I’m a huge  George Michael fan..I know, there’s a mis­placed mod­i­fier or some­thing or other there…I’m not actu­ally “huge”.…I just love George Michael and, of course, it all started with Wham! I remem­ber when my baby sis­ter actu­ally told me about this band and said they would be BIG. She said the same thing about The Eurythmics…so I guess she had her fin­ger on the pulse for a 10 year old.

The last sev­eral months I’ve been fill­ing my new iPod Nano with songs that have been in the back of my mind for decades. Bands/singers like Scritti Politti, Ter­ence Trent D’Arby, Fine Young Can­ni­bals and Adam Ant, among oth­ers. It has been a blast look­ing back and really fun to find that I still enjoy the songs from my mis­spent youth (read nerdy, good girl who should have bro­ken a few rules.)

I thought it would be fun to start a new fea­ture on the ol’ Blog..how about Flash­back Fri­day? Start­ing now.

Here is my Christ­mas gift to you, Last Christ­mas by Wham!, which by some luck of the ‘80s Pop Gods has been deemed wor­thy to become a clas­sic. Whouda thunk it…

There are few things in life that never change and one of them is, Yes, you ALWAYS bring a hostess/host gift to a party. It doesn’t mat­ter if the hostess/host is your fam­ily, best­friend or stranger. This doesn’t usu­ally apply to birth­day par­ties– but can. Let’s just stick to the Hol­i­days at hand here: Christ­mas and New Year’s.

First off,  3 DIVA DONT’S:

DON’T bring flow­ers. This causes stress for the host­ess to search for a vase and then find a place to set them. They may not go with her décor for the party and worst of all– you have just taken her away from her guests while she fixes your flow­ers. You are now her unfa­vorite guest.

DON’T bring wine that you expect to be opened and con­sumed. I love get­ting wine for a host­ess gift– but I hate it when the giver then reaches for a corkscrew to open. RUDE. You have just told the host­ess you don’t care about her plans, party or selec­tion of wine–if there is one.

DON’T make big deal about giv­ing the gift..oth­ers may be uncom­fort­able if they did not bring a gift. Make sure to tell them about this blog so they won’t make the same mis­take again.

Okay, now to the gifts…There are tons of spe­cialty stores that have fab­u­lous gifts — if you actu­ally remem­ber to buy them ahead of time.

I love me some hot choco­late, yet some­how the thrill of it is so fleet­ing. I don’t think it’s humanly pos­si­ble to con­sume an entire pot and live to tell about it.

Mulling over the morn­ing paper with a toasty mug of hot choco­late, perus­ing mag­a­zines in the after­noon — who am I kid­ding — guz­zling while read­ing the online gos­sip sites is just not that enjoy­able for more than a few sec­onds. Hot choco­late is made for drink­ing; not mulling, lin­ger­ing or sipping.

One of our favorite cus­tomers, Robin who owns
B. Daz­zled in Florida, had the bril­liant idea to use our Spa Take Out Shower Spas as a favor for her lat­est birth­day bash!

Robin was kind enough to pass on a pic com­mem­o­rat­ing the event!

Remem­ber when favors used to be a pleated  cup of M&M’s mixed with peanuts?..We think this is the grown-up version!

Kudos to you Robin for treat­ing your friends like the celebri­ties they are!

It’s sad that that such a won­der­ful food item such as bread is rel­e­gated to carbs= bad. I love bread! Not all kinds, just most. I know they are not entirely healthy for me..but every­thing in mod­er­a­tion — even moderation!

Bread sig­nals the begin­ning of a won­der­ful meal with friends or fam­ily, hence, “break­ing the bread.” It is a true sym­bol of hos­pi­tal­ity and good will.

Bread is the per­fect accom­pa­ni­ment to a cap­puc­cino the morn­ings of a beach vaca­tion or before you set off for the day down the Via Veneto.

But I’m not going to wax poetic about breads, I’m here to set the record straight on some con­tro­versy sur­round­ing two of my favorite bread items: Bruschetta and Crois­sants. I choose to cap­i­tal­ize them because they are just that impor­tant to me.

What could pos­si­bly be the issue with these 2 delec­table items? One savory the other sweet? Calo­ries– who cares!  Carbs-pshaw! No my fel­low food­ies– it’s how you pro­nounce them.

There are gen­er­ally 4 schools of thought on insert­ing the regional pro­nun­ci­a­tion of a for­eign word when speak­ing your native tongue; 1– pro­nounc­ing a for­eign word with the regional accent is elit­ist (in a bad — over-educated kind of way), snob­bish and super­fi­cial; 2– pro­nounc­ing it in the angli­cized accent is clumsy and elit­ist (in the –we’re in Amer­ica– speak “Amer­i­can” kind of way): 3– Like to think they don’t care but are aware when peo­ple pro­nounce the oppo­site of what how they do; 4– Self– con­scious either way.

I fall some­where between 2 and 3, mostly 2 if I’m hon­est. There are times I con­tra­dict myself and fall into cat­e­gory 1, but we’ll stick with bread here.

As many of us rush to get ready in the morn­ing, we usu­ally don’t give our mas­cara or blush a sec­ond thought. How­ever, makeup has been around for at least 6,000 years and has played a role in nearly every soci­ety. Check out where makeup started, and how it got to where it is today.

Unlike Johnny Depp’s pirate Cap’n Jack Spar­row, parabens are not sexy.

Like Johnny Depp, they may just be made up to look like a band of  out­law rejects anx­ious to pil­lage and plun­der, when really they are just pretty boys underneath.

What does all this mean? What is a paraben? If you are adamantly against the use of parabens in your beauty prod­ucts or any other prod­ucts, I’m not about to try and change your mind here.

If you have been see­ing a lot of Paraben Free or Para-Free word­ing on prod­ucts lately and are won­der­ing what the big deal is about… I encour­age you to take a few min­utes to edu­cate your­self so you can make your own deci­sion. I won’t get too deep on you, but I will pro­vide sev­eral links to more enlight­ened and edu­cated peo­ple than yours truly.