One.

As a hearing-impaired person (and someone who stubbornly refused to wear her hearing aid as a child), this warms my heart immensely.

The Blue Ear

Four-year old Anthony Smith didn’t want to wear his hearing aid because superheroes don’t wear them, so his mom, Christina D’Allesandro, asked Marvel Comics for help. Watch what happens when Anthony discovers that superheroes need listening devices, too!

Two.

I Want Her Job is a “website for independent-thinking women everywhere in search of the next best thing.” From founder, Brianne Burrowes:

Through I Want Her Job™ I’ve had the opportunity to interview successful women from all over the country, and even world, who love their jobs. These are women who wake up excited to go to work and set ideas into motion. These are women who take the time to stay late and answer that e-mail from someone dying to get into their industry. These are women who have found what makes them professionally happy right now and want to help you make your dreams come true.

This week is Stella & Dot week. Brianne and her team interviewed four stylists about what they find fulfilling about their jobs. I especially like former teacher, Amanda Keely’s, interview.

Click to read interview

Three.

Christopher Jobson describes his blog, Colossal, as

…the intersection of art, design, and physical craft. I enjoy artwork that is tactile, physical and non-digital in nature, especially sculptural work and installations that use impossible numbers of components, or sequences in a process. During the course of a week you’ll find roughly 15-20 posts on photography, design, animation, painting, installation art, architecture, drawing and street art. I share things that I feel are accessible to everyone, requiring little explanation or theory, so in that sense, I hope people not involved directly in the arts can also find it interesting.

I collected miniatures growing up and spent countless hours setting up furniture and accessories in my little, red farmhouse with black shutters and white trim and a green porch swing in the front. My dollhouse had wallpaper and was wired for electricity, and Mom, Dad, Billy, Mary Ann, and the baby (I can’t remember her name!) lived there happily amongst the tiny home goods. Which is why I flipped out when I saw the pictures in this post:

Incredible Miniature Food Sculptures

Flipped out, I tell you! I would have died to find these at my favorite miniatures shop, Jacqueline’s, and I would have thrown money at them like a gambler on a winning streak. Look at the crust on that french loaf! And the salami! And the avocado!!! Adorable! I might have to get some of the sculptor’s miniature food jewelry on etsy. I’m not kidding. It’ll look good with my Stella & Dot, right???

Four.

One day, Karen, a Canadian TV host, looked around her house, saw that it was not good, and sold everything in it. Then she redecorated., finishing the  entire project in one month. O. M. G.

The Art of Doing Stuff

Five.

I love Kate’s philosophy: women should be able to eat cake and not feel guilty about it. She blogs about beauty, body image womanhood, and dessert at eat the damn cake. At the end of each blog post, she does an “Unroast” – something she likes about the way she looks that day, and why she likes it. She also posts pictures of women eating cake. The next time I’m eating cake, I shall take a picture of myself and send it to her.

Cake Gallery

Have a fabulous weekend!

{Black Tie Wedding, Garden Wedding, Romantic Wedding}

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In 2010, I didn’t separate the personal from the professional, but I will this time. I have specific goals for Stella & Dot, and I want to make sure they are front and center. So, here goes!

Stella & Dot

• join BNI and attend all Wednesday morning meetings (they start at 7:00 a.m., so this is a superhuman endeavor for me!) Inducted into BNI on Wednesday, May 30!
• book at least one trunk show in June, July, and August with a BNI member or with someone referred to me through BNI First BNI trunk show on June 6!
• book 4 trunk shows for June, 6 for July, and 8 for August
• sponsor 2 new stylists
• do 3 trunk shows in one week
• do at least one happy hour trunk show, one mid-morning trunk show, and one Saturday or Sunday afternoon trunk show each month
• host a customer appreciation event in August
• sell at least $2300 in June, July, and August to qualify for extra 5% commission each month
• sell on-the-go from my Ikat tote and jewelry portfolio
• pay for all of my fall samples with free product credits and hostess rewards (only spend out-of-pocket for shipping and tax)

Personal

• read at least 3 books each month
• walk 3 miles, 4-5 times a week; continue training 2 times a week at West U Fit
• plan meals, grocery shop, and cook – gradually increase to cooking dinner 5 nights a week
• buy iPad!
• take Luke and Anna Jane to the park and swing!
• see at least one movie a week
• shop at DSW for new sandals, flip-flops, and wedges (It’s been so long since I’ve bought new shoes – I’m in withdrawal, and it’s not pretty!)

Home/Car Improvement

• replace garage door
• repaint office, rearrange furniture, and redecorate
• re-reorganize closets (ugh!)
• keep plants on patio alive!!!
• buy new tires
• fix light panel that is currently dangling in the back of my car

Blog/Other Businesses

• develop The Closet Wizard blog and virtual wardrobe styling business
• rebrand 40 is the new 30 to complement The Closet Wizard
• take Wardrobe 911  Style Institute course online
• tutor (6-10 hours/week)
• teach Designing a Playground and Book Club classes in late July/early August
• invite 3 bloggers to write guest posts for 40 is the new 30
• write guest blog posts for 3 other blogs
• write a series on Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program That Works - pre-order the 3rd edition here

I think that’s it. I didn’t include enough fun things, though. Will have to work on that!

This is what the closet looked like after I cleaned and organized it:

My mom is a big Stella & Dot fan and my best customer, so she has a lot of pretty jewelry! I hung two acrylic peg boards from The Container Store above the shoe shelf and used them to hold most of her necklaces.

I used all the pegs, so she will have to get another peg board when the new collection comes out in July. I also used these trays to corral earrings, brooches, and pendants. The t-bar is a Stella & Dot display piece exclusive to stylists, but you can find a similar one here.

I know this is a crappy shot, but PicMonkey and an iPhone can only do so much!

I’m not sure where she got the jewelry tree, but here’s a similar one. We got the little mirror at West Elm. She has a full-length mirror on the back of the closet door, but this is perfect for when she’s trying to decide what jewelry to wear. A friend gave her the pretty jewelry box.

I might hang two more peg boards above the shelf so she can hang her delicate necklaces, too. Most of them are hanging inside the jewelry box, but they are too long and tend to get tangled at the bottom. After a year and a half of having her personal Stella & Dot stylist select her jewelry, my mom is pretty good at picking out just the right earrings, necklace, and bracelets to complement an outfit. The other day, I met her at a doctor’s appointment, and she was wearing an outfit similar to this one with all the jewelry pictured:

Mom’s Outfit

Next on the to-do list is the bedroom. I’m ready to change the bedding and do a little decorating. Here’s a sneak peek of the “before” pictures:

It may take the rest of the summer, but I am determined to reorganize and redecorate her bedroom, bathroom, and closet! It’s a tough job, but The Closet Wizard can do it!

Perhaps it’s because I’m not married, and I don’t have children, and I only bought my first home, a condo, 4 years ago, but I swear I don’t feel all that grown up. I went to a business networking meeting for the first time a few weeks ago. Each person stood and gave a 30 second commercial about his or her business. When it was my turn, I told the group I was an Independent Stylist for Stella & Dot, a boutique-style line of jewelry sold only at in-home trunk shows and online. That sounds like an important job, doesn’t it? I felt like an impostor, a little kid sitting at the grown-ups’ table. I am literally still playing with jewelry.

Facebook has really messed with my psyche on this whole getting older thing. Before Facebook, I knew that my high school and college friends had children – I’d even met some of them – but their growing up took place largely off my radar. Now I’m seeing prom pictures and graduation pictures and pictures of darling daughters in their first cars, and I wonder how people so young can have children that old? Facebook photo albums are like Dorian Gray in reverse; my friends’ children keep getting older while my friends never change.

When, exactly, did 40 become the new 30? When I was about 8, my father played a joke on his sister-in-law, my Aunt Susie. He made bumper stickers that said Susie Gartner was 30 years old last year, and he put them on all the family cars and in the elevators and hallways of her office building. Once she got over the shock of everyone in Houston knowing she was 31, she realized that always being 30 last year did have its advantages. (She still has one of the stickers in her garage.)

Remember the Over the Hill parties people used to have when they turned 40? Black streamers and cakes with gravestones on them? When was the last time you went to one of those? Nowadays, we celebrate 40th birthdays with a spa weekend for the girls and a bass fishing trip for the guys. For my 40th birthday, I went to Paris for the first time. That’s a grown-up thing to do, right?

I don’t think this phenomenon exists solely in my head. The average age at first marriage was 28.2 for men and 26.1 for women in 2010, an increase from 26.8 and 25.1 in 2000. (In 1970, the average age for men was 23.2. It was 20.8 for women. Yes, you read that correctly.) The average age of women at first childbirth went from 21.4 in 1970 to 25.0 in 2006, an increase of 3.6 years. The proportion of first births among women age 35 and older increased from one out of 100 in 1970 to one out of 12 in 2006. Without doing any further research, my guess is that this is due primarily to greater access to oral contraception; advances in medicine and technology; and the number of women getting college degrees and entering the professional workforce. My sister had her first baby at 36. When women are doing things at 36 that they used to do at 26, it makes them look and feel younger, no?

I think women look better than ever because fitness and sports are no longer the exclusive domains of the male gender. My friends go to spinning and run marathons in their spare time, a far cry from the days of feeling the burn with Jane Fonda in our living rooms. (Speaking of Jane – clearly, 74 is the new 50!) Thanks to the passage of Title IX 1972, girls growing up in the ’70s and ’80s  had unprecedented access to high school and college athletics, although the original statute did not explicitly refer to sports. (Did you know that Title IX was passed to prevent discrimination in hiring and employment practices, not to provide parity in play? I didn’t until I Wikipediaed it.) These girls are now in their fabulous forties, reading 50 Shades of Grey on their Kindles and working their skinny jeans better than most 20 year olds. Surely this is a new stop on the aging train?

When I started this blog, I was 40 1/2. The tagline was

It’s never too late to be who you might have been. ~ George Eliot

I wanted to explore the possibilities: who could I have been? Someone’s wife or mother? A principal or an educational consultant? An interior designer or a writer? And was it really not too late?

I framed a poster with this quote in French; it’s propped up against a wall in my living room. I see it every day when I walk from the kitchen – my kitchen – down the hall to my bedroom: Il n’est jamais trop tard pour être qui vous aurait pu être. I often glance at it as I walk by, a reminder that I’m not over the hill yet, not by a long shot. I’m 42 and a half, living my “do-over decade,” and restyling my life, one necklace at a time.

So, is 40 the new 30?

What do you think?

Red

White

Blue

P. S. Here’s how Katherine Heigl wore the Bahari Necklace to lunch with her mom and her new baby!

Katherine and baby Adalaide

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This just in: new pieces added to the Memorial Day sale! These pieces are discontinuing, so get ‘em while you still can!

Yesterday, I posted pictures of three statement necklaces on sale at my Stella & Dot e-boutique. Today, I want to show you how I would style each necklace for a fun, casual holiday weekend. Take a look:

Casablanca Bib

Festival ’til Dawn

Rio Single Strand Coin Necklace

Come back tomorrow to see how I would style each of these necklaces for a fun holiday weekend!

Inspiration

I’m helping my mom redecorate her house, and she needs new bedding and accessories for her bedroom. The walls are Benjamin Moore’s Palladian Blue, the most gorgeous, soothing blue-green with just enough grey to keep it from veering into aqua. I have it in my bedroom, and my mom has always loved it, so we used it for her room, too.

Flipping through a Pottery Barn catalogue on Friday night, I spied the perfect bedding: the Mari Duvet Cover and Sham. Mom sometimes has difficulty making decisions because she wants to make sure she has seen every possibility and has chosen the absolute best option. Fortunately, she loved the bedding as much as I did, and we snatched it up as soon as we hit Pottery Barn Saturday afternoon.

Her current bed is from Crate and Barrel circa 1994 and looks a little like this:

It’s a perfectly fine bed, but when she bought it, we decorated the bedroom in country cottage with florals (blue and pink hydrangeas on a yellow background) and gingham (big blue bows atop a white balloon valance.) I think it’s time for an update, and I’d love for her to get an upholstered headboard similar to the one in the inspiration board, but the soft blue bedding is a perfect match to the wall color and will look good on the birch bed for now. I want to get a bench for the foot of the bed, and I’m leaning toward the Little Hipster Raspberry print. Don’t you just love the name?

Palladian Blue plays well with so many colors – blood orange, burgundy, magenta, lime, marigold – but I saw this in a local gift shop and knew that my mom would like the color as well as the sentiment:

The above picture looks more raspberry than the one I used on the inspiration board, and it’s closer to the color of the picture in the gift shop. Mom has a beautiful drawing of Rice University that will look great on the other side of the bed. I’ll post a picture of it later.

We both liked the sleek crystal lamp from Pottery Barn. I’m not sure if I want the lamps on either side of the bed to match. The bedside tables (or chests) will probably be different, so maybe I should use the same lamps. What do you think? I’ll put a picture of Mom’s Bichon, Coco, next to her bed instead of that cute beagle, though.

Mom’s bedroom is spacious, and this is just one wall! I will try to change out the bedding and begin accessorizing this week so I can write a real Before and After post. I can’t wait to get started!

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Paper dolls for grownups! This makes me so happy. Thank you, internets!

P. S. The Zahara Bib Necklace is the statement necklace of the summer. Pair with something neutral like the dress in the first set or with one of this summer’s gorgeous pastels and some white jeans. The Medina Bib looks great with everything: a maxi dress,  a colorful tank and shorts, or a summer cocktail dress. Click on the links under the pictures to visit my website.

Zahara Bib Necklace

Medina Bib Necklace

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