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As February ushers in, thousands of women are dreaming of flowers and chocolates, petite teddy bears and diamond jewels, and the hope of a perfect Valentine. But me, well I am dreaming of tulle silks, tartan and plaids, and tickets into the greatest little show on earth – New York Fashion Week. And until my peepers can peep some new fanciful outfits and designs, I find myself flitting around and enjoying past collections – most specifically this lovely little collection from Mr. Dior.
Whenever it gets a little snowy in New Jersey, some people cuddle up next to a fire and read, some find a new series on Netflix and blow through the whole first season, and some people search through their favorite cookbook + freezer and experiment with yummy things to cook. In my house we … well we do a little bit of all three {minus the fire since we sadly do not have a fireplace} – but we mostly while away the snowy hours, warm in our kitchen, mixing up interesting combinations. Some recipes are hits and some are glorious, garbage-bound misses, but fun … fun is had by all. Our latest was a big, big hit.
Cook the spinach, onion and garlic is a large fry pan. Drain well once spinach has cooked down. Add in cheese and oregano. Stir stir stir.
Do you need to jump start your new year? Do you need to find yourself a new outlook on life? Do you sometimes wish you were alive in the 20s and 30s and 40s, sipping the bubbly out of delicate coupe glasses, experiencing the budding jazz movement in a smokey bar, surrounded by gentleman who still open the doors and pick up the check for a pretty lady? Do you enjoy reading a perfectly poetic and unexpected story, one that you cannot put down until the very end and then even at the end you long for just a little more, just one more sentence. Dear friends, then run … do not walk, to the nearest book store and pick up this gem of a tale, namely the ‘Rules of Civility’.
Little-known fact – as recently as a few years ago, my makeup routine almost exclusively consisted of MAC products. As you can imagine, this also meant that my makeup routine was fairly expensive to maintain. However, as I’ve branched out to other brands, I’ve discovered many drugstore-level products that are affordable without sacrificing quality. If one of your New Year’s resolutions is to tame your beauty budget, check out some of my favorite makeup bargains:
Fashion (especially couture) = something that I heartily enjoy reading about, researching, watching, exploring, etc. etc. Male fashion = yuck yuck, boring, yuck yuck.
Call me prejudiced against male fashion, because the truth is – I am. I am bored by it. Most men in my life don’t seem to abide by any rules of fashion – or frankly know that there are rules of fashion. In fact, I have even written about my three top male fashion pet peeves before because I find some male fashion behaviors to be so abhorrent. But character Neal Caffrey – well this man dresses like every woman’s dream, and makes me reconsider that there just may be some exciting possibilities in men’s fashion after all.
Every year about this time, many people go rushing about making gads and gads of resolutions to carry them into the New Year. Well, I don’t. I don’t ever keep my resolutions – but I do respect the need to start the new year on an improved foot. Instead of resolving to ‘lose ten pounds’ or ‘drink more water’, I take some time to look back on myself and my year’s experiences. I sit down – have a nice long think – and decide what I have done right, what I could have handled better, and how I can be a better person/friend/sister/wife/employee/daughter in the coming year.
My new office is a multi-company space, largely filled by an architecture firm that surrounds the walls + crevices + overhangs with towers and bridges and skyscrapers. The rest of the space is filled with a combination of tech companies, start-ups and one non-profit. There is a free, one-cup-flowing-a-plenty coffee maker within the kitchen/staff room and a large, flat screen TV adorning the wall. And while all these things are welcome and quite an upgrade from past work environments – my favorite feature of my new office is the employee book exchange.
The deal is thus … you bring a book, you share a book, you take a book, you read a book. This is how I came to hold ‘The Girl in Blue’. See, a friend had given me two of the ‘Twilight’ books because he was uninterested in the tale – and I admit to feeling the exact same way. But throwing away a book is incredibly wasteful, so instead I brought the two tomes to my book exchange and instead found this brightly-covered, humorous, little gem and was able to enjoy a tale much more to my liking.
