But for the past 16 months, I have been pretty particular about one in particular. Then this week, after months of negotiations and culminations, walk-throughs and drivebys, buildups and letdowns, we decided to walk away. To be sure, this was not the expected turn of events, but even more surprising has been my reaction. I’m not disappointed. Not depressed. But actually, relieved. Yup, relief.

For so long, it was like trying to force a square peg in a round hole. All these problems, big and small, tripping up what should have been my joyous Jimmy Choo stride into the flyest house on the block.  And finally – FINALLY – I stopped. And that brings me to what just might be the most revelatory covetworthy idea yet. Covetworthy Tip #84: Don’t force it.

Incidentally, this truism is worth applying to many facets of a covetworthy girl’s life: be it shoes, relationships, high-waisted pants or the biggest financial decision you’ll make in your entire life. You know, when you’re working too hard to make it work? Yeah, don’t.

And as if I needed any more proof, there’s also this: since Monday, I’ve thrice been complimented by strangers on my makeup (when all I was wearing was moisturizer, Great Lash, eyeliner and Smashbox gloss.) Then two people stopped me in Beverly Hills and asked if they’ve seen me on television.

Coincidence? I think not.  Just goes to show that a clear head trumps clear skin anyday.

Related posts:

1. The Underwear Overhaul Project, Volume I
2. I Dress, Therefore I Channel My Covetworthy Style Icons
3. Swagger Defined

You have to be taught to be second class; you’re not born that way. -Lena Horne

I pay homage to a true original, Lena Horne, who died today at the age of 92. Coco Chanel once said that a woman needs to be only two things: classy and fabulous. Throw in talented, fiery, original, beautiful and you have Ms. Lena.

When I think of the women of her era, I am amazed at what she endured, what she sacrificed, what she learned to smile and bear to pursue her dreams. The little deaths, the indignities large and small. Singing her heart out to a packed house but not able to order a drink at the same bar.  In what should have the height of her career, she decided to speak her mind and stand her ground, nevermind the impact on her career and her reputation.

I love that she was wholly and undeniably Lena. One of her critics wrote that she was “ageless … tempered like steel, baked like clay, annealed like glass; life has chiseled, burnished, refined her.”

What a wonderful lesson for the rest of us covetworthy ladies in waiting, seeking our own place in history. Today, I honor you, Ms. Horne. You made it okay to play it out on your own terms. Thank you.

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I have no space for a PHL of my own right now. The sexy hilltop lovenest we bought seven years ago now has exactly 100% more humans and approximately 300% more noise-making plastic things that must go…somewhere. So imagine my surprise when, surfing for beautiful things to write about on this blog, I came across this.

How gorgeous is THIS?!? I am enthralled by this and it just proves my point. Covetworthy Tip #938:  Open your eyes. Covetworthy is everywhere. This is elevated beyond a library: it’s an art piece, a conversation starter, and yes, the mother of all geek chic projects. I mean, who organizes their books according to jacket color? Are we in agreement that this will make it impossible to find a specific book? But aren’t we also in agreement that we don’t give a rat’s ass if the results are this good?

This photo has inspired me to create beauty around me and to find luxury in the little things, the mundane, the everyday. So today I’m starting with my bookcase.

What are you inspired to make more beautiful?

Related posts:

1. Reading is Mental
2. Clearly Covetworthy
3. I Dress, Therefore I Channel My Covetworthy Style Icons

Since everyone and their waitress/porn star/white supremacist lover is claiming an addiction these days, I feel safe sharing mine. I’m a Dress Addict. No rehabilitation on the horizon. I just can not get enough. And though I loved that denim phase (as in, Cute Top + J Brands + Killer  Heels. Repeat.),  I am beyond thrilled about the latest fashion fixation to rebound around: Dresses, The Sequel. Yahoo.

But a dress, no matter how great, is just a dress if I merely put it on.  The real challenge – and all the fun – comes in completing the look. I believe that, if life is theater, dressing the part is only half the show. I’m about owning the outfit and the attitude. Which brings me to today’s tip.

Covetworthy Tip #543. A little roleplay never hurt a thing.

Related posts:

1. Grateful for Rachel
2. Clearly Covetworthy
3. A question for the ages…

Her iPhone? Orphaned on the Starbucks counter in a sea of discarded Splendas.  Directions to the restaurant where you’re having your much-ballyhooed girls’ night? Still sitting in her printer. Remembering that girls’ night is tonight?  Only after your two emails and urgent voicemail.

You’re the Friend of a Forgetter. You’re always there to remind, remember and even rescue, depending on the circumstances. Krazy Glue couldn’t make vital information stick to her. This is a tried and true friend, who absolutely would be there for you in your time of need if she could only recall what you needed. Plus she’s sweet as pie, which makes your secret desire to kill her all the more tragic.

So the next time you have to buy her something, forgo the journals and the Franklin Coveys and the electronic organizers – all blatant hints to curb her scattiness – and give her something she’ll want to remember like the Forget Me Knot ring by Kiel Mead.  It’s a simple and subtle gesture that lets her know you know her well and love her anyway.

Sentimentality + practicality = perfection at gift time. I can’t promise that she’ll never forget your birthday again, but at least she’ll remember why she owes you big time.

Related posts:

1. How to Gift with Panache!
2. What I know…

Don’t answer in haste. You need to know the details first. This is not just a shoe. It is The Most Beautiful Shoe in the World.  It stretches my leg to amazonian heights. Adds some potent swish to my stride. This is SuperShoe – able to leap cryptic dress codes in a single bound. (“Festive Formal Chic”? “Creative Corporate Cool”? Foiled!)

How did I happen upon SuperShoe?  It happened two days ago when I came face to face with a familiar foe – the Macy’s designer shoe sale. (Shoe sales are my Kryptonite. I am utterly powerless in their midst.)  In one 45-minute frenzy, I tried on fourteen pairs of shoes. Calling on the fortitude of the ancestors, I settled on two.  Both impossibly high heels that make my calves go on for millennia. (Nevermind that one pair is a full size too small.)  These shoes can be reached from now on at the following address: Stacey’s Closet, Bad Ass Division, Cubby 1 and Cubby 2.

And suddenly as I was making my exit, she called out to me from her perch high atop a hidden rack. SuperShoe is lavender (my favorite) with black piping, satin finish with a tiny bow (so femme), a 5-inch heel. And a hefty FIFTY PERCENT OFF discount to boot. Boo-yah!

So what kind of pain are we talking about here? On a scale of 1 being pebble-in-your-sock-irritation and 10 as Chinese foot binding, it’s about a 4.5. But that’s just walking around the marshallowy carpet in the store. What happens when I take Baby Doll out in my hardwood, concrete and unevenly-paved ‘hood?  *Sigh*

But…she’s just so pretty.  There’s not another in my life like SuperShoe. She deserves a permanent home befitting the lifestyle for which she was so lovingly created. And Cubby 3 is vacant. What to do????

Related posts:

1. I Dress, Therefore I Channel My Covetworthy Style Icons
2. Grateful for Rachel
3. How to Gift with Panache!

The images cannot be escaped. A bleeding father and bandaged baby laying side by side on a cot. A lifeless body,  facedown amid a heap of rubble. Blank expressions on the faces of those carrying the wounded away.

I can’t ignore the images and the sadness and grief and despair that I feel, although I have no direct ties to the country. So to combat the overwhelming feelings of helplessness, I’ve done all I know how to do – I donated to Red Cross. I celebrated for friends who finally heard from their parents. I have cried tears for people that are still waiting or worse yet, who’ve had the worst confirmed. I’ve prayed. And I will not stop.

If there is anything else that YOU know that can be done, please let me know. Until then, I will watch. I will give. I will cry. I will celebrate. I will pray. And I will not stop.

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Sometimes you hit the ball out of the park and give a gift that truly wows. But most times, your little something is really just a little something. That’s okay. There are ways to up the excitement no matter what you’re bestowing.

Tip #1: If it’s the thought that counts, don’t gift something that has no thought behind it. We’ve all received this type of gift. You open the nondescript box/floral tapestry gift bag/rumpled plastic bag and go “WTF?!?” while your face is trying to convey “OMG!” Don’t make your friends work this hard. It’s really mean.

Tip #2:  Pay attention to outward appearances. The wrapping can be just as tantalizing as the gift. (Hellooooo, white satin bow around robin’s egg blue box.) Add the unexpected to your present. Punch a small hole at the top of a fun, funny or meaningful picture and scrawl your message on the back. Slip a ribbon through it and voila, the most interesting gift tag in the bunch. Or turn a so-so wrapping paper inside out exposing the white underside. Adorn, adorn, adorn –  a handwritten message, your kids’ handprints, favorite quotes, lyrics to the Jeffersons theme song, whatever floats your boat. Correction: whatever floats your RECEIVER’S boat. This is about them.

Tip #2.5: If you must give a gift bag, have a signature flourish. You gotta make some sort of impression beyond “While I was picking up deodorant at Target, I remembered that I have to put your gift in something.” Add wit and whimsy with a liberal dose of old school candies for your sweetie, or for the ones who kiss and tell, a little black book and feather pen dangling precariously from the handles.

Tip #3: Layer, layer, layer. Say you’re getting a gift card for a new homeowner. Useful. She will looooooooove it, and will promptly place it in a drawer in said home and remember it in 18 months, exactly six months past the day it has expired. Keep your gift top of mind by combining it with a coffee table book on hip homes in her style. Use twine to tie your gift card to the latest issue of a home magazine, and use cool tabs to highlight some items you know she likes. Wouldn’t hurt to throw in $20 for a subscription to that magazine as well. (With only four magazines still in print, this should not be hard.)

Tip #4: Go in halfsies. Gifting someone you know well but not well enough to foot the entire bill? No problem.  Grab a pal and spring for something really nice. What wine novice wouldn’t love a jump start on his collection? Split a 3-month wine club membership with two other friends for $45 each.

Happy gifting!

Sxxoo

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1. Gift Idea: For the Famously Forgetful
2. The iCovet Manifesto (or why this blog exists)
3. Closeted…

Earlier this year, I had to end my relationship…with television. After making sweet love to my Tivo all winter, I decided to break it off with my remote and go back to the books. I went literal, literally.

I have been an avid reader all my life, but for too long saying those words was cowpie. Living in NYC, I exhibited all the symptoms of a real reader – my four room apartment had but one television, on which I watched Seinfeld and the occasional rented video. I finished a book a week MINIMUM and frequented lit lovefests. Now my home has two more TVs than bedrooms, all but one have DVRs and my two-year-old can wield the remote with the best of ‘em. It’s just wrong.

My problem is/was that I had gotten out of the habit of reading. My TV and magazine addictions and their lure of good/bad, drama/suspense/conclusion wrapped in 22 minutes or 2 pages really jacked me up. Read the titles and you know the full story.

I took my book project seriously. I knew that, because I was rusty, picking up Cormac McCarthy’s The Road was probably going to be abandoned at the driveway. So I created categories, from the Brain-Candiest to “The Impressives.” Herewith, my report card (categories in italics, actual works in bold:

1. Chicky but Not Chick Lit. (Suffering through 2 hours of rom-com onscreen is agonizing enough. I couldn’t bear giving my nights and nail appointments over to it in print.) I read Valley of the Dolls. What a fun romp. Must have a dinner party with the girls to watch the DVD. Maribou slippers required. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and Shanghai Girls both by Lisa See. Enjoyable easy reads that made me treasure my friendships.
2. True Classic. As I do once a year, I read Their Eyes Were Watching God, and as I do once a year, loved it. I’m reading Wuthering Heights, which I haven’t done since 1989. The only one not completed, since other books keep cutting the line. Case in point…
3. Parenting. I read Nurture Shock, and it was indeed a shock. This book blew my mind. I have a lunch date-slash-discussion about it later this week and I cannot wait. This book rocked the San Andreas fault of my parenting ideals, and the aftershocks keep coming.
4. The Impressives: Outliers. Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. The End of Overeating – also a mind-blower. Another look at how the food industry has coopted and irrevocably altered the way, the amount and the quality of we eat.

So I give myself an A- for taking on and almost completing the challenge (damn you, Wuthering!!)  I’m starting it up again for winter. Want to read together? Here are my new categories, books yet to be selected:

• Something sentimental, a story that will remind me how precious and fleeting this all is. Love Story perhaps?
• Biography – I’m leaning towards Jackie O, probably because I just saw a doc about the Kennedys that got me all hyped
• An underappreciated gem
• A new voice. I read Uwen Akpan’s Say You’re One of Them last year and was reminded how delicious a new discovery can be.
• Domestic bliss – I’ll be home cooking and entertaining guests from now until January. I sure as shit better figure out how to make it pleasurable and presentable.

Happy reading!
Sxxoo

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1. From the “Anything Can Have Style” Archives
2. Swagger Defined
3. The Underwear Overhaul Project, Volume I

With my pre-baby body blissfully within reach, I am loving all these Mad Men getups. Body conscious dresses and high waisted skirts in wonderfully tactile fabrics. Professional in the front, splah-DOW from behind. It’s fabulous. But what’s really got my tweeds in a twitter is what’s underneath.

I love me some Spanx – believe that – I reach for them on the regular. But I am on this underwear overhaul so I’ve got a few quarrels with them. For one, I’m underwhelmed with the beige-black-blah color offerings. And any attempts to look Elizabeth-Taylor-“Cat-on-a-Hot-Tin-Roof” evaporate upon sight of myself encased in that bandage bondage. Poof!

Enter Sliminizers. A friend turned me onto this collection of shapewear. LOVE this. I pulled some pieces for a makeover segment and have been rocking them ever since.

Most importantly about Sliminizers, they do their job and they do it discreetly. (Not a combination you find often in this life.) I slid them on and was instantly slimmed and smoothed, not stuffed and suffocated. The fabric is lightweight, buttery soft and the pieces stayed put. No inching north to my rib cage (thereby creating a bulge over the one I’m trying to hide in the first freaking place. WTF?!?)

But the line’s true genius is its fantastic color selection: TEN beautiful colors, ranging from Majorca Buff to Espress Brown, that really do mimic and flatter your skin tone. Imagine that: you can be in the nude even when you’re not in the nude. Gives all new meaning to made in the shade, now doesn’t it?

Check them out at www.sliminizer.com. Prices start at $14.

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1. Grateful for Rachel