Turning A Lemon Into Ginger Lemon Cremes

Well, after no less than 2 hours on the phone, 3 techs, a 2 hour round trip to the closest full service Verizon, another hour logged in the First circle of Hell store diagnosing and exchanging a dud and, fiiinallyyy my replacement iPhone is activated...

In a generous attempt to salvage my weekend Babe went out and bought the cables needed to hook my computer up to the TV for watching instant Netflix downloads...

Lolls oversaw the install operation...

Then hightailed it to the kitchen to to lay out a proper tray of English biscuits and tea for her Grace...

And, then it was the period drama series Downton Abbey til Daddy could take no more...

Kindness of my long lost, sniffle sniffle, BBM buds Kappa Prep and Beantown Prepster for the faaabulous Downton Abbey recommendation. Also, my family for taking such good care of me annnd for turning a blind eye to the amount of biscuits that disappeared...XXOO

Speaking Of Copycat...

I'm totally stealing a page out of the EAS/QBS/Hopsy playbooks and doing a post on 5 Things I'm digging at the moment...

Starting with my iomoi iPhone case which just arrived. I looove it so much, I shamefully want another. Like the good Mr. Burns said, Ah, yes, but I'd give it all up for just a little bit more...

The BBC's hysterical Uptown Downstairs Abbey spoofs to tide me over between Downton Sundays...

Like the site itself, my interest in Pinterest has experienced a bit of a hockey stick effect. After initially posting about it, my visits slightly waned til last week when my obsession turned the corner, took off, and I watched 2 whole whatsaweekends disappear. I place the majority of blame on the boards of one Hilary Fox. I could spend hoursss raiding and looting her pins, like the one pic'd above, which I'm officially requesting to have as my epitaph...

Sally, all poised, professional and conservatively pretty in peach, making her national debut with an out of camera shot Emma offering moral support in her sweaty gym clothes. It was really exciting to see all of Sally's sacrifices, hard work annnd prowess with a straightening iron begin paying out...   

Can I tell you how much use the Ti-Babe's have gotten from their 3-in-1 Yummy Bowl during our recent travels? Not even the roads around the GW Bridge were a match for the no-spill water bowl and I knooow my Dad appreciates no longer having to share his cereal bowls with four legged guests. Whoever designed this bowl is a genius. Geeeniuuus! 

Kindness of Lisa Musgrave for sending along the Downton Abbey spoof and Sleepypod who will please put their engineering genius to work on a travel litter box. Also, anyone who thinks the above video is an invitation for dialogue on political views for understanding that, 'tis not. I won't bore you with my opinion of  whether Mrs. Danvers was rightly or wrongly cast, and I beg of you not to bore me with yours, she said with a mischievous twinkle in her eye...XXOO

Downton Fever

Christmas tree shhhmistmas tree, it's t-minus 34 days til season 2 of Downton Abbey starts on PBS and I have yet to finish Season 1...


And, I'd say the tree will have to wait til the weekend while I catch up on my remaining episodes but, the Dowager Countess may give me a withering, What is a weekend?

Kindness of the Dowager Countess for her endless pearls of wisdom. Which reminds me, I'll have to let Emma and Hilbils know for future reference that "only parlor maids have long engagements. Ladies say yes and get on with it."  Got that girlies? XXOO


*Speaking of wisdom, swing by QBS's for some shared by this soon to be Dowager if I keep Counting Hermès scarves...

The SIAV Book Mobile

The Netflix Police are hot on my trail for a très overdue Downton Abbey DVD that I refuse to relinquish before finishing both episodes on the disk. So, as I head to my parent's for an under the Netflix gun movie night, I'll leave you with a couple of requisite drool at the pretty pictures reads that have popped up on the SIAV radar...

PREPPY Cultivating Ivy Style for adding to my soon to need card cataloguing expanding library of prepster reference books...

And, the where was this during my recently lost campaign for a vacay jaunt to the Amalfi Coast in July Hotel Il Pellicano. Sighhh...there's always next summer which gives me 12 months of strategically placed coffee table book plotting...

Kindness of Janine Martinelli for the PREPPY Cultivating Ivy Style alert. It's intel like this from faithful readers like yourself that keep this hardly gets out around Bloggerville and mooonths behind in my magazine reading gal afloat...XXOO

A Christmas Break Break

Well my li'l chickadees, I've decided to extend my vacation through this week. Christmas was an absolute blur of packing, unpacking, repacking, going, coming, going again; G'wich to the beach to Baltimore to NYC baaack to the beach to Salisbury to the beach again annnd final stop G'wich. I over ate, over drank and over packed. I did not send out Christmas cards, workout, get a full night's sleep, crack any one of the 15 magazines I packed or watch a single Christmas movie. I need this time to recalibrate...   

Buuut...since my largest concentration of readers happens to be in Manhattan, I would feel remiss if I didn't mention the Daphne Guinness exhibit at the Museum at FIT which ends this coming Saturday. Def a must see...

Brief pit stop at Amazon pour moi to load this into my cart and then I'm off to plot my week of long runs in my new tights, a massage appointment, The Family Stone on Demand, needlepointing, a hot chocolate date with May December, PVE and The Zhush, a marathon of Downton Abbey, strolling 'round the blogging hood, hunting down the sold out navy and gold Hermès click clack and that stinking nightstand, finding a church, a dermatologist and proper winter jackets, not having salad for dinz, sleeping in, switching from this lousy cable to FIOS annnd booking a flight to Mexico. Cue the sweatpants!

Kindness of Babe for encouraging this small break and everyone else for indulging it...XXOO