Happy Valentine's Day!

I just wanted to tell all of you to have a happy day of love! I love you all! Have a good green day....

WELCOME TO MY FRONT DOOR (PART 2)

Those who follow my blog know that I've been in quite a quandary about remodeling my home. I think it's pretty much settled that the kitchen will be my starting point. The rest of the house will be done to coordinate with the kitchen. I'm staying true to my love of green but in varying shades. The kitchen below kind of sets the mood I'm trying to achieve.

Now to get to this look would require painting my cabinets or having them refaced. It's funny how pinterest.com makes me think I'm capable of painting cabinets! 

What do you think about this look?

SPRING GREENS

Spring is officially here and although it's still too cold to start shedding our clothing I thought I'd share some early spring looks. All of the pictures are from essence.com

Zoe Saldana with her sister Cisely

Jada Pinkett Smith

Solange Knowles

WINTER GREENS

Spring is officially here although Punxsutawny Phil should be arrested for lying. But before we start pulling out our warm weather clothes I wanted to share some final pictures of women in green for the cooler weather. Sometimes it takes just a pop of color to make a statement.

Chioma Nnadi of London, England

Corinna Williams of New York City

Danielle Prescod of  Pelham, NY

Jennifer Battmore of Brooklyn, NY

Karen Blanchard of London, England

Michelle Swittenberg of New Jersey

Millen Umoh of New York City

Chioma Nnadi of London, England

(all pics provided by essence.com)

WELCOME TO MY FRONT DOOR (Part 1)

pinterest.com

Pantone finally jumped on my bandwagon and decided emerald green was the color of the season. Where have they been? Green is always the color. Who amongst us doesn't wish for green grass all year long and green leaves on the trees in the winter? How many of us have all of the green money we want?  How many small animals use the color green as camouflage to hide from the elements?  I could go on and on about the color green but that's not what this is about.

The green door above is my fantasy starting point. So welcome as I start the process of finally getting around to decorating my home. I have three green sofas in my house: one in my office with an ottoman and two in my living room with an ottoman. It was only when I got the two for my living room home I realized they were exactly like the one in my office, the only exception being the one in my office is chenille fabric and the ones in the living are leather! Talk about green obsession!

Now picture this, you can see part of my living room from the kitchen which leaves me in a quandary.
I would like to add more green to my kitchen to create more cohesiveness between the two rooms: backsplash, counter stools, bar stools, canisters, etc. Okay, I know that's a bit much so I have to look at other ways to incorporate some additional green. Let's take a look at some options: I would use this in my breakfast area if the L-shaped bar wasn't there and the builder put the light fixture closer to the window instead of hanging in the middle of the room.

pinterest.com

Next my style is somewhere in the middle of modern and traditional but I'd love to add a little bit of country cottage. I think this planter would add that feeling without going overboard.

pinterest.com

Another dilemma I'm having is the recessed lighting in my kitchen. There is no real rhyme or reason to the placement of the lighting. They didn't center any of the fixtures over the island which would've been great. They put them on the outer edges of the ceiling (in front of the cabinets and in front of the bar (not over it). One redeeming factor is that they placed one fixture over the kitchen sink which is where I could hang another idea; a green chandelier. Perhaps one day my husband will let me spring for rewiring!

pinterest.com

These are just a few of the ideas I'm looking at. This may take a while, so bear with me while I go through the process. At the end of this journey I'm going to have a great kitchen! Then we'll start on the living room

Have a great green day!

SATURDAY

MORE GREEN

It's been quite some time since I've posted pictures of my favorite green pieces for the season. But with autumn in full swing it's time to take a look at what I want in my closet. (all pictures provided by net-a-porter) What's in your closet?

J. Crew satin skirt

J. Crew Cafe animal jacquard capri pants

J. Brand denim

Malene Birger

MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL

pic provided espn.com

Stunning! I don't know a whole lot about football but over the years I've learned to enjoy watching it because my sons played it in high school and its been a way to spend time with my husband on Sunday afternoons and Monday nights. But I do know what I saw Monday night didn't look like the same thing the referees eventually claimed they saw. I saw an interception that would have allowed the Green Bay Packers to come away the winners. What the referees finally announced they saw allowed the Seattle Seahawks to walk away victorious.

Now this has absolutely nothing to do with the color green except that the two teams that played last night had green in their uniforms and I love Seattle's colors! If you went to sleep on the game you missed a doozy! In the first half of the game, Seattle sacked the Packers quarterback something like 8 times and they were leading the game. They weren't leading by a large margin but they were still ahead. Green Bay came back and was leading. I don't even remember what the score was but at the very end of the game Seattle's quarterback threw a pass which was simultaneously caught by a Seattle player and a Green Bay player. The replacement refs called it a touchdown by Seattle and even the people upstairs whomever they are, reviewed it and it was still called a touchdown. Seattle won the game.

This game reminded me of  the roller coaster of emotions one feels of almost winning and then almost losing and then almost winning then winning or losing. Eventually somebody has to win and someone has to lose. That's just the way it is when we compete. Why do we wait for the last minute "hail Mary" to try to win? If we have to depend on the referees to win the game for us then we weren't prepared for the game we were playing in the first place. We also have to remember under that theory the referees can lose the game for us as well. It goes go both ways.

How many of us have tried to publish a book only to be rejected time and time again? How many times has an actress auditioned and been called back but never getting that one big role? How many houses did you have to look at before your offer was accepted? How often have you had to pray your credit was good enough to get the car you wanted? Instead of having to ask those questions why aren't we asking questions like: did I write the very best book I could write, did I reread it, proof read, edit, having it professionally edited before sending to a publisher? Was I prepared for that audition, had I taken acting classes, singing classes, dancing classes or whatever classes were necessary to make me competitive? Have I paid my bills on time so my credit is where it needs to be and if I didn't make enough money to pay them, did I get a part time job or find a way to make extra money to straighten out my credit? You get the point. There are too many things we can and should do for ourselves so we don't have to depend on someone else to decide our fate.

So do we blame the replacement refs for the debacle that ended last night's game or do we blame the players for not playing better earlier in the game so the end of the game wouldn't be or couldn't be decided at the last minute by someone else?

MORE GREEN ON RED CARPET

There was more green seen on the red carpet but no credit was given for the designers. 

All pictures were provided by Getty/aol.com. Tell me which ones were your faves!

GREEN AT THE 2012 EMMY AWARDS

Allison Williams was wearing Oscar de la Renta at this evening's Emmy Awards. I wish I was there to to wear my green gown!

pic provided by getty/aol.com

GREEN ON THE STREETS

I don't know who to credit this picture to but I sure would like to thank Demetrius Jones from Los Angeles, California for sharing it with me so I could share it with you! This is a bad (and that means good) suit! I sure wish I owned it. But how many wears could you get out of it before people started talking? What do you think?

A LITTLE GREEN SWAG

I don't know who to credit this picture to but I thought it was as cute as anything I've seen lately! I had to share!

GREEN ON THE STREETS

pic provided by essence.com

I found model Nayasha Romoeo in a Mus by Mali Ro top and skirt on essence.com.  She knows how to wear green...I wonder if there are some green shoes under that skirt! What do you think?

GREEN DRESSES

Over the last few months I've made several purchases on etsy.com. Thus far, the items have been relatively low in price..but all that is about to change! I recently discovered Solome Katongole and her fabulous clothing. Below are a couple I wanted to share with you.

photos provided by Solome Katongole/etsy.com

GREEN WITH ENVY

I usually talk about most things green and while this particular post will be about green, it will take a different direction.
ENVY or green with envy is what's on my mind tonight. I celebrated my birthday recently and years before I got to this age I thought about all of the things I would've liked to have accomplish before now; a bucket list so to speak. I've always wanted to be on Broadway. I loved to sing growing up and was called on quite regularly to lead a church song or to sing a solo. It wasn't that I   was the greatest singer, I think the church used me because I wasn't scared to stand up in front of the congregation. I was cast by a few local civic and community theaters but never as a lead, always in the background. I wanted to stand center stage on Broadway and sing to the heavens. I wanted a casting agent to sit front and center and ask someone after the performance "who was that and why haven't I heard of her before?" I wanted that agent to hand me his card and tell me to call his secretary to set up an appointment to meet with him so he could discuss a leading movie role he had for me.

Which brings me to the second thing on that "wish I had done" list; become an actress. I wanted to take Hollywood by storm. I got married young and had my children early and by the time I could clearly think about making my way to either Broadway or Hollywood, I had too many ties to the small city I had grown up in. There was always something else in the way of my seeking my dream. How dare I think about taking 4 small children away from their grandparents, their school, their friends and their lives? And by the time I was ready to spread my wings, Hollywood had their Debbie Morgans, Loretta Devines, Lynn Whitfields, Lonette McKees and so on and so forth. So those dreams died and the only stage I sing on now is riding in the car and singing to the old songs I grew up listening to...thank God for Sirrius radio!

The third thing I should've wanted to do was to maintain a decent weight and reasonable health. But once I quit smoking in 1988, I immediately gained more weight than I care to announce publicly and sadly never looked back. Just when I tried to do something about losing weight, poor health got in the way. Then when the health was under control, my husband got ill and whatever progress had been made took a back seat to getting him back to healthy.

There were things I wanted him and I to do together, take a dancing class, a cooking class, drive from Mississippi to California, of course taking some of the ride on Route 66 in a Corvette! There were other things along the way that I've wanted to do and now that my husband and I have all the time in the world to do them, I'm almost too tired to even try.

So I live my life vicariously through my children. One of my daughters and her boyfriend recently rode in a helicopter (also on my list). They went to a gun range (on my list too). Both of my daughters know people from Hollywood well enough to call them by their first names (yep, that was on the list as well).

Perhaps my life will take a dramatic shift and suddenly I will be skinny, healthy, have enough money, plenty of time and energy to do at least some of the things I want to do. But until then I will remain emerald obsessed.

NO MORE HOBO BAGS

Let me start out by saying I'm sad. Why? I'm sad because hobo bags are out this season. Why does that make me sad? I have a closet full of them. I love the comfort of throwing one over my shoulder and being unhindered in my shopping or whatever errand I happen to run. Structured bags -- ughh! You either have to hold them in your hand or put it in the crook of your arm. It's hard to shop without it sliding around and just simply being in the way. You can put it in the baby seat of the grocery cart, but if you turn your back on it, someone could run off with it...bet you never thought about that had you? Now with the hobo bag even you're out eating, you can place the it in your lap. You can squish it up without fear of ruining whatever fabric it's made of. I guess my point is that a hobo bag gives you a lot of flexibility and freedom. You just don't have to be as careful with it. Structured bags require a little more work. However, since I'm going to be forced to carry the unforgiving purses I'm going to have to add a few to the limited number I have. One has caught my eye. I found this Kate Spade New York Satchel - Grand Street Melinda at Bloomingdale's and it's on sale!

pic provided by bloomingdales.com

OMG! FROM YAHOO!

The folks at OMG! from Yahoo! asked this question "Did Emily Blunt look matronly or magnificent in this Jason Wu dress and Alice + Olivia pumps at the New York premiere of her new rom-com, "The Five Year Engagement"? I'm on the fence and need your help. (4/18/2012)" Well I'm not on the fence. You know my answer is absolutely NOT! I love this ensemble especially the shoes! Tell me what you think

pic provided by OMG! from Yahoo!

ICONIC MARILYN

All of us remember the iconic scene of Marilyn Monroe and the "dress" in the 1955 classic The Seven Year Itch. If you don't actually remember the movie surely you have seen the pictures. If not, let me refresh your memories.

pic provided by google.com images

Now don't get me wrong, I loved the dress and the movie. I even thought it was quite poetic to have the platinum haired beauty wearing the white dress and shoes. It made an unforgettable statement. But (and you had to know a "but" was coming) what if the stylist had dressed Marilyn in a different color. Perhaps green! Now you can be an icon. You can get your own dress and make whatever statement you'd like. www.modcloth.com has the University of Marilyn dress for $169.99. A small price to pay to become your own version of Marilyn Monroe!


pic provided by modcloth.com

While you're at it, go all out and do a special pair of shoes. Check out these Gianmarco Lorenzi python skin pumps for $1,025.00 at www.farfetch.com



pic provided by polyvore.com

Have a fashionably green day!

GREEN FURNITURE

There is so much green furniture in my home right now I should be afraid to look at anything else in the same color! But since I'm in the market for a new desk for my office...hint, hint to my husband! This one would be perfect. I saw it on pinterest.com but I could probably find an old desk and paint it myself. If I do I will be sure to post pictures.

pinterest.com



GREEN JEWELRY

I don't talk much about jewelry but I saw two bracelets on etsy.com (I forget who was selling them) and fell in love with both of them. I would love it if my husband bought either on or both as a Mother's Day gifts for me!

etsy.com

etsy.com