instead of focusing on the good and safety of our country, we focus on ourselves. I think we need to take a stand. Everyone's so quick on Facebook or Twitter to share photos of girls in short shorts, or misguiding facts about calling 211 instead of 911, or of some teenage boy holding a piece of paper reading, 'Like if you love God" - Why won't you share a photo of peace? Maybe a post about your favorite peace maker and their efforts to change the world? Maybe a status about you going out there and spreading peace.  We can never attain peace by sitting at home wishing someone would start this trend. We have to start it ourselves.

The Flower Power movement was an idea that was planted and watered until it grew.

Peace is not an ideology that has since passed. Today we need it more than ever.

How will you spread peace, love, and unity... if you will at all?

"The cry of 'Flower Power' echoes through the land. We shall not wilt. 

Let a thousand flowers bloom."

— Abbie Hoffman, Workshop in Nonviolence, May 1967