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Links & Love & Stuff

July 31, 2015

The other day, I posted about how closets in the real world (as opposed to blogger-world) do not have all matching hangers, because hangers are weird-expensive and the wire ones that the dry cleaner gives you are free...and then a reader told me about the skinny velvet hangers you can buy in packs of 25 at Ross, and now I am one of those people with a closet full of matching hangers. (The shame.)

Teeny-tiny moccasins with little palm leaves on them?!?!? Stop it.

My dear friend Gala's first book, Radical Self Love: A Guide to Loving Yourself and Living Your Dream, is available for one week more only over on Amazon. Gala lived through an eating disorder, battled depression, and struggled with her desire to find a career she loved, and came out the other side - and this book is geared towards helping readers do the same. The book is as lovely as she is.

DIARY

The Post I Wish I’d Read Before Having My Second Child

July 30, 2015

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Six weeks after my daughter was born, an email landed in my inbox that sounded like it had come from the inside of my own head. A reader, J, wrote to me that she was pregnant with her second baby, and that she was excited, of course...but also scared. Scared of how her life was going to change - rewind from the calm of the toddler era to the madness of the infant period - and scared that her relationship with her first baby would be...not lost, but dimmed somehow. Pushed aside.

Her email was such a relief to me to receive, because I understood it completely. I had struggled so much with these fears myself and experienced such enormous guilt about them that...I guess it just helped to know that others felt exactly as I did.

Decor

The Spot

July 29, 2015

Oh, that's such a good spot.

One interesting thing (among many) about moving into a house that you've only ever seen on a computer screen: you don't really know what to bring. Will that lamp fit in the new place? How about that sofa? Where's that desk going to go?

You don't know, and so you guess. And in my case, I guessed wrong in the chair department. See, I happen to have really a lot of...I guess you'd call them "statement" chairs, if you were being fancy - just sort of one-of-a-kind, not-part-of-a-set chairs that I found, and loved, and went home with.

Style

The Basics

July 29, 2015

Presenting: the perfect striped shirt (and perfect slouchy pants).

You know, I don't actually shop at J.Crew all that often. Because the problem is that I like pretty much everything they sell, but it's sort of expensive. So it's really best if I just steer clear.

But then every once in awhile I wear one of my much-loved wardrobe basics to death, and I think, oh...what the hell.

Entertaining

Celebrating, Family-Style

July 28, 2015

Look. At these. Munchkins.

Over the past few months I've been documenting my family travel resolutions with Alamo, and for my final post as one of the company's ambassadors we decided to throw a party to celebrate a year that's certainly seen its share of travel - and not "just" travel, but travel that's actively brought our family together, exposing us to places, people and experiences that we'll carry with us forever.

Way back in March I wrote about my resolution to travel consciously, to make sure my kids feel not like they're just "along for the ride," but are an actual part of the process. I wrote about creating a travel journal for our family - a travel journal that I started on our house-hunting trip to San Jose, and that we ended up taking with us across the entire country, filling with jotted-down memories and pasted-in whatevers - and how I hoped that it would remind us that travel isn't just a way to get from one place to another.

Decor

Retiling An Entryway: Before And After (Video)

July 28, 2015

(Watch through to the end for a serious Goldie cameo.)

I've never had an entryway before. I mean, I've had doors that you walk through, and I guess the area on the "inside" side of those doors could technically be referred to as an "entryway," but in our Manhattan apartments those spots were really just "the living room." And in our Tarrytown place, the front door more or less opened directly onto the stairway, which was sort of weird (and sort of inconvenient, because it meant that there was also no coat closet, and if there is one thing you definitely need in Westchester it is a place to store your enormous, down-filled winter coat).

And now?

My Looks

Teenage Dream

July 27, 2015

I think you always have a special little fondness for the styles that were cool when you were in high school. My formative years, for example, were spent developing extreme (and unrequited) crushes on two boys named Borden and Jordan (yes, ha ha, I know), both of whom dressed in that half-grunge half-skater hybrid so particular to the mid-'90s, and to this day I have quite the thing for a man in a button-down flannel.

Likewise, whenever I put on something that could arguably have been worn by Winona Ryder in Reality Bites, Kendrick gets all "Oh well HELLO there." (I get it; I think our entire generation had a collective crush on Winona Ryder in pretty much every movie she did around that time.) Which is what he said when he put on this dress...which is what made me realize that it's totally '90s, hence the accessorizing with hat and round sunglasses, plus a bag and pair of boots that were actually purchased during that era (the bag from a Barney's Warehouse sale; the boots from a Salvation Army in Colorado - they've been re-soled maybe five times, have a big hole in the side made by a switchblade during my Hogs 'n' Heifers bartending days, and are still kicking).

Nothing wrong with dressing up like your partner's Teenage Dream every once in awhile...especially if it happens to coincide with your own.

Style

Alice In Wonderland: Kusama Edition

July 27, 2015

I spent Saturday drinking about ten thousand gallons of ice water and re-re-re-reading Alice In Wonderland. This time, though, I'm reading the Kusama edition, which I found last summer at a bookstore in Campbell specializing in vintage, out-of-print, and unusual editions of classic children's books.

I already own a couple of copies of Alice In Wonderland, so I felt a little silly about how much I wanted this book, but every time I went into the store I picked it up and browsed through the pages, and it's just the most gorgeous thing ever. The artist, Yayoi Kusama, has a condition that causes her to see spots everywhere she looks, and her surreal vision of the world is a perfect counterpoint to Carroll's hallucinogenic storytelling. The book is created in collaboration with the Gagosian Gallery and bound in cloth, making it a crazy-good gift for a book (or art) lover.

You can pick it up here.

Style

An Insane Sale…Minus The Insanity

July 24, 2015

I remember the first time I went to the Barney's Warehouse Sale. It was back in the days when the sale was a secret whispered between friends (but not too many friends because it was so good, and over so fast, that you didn't want the word to get out too far). I found out about it because I had a friend who was a model, and only "industry" people knew about these kinds of things back in the days before social media made secrets more than a little tough to keep. She didn't even let me know about it from an email; she told me about it over an actual face-to-face lunch.

Remember finding out about things face-to-face?

Weird.