How to Pick a Unique Wedding Gift
Wear some comfortable shoes and be well rested. We’re hitting the antique malls today in search of the perfect wedding present for an eclectic couple. If you decide to go off the reservation and not buy from the registry then you’re in for a lengthy search but isn’t it worth it? It’ll take about six [...]
The Best Cheap Candles
Feeling the need for a little Frida Kahlo in your life? Candle budget shrinking after the Christmas spend-a-thon? One of my favorite – and cheap looks – is the Mexican religious votive, a tall candle poured into glass, emblazoned with garish religious scenes or pictures of the Virgin of Guadeloupe. Available at many local supermarkets, [...]
Add Instant Patina to Garden Ornaments
Want to add some instant age to a garden ornament or plaster piece? If that bright spanking white surface is making your eyes flicker, bring it down by sponging on paint. Use a neutral taupe color and a very wet sponge. With broad strokes, wipe the object down with watery paint. Don’t evenly coat if [...]
How to Get out of Debt with Debit Cards
Perpetually, I used credit cards for convenience and routinely carried balances out of perverse laziness. Then, at a certain magic point, usually at the 8 or 9 hundred-dollar range, the balances would suddenly leap forward and mushroom crazily out of control into 2k, 3k, 4k and up. I always wondered how this mysterious alchemy occurred. [...]
How to Fill Your Home with Fragrance
I walked into an antique store the other day and nearly swooned from the heavenly fragrance that filled the air. Whoa – the gents were piping it in by the gallon, hypnotizing the haus fraus into buying. As I rounded the corner past French ormolu, I came to the culprit: a table loaded with hundreds [...]
How to Start Knitting for Stress Relief
Why did I start knitting? Because my mind was doing back flips from work-related stress that I couldn’t escape and I had a desperate need to feel as if I was accomplishing something concrete while I freaked out. So I signed up for a knitting class at my neighborhood knitting emporium (now a Starbucks!). I [...]
How to Wrap Gifts Creatively without Supplies
People insist on getting gifts. There’s no changing their minds. They have birthdays, weddings, and special days to honor roles of Mother and Father. In any calendar year you’ll also be faced with housewarmings, a christening or two, innumerable showers, get-well situations, and yes, the horrors of Valentine’s Day. The present part isn’t so bad. [...]
Find Bliss with a Porch Swing or Hammock
When my sister came into town recently we were walking through Target and chanced upon a porch swing. She and I both leaped for it and began immediately rocking. Heads lolling back, eyes closed, the repetitive swaying was total bliss. “Oh My God.” “I know. I actually feel my mental health–” “Returning?” Yes, add a [...]
How to Clean Your House with Smudge Sticks
Problem: House needs mojo cleansing after bad breakup or major emotional meltdown. It’ something Native-Americans and others believe in doing – burning a bundle of odd-smelling dried sage inside a dwelling. The sticks “cleanse” the house of anything bad and enable you to create a more sacred space. Some say they have magical protective powers. [...]
How to Feng Shui For Relaxation
Was it the long needles plunging into almost every orifice of my body that led me to obsess over my acupuncturist’s house? Possibly. There wasn’t anything else to look at. I also figured I should say nice things about her place. (Just a feeling. Needles.) I had come to lose the tobacco, but instead I [...]
Make a Romantic Bed Canopy
Inside many a cosmopolitan woman with rigorously great taste, a darker design ethic lurks. Call it closet romanticism. It’s the polar opposite of the way I really live, but I sometimes salivate over pie safes draped in white lace, sets of floral china, and a lifestyle that includes actually wearing Nannys cameo pin to afternoon [...]
How to Fix Your Computer Mouse
I felt a cyber tantrum coming on. My computer mouse was misbehaving – badly. Instead of gliding like an Ice Capades star over its happy Bugs Bunny mousepad, my mouse had turned surly. Sticky. Bitchy. Start. Stop. Glug. Suddenly my mouse demanded the hand and eye coordination of a Swiss watchmaker. What was this resistance? [...]
How to Escape Decorating Inertia
Whatever the motivation — change of season, change of relationship, change of aesthetic — when you NEED to alter your living space, boy, do you know. I had lived with a charming assortment of found objects/junk for years, to the point that I was starting to identify with my ages-old, five boyfriends-ago, stained and burdened-with-memories [...]
Treat Your Room to Textured Paint
Tired of looking at those drab, imperfect walls? You know, the ones that are pock-marked from countless wallpaper scrapings, close encounters with heavy furniture or just the ravages of old age? Textured paint to the rescue! This is the quickest, easiest fix around to give your walls an updated look, while hiding all of life’s [...]
Start Your Personal Gift Registry
Every year at the holidays or just before my birthday, some well meaning person will ask, “Hey, what do you want?” “Oh, nothing,” I say. “Or just something teeny-tiny.” I do mean that, usually. Or maybe what I really mean is: I don’t want you to feel you HAVE to do something, and I don’t [...]
Fun Party Games for Your Next Dinner
You’re having another dinner party and want some surefire entertainment. Try these party games that require no board pieces or pesky setup. Inane? Yes. That’s the whole point. Game 1. What’s Your Inner Stripper Name? Add the name of your childhood dog to the name of the street you grew up on. Examples: “Dixie Fifth.” [...]
Easy Flower Arrangements In 5 Minutes
The hottest new flower arrangement for your house is the simplest new flower arrangement for your house. Pave flowers are a look even the village idiot can pull off and it will look like one of Martha’s minions personally arranged it. Like the diamonds from which the style takes its name, Pave flowers means a [...]
How to Choose Unique Antiques
Looking for a great antiques town? Portsmouth, New Hampshire is an artist’s rendering of the perfect New England village. Maybe a bit too slicked-up and rendered, but I am being picky. It is truly beautiful, especially the 18th century rowhouses on winding lanes that mimic the path of many a drunken sailor heading home from [...]
Cheap Holiday Decorating Tips
Need help with holiday decorating? Here’s how to make your home look festive while still staying within Scrooge’s budget. Holiday Centerpiece. Gather imitation red apples, green pears and pine cones of all sizes. Place in a silver bowl, crystal bowl, wrought iron basket or wicker. If your pine cones are the unscented type and aren’t [...]
Instant Bedroom Makeover
Our bedroom furniture was looking worn and blah. Like Jocelyn Wildenstein, it needed a new facelift. I needed something quick, inexpensive and instantly updating. What to do? A can of white spray paint to the rescue! In an afternoon I primed, then spray painted our headboard, both nightstands and the table lamps a fresh, clean [...]
Easy Care for Wrought Iron
There’s no reason to get over wrought. Everyone has wrought iron these days. Whether it be candle sticks, wall sconces or just a doo-dad; they can be a pain to keep dust free. Here’s the easy way to keep them clean, as handed down to me by the Queen of Domesticity, my mother. Just place [...]
How to Make an Easy Fire
My brothers and my father have a phrase, the “cheater’s fire.” This means a fire made by any other means than the continual stuffing of crumpled-up newspaper around kindling, while praying that the whole thing catches. Using gas or fake logs to help the fire along is a big no-no because it’s not manly. Many’s [...]
Pleasure Worship with Mama Gena
Did you happen to hear they’re bringing sexy back? Got the thousand yard stare of the passionless? Pitiful dried husk of your former self? You don’t have to stay anhedonic and snappily unhappy. The delightful pleasure-mad persona of one Regena Thomashauser, AKA Mama Gena,is a 40ish hausfrau on a mission to get women to drop [...]
Throw a Toy Night Party for the Ladies
On April 1, a group of women descended on a satellite location of Condom Sense, owned by my good friend Martha, a 60ish grandmother who is as far away from being a 60ish grandmother as you can imagine. See, Martha sells er, toys. Whaddya mean you don’t have any toys?” she once barked at me. [...]