Latest Posts

Makeup & Beauty

The Night-Before Hack

August 25, 2017

I wish I was the kind of person who woke up an hour before the rest of the household to make coffee and lunches and whatnot, and be all showered and human by the time my kids emerged from their rooms. Maybe I will be one day, but not today. Today, I am all about The Night-Before Hack, because it is during those hours after dinner and before bedtime that virtually everything gets done.

Want to know the real way I “get everything done” at night? I do it all at the same time. All of it. (OK, perhaps talking on the phone while reading a book, brushing my teeth and watering the plants is a tiny exaggeration - but only a tiny one.) But that’s not especially helpful advice - so here are some more specific ways I make things happen at night so that they don’t have to happen in the morning.

ENTREES

Fig Season In Full Swing

August 24, 2017

Noritake China serving dish & gravy boat (shop my curated collection here)

My neighbor Hannah has a fig tree, and too many figs. This was a problem I was more than happy to swing by to help her with.

Hannah gave me bunches of ideas for what to do with the figs, including dipping them in chocolate and large-flake salt, stuffing them with goat cheese and drizzling over some honey, and topping pizzas with them - and yes, all of those are going to happen because HOORAY FOR FIG SEASON - but what I ultimately decided to do with this particular batch was to incorporate them into a dinner by cooking them up in a port-wine sauce that I poured over goat cheese and shallot-stuffed chicken.

Home

The Thing You Might Be Wondering

August 24, 2017

Lately I've been writing about a lot of home improvement projects. The blackout shades. The garage renovation that we just started. All day today I've been working on tricking out our side yard so it can function as a storage space for our bikes, tools, and such (since we'll have less storage space in the garage once it's finished). I'm also in the process of putting together a plan to fix up our pool and the surrounding area, which is starting to show some serious wear.

The question I'd imagine might be on your mind:

...How in the world am I paying for all this (short of having come into some heretofore unknown inheritance)? Excellent question. Let me explain.

Decor

Blackout Goals

August 23, 2017

Magical Thinking Duvet; Kantha Blanket; Lulu & Georgia Lamp

Our bedroom is very, very light. Very bright. I like this, generally speaking, both because sun-filled rooms make me happy, and because being woken up by children wayyyy before you want to be awake is easier when you're not laying in a dark, cozy cave.

Kendrick disagrees with me on this point. He has been annoyed by the brightness of our bedroom for going on two years now, but excuse me, I was not about to hang massive, heavy blackout curtains in our breezy, poolside room. I love him and all, but one must draw the line somewhere.

DIARY

A Trip Down Memory Lane: The “Personal Box”

August 22, 2017

Sifting through my "personal box" gave me all the feelings. (Mostly horrified ones.)

Remember how I mentioned in the post about my (probably ill-advised) new living room furniture that we decided to keep our old couch, so we could do something awesome with it? What we're planning to do - and started doing over the weekend: a massive, massive garage remodel that'll include a separate area for laundry, an office space for Kendrick to record in, and a family room - plus a lofted bed up in the rafters. I'm obviously going to post all about the process, because I'm SO excited - and if it turns out anything like what I'm hoping, it'll be the best thing ever.

But in the meantime, let's look at some embarrassing stuff, shall we? Because while going through my overflowing "personal box" (basically a huge pile of crap dating back to 1984 that I never threw out for one reason or another), I came across a treasure trove.

Lifestyle

Not To Be Paranoid…But DON’T LOOK AT THE SUN, Y’ALL

August 20, 2017

I am not the target audience for a solar eclipse. I mean, I imagine they're cool and all, and hooray for once-in-a-lifetime experiences, but in no version of reality am I loading up a camper and hoofing it over to Oregon so I can battle people who are far better suited for post-apocalyptic survival than I am for gas and water. I mean, I'm pretty sure Bachelor In Paradise is going to be amazing tomorrow night. Priorities.

But here's the thing that's been freaking me out the past couple of days: I am not a fundamentally ignorant human with zero knowledge of astronomical events and their potential repercussions....and yet I can totally imagine myself forgetting about this whole "solar eclipse" thing - because while it's technically a big deal, I guess, it's not an especially big deal to me, for whatever reason - and meandering down the street around 10AM tomorrow morning, then noticing that it's getting dark and cloudy and going "Hm, that's odd!"...and then looking up to see what's going on, and whoopsie: now I'm blind.

This sounds un-fun, to say the least.

Decor

I Totally Made A Table

August 18, 2017

OK, so here's how this small miracle happened. First, I bought a kitchen island. Then the kitchen island arrived and I didn't like it, and it also didn't function the way I needed it to (meaning as a sort of counter/bar), because I had neglected to notice that there was a piece of metal right there in the spot where a person's legs were theoretically supposed to go.

So I looked everywhere online, and everything I found was either not my style or too expensive or too clunky or too something, until I happened upon a Pinterest photo of an Urban Outfitters counter-height table with legs that looked like plumbing pipes. It was about $80, and exactly what I wanted. It was also not available anywhere on the Internet at all, except for via one Etsy vendor who was pretending that it was vintage (it is not) and selling it for around $400. Nope.

Then I looked at the picture of the table more closely, and realized that the legs that "looked like plumbing pipes" were actually...plumbing pipes. Like, the kind that you can get at a hardware store. I started thinking that I might like to try making something like that myself, but couldn't figure out what to do for a tabletop...until I remembered that several months ago my friend Alisa had offered me a gorgeous quartz remnant - white, with sparkles - that I'd declined because I had no idea what I would do with it.

Lifestyle

Game On

August 17, 2017

It has begun. The school year officially started just four days ago (and yes, I too am completely perplexed by the fact that public schools - at least out here - now open in mid-August), and we’re all still…shall we say, “finding our legs”?

There’s a little bit of chaos in the mornings. But also a lot of excitement, so that’s good.

Decor

An Ode To My Couches

August 16, 2017

...It happened again.

If you've been reading Ramshackle Glam for awhile now, you may have noticed that I have what could be called a "mild couch fixation" (or, as Kendrick refers to it, "Jesus, Jordan, what's wrong with the couch we already have?!")

(Oh, hush.)

Entertaining

Moana Party, Our Way (A Little Less “Disney” And A Lot More “Luau”)

August 15, 2017

I am 100% on board with every single thing about the movie Moana - seriously, THANK YOU Disney for fiiiiiinally giving us a heroine that we can all get our daughters on board with - and was more than happy to make my daughter's third birthday party Moana-themed, per her request. I was not, however, super psyched about the idea of making my house look like the Summer Blowout aisle at Party City. I mean, surely there was a way to evoke the whole Polynesian-adventure thing without breaking napkins decorated with The Rock (or at least his animated counterpart). ...No?

Here's how we de-Disneyfied our Moana party (while still making all those three-year-old dreams come true).

« Previous 1 … 69 70 71 72 73 … 708 Next »