Happy Mother’s Day to all the moth­ers that have kept their loved ones under their wing. And to my mom who still calls us 4 kids her lit­tle chickadees.

I believe in Audrey Hepburn.

“I believe in pink.
I believe that laugh­ing is the best calo­rie burner.
I believe in being strong when every­thing seems to be going wrong.
I believe that happy girls are the pret­ti­est girls.”

 It’s that time of year again when peo­ple like me who can’t even remem­ber to feed their cat decide to plant an herb gar­den. Some­thing about spring weather just makes us opti­mistic that we can remem­ber to water the new plants and keep on top of con­trol­ling the numer­ous insects, ani­mals, and other pests that will be munch­ing up our ten­der greens before we even have a recipe picked out to show­case them.

Tip #1: Buy Fresh.

Unless you have a sunny spot in your yard, a sprin­kler sys­tem on a timer, and the patience to either hand-pick bugs off your herbs or spray them down with organic insec­ti­ci­dal soap every other day (which by the way makes your herbs taste nasty), just buy fresh herbs every week at the store.

But if you do suc­ceed in grow­ing lush bunches of sweet basil, tar­ragon, mint, thyme, or parsley—or if you just have bunches of the stuff from the store and you just don’t know what to do with it all—here are some ideas beyond the usual pesto, salsa or tabouleh.

Tip #2: Put them in your salads.

I eat salad every day. And what makes my sal­ads taste great with lit­tle or no dress­ing is herbs. I toss in what­ever I’ve got on hand—basil, pars­ley, cilantro, chives, tarragon—and I espe­cially like mint. You don’t even have to make your own salad to use herbs. You can just take a lit­tle bag­gie of herbs to work with you and toss them on top of what­ever salad you pick up near your office. Fresh herbs are WAY bet­ter than low-calorie dress­ing if you are try­ing to amp up the taste of your salad.

Tip #3: Drink them.

No, I don’t mean make an herb shake (although that could be inter­est­ing). Mash them up, add hot water, let them steep for a minute or two, then pour through a strainer over some ice cubes. Add a lit­tle lemon and sim­ple syrup to sweeten, and you’ve got your­self a sur­pris­ingly refresh­ing bev­er­age that beats diet soft drinks any day. The taste is stronger than a fla­vored water but less intense and less sweet than lemon­ade or punch. What? You say you want a recipe? Okay, here’s some­thing I made up on my own. Just remem­ber to exper­i­ment and come up with your own creation:

2 or 3 stems of mint with leaves
1 small stem of tar­ragon (use about 1/3 as much tar­ragon as mint)
1 or 2 slices of the lemon zest (use a potato peeler and just slice off a slab)
1 table­spoon fresh lemon juice
2 tea­spoons sim­ple syrup

Mud­dle the first three ingre­di­ents with a mor­tar and pes­tle. Put the herbs and zest in a heat-proof glass or mug and cover with 8–10 ounces boil­ing water. Allow to steep for a cou­ple min­utes. Strain out the herbs and zest and pour over ice. Add the remain­ing ingre­di­ents and stir.

There is no magic at all to this recipe. Feel free to change the ratios and amount as your taste buds so desire. Fresh gin­ger, lemon, and mint are also an excel­lent combination.

Tip #4: Stuff chicken breasts with herbs.

Wait—don’t tell me you don’t know how to roast a chicken breast! Okay, here’s another recipe:

Take two split chicken breasts, bone in and skin on. Sep­a­rate the skin from the meat just enough to smear a lib­eral amount of salt in between the skin and the meat. You do not want to remove the skin. Cram some herbs in there while you are at it. Thyme, basil and tar­ragon are all nice choices. Pre-heat your oven to 375 degrees and let the chicken sit out for at least ½ hour while the oven heats up. This gives the salt time to melt and allows the chicken to warm up to room tem­per­a­ture. I usu­ally let my chicken sit out for about an hour, but it just depends on what you have time for. Before bak­ing, rub canola oil on the out­side of the skin, and sprin­kle with salt & pep­per. Bake for about 42 min­utes, or until the inter­nal tem­per­a­ture is about 160 degrees. Yum. You might as well make extra and snack on this stuff cold or add it to your deli­cious herb-spiked salad while sip­ping your lip-smacking herb iced tea!

I love see­ing Johnny Depp’s take on a character..love it or hate it…It’s worth the cost of admission.

Wall­pa­per.  Does any­one use wall­pa­per any­more? Well, maybe you would if you had ever seen (and if you were really rich) the designs at Nama Rococo Wall­pa­per Stu­dio. Karen Combs and her team have been mak­ing gor­geous hand painted, hand printed wall­pa­per since 2005. And if you can’t afford to wall­pa­per your entire bed­room with their lux­u­ri­ous prints ($98-$220 for a sin­gle sheet), you can always just buy a few sheets to frame. www.namarococo.com.

Oh—and one more thing—so Banarama has noth­ing to do with this post, but didn’t you love that song from the ‘80s that they did with Fun Boy Three?

Last sum­mer I com­mented to a 20-something col­league of mine that I couldn’t find any cute, flat­ter­ing, easy-care casual dresses any­where. She asked if I had ever tried Boden.  “They have great online reviews.  I always get a per­fect fit,” she said.  No, I told her, I had never heard of them.  She for­warded to me a 20% off email coupon with free ship­ping and free returns.  I’ve been hooked ever since.

Boden is a British apparel com­pany that has three lines—Boden (for women and men), Mini-Boden (for babies, tod­dlers, and younger kids), and John­nie B (for tweens and teens). You’ll have to visit their online store at www.bodenusa.com or get a copy of the catalogue—Boden does not have any stand alone stores in the U.S., although a few depart­ment stores carry some of Boden’s lines (I’ve seen Mini-Boden at Nordstrom).

If I had to guess, I’d say that the Boden demo­graphic is some­where between the Ann Tay­lor demo­graphic and the J. Crew demo­graphic.  Where Ann Tay­lor strives to be ele­gant, Boden is lively, with lots of bold, mod-inspired prints and water color flo­rals.  Where J. Crew strives to be fashion-forward, Boden is more clas­sic with a bit of whimsy. Fun details like col­or­ful stitch­ing, hid­den rib­bon trim, unmatched but­tons, and appliqués are all Boden main­stays across the sea­sons. This is the only place you will find polka-dot plim­solls (the British term for Converse-style sneak­ers) with rib­bon laces—for grown ups!