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My Looks

Sneaky

March 29, 2018

Oh my sneakers

A few weeks ago, Skechers asked me if they could send me a pair of sneakers from their Spring collection to try out/potentially wear in posts/etc, and I was like "ehhh, I have a couple of pairs of sneakers; I'm probably good, but thank you!" But then I went on the site to take a quick look, and excuuuuuuuuse me but what are those?

So I said yes, please can I try these out because they're red, and now I know that they are also a DREAM on your feet. (This is not a sponsored post, just FYI; this is good old genuine enthusiasm talking here.) I have a feeling that the technology that they use to make them this comfortable was developed for little old ladies with bone spurs, but whatever, I'll take it. (I went and looked up the sneaker info, and the extreme comfort level is apparently a combo of the memory foam insole, the stretchable, "sock-like" inner lining, and the padded collar and tongue.)

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Entertaining

All The Springy Things

March 28, 2018

April showers, et cetera et cetera

The school I attended up through the sixth grade was technically Protestant - the hint being its name, Trinity - and students were required to attend Chapel each week, but, oddly enough, the student body was predominantly Jewish. So was the student body at Dalton, where I spent the remainder of my grade school years. And so was I, sort of - my dad is Jewish. Except my mom is a lapsed Protestant. And both of them are atheists. So I guess you could say that when it came to holidays, religion didn't exactly play a big role - we essentially cherrypicked the ones that seemed to make sense to us to celebrate, and celebrated those in a way that made sense to us, too.

Easter was never really a big deal in our house; it always came upon me out of nowhere, like an afterthought to Valentine's Day (the Easter Bunny usually delivered my basket of creme eggs in the morning, shortly after my parents had ushered me back into bed; it appears that I wasn't the only one who Easter took by surprise). Once, when I was in fifth grade, a friend of mine took me to an Easter service with her family. I remember being excited to dress up in my favorite plaid skirt, and I remember the kids got to go up on stage to pet a rabbit, but that's about it.

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Fashion Tips & Reader Questions

Travel Capsule

March 27, 2018

I have located the perfect travel outfit. 

Blouse | Socks | Boots (similar) | Sunglasses

Don't you hate it when you spend a lifetime going about something one way, and the way you do this thing is easy and involves no brain cells, and sure, it may not be the best approach on the planet, but whatever...and then all of a sudden someone named, say, Francesca shows up and tells you that you should start doing this thing in a way that requires something approaching work, and so you humor her, only to discover that her way is, in fact, much better?

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DIARY

I Didn’t Go To The March For Our Lives, And This Is Why

March 26, 2018

I’ve marched a lot in the past year and a half - in the streets of Los Angeles, at the San Francisco airport, on the side of a road somewhere in the middle of nowhere, and so on and so forth, as we do nowadays - but this Saturday, during the March For Our Lives, I stayed home.

I packed for Monday morning's flight to New York. I played Mario Kart with my kids, and covered spring bulbs with just-thawed soil. Every hour or so I sifted through my social media feeds, watching all passive and warm on my big, comfortable couch while Emma Gonzalez stood silent to mark the six minutes and twenty seconds it took for a former classmate to murder 17 of his classmates with a semi-automatic rifle, while eleven-year-old Naomi Wadler reminded America that there are huge numbers of American women whose deaths by gun violence are mere statistics, and while Yolanda Renee King echoed the words of her grandfather: "I have a dream that enough is enough. That this should be a gun-free world. Period."

"Spread the word," she led the chant. "Have you heard? All across the nation. We...are going to be. A great generation."

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Before & After Renovations

Secret Garden

March 22, 2018

Looks simple enough. ...Right?

I had big plans for today's post, about wallpapering my daughter's room. My great-grandfather, you see, was a professional wallpaper hanger, and I have this old newspaper clipping with a black-and-white photo of him hanging paper in Rockefeller Center just before it opened. I was going to write about how everyone told me hanging wallpaper was hard, but it's in my blood, and triumphantly post shots of my stunning new wallpaper along with how-to tips and tricks and such.

And then I Googled "how to hang wallpaper."

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Lifestyle

Links & Love & Stuff

March 21, 2018

me + sea + my mama tee

Hatch created this MAMA tee to support Every Mom Counts' efforts to make pregnancy and childbirth safe for every woman, everywhere (100% of net proceeds goes to the cause). If you need another excuse to pick one up, it also happens to fit like a dream. And has POCKETS. (It's their signature bateau top, and so it also comes without the lettering if you don't want to advertise your maternal status - and FYI, even though Hatch is technically a maternity company, this top one thousand percent works for the non-pregnant.)

Sooooo it turns out Dapper + Crown makes what might be the cutest little girl's dress I've ever seen (please get the yellow).

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Eat

Reader Recipes Are Back! (And I Would Really, Really Like Yours)

March 19, 2018

Me cooking and blogging, a looooong time ago in the old apartment

Since I'm busy reminiscing about cooking today: Those of you who've been reading here since way back when may remember that I used to make reader-submitted recipes on a fairly regular basis. They were a big part of the process of me figuring out how to cook, since they usually felt more accessible to me than recipes in cookbooks and such (and since I could just email the person who sent the recipe in if I had a question), and a few of them are still in regular rotation at our house, because they were just that good. (Most of them, obviously, are pasta.)

So: If you have a family-friendly - read: easy and non-fussy - dinner recipe that you particularly love and think I need to make...help a girl out? It doesn't have to be your personal recipe; just one that you love.

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Eat

A Little Life Milestone (Plus Creamy Chicken with Couscous, Bacon and Corn)

March 19, 2018

Remember when I started this site, and I didn't know how to cook, but pretended I did because I thought I was supposed to know how to do things if I was going to write about them? (I abandoned that ethos pretty quickly, but there was definitely a period when I authoritatively delivered tomato sauce recipes that included actual Prego - which I still enjoy as its own thing, because come on, Prego is delicious, but no longer add to meat to make "homemade bolognese.") My meal repertoire at that point was mostly a rotation of roast chicken from a recipe I'd found in Allure in the '90s and Bertoli four-cheese tortellini with, yes, Prego.

But writing this site inspired me to do many, many (many many many) things I never would have done otherwise, and among them was learning my way around a kitchen. I don't consider myself a "food blogger," obviously - I consider myself a person who likes food, and writes about it, but who still has to solicit advice from Google and my next-door neighbor Alisa whenever I run into something tricky. And while I might make little adjustments to recipes (usually more salt, less pepper, because in my opinion pepper should be illegal) I wouldn't ever really presume to have improved upon an actual recipe written by an actual food person. I always assume, in other words, that everybody who has ever come up with and published a recipe is a better cook than I am, and I should probably sit down and listen.

And then, last night, this cool little thing happened: I found a recipe I wanted to make on The Kitchn, and as I was reading it I thought...hm. Some of this doesn't sound like it'll work quite right. 

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