September 2009

Cheat Sheet: 5 Things You Missed While Living Your Life

September 25, 2009 at 2:30 pm , by Arpita Joshi

1. Obama made us laugh on Letterman.
The president took a seat with David Letterman on Monday night, and discussed – what else – his health care plan. Not only did he randomly accept the gift of a heart-shaped potato from an audience member, but he might have gotten more laughs than Letterman during their chat. When Dave asked him about Jimmy Carter’s suggestion that the opposition to his healthcare plan is rooted in racism, Obama said, “I think it’s important to realize I was actually black before the election,” to which Dave replied, ”Really, how long have you been a black man?” with a totally straight face. The two of them brought out a lot of laughs in the audience – check the video here if you missed it.

2. Hollywood actors defended insurance companies – hilariously.
Speaking of health care, a bunch of actors got together and made this Funny or Die video playing devil’s advocate to Obama’s health care reform plan. You really need to watch it to appreciate it, but I’ll give away one gem: “Insurance companies are detail oriented enough to deny claims for things like typos…if you spell something wrong, do you really deserve surgery?”- Will Ferrell

3. A new Dan Brown novel came out, and we’re not sure if it’s good or not.
Dan Brown, of The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons fame, came out with a new novel – The Lost Symbol. Will it take the world by storm like the other two? It got some mixed reviews this week, including this one, that claims the story “dies repeatedly” and “doesn’t ever have the chance to develop any pace because Brown dumps chunks of often irrelevant information directly into the text, stopping the narrative dead in the water.” Ouch. Decide for yourself – the new book is on Amazon.

4. Hugely famous stars have embarrassing high school photos too.
Brangelina, Jennifer Aniston, Paula Abdul, Tom Cruise, Mariah, and more…in high school yearbook photos. Enough said.

5. Baby does Beyonce!
I’m willing to bet this is the cutest thing you’ve seen on the internet all week. This adorable tot is giving Sasha Fierce a run for her money – the baby doesn’t have a metal glove, but does have all the attitude!

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After The Makeover…Beware Of Compliments and Snoopy Neighbors

September 25, 2009 at 11:09 am , by Mandy Hendrix

It’s funny when we approach women for makeovers. Often, a kind relative or friend has suggested to us that she knows someone who would look better without her mom jeans and a more flattering haircut. It then becomes my job to approach the woman and tell her how amazing she would look in the hands of our fashion and beauty teams. It’s really quite a thrill.

Getting to the salon for a transformative cut and color appointment is always fun, and working with a makeup artist to highlight beautiful eyes or great lips is exciting, too. But the most rewarding part of the process is checking in with our ladies after the makeover has happened. The confidence gained throughout the process carries over into real life and continues long after the shoot. Here’s a juicy little bit from one of our recent makeovers:

Mindy came to us ready for some big changes. Most notably, stylist Valery Joseph cut six inches of hair and a few caramel-colored strands. For the very happily married Mindy, she returned home, pleased with the results. Several weeks later, a pair of widowed neighbor ladies approached Mindy’s husband, inquiring about the younger woman with lighter hair that had been going in and out of the house. The neighbors were concerned that Mindy was “another woman,” when in reality, she had made a few style changes and had confidence through the roof.

Maybe it was time for the nosy neighbors to get a new eyeglass prescription.

I’m in the process of planning for our next makeovers. Think you—or someone you know—needs a style tweak? Send me a line and a few pictures at lhjstyle@meredith.com. I’d love to hear from you.

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What My Son’s Preschool Taught Me

September 24, 2009 at 4:52 pm , by Louise Sloan

I was getting a bit lax in the eco-friendly arena. But preschool whipped me into shape.

My son just started preschool for the first time last week, and I thought I’d be the  dorky parent who sends carrot sticks and soy nuts for snacks when everyone else gets Lunchables or some other food that’s “fun,” mainly due to being based on white flour and sugar and housed in disposable cartons, boxes and bags covered with brightly-colored, bug-eyed licensed characters. For at least a minute or two, I seriously worried that he might be a preschool social reject because of his uncool, health-conscious lunches.  (In reality, I think he has a couple years before he risks becoming a pariah on those grounds.)

Turns out I seriously underestimated my ultraprogressive, parent-run preschool.  No Blues Clues-emblazoned Yoplait for this crew! Right in the family handbook, it spelled out a lunch and snack policy that was healthier and way more eco-friendly than I was planning to be. Healthy lunch and snacks only, they said, no sweets allowed—and please send food in reusable containers, with real cups, spoons and forks and a cloth napkin. “This practice will eliminate the waste of paper and plastic and help your child learn to preserve the earth’s resources.”

Whoa. I was planning on being eco-friendly and all, but no yogurt cartons, pretzel packs, or juice boxes EVER? What about those little containers of organic applesauce? Don’t they buy me some moral high ground, despite the plastic? What about my guilty addiction to Ziploc bags? And it would never have occurred to me to send a cloth napkin to school. The responsible citizen in me thought these were excellent rules, but the harried mom thought, “yikes!” I had some shopping to do.

After totally striking out at local stores—cloth napkins for kids and eco-friendly lunch paraphernalia are apparently far from the norm, even in my famously progressive neighborhood—I went online and found some great products (my favorites listed below). Scott was ready to go green.

But something else happened. Preparing his healthy, eco-friendly lunches guilted me into doing the same for myself—and because of his preschool’s rules, I was ready with all the right containers.

I swear my turkey on whole wheat tastes way better in its hip-looking ReSnackIt reusable bag than it would in a Ziploc.  Even those drearily healthy carrot sticks have taken a step up: now they get dipped in the hummus I put in one of the tiny little Sassy containers I got for Scott.

The transformation goes further—as I put his cute cloth napkin into his lunchbox, I find myself thinking that, instead of a paper towel, I really could use a cloth kitchen towel to dry the counter after sponging it. Meanwhile, at work, the Envirosax company sent me a 5-pack of their portable, reusable shopping bags. Thanks to Scott’s preschool giving me a shove in the ecologically correct direction, I decided to try them.

Turns out they’re not only pretty, but practical: They fold up easily to the size of a Kleenex pocket pack, so you can always keep one in your purse, and they have nice long handles so you can hang them from your shoulders, making grocery-carrying a lot easier (a big deal in New York, where you have to shlep your bags for blocks).  Plus, Justin Timberlake uses them. How cool is that?

The upshot: After two weeks, I’ll bet all the paper and plastic Scott and I would have generated—but haven’t—would fill our kitchen garbage can.  I still use too many paper towels and too much plastic, but I feel great about the changes I’ve made. It took some effort to get myself set up with products that make re-using easy, but now it really isn’t so hard to pour some milk into a thermos or spoon some yogurt or applesauce from a big jar to a small container that I can throw in the dishwasher later. I wouldn’t have done it without a push—our culture is set up to encourage excess packaging and the idea that things can be heedlessly thrown away, and it’s so much easier to just go with it.

So, what I’ve learned so far in preschool? Just like the teacher says, rules really can make the classroom a better and happier place. And sometimes, peer pressure can actually be a force for good!

Do you have an eco-friendly lunch product you swear by? Check out my faves, after the jump: Read more

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Trying It Out: Hyp-Yoga

September 24, 2009 at 12:09 pm , by Emily Chau

Everything goes with yoga—or at least, that’s what it seems.  There’s hot yoga, power yoga, laughter yoga, and of course the hybrid-types like yogalates and doga. So when I got an email about trying a session of Hyp-Yoga, a new wellness program founded by Carly Cummings which blends—you got it—hypnosis and yoga, I couldn’t resist.  Sound like an unlikely pairing?  A little.  But it’s not as odd as it initially seems.

Research shows that there are there are plenty of health benefits of yoga and hypnosis.  While yoga can help improve your flexibility, lower blood pressure and fight stress, hypnosis has been used to help people lose weight, quit smoking and control pain.

Did that mean that in a Hyp-Yoga session I could get two for the price of one?

Read more

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Make the Most of Your Dreams

September 24, 2009 at 11:55 am , by Julie Bain

I’m standing in a living room at an elegant cocktail party. Suddenly I start to levitate, and then I’m floating, flying, above the crowd. It feels great, so light and freeing. Then I wake up.

What does it mean? Flying is one of the most common of pleasant dreams, and it usually happens when you feel exuberant, in command, on top of things. But when it comes to dream interpretation, there’s no one-size-fits-all.

So for me, that floating feeling simulates what I imagine it would be like in space where there is zero-gravity. It just so happens that a friend of mine is an astronaut who recently sent me an invitation to attend his next space shuttle launch in Florida next February. I’m dying to go, and it’s possible that it spurred my dream of weightlessness. You see, it’s what the symbols in your dream mean to you that matters!

That’s one of the many things I learned while working on our Dreams story by Dan Ferber in the October issue of LHJ. Surely there’s no topic more endlessly fascinating and mysterious than our dreams. They’re like little windows into our souls—and with more amazing special effects than any sci-fi movie. But most people say they don’t remember their dreams, and even when they do, they don’t pay much attention to them.

That’s a shame. Because research is showing more and more that dreams serve a bunch of major purposes. They can help you resolve conflicts, defuse your fears, conjure up creative solutions to problems, and even help you make life-altering decisions. That’s why it’s worth it to focus on your dreams. There are some good tips on how to do that in the article. And some more advice in the Today show segment I did this morning, which you can watch here.

You can train yourself to have more interesting dreams, and to remember them, just by telling yourself, right before you turn off the light and go to sleep, that it will happen. It works!

Then before you know it, you’ll be flying! How cool is that?

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Ladies We Love: Melissa Michaels

September 23, 2009 at 10:14 am , by Sonia Harmon

“Refining your home for authentic living” is the tag line of Melissa Michaels’ interior decorating and lifestyle blog, The Inspired Room. Her home decor ideas are fabulous, but she writes about more than just paint and fabric. Her readers love the way she combines tips and techniques with ways to become inspired by your surroundings, which she says can encourage you to live your most authentic life. Sounds good to us!

What makes me a lady: I ventured out of my comfort zone and started The Inspired Room two years ago, and I found I was stronger and more confident than I ever thought I could be! Each time I try something new, I grow in confidence and find I enjoy the challenge.

Favorite guilty pleasure: I would say chocolate but I seem to have no guilt about indulging in it, so I think I need to find a new, more guilty pleasure.

Three things on my life list: Starting my own interior decorating business, which I finally did at age 40! I really want to learn to embroider. I also want to start an interior decorating outreach program for low income women. Everyone deserves to have a home they love and are proud of.

If I could have a superpower, it would be: I’d be just like I Dream of Jeannie and be able to blink my eyes and appear somewhere else.

Ladies I admire: I admire any lady who is willing to accomplish great things in her world while keeping her family a priority.

Do you know a woman who deserves some of the spotlight? Tell us about her! E-mail us at ladieslounge@lhj.com and she could be featured in a future post.

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Nailed it: A Private Gallery

September 22, 2009 at 4:39 pm , by cdewet

My favorite wall in my little New York City apartment displays an arrangement of old family photos, treasured images and decorative paper all hung together in an assortment of mismatched vintage frames; my own private gallery wall, if you will. The project was surprisingly easy, fun and inexpensive! I had such a wonderful time sorting through old black and white images of my parents as children and browsing through old picture books at flea markets.

• To get started, I bid on a bunch of mismatched vintage frames (some with glass, some without) on eBay. I received the entire lot for quite a steal—they just needed some TLC.
• Next I spray painted some of the frames. Then I laid everything out on the floor and moved them around until I found a pattern I loved.
• Before hammering nails into my rented walls, I cut paper in the same shapes as the frames and taped them up to make sure the spacing and pattern looked correct.
• Then I finally hammered the nails through the paper and hung the frames. Voila! The great thing about my wall is that I can continue to add to it over time, or easily swap out the pictures so it always reflects my personal style and interests. My husband was so impressed with my gallery that I even created a smaller one in the kitchen. Here’s a tip: if you don’t have any great local flea markets, check out etsy.com, which has tons of online vintage shops with a unique selection of frames and pictures.

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