Tag: shopping

tonight, we hanukkah in harlem.


My Hanukkah List. December, 2009
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When I was a kid, my favorite holiday tradition was drafting an official Hanukkah List.  It was always inappropriately long and was mostly made up of all the CDs and gift cards I was just dying to have.  Really, Amy?  You want another copy of the original cast recording of RENT and a gift card to Claire’s?  Again?  But you only buy key chains and gel pens. Ooooh how I loved those gel pens.  Soo inky!  Soo pretty!  Soo . . . well, to be totally honest, useless since all they really did was leave messy, glittery, unintelligible streaks all over the place.
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In any event, I can’t really remember the last time I sat down and actually celebrated Hanukkah so the fact that I’m hiking up to Harlem tonight with store bought latkes and applesauce to spend the first night of this long forgotten holiday with my cousin Natasha has caused me to wax all nostalgic and draft a more useful, grown-up, and ladylike Hanukkah List.
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Happy Holidays, Internet!

lady laa di baba.

catherine baba
Catherine Baba. Someplace, Fabulous

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Today I found a whole new reason to love the internet and it’s called the nytimes.com video library.  I rarely check the nytimes homepage until well after lunch, but this morning I was in a mix it up kind of mood and after only a few minutes on the site I already knew where and when the next world series game was going down and was happily watching a video feature on how to get hard cash for my family’s gold heirlooms in the diamond district. OOOhhh soo tempting.
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But then I realized the web layout I was navigating was really foreign to me.  I mean, I knew I was on the nytimes website, but there were all these videos!  Tons and tons and tons of videos about soooo many different things.  And this place, this glorious video library place, was all kinds of dark and mysterious and recommending things I actually wanted to watch and learn about!  Like the Urban Eye feature on CMJ!  And that random snow day last year!  And, oh my goodness, what’s this?  Would I like to go backstage at the Marc Jacobs Spring 2010 show?
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No no, I would not like to go.—I’d LOVE to go.
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Now, follow me, because I want to introduce you to the FABULOUS Catherine Baba.  She’s a stylist who attended Marc’s show and says things like, “Darling” and “Laa-Di-Daa” and “I feeeeeeeeel DIVINE,” and I would like to be her very much.
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Pleeeeeeased to meeeeeet you, darling.

welcome to the club.

tights
Thanks, Jane. New York, NY

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Lately, in order to quell my non-stop obsession slash anxiety over my upcoming move and how exactly to maximize the space in my adorable slash totally awesome East Village shoebox, I’ve been spending some quality time perusing the New York Times Real Estate Section.  You know, because it’s always nice to know someone else’s apartment hunt was way more horrific than mine or that $220,000 can get me a really fantastic three bedroom bungalow . . . in Idaho.

Anyway, last Thursday they did a feature on Jean-Marie Grenier and his wife Jane (pictured above) who live in a former funeral home in Greenpoint.  Blah blah blah. Jean-Marie is a scultpor! Jane works at Condé Nast! They live in a funeral home! That’s so spooky! That’s so scary! Let’s all go to a werewolf bar mitzvah! Oh, wait, I totally know that woman.  She goes to my gym!  In fact, not only does she go to my gym, but she also gave me the best budget fashion advice I have received since moving to New York.

Back in December I happened to see Jane in the locker room and commented on how fantastic and incredibly opaque her tights were.  Sidebar:  if you have average sized to study little tree trunk sized legs like mine, you know that owning a pair of opaque tights that actually stay opaque once you put them on is about as likely as fitting into a pair of size zero skinny jeans.  But Jane changed all of that nonsense because she let me in on the biggest fashion insider secret ever.  She told me that I too could join the opaque even after you put them on tights club without having to invest $52 on a pair of Matte Opaque Wolfords (what she was wearing, of course) by just wearing two pairs of throw-aways from Duane Reade.

Holy crap.
Two pairs.
At the same time!

Ladies, ladies.  I know what you’re thinking.  It’ll feel really funny! It doesn’t make any sense! It’s probably a trick! Well, I’m here to tell you it’s not a trick and you really just need to shut up and try it because it will revolutionize your winter wardrobe and you’ll only have me (and Jane) to thank.

So yeah, you’re welcome (and thank you, Jane).

weiners and role models.

Weiner Dog. Luckyduct, Etsy
Weiner Dog. Luckyduct, Etsy

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Yesterday, ilikeyoulikeyou received it’s very first email!  Aww. . .

Actually, it came from my friend Rachel Pfeffer who I was beyond lucky to have lived with during my junior year of college.  Back then, she was a fantastically gifted artist whose pieces and installations left our campus giddy and glowing.   As it turns out, not one bit of that has changed and she’s still leaving trails awesome everywhere she goes.  One visit to her Etsy shop luckyduct or her blog cut paste repeat, and an 8 hour staring contest with my work computer is suddenly turned into a coolkid adventure on the wild and crazy internet.  Uhhhmazing!

Clearly, Rachel has zero fear of pursuing any and all things that excite her (true story: she opened up her own ice cream store during the summer between her freshman and sophomore year of college) and she is still my don’tworry+lovelife+justmakeart role model.  Maybe she would want to help me brainstorm business plans for Penny’s (aka my latest and greatest totally insane pipe dream).  Hmmm . . .

me gusta.

elefant
Salt&Syrup. www, The Internet

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These cards are made by Salt&Syrup, a quiet and quaint Scandinavian design firm that caught my attention today while I was doing some casual web wandering.  What can I say?  I’m a total sucker for whimsical animals and lowercase fonts.  Also, thanks to a certain Dan Dobies, I can’t stop listening to “The Modern Leper” by Frightened Rabbit.  Good thing we’re both subscribers to the “songs we love live on repeat” movement.  Very.  Good.  Thing.

a pleasant surprise.

[almost] super targetajnote

I promised myself I would never do it.  Our attraction and desire for each other was unbelievably strong, but I knew deep down it was only going to end badly, most likely with tears and irreparable emotional scarring.  Clearly, there were tons of warning signs and everyone I spoke with warned me to stay far far away.  But, after a year of endless flirtation and suggestive glances and unanswered late-night booty calls, I couldn’t help myself.  By George, it was time.

. . . to visit the Brooklyn Target.

Well, to be honest, the main reason I finally gave in was because I recently discovered the Sonia Kashuk make-up line for Target through a NY Magazine advertisement and my co-worker Andrea and I were more than a little interested.  Okay.  So maaaybe there was a slightly inappropriate number of girlish squeals and giggles and tantrums and  “oooooo nooooo”s echoing from our cubicles.  Maaybe.  Well, anyway, Andrea was in desperate need of a make-up brush bag and Sonia just so happens to make an adorable one for a totally affordable price.  And so before I knew it, I was hopping on the downtown Q after work on Wednesday to break my year-long “Targets That Are Definitely NOT Super” celibacy.

And you know what?

There wasn’t any emotional scarring.
It didn’t even end in tears.
In fact, I’m totally fine.
Really.  Really!

So maybe the shelves weren’t very color-coded or clean or overflowing with that oh-so-amazing Targety goodness that makes me wanna do the Risky Business No Pants Dance down the aisles the way my gargantuan SUPER Target in Indiana does, but the Brooklyn Target did happen to have one of Sonia’s make-up brush bags left!  Yessss.  I then discovered rather quickly that this was the kind of Target that wouldn’t mind taking me out for a casual dinner if I came without a clear shopping list and might even offer to pay if I arrived solo right after work on a rainy Wednesday.  But if I tried to look for something specific in a quantity larger than none-1 on a sunny Saturday afternoon with a slowly creeping headache, this Target would probably just graze my boob “accidentally,” ask for my underwear, and then leave me with the bill itching for [no] more.

Oh.   No.   He.   Didn’t.

Well, with me he didn’t.  So yay!
All in all, I was pleasantly surprised.
Thanks for dinner, Brooklyn Target.

{awkward hugging}

ummm.  I’ll call you!