Proud Mom Alert!

My super talented son wrote a great piece about Blood Minerals

for the University of Oregon's ETHOS magazine.

He even got the cover!!

Why So Snarky?

I see a lot of beautifully decorated rooms and truly inspired and eclectic home design all over the Internet. There are a multitude of decor blogs giving opinions about things they love and just as often things they are tired of. Haters I call them! This poster has somehow made it onto the haters list. I don't know why, except maybe they feel the need to express their coolness by jumping on the bandwagon of snark. Well I still love this poster! I have it in pink and it is the first thing I see when I gaze down the hall way to my daughters bedroom. It makes me smile and reminds me of how constant love is. So ignore the haters I say and embrace this classic work of art! You can now get it in other colors. If I only had more wall space.

SpWiing Break!

All my kids are under one roof.

...and 1 of them needs a hair cut bad!

The Luck of the Irish

Three years ago for our 10th wedding anniversary, my adorable husband took me on the trip of a life time. Because neither one of has any foreign language skills and because my handsome, strapping husband is Irish, it was an easy decision where to go. I'm not a very good traveler, I get car sick easily and I'm not very adventurous, but from the Guinness Brewery, to the Waterford Crystal Factory, from the Counting Crows, to kissing the Blarney Stone, from the old Irish bars and ancient Irish Castles, to the tiny little car with the steering wheel on the wrong side, it was all so fun and amazingly beautiful! I loved that trip, and Ireland, and consider myself lucky enough to be married to the Irishman who took me there.

"The Stories Of John Cheever"

I have finally finished the very long and detailed book "Cheever a Life" by Blake Bailey. Phew! 770 pages of elegantly written literary history about a man that was as talented as he was tortured. I loved this book and the man it attempted to make me understand, but like the book itself Cheever was difficult and complicated, but in the end brilliant. Bailey details the dismal poverty John Cheever was born into, his dysfunctional family and marriage, and his covert homosexuality. He lived a fascinating life full of travel, literary rivalry and alcohol fueled depression. He had complicated relationships with almost everyone around him, editors, young writers (whom he bullied into giving him sexual favors), and sadly his own children. Despite Bailey's in depth account I didn't really get a true sense of Cheevers actual writing, his craft, his story telling. There were short passages quoted and analyzed, but I finished this book not really understanding why he was such a big deal. I then picked up a copy of "The Stories of John Cheever" and after just one page, truly after just one paragraph, I got it. He understood people and their flaws. Flaws that made them unique and flaws that made them exactly like everyone else. He wrote knowingly about the human condition, how men and women inhabit their lives, marriages, jobs and social circles. He revealed each person as an individual and as a cog in a tragically predictable world. He wrote of lonely men and disappointed housewives, of idleness and toil. He conveyed mood and desperation better then anything I have ever read. These are the stomping grounds of the original "Mad Men". He gave the people he wrote about real lives however mundane, and could end a story abruptly with a crazy tragic twist that sometimes didn't seem to fit, but you could hardly mind because you were taken there with such beautiful melancholy ease. After 770 pages dedicated to unraveling the complicated life of this very complicated man, I finally began to better understand John Cheever through his own superior words.

It's Never too Late to Make a First Impression.

When you walk into my home you walk, right into my home. There is not a foyer that tastefully sets the tone for the rest of the house or a hallway that gently leads you into the living area. Just open the door and there you are, right in the middle of it. I have over the years moved furniture in and out and hung and rehung art, to find the most inviting arrangement to be the first thing that someone sees when they walk into my home. This is my latest configuration and I think I like it!

1 Year Old!

While laying awake one night exactly a year ago today, I had an idea. I am often plagued by insomnia but not as often by great ideas, so this was special. I had for some time been secretly entertaining the idea of starting a blog, a medium that I saw gave regular people the access and the ability to express themselves and their creativity, ideas and opinions. I wanted to be a person who did that. What held me back was fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of failure, fear of embarrassing myself and fear of looking and sounding like a self absorbed narcissist! I wasn't even sure of how to get a blog started or what I would write about if I could. I didn't know if I could stick with it or if there would be anyone who would even want read about the things I didn't yet know what I wanted to write about. I used to knit, so for a I while thought about starting a knitting blog but decided no, that was too narrowly focused. As a hair dresser I thought a beauty or hair design centered blog seemed logical but how interesting would that be: describing the latest hair-dos and giving styling tips? Not very, I decided. I have sometimes considered my self an amateur decorator, very amateur, but I have so much fun thrifting, painting and re-purposing, that I thought that this would be at least partially what I would blog about. So that was my idea exactly one year ago, the one I had been afraid to realize, the one that forced me out of bed and lured me into the web log world. Since then it has turned into and has uncovered more then that: a place to collect my thoughts, an awareness of who I am and what I love, and surprisingly my desire to write, but it all started with a vague idea and a blog title that would eventually encompass lots of ideas about making pretty.