THROWING SHADE

The sun, I love it and hate it. To clarify... my skin hates it!

The damaging effects the sun has on my skin is no longer worth the summer glow I used to work so hard for in past summers. Besides, I can obtain the same glow with the help of  self tanners (insert skin god's singing). Thankfully, smart sun protection no longer makes you look unfashionable.

See, a well-designed hat is not only attractive, stylish and wearable, but also functional. Whether it is completing your look, offering great sun protection , or offering privacy, a hat helps us feel and look alluring, smart and .... better.

In protecting our skin from the harmful effects of the sun, a hat truly fulfills its role as an object of style and practicality:

• A wide-brimmed (3-inch or greater) hat covers places where it is difficult to apply sunscreen (i.e. neck, ears, scalp etc.)
• When you're wearing a hat, your face has more protection than with sunscreen alone.
• A hat will shade your eyes, protecting the delicate skin & keeping you from squinting in the sun - less squinting less wrinkles!
• A hat in the summer can help keep you cool while looking chic 
• When need be, take it off and fan yourself & if your hair is not cooperating, just throw on a panama or fedora and instantly you look pulled together.

Here are some hats that have made my favorite summer list. 

I hope this inspires you to find the most perfect summer hat to shade those sun rays.

xo

Meems

MAKE YOUR BED - A SMALL LIFE LESSON

I came across this great article Memorial Day weekend and wanted to share one piece of it with you.

William H. McRaven is an admiral, former commander of the Navy’s SEAL Team 3 and current commander of the US Special Operations Command — the man who led the mission to get Osama bin Laden. On May 17, he gave the commencement address for his alma mater, the University of Texas at Austin, which touched graduates with its earnest, simple advice about living a better life. This Memorial Day, an excerpt: 

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If you will humor this old sailor for just a moment, I have a few suggestions that may help you on your way to a better world.

And while these lessons were learned during my time in the military, I can assure you that it matters not whether you ever served a day in uniform.

It matters not your gender, your ethnic or religious background, your orientation, or your social status.

Our struggles in this world are similar and the lessons to overcome those struggles and to move forward — changing ourselves and the world around us — will apply equally to all.

He then continues to go through 10 Lessons... the 1st one I want to share with you:

Every morning in basic SEAL training, my instructors, who at the time were all Vietnam veterans, would show up in my barracks room, and the first thing they would inspect was your bed.

If you did it right, the corners would be square, the covers pulled tight, the pillow centered just under the headboard and the extra blanket folded neatly at the foot of the rack — rack, that’s Navy talk for bed.

It was a simple task — mundane at best. But every morning we were required to make our bed to perfection. It seemed a little ridiculous at the time, particularly in light of the fact that we were aspiring to be real warriors, tough, battle-hardened SEALs — but the wisdom of this simple act has been proven to me many times over.

If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another.

By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that little things in life matter.

If you can’t do the little things right, you will never do the big things right.

And, if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made — that you made — and a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better.

Click here for the article in its entirety


& Hats off to you McRaven!

xo
Meems

PREACH ON!

MY "BUMMER OF A SUMMER" READING LIST

As I countdown to my surgery (s), June and July, I am crossing off all of my to do lists that need to be completed. One item on my list is to find a few good books that I can get lost in. Sure, I'll be in stuck in the living room with TV but honestly TV shows these days bore me. Except the BRAVO network. I JUST LOVE ME SOME ANDY COHEN! 

Last month, I started reading Thrive by Arianna Huffington but I can't see myself reading such a book while being helplessly laid out this summer. Motivational books make me want to go conquer the world & how the hell can I conquer with broken feet?! I have a desire to get lost in a good story.

I came across a few good summer books and I think these puppies will be in rotation on my nightstand/coffee table..... Here they are!

RULES OF CIVILITY This sophisticated and entertaining first novel presents the story of a young woman whose life is on the brink of transformation. On the last night of 1937, twenty-five-year-old Katey Kontent is in a second-rate Greenwich Village jazz bar when Tinker Grey, a handsome banker, happens to sit down at the neighboring table. This chance encounter and its startling consequences propel Katey on a year-long journey into the upper echelons of New York society—where she will have little to rely upon other than a bracing wit and her own brand of cool nerve. With its sparkling depiction of New York’s social strata, its intricate imagery and themes, and its immensely appealing characters, Rules of Civility won the hearts of readers and critics alike.

SUZANNE DAVIS GETS A LIFE Suzanne Davis lounges around her tiny NYC apartment in her pajamas, writing press releases listening to the ticking of her biological clock, and wondering where life is taking her. As her 35th birthday looms, Suzanne embarks on a wrong-headed, but very funny, quest—to find Mr. Right and start the family she hopes will give meaning to her life. 

Her quest plunges us into the world of her Upper West Side apartment building, a world of overly invested mothers, fanatical dog-owners, curmudgeonly longtime residents, and young (and not so young) professionals. All are keenly observed by Suzanne, whose witty self-deprecation endears her to us even as it makes us want to shake some sense into her. 

Light in its tone but incisive in its social satire, Suzanne Davis Gets a Life balances its wit with true concern for its protagonist.

CUTTING TEETH One of the most anticipated debut novels of 2014, Cutting Teeth takes place one late-summer weekend as a group of thirty-something couples gather at a shabby beach house on Long Island, their young children in tow.

Cutting Teeth is about the complex dilemmas of early midlife—the vicissitudes of friendship, of romantic and familial love, and of sex. It’s about class tension, status hunger, and the unease of being in possession of life's greatest bounty while still wondering, is this as good as it gets? And, perhaps most of all, Julia Fierro’s warm and unpretentious debut explores the all-consuming love we feel for those we need most, and the sacrifice and compromise that underpins that love.

THE PHANTOM OF FIFTH AVENUE 

Born in 1906, Huguette Clark grew up in her family's 121-room Beaux Arts mansion in New York and was one of the leading celebrities of her day. Her father William Andrews Clark, was a copper magnate, the second richest man in American, and not above bribing his way into the Senate. Huguette attended the coronation of King George V. And at twenty-two with a personal fortune of $50 million to her name, she married a Princeton man and childhood friend William MacDonald Gower. Two-years later the couple divorced. 

After a series of failed romances, Huguette began to withdraw from society--first living with her mother in a kind of Grey Gardens isolation then as a modern-day Miss Havisham, spending her days in a vast apartment overlooking Central Park, eating crackers and watching The Flintstones with only servants for company.

All her money and all her real estate could not protect her in her later life from being manipulated by shady hangers-on and hospitals that were only too happy to admit (and bill) a healthy woman. But what happened to Huguette that turned a vivacious, young socialite into a recluse? And what was her life like inside that gilded, copper cage?

FIRST FRENCH ESSAIS

Kristin struggles--and eventually succeeds--in learning French in school, but the real lessons begin when she lands in France, to start her adult life with a Marseillais. From quitting her first stable job (as a glorified janitor) near St. Tropez, to dusting off her dream of writing, Kristin pursues 'la vie en rose' only to discover that reality is... muddy! There are no clear instructions on how to behave in France.

Filled with delightful photos and tender essays, Kristin's memoir shows us how she overcomes these cultural "tests", always finishing with an "A" for amour de la vie!

Some Book options via TSLLB

What books can you recommend? Id love to know what you plan on getting lost in this summer?

xo
Meems