Pink Champagne Cake

A great cake for celebrating a birthday, New Years of anything worthy of a celebration. The cake was inspired from the film, 16 Candles. I found this recipe on the Cabi Blog.
Just reading the recipe will make you happy and want to celebrate something.
http://cabicanary.com/?recipe-details=1&rec_id=176

Vacation...Hiatus? I am back.

After what appears to be a year but only about five months, I am back. It was a busy summer. In fact, this is the first summer that I have worked full time in 10 years. Navigating child care, camps, play dates and trying to maintain a home while working was challenging. But..I managed and learned a few life lessons.
1. Summer child care can be a nightmare. I was prepared with nine possible sitters on stand-by and I used all nine.
2. I think I spent more on child care, camps, activities, etc. than I actually made working.
3. It wasn't so bad.

My family has three months of the fall and the school year behind us and I think we finally found our routine. So, with that said, I will be blogging more regularly. Look for information about fashion, beauty, entertaining, cooking and other lifestyle topics.

It's good to be back!

Norma Kamali at Walmart -- What???

Today, I met my daughter and husband at the pool. My daughter was instructed to bring my bathing suit and pool bag. I arrived at the pool, grabbed the pool bag and proceeded to change into my suit...only, my daughter forgot to pack my bottoms. My husband said, "Is that a big deal?" WHAT, are you kidding me? Yes, that is a huge deal!

I drive home to retrieve the bottoms of my swimsuit only I cannot find them anywhere. I searched everywhere, for the sake of time I grab a black bottom from another suit and drive back to the pool. While driving back I am becoming angry, because that bathing suit fit me really well and I paid more a than usual for the suit.

Eventually, the next day the bottoms appear, hidden under stuffed animals in my daughter's room (don't ask). I had assumed the bottoms would never surface so I started searching the web for Norma Kamali bathing suits hoping to find last year's suit on Ebay or something. In my search results was a link to "Norma Kamali for Walmart". WHAT??? Is this a joke? So, I clicked on the link and to my delight, Norma Kamali created a line for Walmart. Quite nice I might add. I ventured off to my local Walmart to find just a few items from the line. I purchased the black sleeveless dress for $19.99. I am browsing the site to order several pieces on line. Give it a look over, the line is amazing.
http://www.normakamalicollection.com/catalog/NK_WMT_SPRING_2009.aspx

J Crew and Shelly O

I have always been a fan of J Crew since Emily Cinader took over her father's company in 1986. I find J Crew classic with a twist and affordable. It appears that Michelle Obama is a J Crew fan as well. We saw Michelle wearing J Crew throughout the campaign and she has carried the trend to the White House.

Great news for J Crew although I doubt the company could ever forecast for the amount of sales the company is generating, thanks to Shelly O. I have tried to order a couple of cardigans to no avail - - in fact, I don't know when they will ever be available. I know that J Crew is not a publicly owned company but we may see that change with growing sales and interest since the First Lady took them public.

I have included my favorite ensemble from Mrs. Obama's trip to London.
Enjoy!

I Am Back

It has been a while since my last post. I have been on hiatus with good reason, I returned to work in a full time role. My husband and I were both self employed and given the recent economic turmoil it made sense for me to return to work. This transition has been difficult to navigate but I am finally stearing the ship. It has honestly taken three months for my family and I to adjust.

I had to up my game and become more organized and plan, plan, plan. I get everything organized and ready for show time for the week on Sunday. I have been laying out my clothes for the week as well as my daughters, my husband is on his own here. Whatever I can do in the evening to make the mornings run smoothly helps too!

I am back and ready to post and tweet. Follow me on twitter too!

Thanks for your supportive emails! :)

Bamboo Floors

We are in the planning stages of refurbishing and redesigning our kitchen. My home is a 1922 English Tudor with all original wood floor except for the kitchen. A kitchen renovation was done in the 70' s with a Brady Bunch influence. The geniuses that renovated the kitchen did harm to the original wood floor. I am toying with replacing the floor entirely as trying to have planks milled to match is almost a nightmare. I feel very good about using bamboo in lieu of pine. I also like that the bamboo planks are so long which will lend itself to my kitchen 24 x 24. The blogger in the attached link is using the bamboo planks for a renovation in the UK http://kaybar007.blogspot.com/2008/12/house-of-bamboo.html

Favorite Things from Real Simple Magazine

Well...it's almost the New Year time for reflecting and REORGANIZING. In my fair opinion no one does it better than Real Simple Magazine - - always, a great go to for some inspiration. Reorganizing and some old fashioned pitching and donating is very zen for me. The link below from Real Simple can get you started to http://simplystated.realsimple.com/home/2008/12/a-few-of-my-fav.html