When I was growing up we never had a laundry basket in the house.   That’s because we were so privileged and averse to any form of manual labour that we simply threw our dirty clothes in the woodland forest behind our house and had Yves (St. Laurent) make us new stuff. By the time [...]

Now you’ll probably think I’m exaggerating, but I had the best day of my entire life a couple of weeks ago.  I FOUND SOME STICKS! Not just *any* sticks!  I found 2 bundles of perfectly straight sticks out behind the kitchen store I shop at.  In their garbage pile, covered in muck and discarded coffee [...]

    It is time for the final Christmas Pledge update. As you know, almost one month ago I pledged to get a certain amount of holiday crap done before December.  The point of this was to make December more enjoyable.  I invited you to join in the pledge and a LOT of you did. [...]

Still flummoxed about what to buy certain people?  I have the perfect solution that’ll make you, me and my sponsors happy.   A show I hosted a couple of years ago had one of Aquaovo’s water dispensers as part of the kitchen’s set. That’s when I was first introduced to the truly innovative and completely [...]

As you know, I’m partaking in a Christmas Pledge.  I have vowed to get the majority of the stuff I need to get done, finished before December 4th.  If you read the original post you know that I said the first nice day there was, I was going to put up my outdoor lights and [...]

I got an email last week from a reader I can really empathize with.  Jen’s an adult putting herself through college so she doesn’t have a lot of money to spend on Christmas presents.  That means right about this time of year she’s probably getting that panicky, doomsday feeling.  You may have experienced it yourself [...]

    Yeah, you read that right. There’s only 14 days left until the Christmas Pledge deadline is up.  2 weeks. 2 weeks to finish your shopping, get your decorations up, write out your Christmas Cards and tie up any loose ends. THIS IS WHY STICKING TO THE CHRISTMAS PLEDGE IS SO IMPORTANT. Christmas really [...]

    I’m sick.  And I’m the worst kind of sick too.  If you’ve been following me on Facebook you know that … I have a Man Cold.  A cold I caught from a man.  And as we all know, men get the exact same kinds of sicknesses that women get only much, much worse. [...]

I Karen, being of sound mind and body, (except for an occasional dagger-like pain in my eyeball from a migraine) hereby declare I am going to be completely and totally organized for Christmas by December 4th. That gives me exactly one month to get everything done. By everything, I mean by December 4th I want [...]

Every Halloween I have the exact same conversation with myself.  I say “Myself.  You are NOT going to carve an elaborate pumpkin again.  You are going to carve a normal pumpkin with triangle eyes and a carrot for a nose and a corn cob pipe.  Or whatever.”  I argue it’s too time consuming, too much [...]

Cute, right?  To put it in perspective … here it is in the room. Rather large. Rather impressive. Rather cheap. $1 for the yarn at the Dollar Store, $1 for the two way tape.  If you need to go out and buy the spiders, that’ll set you back another dollar or two.  I know.  I [...]

Every year for Halloween I try to get the kids something a tiny bit different in terms of their candy.  One year when I was rolling in the money I gave out full sized chocolate bars.  Another year it was Pringles as opposed to regular bags of potato chips. But no matter what …my options [...]