Sonya Nimri

Like every other mom with an eye for the environmental future, I seem to have unwittingly built up an armory of recyclable shopping bags well beyond my actual needs.  I have large ones, small ones, some made of recycled plastic bottles, some of vinyl, some of canvas.  While I do use one or two every day for everything from toys to groceries to diapers to a last-chance change of clothes and a few wipes while out on the road(essential, btw...), the fact is that if I was to fill up every one of my bags on a single trip I'd need a military convoy to carry everything home. No one needs that much stuff. But every mom needs a tote. So I'm looking to downsize my own collection and hand off some convenient carrying-capacity to a new mom in need.  This particular re-constituted tote I made for a friend of mine who just had her first baby boy 3 months ago (okay, okay, I run late...).  His name is Niko so I thought a big "N" would get him on the letter train early.  I dabbled wit

It's not like every every artistic challenge I take on isn't an adventure in and of itself BUT...my friend Dany's wedding crown was a project that I was so totally excited to work on. Even more so than usual. See, this was payback time. Not only because Dany is such an amazing artist, and did an awesome job illustrating my two books- Beadalicious, and Just for the Frill of It , but on top of that she helped me make a beautiful handmade photo album for my wedding and, well, she's just an awesome girl who I love hanging out with. And I'm so supremely happy for her to finally have found a deserving match.  So for her wedding crown, I wanted to make something not only beautiful, but comfortable.  Dany is having a salsa-dancing wedding (how she and her hubby met) and I want her to be able to dance her little heart out without her head hurting from a harsh wire headband putting pounding pressure behind her ears (certainly not the good kind of accupressure). You can dance

The Incognito art gala was one of the more memorable events I've attended in a long time.  Even though I'm on a super-tight budget with the kids and only working part time I somehow, during the event, managed to catch art fever and purchase five beautiful works of art. Er, well, four beautiful ones anyway. One of them, Grippy chose, and I'm still not so sure...Anyway, the event. Great set-up.  In a single room at Bergamot Station, 600 works of art are put on display. Each of them 8x10", in rows all around the museum with numbers below them and signed on the back so you have no idea who the artist is.  They are all priced at $350.00.  There are quite a few known artists in the show, museum faves  Ed Ruscha and John Baldessari  being among the most famous of the artists in the show...point is you just have no idea whose art you are looking at, which is suppose to make you follow your heart and buy what you would like to see on your wall, not just buy someone famous'

Paris is full of little boutiques, some more uniquely Parisian than others.  Last visit there, I found the most charming boutique right down the street from where I was staying. It's called Minibus and they specialize in vintage children's clothing and toys.  I was immediately struck by the array of vintage finds for children, and it occurred to me that a boutique like this would never exist in the U.S., be it from of fear of lead paint, flammable polyester clothing or other uniquely American phobias that keep us away from exposing our children to the norms of another era. It was such a delight seeing the adorable French children's clothing that I've only seen in the likes of the Red Balloon  or other time-tested masterpieces of French movie-making genius.  Check out these adorable treasures that Minibus had to offer. I'm not sure what is going on in this scene.  It seems a bit random, with a goat gingerly passing and the young man fishing, but you gotta love i

These days I've gotten totally addicted to the Showtime series The Borgias , about the intrigues of the notorious 15th century Papal family.  Now, some people watch the show for the back-stabbing, the political underminings, the betrayals...not me. I watch it for one reason: Italy. You just gotta love it. And it's totally been making me nostalgic for Italy, in general,  and the Veneto region, in particular, where my best friend got married last fall.  It still feels like a dream that not long ago I packed up my 9 month old and a single backpack and left my then two-year-old and and equally helpless husband to fend for themselves for two weeks while I crossed the ocean to dive headlong into the world of proscuitto and prosecco.  An unexpected European adventure with my little James.  And what an adventure! The Italians were so kind and generous in helping me with James, waitresses and lovely grandmas generously offered to carry him while I ate and worked on wedding pre-productio