It's The End Of The World But Decorist.com Can Help

We are breaking the world. Scientists just released a report with dire news: There are 9 deal breakers when it comes to the environment. We’ve busted through 4 of them and pretty soon the planet’s gonna redline.

Of course the report didn’t say it exactly this way, but that’s the gist. The report said stuff like, “The likely destabilization of the Earth could occur in decades to a century.”

So if my kids have the kind of life span boasted by their great-great-grandma (who lived to be 100), Earth could close. In their lifetime.

Huh.

This news doesn’t make me want to compost or reduce my carbon footprint.

It makes me want to redecorate.

Because the Dynamic Duo are gonna need to know how to make their spaceships cozy when they’re 100 years old and living on them permanently.

Because apparently that’s the plan. Scientists say technology will help us so we can “live outside planetary boundaries”. On spaceships. Like that weird Tom Cruise movie.

I am not making this up. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that neither am I making up this great, new design website: decorist.com. (Click this link to visit decorist.com.)

Decorist.com brings the services of a professional designer to the masses without the hefty price tag.

Here’s how it works: You e-mail a picture of your problematic room to the site. Include important details like your style and budget for the project and a designer sketches out 2 different plans for your room, complete with info on where you can buy the items she’s chosen. All via e-mail. All for $199.

Total win. And it's much more fun to consider redecorating than it is to consider relocating to another place. Like the stratosphere. 

Moisturizing Made Easy: Nivea In Shower Body Lotion!

Suggestible people should not be allowed to read books about, say, hoarding. Because a suggestible reader would then start eyeing the contents of her own house with great suspicion. Is it just normal-clutter or hoarding-clutter?

And then action must be taken. Junk drawers cleaned. Closets weeded. Basement storage tackled.

Whew. I am exhausted. But still suggestible. Which is why I should also quit watching prime time television. I actually did this last night but only because the State Of The Union address was on.

Most nights I do watch prime time television and most nights this new, miraculous Nivea lotion is advertised. In fact, it’s advertised so often the suggestible among us don’t stand a chance.

So I gave up the fight and bought some today. Nivea In-Shower Body Lotion is lotion you spray on yourself right in the shower, while you’re still drenched from the shower. It only adds 30 seconds to your morning routine. And you do it before you even touch a towel.(Click this link to go to amazon.com where you can buy Nivea In Shower Body Lotion for around $6.)

Because those Nivea chemists know it’s January, it’s cold and our skin is cracking and red. But some of us are too busy to apply lotion because every spare minute is being spent de-cluttering our houses so we don’t become accidental hoarders.

But this little Nivea number is one product worth hoarding if you see it on special at Cost Co. Because after a few spritzes, you’re encased in a little bubble of moisturized greatness. For a full 24 hours, your skin’s impervious to wind, snow and storage box paper cuts!

Happy moisturizing, guru girls & guys!

2 Top Books:"We Were Liars" & "The House We Grew Up In"

Am not sure I’m loving the big trend of cut out gowns on the red carpet these days. You know the Golden Globe dresses I’m talking about.

Beautiful girls in dresses apparently tailored by Edward Scissorhands. Huh.

In fashion, cut outs aren’t so hot. But in fiction? Bring them on!

Just finished not 1 but 2 books with suffering heroines whose memories had been hacked. Huge chunks of time simply erased, otherwise known as the memory cut out.

The memory cut out is sad for our heroines but good for us as readers because we can’t put the books down, so eager are we to find out what in the heck happened.

I finished the first book We Were Liars by E. Lockhart in 2 days. It’s technically a young adult title, but the book deals with some very adult themes. And it’s so good it’ll keep you up reading way past the average young adult’s bedtime!

 The book’s about Cadence, a teenage member of the elite Sinclair family, and the apocryphal events that unfold one summer at their island estate off of the Cape. (Trying saying that 3 times fast.)

Why is Cadence at the center of the action, but in retrospect she can’t remember anything about it?

Is she like guru girl when hosting a dinner party, so distracted by possibility of cooking catastrophe that she blanks entire event out? Or is the reason behind her memory loss something more sinister?

The book is an examination of love & loyalty, class & race with a smidgen of betrayal and denial thrown in, just for fun. It ends with the very high cost this wealthy family pays when all these issues collide.(Click this link to check out "We Were Liars" on amazon.com where you can buy it for around $10.)

The House We Grew Up In by Lisa Jewell looks at some of the same themes but through the lens of hoarding. The Birds are a charming, English family, helmed by whimsical & packrattish mother, Lorelei. Childhood for the four Bird siblings is idyllic until something goes very wrong in their teenage years.

What happened to make the family implode? Why won’t Lorelei speak of or even remember it? (Click this link to go to amazon.com to check out more about "The House We Grew Up In", which you can get for around $12.)

 Both these reads are fantastic. Though maybe not quite as fantastic as the Golden Globes, which has its own cast of charmed protagonists with their own doomed fates (cut out gown, anyone?).

Happy reading, guru girls & guys!

4 Style Rules To Live By

This bedazzled burkini is the sort of thing I would buy just because it's on sale.

 What is wrong with me?!

I am never breaking style rule #3: do not buy stuff just because it is on sale ever again. Last month I went and broke it.

Twice.

The annual sales they were having at Sundance and Boden were killer. Great items. Even greater prices. What’s not to like?

It turns out there’s everything not to like about this scenario… starting with the way the clothes look on me! There is a reason that boho chic tunic is a steal of a deal at $19.99. Because its weird cut makes me look like I’m wearing a small, pup tent!

This is why they have 12,000 of them in leftover stock. These companies should actually be paying me $19.99 to take it off their hands.

Now I have to package the stuff up, send it back and remember to check my Visa to ensure my account is credited. This will totally happen as I am definitely not one to let mundane details slip. (Last statement untrue as my “to do” list is made up of nothing but these mundane details because I procrastinate with them until the end of time!)

  

Guru girls, remember your style rules. Live by them. And save yourself much time, angst and postage.

Style Rules

Rule #1: Try stuff on. Always. 

Rule #2: The most you’re going to love something is when you’re trying it on in the dressing room. If you’re not doing the “how cute am I” twirl in it in the dressing room, do not buy it.

Rule #3: Don’t buy something just because it’s on sale and think the low price 

is going to make you love it. 

Rule #4: Before you buy something think of the exact outfit you’re going to wear it with. And the exact occasion. If you can’t think of these two things, back away from the item.

Apparently most of us wear 20% of what is in our closet all the time. This statistic infuriates me, as do most statistics and math in general. Follow these style rules and kick those style mistakes (80%???) to the curb.

Happy shopping, guru girls!