Off to Canouan

Wednesday, May 08, 2013

Getting ready to visit the island of Canouan and couldn't be more excited!! Canouan is just about 10 miles southwest of Mustique, and it's just as tiny. I'll be laying on the white sandy beach and soaking up all the beauty the island has to offer before jetting off back to Mustique to finish out this vacation, which has so far been unbelievable. Signing OFF -  with love from the Grenadines!

Photos from my Instagram and First Class Holidays

Sunrise House Mustique

Tuesday, May 07, 2013

During our much needed Mustique vacation, we're staying at Sunrise House - and let me tell you, this place is UNBELIEVABLE. There's sun, sand, beachy, airy rooms, amazing service, a pool and outdoor hot tub to knock your socks off - I swear if I didn't have to get back to real life, I think I might stay here forever. Soon we're off to Canouan for some more island hopping adventures. Today I'm just loving life and working on my best bronze.



All photos from the Sunrise House website

Helping The Kase Family

Monday, April 15, 2013

It's days like today that should remind all of us how important it is to help our fellow neighbors. Whether we know them personally or not, it's critical that we all band together as a country in times of need and support each other. What happened in Boston today was such a tragedy - but for all that we've heard about the bad, we also hear about all the brave people who jumped in immediately to help, and THAT is exactly what is important about days like today. Supporting and helping each other not because we have to, but because in times of tragedy, we all become each other's family.

Today I'm feeling particularly inspired by an interior designer (and good friend) in New York City, Doryn Wallach, who was affected by Hurricane Sandy just like so many people and families living on the east coast. Doryn is busy raising money for the Kase family; a family of four that was forced to stay in their destroyed home after Hurricane Sandy hit, with no means to repair it themselves. 

Doryn says: "While interior design used to just be a career path of mine, it has taken on a new meaning after my Hurricane Sandy experience. When your home where you spent wonderful moments with your family and friends – and was once warm and happy and filled with memorabilia – is then ripped down to its skeleton, it's heartbreaking, traumatic and scary. All you want is for it to feel like a home again and to forget how it appears cold and barren. I am just one person, but with your support, we can help the Kase family get their home put back together and feeling like "home" again, so they can continue their selfless efforts to help others around them."

I don't know about everyone else, but I'm completely inspired by this. I urge everyone to click onto the website and donate to the Kase family if you can, through the site Go Get Funding. Also, see more of Doryn's work on her website, www.dorynw.com. This woman is talented (see above), and using her time to do some good in the world. My thoughts go out to everyone affected in Boston today, and everyone that is still being affected by the damage from Huricane Sandy. 

Photos from Doryn's website, www.dorynw.com

My Texas Garden

Monday, March 25, 2013

I love spring time in Texas. This weekend I spent a ton of time planting veggies and flowers around my house in Texas. I've got a real "grandma" garden around my house - it has a little bit of planting from every person that has ever owned the house, and it's almost 100 years old. I didn't have the heart to tear out everyone's hard work and love from over the years, so I've got plants in my yard that you can't even buy because they were acquired from sharing with your neighbors... a cutting here, a cutting there. It's a beautiful hodgepodge of color, texture, and variety.

I love digging in the dirt and usually hate to wear gloves because I love the feel of the dirt so much. I grew up working with my parents in the yard and garden; it really relaxes me. And there is nothing better than walking through the garden with a cold glass of white wine and surveying all the sweat and muscle that went into every planting.

My Texas garden is very different from my LA yard that was landscaped to perfection and is maintained by a gardener that comes more often than I'd like to admit - just one more great example of my two extremely separate lives.


New Year's Resolutions, For Myself

Wednesday, January 09, 2013

To finish off my new year's resolutions, here's a few that are a little more selfish. It's probably a good idea to have a few that are focused on myself, since every year it seems I'm guaranteed to have to kick my own ass and just get it together!!

1. Stick with my pilates class. I've had a horrible lower back for over 10 years now and I REFUSE to be the old lady who has to sit down to put her underwear on (which I currently do).
2. Stop buying every damn thing that catches my eye. I need to sort though the shit I currently have and make MUCH more selective purchases in 2013. (This is especially true when I have lunch and drink wine before shopping).
3. Read my kindle more than I read Perez Hilton. Enough said.

Pilates photo from Ballet and Pilates, Perez Hilton photo from Miss Malini

New Year's Resolutions, For Others

Tuesday, January 08, 2013

I've considered my new year's resolutions carefully this year because for once I ACTUALLY want to make them stick. While I feel like I'm in a perpetual state of resolute, I, like everyone, yearn for the time of year that symbolizes a fresh page on life. I've crafted my resolutions carefully, which fall into two categories: resolutions for the benefit of others (as well as myself), and resolutions solely for my personal gain in the new year (have to be a little selfish, right?). Today, my resolutions for the benefit of others (better read as: things I really should be doing already, but tend to slack off on):

1. Get better at writing thank you notes. And by "better", I mean start doing it. 
2. Call my mother more. I believe in Karma and you better believe I'll be pissed if my kids don't call me when they're gone!
3. Stay more connected with friends by doing a consistent rotation of lunch/dinner or drinks. Preferably drinks!!

Happy 2013 to all the wonderful people in my life. I solemnly swear this is the year I start writing you all hand written thank you notes for every amazing and fabulous thing you do.

California & Texas Necklace

Monday, November 12, 2012

As most of you know, I lead a crazy, hectic, wonderful, amazing double life. I'm traveling between TX and LA so often that sometimes it makes me go a little cross-eyed... what day is it, where am I, WHAT's HAPPENING?!? Sometimes it gets the better of me and I feel weighed down by the chaos of it all... but then I remember how much I love this life, my family, and everyone and everything that I am traveling and running myself ragged for. I love my double life, and given the choice, I wouldn't have it any other way. When I came across this necklace, it made me laugh. Someone else gets me. The artist will make it with any two states for anyone else out there who lives the same kind of life I do... life and love, people! At the end of the day, that's all we can really do, isn't it?

To get a Live & Love Custom Necklace from NINOTCHKAgoods, click here.

Colorado County Fair

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

County Fairs are as All-American as apple pie. They start popping up all over the rural countryside in early September, always filled with all kinds of animals, fried foods on a stick, and plenty of excellent people watching. My entire childhood can be measured through fair memories. Back in my day we all raised animals to show, and now there's something so funny about watching a bunch of kids carrying around their prized rabbits and chickens (which have inevitably become their best friend), hoping to win the covetable blue ribbon. 

Beyond all the excitement and entertainment of showing animals, there are the rides that look so old and unstable I can't believe any parent lets a kid ride them, the gigantic turkey legs and funnel cakes wafting through the air, all the young girls wearing lip gloss and eyeliner hoping to get their first kiss in the middle of the midway, and (inevitably) some washed up country western singer headlining as the musical event. When I was a teenager, my boyfriend, his brother, and his dad competed in the annual tractor pulling competition. A bunch of men driving souped up tractors, what's not to love??

It's been years since I've attended the county fair in my hometown, but this year, I lucked out and finally made it. It was a blast from the past. I drank a beer with old friends and was very, very tempted to tackle a turkey leg and funnel cake. The rides still look like steel death traps, the young girls are still glossed up and on the prowl, and they still have that dang tractor pulling competition. As much as I love change, I'm so happy that some things never do.


Commuting on a Jet Plane

Friday, September 07, 2012

As if you didn't know this already, airlines SUCK!! They are such a necessary evil. Airline food is what I imagine prison food to taste like, all the flight attendants seem pissed off at the world, and the bathrooms never fail to smell like port-a-potties that haven't been dumped in three days (and have just been sitting in the TX summer heat. Yum.)

Yet, week after week, I climb aboard a flight that shuttles me between LA and Houston to my boys. Of course, many people who know me say it's my fault. My wanderlust has finally gotten the best of me and has left me splintered between a life in TX and one in LA. This geographical indiscretion leaves me in a total commuters nightmare. I fly so often and so regularly that I know just about every attendant and pilot on my route. In return, they know that I start my flight with a water (no ice) and then move on to a bloody mary. They also know I'm always going to ask for a blanket and a pillow, and I'm almost always going to be sitting in row three in an aisle seat. I can also testify that the menu hasn't changed on a Continental flight (now I guess confusingly referred to as United) since I started my regular commute 7 years ago. I'm always going to get salad with chicken that is painted with fake grill marks and a hot chicken fajita wrap. Every. Single. Time. They always excitedly tell you too, "and this all comes with a delicious soup!" which is always mushroom or tomato basil. The entire meal has enough sodium to cause every passenger to suffer from inflight thrombosis. I realize you're always told to stay away from alcohol on a flight, but it truly is the only way to make it bearable when you fly as much as I do. I start drinking immediately and pretty much don't stop until I doze off for the rest of the flight. 

As much as I hate flying, I never think twice about climbing aboard my weekly flight in one direction or the other. I realize my boys are growing up faster than my head and heart can handle, and soon I won't be flying like a maniac to make school pickup at 3:15, or a 7PM kickoff on a Friday night. I will miss this. ALL of this. I might even begin to miss the weekly bowl of crappy mushroom soup.

TV Dinners Then & Now

Monday, August 27, 2012

When I was a kid and my parents went away, I was never too sad about them being gone because it meant I would get to eat a glorious TV dinner. My choice (of course) was Swansons fried chicken with mashed potatoes, peas and carrots, and cherry cobbler, all tucked inside it's beautiful aluminum nest. I can still see the little compartment with the mashed potatoes and the perfectly square, frozen pat of what I'm certain in 1980 could only have been a disgusting oil-bomb of yellow margarine. The only downside to eating my frozen treasure was the hour long wait it took to heat up in the oven before I could finally pull back the tinfoil curtain on my lip-smackin'-finger-lickin-culinary delight. 

Today, things have certainly changed. The freezer section of any grocery store now offers every frozen entree you could ever possibly desire (with the added bonus of only 3-6 minutes cook time in the microwave), but nothing matches my generation's first frozen experience. Now I've started to see crazy cool chefs serving their own versions of the classic TV dinners, things like buffalo "salisbury" steak with gruyere mashed potatoes, root vegetable sauté, and a summer berry crisp, all served on a reusable, environmentally-friendly, ceramic compartmentalized tray, trying to evoke the look and feel of times gone by. While I'm sure the new wave of gourmet TV dinners are absolutely delicious, nothing beats the memories of me comfortably stretched out on the couch watching the Brady Bunch and happily devouring my artery clogging, finger-licking, prized TV dinner.

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