CHARMED

Life is a funny bastard. It's just donned on me in this past year. I was always the girl who had a mapped out trajectory for my life. 5 years, 10 years, 15 years. I was researching college in junior high, I was looking up average salaries for my career in high school, by the time I finished six internships and Hofstra University graduation rolled around, I had landed my "dream job". Everything went perfectly according to plan. It's the age old story - that hard workin' determined gal gets everything she's wanted for years, and whoops! Ends up loathing every aspect of it. The reality FAR from matches the fantasy in your head. What to do with life now? One year later I look at where I am sitting and the adventure I've been on, how drastically a human life can change in 12 months. ONE YEAR AGO: I was working as an entry-level (aka slave) Publicist at MS&L Worldwide. One of the top PR firms in....the world. I skipped along to work in Times Square, 52nd &am

I love raspberries. I love lemons. I love fruit in general. I always eat my daily dose of fruits. However that can get quite boring fast. Same old apple. Same old banana. If you haven't caught on by now...I'm a person who prefers pretty much everything in life to be spiced up - somehow. Unfortunately for me, the majority of things you can make fruit into have to do with either: adding tons of bad-for-you-ingredients ......or.....no, that's it. You can only make fruit into a dessert-eqsue item. Apple pie. Bananas Foster. Raspberry Buttery Scones. Lemon Meringue Pie. Peach Melba. Sugar. Flour. Butter. Clogged Arteries. Completely counter-acts any good-benefit of eating fruit in the first place. So it's my ongoing work to find SWEEEEEET healthy recipes....that actually taste amazing! Where you bite into your concoction and do the happy-food-dance (we've ALL DONE it) and the farthest thing from your mind is how you're amazed that it's healthy.....it's just G

There's a lot of chairs in the world. Zillions of them. A chair is a chair is a chair. They all have some type of leg-system, some type of large expansive flat surface for your butt to spread out onto, and generally some type of back support. My personal thought is if a chair works, and really it doesn't take a lot for them to "work", then what's the point in perpetuating and buying into the manufacturing of NEW chairs to add to the excessively overhwhelming pile of already-made chairs. Already-made chairs that are even being given away for FREE! Imagine that. Just go to craigslist and type in free chairs, you'll be overwhelmed. Most likely initially overhwhelmed by their ugliness - INITIALLY I said. Here's my tip -- boil it down people. Look past the pooey brown 80's wood, look past the pukey green 70's plastic, look past the moldy 60's fabric...look past all of that and boil it down. Legs attached and sturdy? Check. Acceptable butt-holding-a

So there's been many mentions to me ever since sharing my humiliatingly hilarious story of my 8th grade french teacher widdling down my existence on this earth by simply remembering me after 10 years as "the girl who always had the unique and elaborate earrings". Alright fine. I'm owning my reputation as a crazy earring lady. Whether that be negative or positive in connotation, it's who I am. And upon further examination I've come to realize I'm a crazy bracelet and ring lady too. Might as well just merge it all together and let the world know I like outrageous accessories okay. Since I like tips, my tip for your accessories, crazy or not, is to display them - on your dresser, on your night stand, on that useless weird side-table taking up space with a lamp on it and nothing else, even on the wall. Why spend all that money on pretty pretty things and then keep them hidden in a box 99% of the time? I was gifted one Christmas the most fabulous thing ever. An

In this fleeting life, cities empower and defeat, jobs arise and disappear, green pieces of paper rule decisions while the heart falls by the wayside. Our one constant in the choppy seas of incessent change are the special moments with the people we love most. The moments you usually don’t realize are so special until a time later when it pops like a bubble out of your frontal lobe. It plays over, a vivd deja-vu - you can see distinctly the overwhelming smile on your mother’s face and the sparkle of happiness in her eyes, flickering back on the movie screen of your mind. You wish time would freeze back at that moment so you could revel in the beauty forever. Your bones overflow with tingling joy. The next feature plays and the next and the next. You see his piercing blue eyes fade to black and feel his fingers sweep along your forehead, transported to the time when you fell asleep on his lap. Your heart is warm. These are the moments I want to dedicate my life to achieving. No city, no

We've all had those days. Those days. Nothing specifically happened, everything (in theory) is actually perfect, we can't point a finger at anyone, and there is no logical explanation for why we're draggin', can't focus, and can't motivate ourselves to be a productive human being for the day. Just BLAH. The BLAH days. A bad case of the BLAHs. Well I'm happy to profess that there is a pretty simple and fabulous antidote for BLAH days. It will make you smile, make you feel like a kid again, make other people happy by default, and most importantly it's really flippin' yummy. I'm talking about making a PIE! Pie just can't go wrong, can it? Even just finding out that I was referring to pie made you happy didn't it? And honestly I have no clue what makes a good pie - so if I can pull this off to success so can anyone. One blah day not too long ago I decided PIE was indeed the answer. I went to the store and bought pre-made pie dough. Bam, just

Now anyone who knows me knows I'm a sucker for a great bargain. I'm also a sucker for french onion soup on any menu, sparkly and funky printed scarfs, and most notoriously I'm a sucker for apparently outrageous earrings. To the point where my 8th grade french teacher, whom I happened to bump into at the town dump while dropping off garbage, squinted her eyes at me after I squealed in happiness to see her after 10+ years......her brain was racking and racking and finally her squint turned into a look of surprise and amusement.......I was "the girl who always had the unique and elaborate earrings!!!". 10 years and this is the single tidbit my existence is widdled down to by someone. Might as well be swinging crystal chandeliers from my ears. My reputation precedes me! But those are different stories all-together. This particular story is about the fact that whenever I'm in close proximity to any kind of thrift/antique/consignment store....my involuntary bargai

There really is nothing better than getting away for a long weekend. Leaving any trivial concerns, any partially made to-do-lists, any good-intention to start that project...leaving it all behind - and for a few days wipe your slate clean, just live in the moment, let your hair blow in the wind, drink too many martinis, and spend a little bit too much money. Re-energize, re-fuel, review. A long weekend spent back in the city in which I arrived eagerly & anonymously and departed almost as eagerly 5 years later with a crystal-clear understanding of who I was and who I DIDN'T want to be. I still have lots of love for New York, but I have to say it was an absolute pleasure to be visiting purely for fun. To ride the subway as a novelty and not a necessity. To run through the streets trying to make it on time to a Broadway show and not to a meeting. To stand still for a minute and marvel at the canopy of city lights at night...instead of cursing that I haven't seen the light of d