Hell's Kitchen | NYC
I have been DYING to show you this sweatshirt.
This photo was actually taken in NYC when I was there last month, but I'm only posting it now because of a very valuable lesson in retail that I recently learned: please, oh please do not promote a product that you do not have in sufficient quantities to accommodate demand.
Way back in 2003, I shot a commercial for Capital One in which I aged from a 1950s teenager to an eighty-year-old woman and then pushed my boyfriend into a lake, all set to the song (Now I've) Had the Time Of My Life. I can’t remember what, exactly, this had to do with credit cards, but I’m sure it was something.
The whole experience was very weird, half because it amounted to a little social experiment in how differently people treat you when you visually age 65 years overnight, and half because it involved making a plaster cast of my face. Trust me: if you're not claustrophobic before having twenty pounds of plaster poured onto your head to the point where you cannot see or move, and can breathe only through two tiny straws inserted into your nostrils, this experience would do the trick. (I for-real almost lost it, but the cute guy auditioning to play opposite me held my hand while I spent half an hour frozen in cement, so that was a plus.)
Even given the overall oddity of this experience, one of the things I recall most clearly from the shoot was the makeup artist breaking out a little machine that blew out a fine spray of makeup, and that she used to cover up my tattoo. At the time, what she was doing seemed super-fancy and complicated, but in the years since airbrushing has made the leap from something used only by pros to something that people like you and me can keep in our bags of tricks for whenever we feel like looking not just “good,” but spectacular.
My son would like to know if he can sleep in his new bunk bed tonight.
I am guessing the answer is no. #sendhelp #andsnacks
You want to hear something super annoying? Yesterday I was about an hour and a half into assembling my son's new lofted bed (the solution that most of you suggested when I asked what I should do about getting a twin bed into his tiny bedroom), and I was completely ready to give up. I was pouring sweat (I hadn't realized that furniture assembly constitutes cardio, but apparently: ayup), I could not for the life of me figure out what the random black plastic thing in my hand was supposed to do, and I had managed to somehow lose a seven-foot-long piece of wood that was a tiny bit essential to the construction process.
Monterey Bay | California
Because this morning's post was so light and fluffy, I thought I'd bring it back down and talk about something really, really important:
...
Whale-watching | Monterey Bay
It's a beautiful summer day. The sky is blue; the birds are chirping; all seems right with the world. So let's talk about death, shall we?
Here is why I want to talk about this (or, more specifically, feel like I need to): because until very, very recently, death was not a topic I could even begin to unbox in my mind without sparking an emotion that was some singularly crushing combination of despair and utter panic. The feeling that I got when I allowed my mind to wander to the death of anyone from my dogs to my husband to my parents to myself was so intense it felt like a living thing that I had to keep under lock and key, because if it got out it would consume everything it touched. I felt it - still feel it - physically, like a fireball in my chest. If I let it take even the smallest breath, it instantly expands beyond the borders of my body.
Chris' Whale Watching | Monterey Bay, California
A couple of weeks ago, when I was in New York, Erin and I were walking down the street after lunch and a pigeon landed on my head.
Pigeons do not typically land on people's heads. And despite the fact that I screamed like the little girl in The Ring had just come walking out of my television screen during JoJo's one-on-one date, once we - and the other people on the block who had borne witness to my attack-by-bird - recovered, Erin said, "I'm not even surprised. Of COURSE a pigeon just landed on your head." And honestly, I wasn't surprised either.
I LOVE it when I find things like this on the internet. And by "things like this" I mean super, super expensive things that I really like but can totally just go ahead and make myself for free.
Click here for tons and tons of my DIYs!
This denim jacket, discovered on a random British shop's website, actually isn't insaaaaanely expensive - about $145, if my pounds-to-dollars calculations serve me correctly - but it's still more than I want to pay for something that I could simply...not pay for. Also, I have a little grandmother living inside my head who yells why would you pay extra for something that looks like trash?! whenever I contemplate purchasing something with rips in it (which is frequently).
Here is a piece of string. I want to wear it.
See that string? If I could get away with wearing that and nothing else for the remainder of the week, that would be great.
My phone says that it is 102F outside, and our air conditioning just broke. (I mean, of course it did. Because that's how life works.) It is so hot that when we sat down for dinner last night (at 6:30PM, which is not an hour during which one typically melts), the silverware that had been sitting on the table for all of ten minutes was too hot to pick up.
Look! She's wearing an apron; she must know what she's doing! (Spoiler: she did not.)
The other night, I made grilled pizzas for dinner - one with tomato sauce, mozzarella and fresh basil (FROM MY GARDEN, #bam), and the other with arugula, peaches, prosciutto and goat cheese (and both with store-bought dough, obviously, because dough-making is not my thing). We were sitting outside eating dinner and Kendrick said something about the peach pizza being good, and then he said, "Remember when you didn't know how to cook?"
To be clear: I still don't consider myself an especially proficient cook. I make things that are easy and that I think taste good, I cut corners virtually everywhere, and I never met a package of pre-marinated Trader Joe's anything that I didn't like. But what Kendrick was referring to was the fact that when I started this website six years ago, my idea of "making dinner" was boiling some ravioli and throwing a bit of Prego over it that I'd tarted up with diced onions and mushrooms (I still make this sometimes when I'm alone, because it may not be elevated cuisine, but it is GOOD).
The original idea behind Ramshackle Glam was that it would be a food and entertaining blog written by a person who didn't know a whole lot about either. I figured hey, I just got married and moved into a (massive-for-us, at 800 square feet) new apartment, I'm interested in spending time at home and cultivating a cozy home life (as opposed to spending as many nights as possible out at some bar or another) for the first time ever...I might as well try to figure out this whole "cooking and entertaining and decorating" thing. And I might as well write about it on the internet while I do it, because there are a hell of a lot of sites that explore cooking from an expert perspective...but I always think it's fun to watch someone figure things out as they go.
Jack Rose | Los Gatos, California
Emu Australia Boots | Stripes Boutique Dress
My parents came into town for Memorial Day Weekend so we could all be together on my 35th birthday, and our weekend was a mix of day trips to fun places with the kids, hanging by the pool, and taking care of stuff around the house (wildly exciting projects like fixing closet door tracks and replacing fluorescents; all things that my dad cares about and I care much less about but do anyway when he's there because he makes me and because whining doesn't work on my father).
