hollywood housewife

garlic naan with salt & olive oil

I realize this is the equivalent of me showing you how to make toast, but roll with it.

My friend served this at book club and I lost track of all conversation. I think I said something along the lines of, "I only want to sit and eat this bread for the rest of all time."

And some days it feels like I've done just that, since I've made this many (many) times since then.

original art in your home, part 1: acquiring the pieces

After my house tour at Design Mom ran last month, I got lots of questions about the house that I’m going to attempt to answer here over the next few weeks. The most common thing people asked about - and this happens with guests in our home, too - was about all the art. (Though no one asked about the nudie art. Thank heavens.)

What you put on the wall is the most important decorating decision of any room: the paint, the wallpaper, and of course the art. Color and texture sets the tone, and original art takes any home from generic to unique.

carry on warrior, where'd you go bernadette, look at me

If it means anything to you, I cried off and on throughout Glennon Doyle Melton's Carry On, Warrior. This was surprise to me, as her memoir about drugs, bulimia, and rebellion isn't something to which I should relate. But she is such a talented writer, a gift I already knew through her very popular blog Momastery.

Several of the essays in Carry On, Warrior are posts from her blog, but since Momastery was still relatively new to me, it was still new material. Though even if you're a rabid fan, it's nice to have some of her best writing all in one place. 

deep breaths are not the answer

Welcome to Mommy Mondays, the one day of the week where I talk parenthood. The good and bad and funny and not. It's hit or miss, really.

On Sunday afternoon while my husband was golfing and I was recuperating from a weekend away, I put both of my children down for a nap and then I laid down myself.

I fell asleep quickly, deeply. I dreamed that while I was sleeping my three-year-old had cut off all of her hair and dyed the remaining bits bright pink. In the dream I was so upset about this that it made me start to have a panic attack. This meant, actually, that I was having a panic attack in real life. In the dream, my heart raced and my throat closed to where I couldn’t breathe. In real life, the same.

Later in the dream my husband found me on the stairs naked except for a furry sleep mask. I had been sleeping, dreaming, walking, and hypervenilating, and I didn’t know where the kids were.

He wasn’t mad at me, but I was very mad at myself. I was still dreaming.

We went down to the backyard, me now in a nightgown, with a sleep mask on top of my head, my daughter with very short, self-dyed hair, and we found my mom with a photographer there to take our family photos. I clung to my mom, physically held on to her so hard that I was almost dragging both of us to the ground. “Help me,” I pleaded with her, staring into her eyes, trying to make her understand that I was having trouble breathing, and that I had lost track of the children.

She assured me that my kids were fine, and that she understood I couldn’t breathe. And that she couldn’t help me.