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What’s Left When Your Goals Are Gone?

April 4, 2013

Q. Jordan,

I'm an avid reader of Ramshackle Glam, and a high school senior. I realize that this is probably a very strange question, but...I'm at a loss.

Yesterday was decision day for most of the Ivy League schools. I got a perfect ACT score, and I have a good GPA. I took on as many leadership roles as possible in clubs and such, and I've made a precariously small amount of friends because I've been working so hard to get straight As since freshman year.

And I applied to a lot of Ivies. I told myself that all of the hours writing essays and the late nights studying for exams would be worth it because I would get in to the school that I so desperately wanted, I would be away from the other students who had mocked me for studying so hard, and I would finally be around people that were interested in the same things as I am and would appreciate me for my intelligence. Which sounded like a great plan.

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SNAPSHOTS

This Past Year…In Video Clip Form

April 3, 2013

My new reel is done! Thought you might be interested in taking a look; it's basically just a whole bunch of clips from various projects I've worked on over the past year or so, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

(P.S. If you're curious, the "NSB" you see at the start of the video refers to my hosting agents, who created this reel and who I work with on things like Better TV; my digital media managers, DBA, are the ones with whom I work on the RG-related collaborations you see here.)

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Style

Behind The Scenes: DKNY x Ramshackle Glam

April 2, 2013

When I was seventeen years old, I shot a commercial for a face wash product that ended up doing pretty well (I'll dig it out of my video archives someday; I guarantee that those of you who were teenagers in the '90s will both remember it and remember being vaguely annoyed by it, because the thing played a lot).

Anyway, as a sort of celebration for booking that commercial I decided to do something I'd never done before: buy a really special piece of clothing that didn't come from somewhere like the Salvation Army (my go-to shopping destination for most of high school). My mom and I went down to DKNY on West Broadway and I bought the most beautiful sweater I'd ever seen: it was a light camel color, cashmere, with an enormous cowl-neck and extra-long sleeves. For something like ten years, that sweater was what I put on whenever I wanted to feel casually elegant and sort of 'Oh, this old thing?', like I'd just stepped out of a Nora Ephron movie set in the Hamptons or something.

All of this is to say that I have a big soft spot for DKNY, and so the chance to work with the brand in such an involved, collaborative way was more than a little bit exciting.

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Eat

Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Artichokes (And Probably More)

April 2, 2013

A couple of years ago, I went through this weird phase where I ate steamed artichokes practically every single day. Basically, what happened was that I discovered that they are less vegetables than they are butter delivery systems, and boom: obsessed.

Anyway, I haven't had one for ages and ages, and then last night, all of a sudden, I decided that artichokes must be steamed. Lemon butter must be made.

It was awesome (albeit not the loveliest thing in the world to photograph post-steaming, but what can you do?).

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Makeup & Beauty

Fix In A Flash: Ombre-Ish Nails

April 2, 2013

Did you know that it's actually, literally impossible for me to sit still for long enough to allow a manicure to dry properly before getting myself involved in one kind of activity or another that completely destroys it?

I know, you're shocked; go ahead and sit down for a moment if you need to.

Anyway, I've discovered a fantastic little solution for those times when you screw up one or two nails badly enough that you really should just take it all off and start over, but - oops - you don't happen to own the same exact color they used on you at the salon.

At the DKNY shoot last Friday, one of my colleagues had the most beautiful ombre-ish manicure, with the nail on her index finger painted just slightly darker than all the others; a subtler, more elegant version of that ring-finger nail art trend that's been circling around forever and ever now. And so on Saturday, when I decided to splurge on a beautiful pale-grey manicure only to arrive home, tickle my child, and immediately divest my fingernail of every single iota of its former prettiness, I just looked in my drawer, found a slightly darker shade in the same general color family, painted the index finger on both hands, and presto:

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Love

Weekend Snapshots: Bunny Ears Edition

April 1, 2013

I'm heading to Colorado next week with Better TV, so the plan Saturday morning was to go shopping and pull together my wardrobe for all five segments.

Instead, I got distracted by wallets.

I have a thing for zip-arounds, you see, and my current wallet is an overstuffed disaster zone. Sure, I could just clean it out...but honestly, I feel like given my Costanza Tendencies, I should really just own one that's the size of a basketball. Anyway, I found both of these pretty things at T.J. Maxx, couldn't figure out whether to go for classic navy or fun purple-with-studs, Instagram-sourced to see which one you guys thought I should choose...and then you couldn't decide either: the vote was split perfectly down the middle. So I got all paralyzed by indecision and left without buying either.

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ENTREES

Mom’s Spinach Lasagna

April 1, 2013

Weekend Snapshots are coming up in just a bit, but in the meantime: this lasagna deserves its own post.

It's kind of labor-intensive what with all the spinach-chopping and layering, but you're going to have to trust me when I say that it's worth it (and it makes so much that you'll be able to freeze lots of leftovers for later).

I mean...you know something's good when it requires a two-spoon approach.

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