Gift Guide: Your Beautiful Bestie

It's that time again! We're headed straight for the best discounts of the year, so I wanted to share some gift ideas to jumpstart your inspiration. I've been poking around the internet for ideas for my family and friends, and here are some items I came across in the process. Here are some gift ideas for your best gal pals!

1. Whether it's Drybar or a copycat, get her a gift certificate for an amazing blowout. There's no better confidence booster than a good hair day!
2. For the holidays or year-round, this paper Moravian star would be a pretty addition to anyone's house. $28 at Serena and Lily.
3. Fill this pretty tin box with your favorite recipes and your gift will truly keep on giving. $34 at Rifle Paper Co.
4. Give her a great base to start from with the Benefit Primping With the Stars set, including primers, concealers and cheek stain. $32 at Sephora. 
5. A beautiful jewelry holder that looks like sculpture. $29 at West Elm.
6. Let's admit it: we can't tell what the heck our wine smells like. For the burgeoning oenophile in your life, get this scratch & sniff wine guide. $13 at Amazon.
7. And it would be even better paired with one of Rewined's divine wine-scented candles, $26.
8. Has she been stressed? Give her a book full of laughs with the new book from Hyperbole and a Half. $11 at Amazon.

Sunday Best v.181

When two people are as famous as John and Jackie Kennedy, it's easy to forget they were ever real people. We've been reflecting on his assassination this week, and it still feels just as painful to imagine the national sense of loss. I like this picture of happier times, but here are more pictures of JFK.

We've had a busy weekend! I saw Catching Fire and LOVED it, walked in a Christmas parade (for the fourth time in seven years...I'm becoming a pro!) and just hosted friends for dinner. I'm getting very excited for the holiday season!

• Things every woman should stop doing.
• I've never been a fan, but I was really touched by this speech from Angelina Jolie.
• Martha Stewart takes the worst food pics.
• R. Kelly makes up sexy songs on the spot.
• Improv Everywhere brings Harry Potter to Penn Station.
• The perfect Chris Farley/Rob Ford mash-up.
• Paste Nicholas Cage's face on anyone else's body and hilarity ensues.
• A fascinating look back at the TRL years from former VJ Dave Holmes (I used to love this guy!).
• And Real World Seattle's Irene tells her side of the slap heard round the world.
• You can't help LOL'ing at this voicemail play-by-play of a car accident.
• 27 gross and bizarre things women do.
• Longest married couple celebrates 81 years.

I Can't Quit You, Beef

I've been insanely busy at work, but I had to check in to say: guys, ground turkey is just not as good. I've tried to convert Sean to turkey burgers and the other day, to turkey chili, but y'all....it's hard to convince myself!

Am I the only one, or are you all lying when you say turkey everything is delicious? I even hated the smell. Once I was eating the chili, it wasn't so bad, but I'm thinking the cheese and Fritos I insisted on adding might have removed some of the health value of using turkey. I totally doused it in spices, but maybe you guys have some other tips to mask its essential turkey-ness?

In summation: eatin' healthier is hard, surprise surprise.

Birthday Dinner 2013

 I had to work on my real birthday, but much to my delight, Sean made reservations Saturday night at Circa 1918, a restaurant I've been dying to try since it opened several years ago. We have a bad habit of always trying to go without reservations, and that never works out. Happily, it lived up to the hype.

I sipped on a delicious Ava Gardner — Stoli, St. Germain and berry compote.

 For dinner, I had perfectly cooked beef tenderloin, with garlicky green beans and the most DIVINE butternut squash gouda gratin. I will be dreaming of that gratin for years, seriously.

 I also had a great pear martini!

And we finished up with warm pumpkin donuts with walnuts and an Irish Cream sauce. So good!

Afterward, we went to see "12 Years a Slave," which left me in shambles, but was profoundly moving. I spent the rest of the weekend relaxing to the max, which is what I truly needed after working and socializing at a breakneck pace lately.

Sunday Best v.180

The Cup of Tea by Mary Cassatt

I've had a nice birthday weekend, with a fun midnight margarita run on Friday night and a delicious dinner/movie night with Sean on Saturday night. I relished some down time Saturday to catch up on interesting articles online, so I have plenty of awesome links for you this week!

• Immigrants talk about what amazed them when they moved to America and Chinese students describe their opinions about American food.
• How Wal-Mart destroys our cities.
• I'm so inspired by Dinovember.
• A hilarious Facebook status generator.
• Amazing colorized vintage photos.
• Renaissance painting subjects become superheroes.
• The cutest video ever: a baby girl's first time standing on ice.
• The love of two best friends goes on for generations.
• The importance of giving good praise to girls.
• An incredibly touching piece about the power of reading.
• A Portugese village where people literally live under rocks!
• The Fug Girls completely accurately take down Lucky Magazine's cover with Kerry Washington.
• Jean Claude Van Damm's still got it.
• ICYMI: Batkid.
• A provocative collection of things people have said to lady journalists.
• What happens when you let your 4-year-old finish your drawings.

29 Years

 Me and my dad, blowing out some birthday candles (I think it was his birthday, not mine).

Oh yeah, I'm a grown-up.

Today I'm 29, which means I'm officially in the last year of my 20s. It's funny thinking about all the things you hoped you would have accomplished by 30 that you haven't (a graduate degree, bought a house, live in a major metro, have a kid, have a pet) and all the things you have (lived in 3 different cities, change careers, get married, travel out of the country). 

I really appreciate this age...I think it's one of the best stages of life I could imagine. I'm young enough to still be a little footloose and fancy free, but I'm old enough to have learned a lot about how the world works. I'm glad not to be 22, you know?

Just for fun, I thought I'd share these random facts I shared on Facebook last night about myself. I'm sure it will be interesting to look back on this list someday!

1. I can't whistle at all.
2. I have to read every night before bed or I will not go to sleep.
3. I have always secretly enjoyed writing research papers, which is probably why journalism was a natural fit.
4. My favorite dinosaur is the stegosaurus, because it's an herbivore that can still eff you up!
5. I wikipedia/google EVERYTHING.
6. I've had a subscription to Entertainment Weekly since I was 9.
7. I'm a super picky eater when it comes to consistency and texture.
8. I love to play made-up road trip games, like "Most Random Celebrity Crushes" and "Guess the Price of These Items in Architectural Digest."
9. I hate to play Scrabble.
10. I'm one-quarter Puerto Rican and I don't speak Spanish.
11. I didn't learn how to cook anything until I was 24.
12. I care an inordinate amount about the design of things, from fonts to candle jars.
13. My mom gave me historical fashion paper dolls and ballet history coloring pages as a kid and I was OBSESSED.
14. If I don't have chocolate in the house, I go a little cuckoo.
15. I'm named after a fantasy novel.

Sunday Best v.179

Round Hill by Alex Katz.

I hope the weekend's been treating you right! We are in New Jersey, visiting with my grandparents, but that doesn't mean I don't have some links saved for your reading pleasure. Here's some of the best I saw this week:

• All the awkward times Woody Allen's movies include the phrase "making love"
• Jurassic Park, recreated.
• Melissa Joan Hart kisses and tells.
• The supposed best sandwiches of these United States.
• By TV standards, Appalachia is hip. I have mixed feelings about this.
• Once and for all, Mashable is going to decide how to pronounce tech terms.
• A brilliant party theme from Mighty Girl. Seriously, I want to recreate this.
• St. Vincent reviews the Arcade Fire completely based on how Reflektor inspired her Google searches.
• The real 11 nations of the United States.
• The weirdest/greatest "Royals" cover.
• A couple tweets their fights and many of them are hilariously mundane.
• Patti Smith remembers Lou Reed.

Wine Club Paints!

Last night, Wine Club took a walk on the artistic side and completed masterpieces in the Sip & Sample class at the local art center. Rather than paint identical pictures that were pre-drawn for us to fill in, we painted completely original pieces with the encouragement of our instructor. She suggested using fingers to paint abstract pieces and this was mine! It was a fun adventure in improvisation.

We were able to bring snacks and our own wine, so that made it like a little party.

 Lauren hard at work on hers!

 Jen painted a very Van Gogh-ish pot of flowers that was beautiful.

The end results: my abstract + Lauren's awesome ode to the 80s boombox.

Needless to say, it was a fun outing and now we're talking about all the other classes we could take, from glassblowing to ceramics. 

Easy Baked Gnocchi with Sausage

Here's what you could do. You could make this dish with ricotta, fresh basil, real tomatoes, handmade gnocchi and onions/peppers and I can promise it would probably be complex, rich, flavorful and all around fabulous.

But if you're pressed for time/energy/creativity, you can also do my cheater, easy version and also have a rich, flavorful and all around fabulous dinner.

Here's what you can do if you fall into the latter category:

1. Boil water for gnocchi and preheat the oven to 425.
2. In another skillet/pot, brown ground sausage and once fully cooked, add jarred pasta sauce with a little extra garlic.
3. Add gnocchi to boiling water and cook until the gnocchi floats to the top, about 2 minutes.
4. Add the cooked gnocchi to the sausage sauce and mix until it's coated. 
5. Add the gnocchi and sausage to a baking dish coated in cooking spray and layer it with shredded mozzarella cheese, with a layer on top for good measure. Pop that bad boy into the oven and watch it until the cheese is melted.
6. Turn on the broiler and wait until your cheese begins to bubble and brown. That right there is where the magic lives!
7. Eat. You'll experience deep feelings of bliss, followed by deep feelings of, "ooof why did I eat so much?" 

Sunday Best v.178

Beautiful photo by the recently deceased Deborah Turbeville

I spent the weekend shopping with my best friend since 4th grade...so much fun! I don't know where the year went, but I'm already realizing it's time to shop for Christmas! Hitting the stores this weekend really drove that idea home...don't dare enter if you're not ready to feel the pressure.

• Lou Reed's wife wrote the coolest, sweetest obit.
• Why Iceland believes in elves.
• A teen girl gets an amazing photobomb at a concert.
• Ohio State's marching band makes me proud to be American; it's that good.
• Marriage isn't for you.
• A real-time map of births and deaths in the world. It's hypnotic.
• I love the concept of this art piece by Ammiel Mendoza.
• Speaking of art, Vanity Fair ranks the best living artists
• Humans of New York deserves a Pulizter/Nobel Prize for this powerful piece.
• I was completely sucked into this story about Mia Farrow, 20 years after the split with Woody Allen.
• Michelle Obama has a weird job.
• I love Joanna's idea of having a photo scavenger hunt at holiday parties.
• Diana's wedding is one of the prettiest I've seen.