For Fall

It looks to me like For Joseph has some really lovely and comparatively reasonable looks for fall.Voulez vous? Don't mind if I do.

Cookie Monsters

When life gives us a really messy house and a really killer cookie recipe, we choose bake cookies over clean house any day. Too many cooks.
Chocolate chips go in. Chocolate chips come out.Caught red-handed!After only one semi-panicked phone call to Jora- tada! They took eighteen minutes to reach chewy, gooey goodness in my oven, so be prepared for some experimenting here. And note to self: Buy some sweetened coconut alreadyThese bowls didn't stay full for long!

Looked Good Enough To Eat

So we did. And it was. You can find something similar here. I popped a steamed mussel into each of the kids' mouths. There was chewing but no swallowing. Baby steps.

A Must-Read

This is the working cover of my fellow Class of '96 Scripps alumnae/book-club buddy Margaret Dilloway's DEBUT NOVEL!!! Isn't it gorgeous??? Hard to believe I know someone who's about to get her first book published. (I still have some Werther's Original chocolates in a bowl that she left here last spring before she moved to Hawaii.) Oh, and she wrote this book while birthing and raising three children. Word is that it will be released in August 2010. I absolutely cannot wait to read it.

P.S. She has a beautiful blog too! Do yourself a favor and read this post, in case you've been forgetting to believe in yourself lately.

Too Soon . . .

. . . but still kind of hilarious. You can pick up your Balloon Boy Halloween Costume Kit here (in case you were stumped) and read all about it here. (Thanks Uncle Todd!)

Melina's New Shop

My impossibly creative, sunburst of a cousin, Melina, just opened up her own Etsy shop. I am in awe! When she turned to neuroscience, I thought she had left her fashion-designer days behind. Apparently not. Talk about combining your passions. Aren't her cuts and patterns amazing? And she can certainly add modeling to her long list of talents as well. Please think of Melina when you're shopping for the fascienista in your life. Congratulations, cuz!

Those Tights Are Tight

This has to be one of fall's hottest trends. And I am all over it. Any time I can ramp up, not to mention vamp up, my whole look for a mere twenty bucks, I am completely sold. What about you? Don't your gams deserve the stockings and stilettos treatment this season?

Mom's Away! (Part Two)

I'm back! My weekend in Santa Barbara was wonderful. Exactly what I needed. So, so relaxing. And I checked off every item on my wish list. Except for the running on the beach part. It was way hot so I settled for walking. That and laziness was the order of the day.This was the view of Del Mar from my train window on the way up to Los Angeles. I thought the ham sandwich I made for myself didn't look too bad either.I always love seeing LA's skyline for some reason. Los Angeles was where my friend, Eugenia, picked me up, and we drove the rest of the way to Santa Barbara for her work's retreat with a quick pit-stop in Montecito. MeEugenia Montecito
I had sort of remembered that Montecito was pretty but wow! Then it was on to Santa Barbara and our accommodations. As usual, our thoughts turned to food pretty quickly. The first night we went out for some good, albeit tragically touristy seafood. We did A LOT better foodie-wise for lunch the next day at Pierre Lafond. Thanks Alice!We dined on spinach salad, a mushroom and prosciutto turnover and a turkey, brie and cranberry sandwich. Everything was delectable. There was a really good Santa Barbara pinot noir too . . . . . . that made us feel the teensiest bit silly. E also found us a scrumptious patisserie for coffee and pastry on Sunday morning. That raisin croissant and binoche really deserved to be photographed. No pictures of me painted green and wrapped in cellophane either. Oh well. My only regret for the weekend is that I brought along this book to read.It is a graphic, gruesome, deeply disturbing murder mystery that had me slightly on edge the whole time. Just ask E who remarked on my wide-eyededness more than once. But at least I finished it in time for book club in a couple of Sundays. And I can't remember the last time I read more than 500 pages in two days. I was so engrossed that someone at the pool had to remind me I was missing happy hour. Little did they know, the whole weekend felt like happy hour! I'm so grateful that E let me tag along and that we're BFFs.

The grand finale was being surprised by my beloved H, S and B at the train station when I returned on Sunday evening. Bubs actually threw both arms up in the air and jumped for joy when he saw me (before beginning an endless refrain of, "Want ride choo choo pees.") Of course I teared up. Well, darn it if the little guy didn't look like he'd grown more hair and a couple of inches taller since I'd seen him last. Whereas Snook had regressed, asking me to carry her, carry her. I didn't mind.

The house? My "bomb" reference turned out to be more than a little prophetic. So what. It was worth it. But I'm saving that for another post.

Mom's Away! (Part 1)

This weekend, I'm heading up the coast to Santa Barbara with a girlfriend. I can't believe I just typed that, but it's true. And I'm leaving behind a very sickly husband no less. :( Things I'm looking forward to:

-staring out the window of the train
-reading
-wining and dining
-girl talk
-sleeping in
-running on the beach
-an Avance French seaweed wrap
-puttering around State Street
-Sunday brunch
-a change of scenery

And I'm already especially looking forward to my homecoming. Just hope the fallout isn't too severe when I walk in the door. See you Monday!

The "Black Box" Theory

Remember Seinfeld's famous query, "What's the deal with a plane's 'black box?' If the black box is the only thing that survives a crash, why not build the whole plane out of black box?" Another less critical but still pressing question might be, "What's the deal with a plane's black box being bright orange?" Answer: To heighten visibility in a wreckage, but then we're still dealing with a misnomer. And I've lost my train of thought. Oh yeah, I've just alighted upon what I think is a pretty good idea. That being to apply Seinfeld's "black box" logic to my skincare regimen. So you know how the skin around your eyes is the most delicate and prone to aging on your entire face? Well, that must mean products intended for the eye area must contain the most potent anti-aging ingredients known to woman. Soooo, why not slather eye cream all over your entire face??? For obvious reasons, I'm sticking to my Bullseye pledge on this one. But it's worth a try, don't you think? Even if there probably is tons of advice out there against doing this very thing. I'll let you know how it goes.

Oktoberfest 2009

This year, my in-laws' annual Oktoberfest party felt more like Kidfest. I think there might have been two kids at the first one they threw, whereas this time there were easily thirty-two. And you never saw such happy kids, all of them enjoying the music, ball house and jumpy tent so much, while the adults drank responsibly, of course.

One of my main objectives at last Saturday night's Fest (in addition to sampling the German beer, gorging on as much roasted chicken, spaetzle, and Black Forest cake as possible, and avoiding the kazoos) was to get a good group shot of S 'n' B (aka Matilda and Dashiell) and their baby cousin, Kaylie.I got a cute shot of Snook.A couple sweet ones of Bubs in his lederhosen, which are big enough to last him for the next three or four Oktoberfests, I would think.And an unbelievably adorable shot of little Kaylie.I even got two really charming poses of the girl cousins together, wearing their matching pink and black polka dot outfits.But the group shot proved to be much, much more difficult. It's a wonder they're all in the same frame.

So after throwing in the towel on the cousin photo, I focused instead on taking some party-people pictures.My friends Reen, holding her precious 14-month-old Jayden, and Marcy, holding her handsome 20-month-old, Marcus.A close-up of Jayden.My SIL and BIL, Karen and Pete.My friend Krista's husband Gil, holding their beautiful almost-two-year-old, Maia.My friend Nina with her darling almost-one-year-old, Sophia.Karen, holding her girl.The H and Bubs.Marcy and me.

Want to see Marcy and me at the 2007 Fest, both about six months pregnant, both stuck drinking near beer?Sure, why not! Please don't kill me, Marc!

I wanted to take more photos of this year's festivities, but someone mistook me for the event photographer, so I decided to give it a rest. As always, it was a great, great party!