DIY

Decor

Love and Kids’ Rooms

Our old (old, old) living room, 2009.

Several lifetimes ago (by my count), I wrote my first of what turned out to be hundreds of posts that loosely fall into the "Diary" category - the missives about parenting, about anxiety, about divorce that I've posted here over the years. This first one, though, was about something a little different. A little more...tactile.

It was about my living room. The living room that I shared with Kendrick (and Lucy, and then later on Virgil and our infant son) when we lived on the Upper East Side.  It was a wild, messy mix of hand-me-downs from my parents, pieces we'd found discarded on the street and fixed up with varying degrees of success, and the occasional element of inexplicable drama (chalkboard fridge! graffiti-covered chest of drawers! insane bird wallpaper!).

DIARY

Five Things I Learned From Francesca This Weekend

Totally casual magazine-reading outfit (dress by Cleobella)

On Friday afternoon, I arrived at Francesca's house for a little kid-free staycation only to find her triumphantly reducing some apricots to make a pork chop sauce. "I just invented this dish!" she declared. "It's SO DELICIOUS!"

We exclaimed over and over about the particular combination of flavors - how unexpected! how delightful! - and snapped a couple of pics, because clearly I would need to post about this unexpectedly delightful new dish.

Home

Easy Tips For Staging A House

My house, all staged and ready to be sold.

Here's a fun little career development as of late: I've started doing digital marketing and strategy for realtors. Mostly what that means is that I help them develop their digital channels - SEO optimize their websites, establish their social aesthetic, etc etc - but in the cases of clients that are local, I've also been helping with the actual, physical, staging-of-spaces in advance of photographing them and putting them on the market.

Read: Everything I Know About Buying And Selling Houses

Makeup & Beauty

An Argument In Favor Of Press-On Nails (Really)

The dream

I've had dalliances with fake nails in the past. I know acrylics aren't great for your nails - and I extra-know this because one of these dalliances ended with water seeping into the space between the acrylic and my real nails, unbeknownst to me, and turning my nails a glorious and semi-permanent chocolate brown (oh yes, that happened) - but they're just so tempting. 

As a person who is genetically incapable of growing her nails beyond the ends of her fingertips without them essentially dissolving, there are few things that make me feel more elegant and feminine than perfectly shaped, perfectly polished long nails. And in pursuit of that goal I've basically tried it all: gel polish, strengthening polish, letting my nails breathe to see if they'll reward me by growing, and - yes - acrylics.

Makeup & Beauty

Just A Few On-Set Discoveries

mwah

Little entertainment industry Insider Info for you: There are few places on this planet more fun to hang out in than a makeup and hair room when everyone's all jacked up on caffeine (a.k.a. all the time). Because the day may start with chit chat about, say, politics, but the conversation always boils down to two things:

1) Men (see also: men, terrible)