Watching: Grey's Anatomy

Icicle? Christina? Seriously???

Note: I'll update the post with further thoughts after the episode is over, so we can properly discuss, but I'm traveling and there is no one else around so I just had to get that out.

Bring on the hot chocolate!

I just took a peek at today's weather report and we're looking at a 67-degree high and 47-degree low tonight. As a warm-weather-phobe, I am in my glory. We won't even talk about the fact that last Sunday (a mere 5 days ago) was a record breaking 91-degrees. This weather has been more bi-polar than my Gemini mother!


Fortunately, Mr. Cupcake has a half-day today -- which was supposed to be a full day off, but I lost that battle hands down -- so hopefully we'll get to spend a good chunk of the day outdoors. What I am looking forward to most, besides wearing my ice blue pashmina that makes my eyes look fabulously sparkly, is Starbucks Hot Chocolate. Not being one to drink a hot beverage on a hot day (seriously, I don't get people who do that), I have been itching for my Grande Non-Fat No-Whip Hot Chocolate and I think today will be the perfect day!

Cloud Blue: Color of the Day

A few days ago I read about Pantone's Colorstrology website (of course I bookmarked it and now can't remember who wrote about it). I am so inspired by color and texture that I could not wait to find out what mine would be and what it would say about me. It is so spot-on accurate that I had to rush over and post about it:

You have a creative mind and an adventurous spirit. It nay be a challenge for you to keep your equilibrium due to your sensitive nature. Partnerships are very important to you and you should s surround yourself with people who are kind and loving. It is essential for you to be creative and exress your childlike spirit. Don't let the weight of life or responsibilities weigh on your spirit. Your personal color resonates with vision. Wearing, meditating or surrounding yourself with Dream Blue eases your emotional nature and promotes balance and well-being.

What is your color? Find your birth date and post in the comments!

Favorite Tips of the Day

Here's a little secret about me: I LOVE to organize things! A peek inside my studio and office in it's current state might seem otherwise, but nothing gets me going like a stack of empty plastic tubs or [gasp] a trip to The Container Store. Powerful shredders make me weak in the knees. I have even been known to swoon over a particularly well managed desktop in-box. No productive day can start without a list, and perhaps even a list of the different lists that I'd like to accomplish. The other day there was a fabulous blog post over at Clutter Control Freak that combined two of my loves -- a list of ten rules about organized living!

1. Shop 'til you Drop - be a good consumer and get out there and buy stuff, even stuff you do not need or want. When you think you have enough go and buy more. Better yet every time you feel emotionally upset or are having a bad day engage in shopping therapy to make yourself feel better. Just remember that in order to create more clutter you must always add to what you already have so if you buy duplicates of any item make sure you keep each and every one!

2. Do not plan - live in the moment and only deal with what is going on right now. Who cares if you cannot find your socks, your briefcase, or your keys tomorrow morning? You are happy right now and you should be able to do only what you want to do at this moment.

3. Assign the same level of importance to everything - this will make you feel truly overwhelmed and if you are feeling overwhelmed you can just go shopping!

4. Accept every free item that is offered to you - if it's free it must be worthwhile and it must be worth having.

5. Never ever say no, to anyone or anything, not even to yourself - This method is guaranteed to win you friends because no one will ever be mad at you! and in addition you will likely be rich with clutter. Definitely a win/win situation for the clutter lover!

6. Procrastinate - why make a decision today when you can do it tomorrow, or the day after, or the year after that!

7. Create emotional attachments to your stuff - being emotionally attached to stuff is so much safer than forming relationships with people. Stuff will never abandon you, hurt your feelings, or be late for a lunch date! When your stuff has such wonderful emotions and memories attached why would anyone want to go out and create new memories??

8. Stay stuck in the past - the future is so uncertain but the past is a known entity. There are no uncertainties in the past! Actually moving forward in your life would mean that you have to clear the clutter (horrors). Better to stick with what you know than face an uncertain future.

9. Think emotionally not logically - use your emotions as the basis for every decision in your life and you are guaranteed to have more of what you already have!

10. Keep everything "just in case" - in order to keep your clutter you must assume that everything you have will have some usefulness in the future. You do not have to plan to use it tomorrow or even the next day just someday! You should not be planning to use it anyway or you are breaking rule #2!

I think these are so on target and I fully intend to incorporate these habits into my daily life at once!

Moment of reflection

Seven years ago, today, I was driving to work with the radio on. I was living/working 5 miles from NYC at the time and cursing the traffic I had to fight everyday. Within a split second, everyone's world changed and what used to be important no longer was. Family friends were now gone. Everyone was particularly proud to be an American, whether you lived in Lower Manhattan or Omaha, Nebraska. I remember getting home that night and lighting candles on our front porch and hanging flags from anywhere I could.

I can't help but think about what has happened to that national pride and our feelings of true unity? In an election year, it becomes especially important to keep perspective on what is truly best for our country, regardless of our own personally held beliefs.

Today I'm going make sure I take some extra time to remind myself of what is truly important in my life, remembering that life can change in a split second.

Summer vacation, finally!

While everyone else is saying "goodbye" to summer and heading back to school, Mr. Cupcake and I are headed down the shore for our summer vacation! Because of the Mr's busy schedule (and his charming inability to leave work unless every last thing is done to absolute perfection at the direct risk of his personal life), we haven't taken a proper vacation since we moved to New Jersey in March. We had the opportunity to travel together at least once every 6 weeks while living in Dallas, so needless to say, we are ready for a few days of R&R and "us" time.

Here's to days filled with sand and sun,

calm, peaceful nights

and maybe a jackpot or two!

The bags are packed, and the mammoth September editions of my favorite magazines are waiting to be read. I can't wait to see what shenanigans we find ourselves in this time!

"It looks like it's a pterodactyl out of a gay Jurassic Park."

I just finished catching up on this season's Project Runway and overall, I'm pretty underwhelmed. It seems the number of whiny, overly dramatic designers is way up this year. Fortunately they seem to be falling in the bottom 2/3 and are slowly being "Auf'ed".

My picks have been more or less in line with the judges, though I really think Joe should have won the Olympic challenge. It was the only one presented that I could actually picture the athletes wearing without looking completely ridiculous (really Jerell, what were you thinking?!):

photo (c) BravoTV.com

I adored last week's drag queen challenge because it allowed the designers to really go outside their comfort zones and was fairly unrestricted. I'm going with Terri, Kenley and Korto for top 3. What do you think of the season so far? Early favorites?

{gasp} She's alive!

Blogger tells me it has been 3 months since my last post, which seems to have just flown by. Quite a bit has happened and yet when I sit down to write a catch-up blog post, none of it seems terribly interesting.

The store is still closed, despite my best intentions to have it open weeks ago. I'm still trying to unearth some of the more vital things from the cavernous depths of our storage room like, say, my sewing machine and my printer. Most of us might think my sewing machine would be found in the box marked "Sewing Machine". Clearly, we would be wrong. I don't know what was going on in the mover's heads while packing everything up, because boxes marked "Living Room" contain bed sheets and those marked "Office/Studio" have been filled with everything from towels to our blender. Not surprisingly, none of these things were located anywhere near the studio in our old apartment.

No official re-opening date has been set, but with any luck it will be sooner rather than later. I have some brand new sizes of your favorite preppy prints (Norwalk, Annapolis and Stone Harbor) that I am super excited about. There are some absolutely gorgeous new vintage and vintage-inspired trims that will knock your socks off, too.

I feel so out of the preppy blog loop that I so adore so I'm going to make a valiant effort to get back to posting regularly. See you around!

Patronizing Prompt of the Day

This morning I called Bally's (the gym) to cancel my membership -- for the 3rd time in as many months, but that's another post -- I went through their telephone prompts to hopefully speak with a live person. Along the way, I was offered this as one of my options:

If you wish to cancel for buyer's remorse reasons, press 3.

As if trying to cancel an already paid-in-full contract wasn't difficult enough, they need to mock me while I'm doing it.

Time Waster of the Day

What do plutonium, FM radio, Spam and Israel all have in common?

photo from JohnMcCain.com

They are all younger than John McCain! Regardless of your personal political leanings (and I'm not about to get into mine here), the concept of this blog is pretty amusing.