This Year It Will Be Different: A Christmas Treasury is my favorite Christmas book. I re-read it every year. It’s hard to find that good balance between gaggy “Miracle of Christmas Love” and hard bitter “dead bum in the Christmas mud” cynicism, and Maeve Binchy finds it. These are the kind […]

My local grocery store has a little self-care section where the mouthwash, razors, and Q-tips live, and they have a growing selection of surprisingly hippie-ish beauty products there. Mostly soaps and shampoos and that creepy Toms of Maine toothpaste featuring delicious ANISE, but also some skincare items, which is where I found this super-awesome body […]

Still need stocking stuffers? I’ll tell you what you should get for the parents of small children: a WIRE CUTTER.
I spent several hours this weekend wrapping presents for the kids, and since I don’t want to spend all of Christmas Day wresting toys from their packages, I’m doing a lot of pre-wrapping de-boxing. […]

Here is another holiday gift idea from my husband, who traded in his massively overstuffed wallet a couple years ago for this “Slimmy” brand. He says he got sick of sitting on a too-big wallet all the time (this can actually cause back problems over time), and during his frequent business trips overseas he didn’t […]

It took me a long, long time to be willing to try a Yankee Candle. Something about the company’s image (farmhouse-y jars, smiling country snowmen, the word “Yankee”) didn’t seem to fit with mine. I felt as if I’d need to wallpaper with a Country Goose pattern if I wanted a glass-jarred […]