Archive for the ‘Companion Ideas’ Category
September 26th
Lani Rosenstock is a New York based style consultant whose philosophy is that fashion is about being confident in your own unique look. Today, she’s back with a trend report on fall styles.
Who do you want to be this season? Huntress, Bohemian Goddess or Sexy Secretary? No recent season has offered us so many characters to play at once. I don’t suggest choosing more than one of these for work or your boss may suspect multiple personality disorder. But feel free to don a feminine blouse and pencil skirt to play the Sexy Secretary by day and a Boho dress after dark to bring out your inner Bohemian. Feeling brave? A Huntress would put a feather in your cap, literally, and swirl around in a plaid cape or menswear inspired vest. All this costumery too much for you? You’ll be happy to know that another look of the season is Minimalism.
Accessories offer another outlet for creativity this season. The most important footwear trend is the bootie. I love it in grey suede, which will let you hit another trend of the season, grey shoes. Last season’s big necklaces have only gotten bigger. If this trend is well, too big for you, create a long and lean tough girl look with a variety of layered chains around your neck. Not one for necklaces? Embrace the costume jewelry trend with a large cuff.
Our style, like our lives, should be constant but always changing. We all have a core style but we should be looking for ways to update and refresh that style each season. I’m hoping that these resources will help you to do just that!
September 23rd
Geralin Thomas of Metropolitan Organizing in Cary, North Carolina uses a Minister weekly planner. However, she has adapted the dashboard of action items to meet her own needs. Here’s how she described it: 
“Regarding the Minister’s right columns: delete the category, “Write” and instead add, “Buy” and “Dinner.” Alphabetize the list:
A: Action
B: Buy
C: Call
D: Dinner (as in what is for dinner every night of the week)
E: E-mail
F: Future (stuff you need to do, later)
This is how I customize each box within the Minister’s weekly layout for myself; I share this alpha list with clients and they love it! It’s easy to remember, too.
If you really want to make it user-friendly, add lines in the “Call” section making it easier to write names and numbers in an orderly fashion.”
Thank you, Geralin - you always have great suggestions.
How do you personalize your planner?
September 19th
I often write and research on the internet at the same time.
But I’m finding its taking longer and longer to get work done. When I’m on the web I begin to drift from link to link, and lose focus for the task at hand. Web surfing isn’t a waste of time, but it has become a major distraction from what I’m supposed to be doing.
So, I’ve decided to employ an old time management devise to help keep me on track–an hourglass, also called a sandglass. I will use it to set a specific amount of time for particular writing projects. The sand rushing through the funnel will be my prompter to stay focused and work quickly.
Other ideas?
September 16th
The Butler Bag is designed to help women find things in their bag.
A busy working woman who’d just given birth to twin girls, Jen Groover was frustrated by the lack of organization in her purse. 
She envisioned designing and marketing a “Butler Bag” - a purse-meets-tackle box aimed as busy women looking to organize their lives.
Unlike standard pocketbooks, Grover’s Butler Bags would come with built-in compartments, with slots for everything women carry around from Blackberrys, compacts, iPhones, brushes, keys, wallets, etc.
“I wanted to solve the problem of the black hole of women’s handbags,” said Grover, 35. “This is organization without compromising fashion.”
While the Butler Bag looks like other bags on the outside, hidden inside are dividers. With this tidy system, women don’t have to fish around for keys, or change, or mints that have dropped to the bottom of the purse.
The bags are priced from $125 (shown here) to $1800 for deluxe models. 
September 13th
I am beginning to get weary of the U.S. presidential campaign, which seems to have been going on for ten years now. I decided to try to find a “countdown clock” to see how much longer we have to go before the election.
Online countdown clocks make things easy.Â
There also companies that make countdown clocks to mark special events, such as a birth, wedding, graduation, retirement, vacation and more. The Beijing Olympics had its own countdown clock! 
We have 51 days to go to November 4th….
September 12th
I just broke down and made my first purchase at the newly opened Brooklyn IKEA… I don’t have anything against the company or its products in the abstract, but they totally demolished a beautiful old block in my neighborhood to make way for their big, bland, blue and yellow box store. Before: lovely cobblestone streets and 19th century warehouses. After: smooth roads and a massive parking lot. And of course, that blue and yellow box.
On the one hand, they did build a lovely little park on the waterfront behind the store, and there’s plenty to be said for the creation of new jobs and modern infrastructure. On the other hand, I don’t understand why they couldn’t have simply gutted and reused some of those old buildings—it would have been the coolest IKEA in the world.
In the meantime, I guess it’s time to sand and stain my little bedside table…
September 8th
The Hand Drawn Map Association (HDMA) is an online archive of maps and diagrams that were created by hand and submitted from all over the world. Many of them are also accompanied by interesting stories or anecdotes (this map was made by tracing coffee stains on a seating chart; this map was drawn by a half-Canadian who was trying to educate his U.S. friends).
Not as useful as Google Maps, perhaps, but every bit as cool…
September 3rd
New York is a great place for people-watching; for birding, not so much. In Westport, though, we saw plenty of interesting species, including osprey, cormorants, egrets, and one lone great blue heron. I don’t have a very sophisticated camera, but I took it out nonetheless one morning when we went kayaking, and I managed to get a couple of shots of some egrets on a small island… More pictures after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
September 1st
The observance of Labor Day began over 100 years ago.
Conceived by America’s labor unions as a testament to their cause, the legislation creating the holiday was shepherded through Congress and signed by president Grover Cleveland in 1894. Since then, Labor Day has been celebrated on the first Monday in September. It has become the unofficial end of summer.
The first Labor Day parade was held on September 5, 1882 in New York City. Twenty thousand workers marched up Broadway carrying banners that read “LABOR CREATES ALL WEALTH,” and “EIGHT HOURS FOR WORK, EIGHT HOURS FOR REST, EIGHT HOURS FOR RECREATION!”
The roots of Labor Day stretch back to what was known as the eight hour day movement. In 1817, a Welsh mill owner, Robert Owen, formulated the goal of the eight-hour day and coined the slogan. 
The International Workingmen’s Association, many of whom were socialists or anarchists, favored a May 1 holiday. With the event of the Chicago Haymarket riots in May 1886, president Grover Cleveland believed that a May 1 holiday could become an opportunity to commemorate the riots. Fearing that it might strengthen the socialist movement, he eventually supported a September Labor Day.
Is an eight-hour workday the standard anymore?
August 31st
We have received several emails from coffeehouses looking for notebooks to sell. Although plenty of people tote their laptop into Starbucks and other coffee places, it’s nice to know some people still prefer pen and paper while enjoying an expresso and biscotti or cappucino.Â
The inquiries made me think of my own favorite place to loaf & watch life walk by, think, greet friends and savor good coffee–all at the same time:  Aldo’s  in Greenport, NY. Owned by Aldo Maiorana, is a baker, coffee roaster, business owner and chef. Aldo was born in Sicily and raised in France. 
After living in New Caledonia, Paris and South America, Aldo moved to East Marion, NY in 1978 with his American wife, Martine. His cafe and biscotteria–Aldo’s Too–is a Greenport landmark. Regulars and visitors co-mingle, as people stop by for an expresso and chat. In the winter people pack the place to come in from the cold for homemade hot chocolate.
You can spot Aldo immediately by his full head of curly white hair. He roasts his own coffee, so the air is always thick with the latest batch. But Aldo is known as much for his hazelnut and harlequin biscotti as he is his coffee. The biscotti is shipped all over the country and as far away as Dean & DeLuca in Toyko.
Once you get your coffee, you can sit at the yellow picnic table inside; or one of the small tables outside, and read the paper, discuss, swap hellos, and savor a moment of peace and contentment.
Do you have a favorite place to go?
