L'uvalla

I have a treat for all of you today. I am OBSESSED with this line of skin care products. It's called L'uvalla. As you all know I live in the land of botox and eternal youth. I guess we all do now. I believe in growing old gracefully. But I don't think that means I have to give up on healthy looking skin. I also don't think you need to pay an arm and a leg for it. I've tried it all, from Creme de la mer to Oil of Olay. Creme de la mer made my eyes burn, and while I love my grocery store olay, it's not really a miracle worker. This stuff is. 


L'uvalla's eye/lip cream contains ylang ylang and I have been sneaking into the bathroom to put it on in the middle of the day. It smells so good and it makes my skin so soft and the best part, it's vegan, cruelty free, fair trade, certified organic. Plus it's going to keep my upper lip area from looking like the crypt keeper. GOOD STUFF! All of their products contain aromatherapy benefits that I think are pretty unisex in their scents. So it's good for your ma or your pa! I have pretty sensitive skin and eyes and I've found their stuff is also very gentle. 


The company donates 10% of their proceeds to their foundation which supports awesome organizations like the Make a Wish Foundation, FINCA, Doctors Without Borders, NRDC, the Susan G Komen foundation, One Campaign, and the Wildlife Trust. Good peeps!


Well lucky lucky ducks, if you order it this month from their website and include the code: MARIJA15  when you check out you'll get 15% off!!! If you miss the promotion you can also get their stuff at Whole Foods throughout the country, as well as on their site. 


I'm telling you, your face will look and feel like my baby's butt (for those of you who don't know, that's a really good thing) Run, don't walk...

Things you should know about me

Can you identify the location of this picture?

I always sneeze 4 times

I love A Prairie Home Companion and don't think that makes me and old lady, Nipper

My favorite color is jadite green not pink as some people would imagine

I love almost anything that is pale pale pale peachy pink. NOT baby pink

I lost my virginity way too young, but not in a woe is me kind of way, just more of a huh, that was dumb kind of way

I hate hypocrisy, but I think late night televangelists are super entertaining

Cinnamon is my favorite ice cream flavor

Ira Glass is hot

I was wild when I was younger but it was mostly an act, except when it wasn't

I love clementines but don't really care for oranges

I think it's funny that Nipper Knapp HATES Rilke. It's like what did Rilke ever do to you?

If I had a superpower it would be getting stupid people to stop talking to me, or around me, or just period, also I would ban things that smell bad, but that's more of a supreme being power than  superpower

I'm in desperate need of new underwear, but can't find anything I like

In 1995 I went to Mexico by myself and didn't tell anyone but my drinking buddy, a priest named Alberto

I asked for an epidural when I got to 6

I've worn Chanel No. 5 for the last 15 years

I love sushi, but hate cooked fish

I'm pretty sure that the giant ficus trees that line the streets in California are my favorite tree

I think the California pepper could give the ficus a run for it's money

I'm the most sentimental person I know

My hair color is Nice and Easy 103 in case you were wondering

I have a supersonic sense of smell

All of my names are aliases

why hello stranger

I saw this today while walking through the Americana. I love this man. I think he's adorable and funny, and talented and in this picture...meow. (sorry Nipper) So glad he's no longer wandering into neighbors houses taking meth naps. Although, he's welcome here anytime...(sorry Nipper)

move over Ina Garten...

No seriously move over, we both can't fit in this kitchen. Jack slept in until 6:45 this morning which a very nice thing to do, except it allowed me to go into a deeper sleep than I've been since I was 15 and avoiding school on a winter morning. I was in the middle of a dream that I was a christmas ornament and there was a spider crawling on me but I couldn't get it off because HELLO I was a glass ornament, when Jack came running into the room shouting "Mommy get UP! I'm ready to go downstairs and get some cocooooooooo!" Then he got the maglite Nipper keeps next to the bed and started shining it in my face repeating "get up, get up, Mommy, get up!" How did I give birth to a tiny drill sergeant?


Once I had picked up the 32,000 pieces I had shattered into, I took the kid downstairs and made his dang blast cocoa. I left him playing with one of his garbage trucks and went back into the kitchen to make my coffee. I'm on the decaf, but can't break the habit of the morning latte. I opened the fridge, and pulled out what I could tell was a carton with about three drops of soy milk left in it. Damn you me! What kind of craven person puts an empty carton of milk back?


Hiding behind my mostly empty soy milk was a small carton of organic egg nog my mom bought at thanksgiving. Maybe... Nah. Ok, let's do this thing. Egg nog latte!!! It was unbelievably good, and I'm trying to forget that the little number 40, as in 40 grams of fat per tiny little serving.


I have a print audition for a "average woman who has lost her sexual feelings" It's for a pharmaceutical of some sort. And this is what I feel like after my latte, so I should be good...

I want someone nice to get all my shoes

I think I'm having a heart attack. It's probably just heartburn. But you never know with these things. Nipper and I drew up a will, but we never got it notarized, because we are not the kind of people who get things like that done in a timely manner. I'll be falling into an active volcano someday shouting to Nipper "DID WE PROPERLY FILE THOSE OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS?"

I went to an audition this morning and took Jack with me, because he was having one of those "mommy don't leave me" moments, and I figured there would be someone there to watch him for the 4 minutes I was auditioning. I was wrong, there was no one but floozies and hobos, but he managed to entertain himself somehow between the iphone, buzz lightyear, a gargbage truck, and cheddar bunnies, that I brought with us.

I ate three cheddar bunnies while waiting.

When I got home Sadie was here to pick me up and we went out for a rare girls afternoon of shopping. Our first stop was Starbucks where I had my second half caff soy gingerbread latte of the day. I know that adds up to one whole caff, so just back off. I also know that means that I spent $9.40 on fake coffee today which fills me with all kinds of self loathing. I ate 1/4 of Sadie's frosted gingerbread, and then we shopped until we fell down, taking elevators whenever possible to maintain our strength.

When I got home Jack and I got back in the car and went to In&Out burger where, starving at 4:30 in the afternoon, I consumed a double double and fries. Pretty. I topped it off with a handful of dark chocolate m&ms when I got home.

Nipper got home from his run, and we opened a bottle of wine.

After we got Jack to bed, Nipper made himself some scrambled eggs and toast which smelled SO good, probably in large part due to the wine, so I made some too, and then another glass of wine followed up by another handful of dark chocolate m&ms.

You see where this is going. Please see related post about spanx below. I'm having serious chest pains and I'm sure it's because I starved myself all day minus sugar and caffeine, and then ate breakfast and dinner in the span of 3 hours followed by booze and chocolate. If somebody were to interrogate me right now, I would totally break. I shot JFK, it was me and some Cubans! I can not tell a lie!

Going to go lay in bed now and hope for the best.

je suis desolé...

Years ago, before I met Nipper I saw this Francis Francis espresso machine at sur la table. It was jadite green and it matched the rest of my kitchen appliances. But it was $450, way out of my price range, and so I would just visit it whenever I was at the store. They discontinued the color, and over the years I've thought about it. Those same machines now sell for $900 and they don't have the pretty green one anymore. 

My old krups machine croaked earlier this year, and I've been doing a sort of make-shift latte with my french press. I've switched to decaf so I told myself that it didn't really have to taste good or anything. Every morning the same sad watery cup of coffee. So on a whim, I started looking around for a jadite green Francis Francis machine. I thought maybe I could fine a used one. I couldn't even find a picture of it. It's like it never existed.

I've been looking on ebay, and googling it. Nothing. Then last night I went on craigslist and typed in Francis Francis espresso. Guess what came up? YES! I couldn't believe it. After all these years of looking, and there it was. Someone in Thousand Oaks was selling theirs and it was only $150!!!!! It was also sold. Probably the minute it went online. Damn damn damn! Why hadn't I checked craigslist sooner? I am filled with self loathing. 

If anyone sees one of these laying around in a resale shop, or I don't know, a friends kitchen, buy it, steal it, do what you have to do. You will be rewarded generously. Not really. But now that I've come this close to having it, I'm obsessed. Sorry Nipper. 

Oh my darling Clementine

When we were looking for a house, I kept saying that all I wanted was a yard with an orange tree in it. We found our house, and it had zero orange trees in it. For a housewarming gift we received two kumquat trees, one that we have in a large pot, and one in the ground. I also received a blood orange tree from Kelly when she moved back to Nashville. I added a lemon, and a lime, and last but not least a clementine. Clementines are really the only citrus we eat on a regular basis, besides lemons and limes which we cook with. So of course the Clementines took their sweet time to fruit. Everything else had tons of fruit the last few years, especially the kumquat, which I don't really like to eat, but think are so pretty to look at.

Finally this year, I got 6 precious Clementines, and they are delicious. I was sad to find out they're not seedless, but I'll live. I'm so ungrateful...

Seasons Gratings!

December is upon us, and while this is my favorite time of year, it goes fast, and it's often stressful or sometimes sad too. Here's a little story about how things go down around here this time of year.

A few years ago, Nipper Knapp and I lived in a live/work loft in downtown Los Angeles. It was great. I had studio space for my photography, we had a rooftop pool. Faaaaaaaancy. It did have some downsides though. Like the truck wash that was 4 stories below our window. Hello diesel fumes. And when business was slow, the workers would play soccer in the parking lot, and for some reason this involved A LOT of howling and cat calling. One time a truck driver hit Nipper in his car while he was parked outside the loft. Hit our car with his giant truck. When Nipper got out to get insurance info the guy went CRAZY, said he didn't hit our car, threatened Nipper Knapp and then drove away. Nipper got his license plate, which it turned out was FAKE. Yup. great neighborhood.

We got pregnant in the fall of that year we lived in the loft, so when Christmas rolled around, I was in prime end of first trimester barf bag raging hormone you'd better think twice before you speak to me land. We had 14' ceilings, so I was determined to buy the biggest tree we could find. We did. When we got it home, and standing up in the stand, which I seem to recall involved Nipper getting out his circular saw, I was too cranky to decorate it.

My mom was visiting for the holiday, and we were going to make Christmas cookies. I had found a new recipe that supposedly made gingerbread cookies that didn't suck. Does anyone else have memories of breaking a tooth on a christmas cookie that tasted vaguely of sawdust? The way that they made them delicious and not suck was that there were 7300 steps and ingredients, including rolling them out and then chilling them for 30 minutes before you cut them out. They were sticky and generally a pain in the ass.

Because mom had to decorate gigantor the christmas tree single handedly while I sat on the couch and complained, we didn't start the cookies until about 7pm. (I was a real peach, I know) Around midnight, we had batches and batches of undecorated cookies laid out on the table along with the squeeze bottles of fancy royal icing, and pastel dragees. I wanted magazine cookies, not some stupid homemade cookies. I had BIG DREAMS for these cookies! Things were tense and no one dared comment on our folly, lest the pregnant lady blow again. Finally, my mom said "Well, Merry Fucking Christmas!" I have never laughed so hard in my whole entire life.

Merry Fucking ChristmaHanaKwanzaSolstice everybody! I hope everyone has a great Holiday season with lots of laughs and love, and family close by.

Share the wealth episode 3

This ADORABLE scarf does have something to do with today's post, but you'll have to read to the bottom to find out how to get this little treat. oh also it's from Kate Spade. Wait, did I give it all away? Whoopsy Tootsie. Read on please...

Today I want to talk about something that is near and dear to my heart. Women. You know, girls, moms, daughters, and grannies. I love men. But I can love men, because I was fortunate enough to be born to a place that values me as a woman. I'm so fortunate to have a father and a husband who support me in the most positive ways possible. (and of course a son who ADORES me) I'm so fortunate to have been born in a place that never questioned if I should be educated, or vaccinated or fed, because I'm a woman. If you are reading this, so are you.

I've been thinking I wanted to talk about one specific organization for the last few weeks now, but I haven't been able to narrow it down. Then today Oprah, who I swear I don't watch, (SWEAR!)  had Nicholas Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn on talking about their book and organization "Half The Sky", and I wanted to mention that. You can also read a portion of the book in the NYTimes. They have a list of great organizations that you can look into on their site as well. Oprah, wise woman that she is put a handy little registry up on her site where you can help all kinds of women in all kinds of ways. Many of the donations are so small but can make such big difference in a woman or girl's life. So I'm going to mention a few organizations. Hopefully they will get you all thinking about these numbers, and urge you to do something, however small to help women and girls, who, as you and I know, make all the good shit happen. 

The first one I want to mention is the Fistula Foundation. I'm not going to go into the nitty gritty of what a obstetric fistula is here, because some of you maybe reading this over breakfast, but you can read about it here on their site. Basically it is a hole. It is a common complication with obstructed labor. It is a very common, and very curable problem that effects so many women all over the world. With surgery and antibiotics these women can go on to have very normal lives. But in many parts of the world, they have no access to the health care they need. They end up being shunned due to the embarrassing nature of the injury and many women die unnecessarily because of it. You can learn more about fistula on the Fistula Foundation website. You can also donate to their cause here. 

The next one, I know a lot of you already know about, because it's so family friendly. They do a great job, of making their donations giftable, which is great this time of year. It's Heifer International. For those of you who don't know, Heifer gives the gift of something like a goat, or a cow, or a flock of geese, or honeybees, even bunny rabbits. These animals can take a family and eventually a whole community from terribly impoverished conditions to having a dependable source of food and income. This year my mother is buying all the grandkids a goat or a small flock of something as a christmas gift. It's a great way to teach kids about something that is very hard to understand in our world where food comes from the grocery store. 

The last one I'm going to include is Women For Women. This organization helps women in war torn areas get back on their feet and become empowered through education and work skills. You can simply donate, or you can sponsor a woman, in one of many war torn countries. I think this org is pretty incredible. I probably should have put this one first, because I'm going to use some of the statistics from their site. Here are some facts that should move you to action:

Why Women?

Around the world, women face some of the greatest obstacles yet also represent tremendous opportunity for lasting social and economic development. Globally, women face the following challenges:

• They bear a disproportionate burden of the world’s poverty (They represent 70 percent of the world’s poor)
• Their ability to have a decent life is limited (they perform 66 percent of the world’s work and produce 50 percent of the food but they only earn 10 percent of the income and own 1 percent of the property)
• Investment in women is inadequate (recent data shows that only 3.6% of overseas development assistance was earmarked for gender equality (UNIFEM). And for every dollar of development assistance, two cents goes to girls (Girl Effect).
• During and after conflict, women are particularly vulnerable to violence and exploitation (About 70% of casualties in recent conflicts are women and children (UNIFEM) and the forms of violence they experience include torture, rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution and mutilation (UN)

An average Women for Women International participant faces the following challenges:

• She has limited access to electricity and water (99% of participants in Sudan)
• She is not educated (96% of participants in Afghanistan)
• She is not engaged in productive work (90% of participants in Iraq)
• She is not able to pay for medical care (66% of participants in Afghanistan)
• She is not able to change customs and traditions that are not fair to her
• (94% of participants in the DRC)

And for you fashion mavens out there who want to buy something cute, cute, cute, Kate Spade has been partnered with Women For Women since 2005. This year they are selling the most adorable hats, and mittens, dog sweaters, (attention Auntie Swing, Lola needs a Kate Spade sweater) and scarves for the holidays. The knits were all made by women in Bosnia and Herzegovina who are graduates of the program. Dudes... cute, AND good for women! You know you want some. How virtuous would you feel giving your mother in law * something that you could lord over her all year long. "Remember that hat we gave you for christmas? Yeah, I single handedly helped a woman in a war torn country with the purchase of that hat. What did you get me last year? Oh that's right Prell."

If you still need inspiration check out this little video:

http://www.oprah.com/media/20090925-tows-girl-effect

"It's no big deal, just the future of humanity..."

*the above statements in no way reflect the relationship I have with MY mother in law, who loves me and always know exactly the perfect thing that will make me squeal with delight on birthdays and Christmas. Meems, you are THE BEST and I love you! 

ay dios mio

Our neighborhood is what realtors might refer to as "transitional". But what they mean is: you are going to be the only white family, and I want you to know that ahead of time in case you're a bigot, or afraid of minorities, or have some other hang-ups about you know, stuff like that.


Our neighborhood also happens to be in a town where every house we looked at came with price tag that was 4 times more than I ever thought I'd pay for a house, and each of those was in a sketchy neighborhood. Even the ones that were supposedly in better neighborhoods were on the fringey underbelly streets,  or they were 600 sq. ft. and needed a new foundation. Oh and most of those houses were WAY out of our price range. We actually put a bid on a house, previous to seeing this one, that was wall to wall faux wood paneling, and it was in a neighborhood that caused people to shake their heads when mentioned. We didn't get it. 


All in all we love our neighborhood. We love our house. We have great neighbors, minus one who is loud, loud, loud, but I think you get that on every street. One jerk who doesn't care at all about other people. There are a lot of young families with kids Jack's age, and then a lot of old timers who've been here for decades and know everybody's business. 


The weekend we moved in, the OLD man across the street came over on his jazzy power scooter with a pie, and a welcome card. He was under the impression for some reason that my name was Nancy. I didn't care. I was 8 months pregnant, and it made me cry. "We picked a good one" I thought. We picked the one neighborhood in LA, where people still bring their new neighbors pie! We found out a few months later, once the other neighbors thought we weren't a flight risk, that the old man was a dirty old pedophile, oh and also he was insane and tried to break into people's houses if they disagreed with him about his fence line. Uhm, ok, good to know thanks. WHAT? Turns out he wasn't in great shape and he died about year after we moved in. It's weird to say that you are relieved that someone died. Because he did bring us a pie and all. But that's what I felt. Relief. 


Twenty five years ago this neighborhood was overrun with gangs. It was really bad. Like your cliche idea of LA bad. Our nanny grew up on this hill, and when she was 15,  she decided that she would be better off in Mexico than in our neighborhood. That kind of bad. But over the years, lots of different people have moved in. For a long time the whole hill was filled with gay couples, mixed with hispanic families, then came the hipsters, and now it's us. Middle class whiteys with our babies and our hybrid cars. Our neighbors Michael and Jerry have been here for 21 years, and they know everything about everyone. SO the other day when Jerry knocked on the door, I thought he was bringing leftover thanksgiving sweets. (more pie please) But he was knocking to let me know that all four cars parked on the street above his house had their windows smashed the night before. Merde. 

We call Georgia's house "the owl house" because it's the cutest little craftsmen bungalow, that she has restored perfectly, and it looks like a little owl up there. 

The night before that, our neighbor Georgia's wall was tagged. Great. I don't know if it's the same culprits, if it's a gang, or just a group of kids doing the wrong thing. But it's unsettling. And it makes me angry. Georgia is out of town for the holiday, and we didn't want to leave it up there, so we went to Home Depot, got some paint and painted over the graffiti. I guess that's all you can do. 

Jack has the famous Knapp family eyes closed photo pose DOWN. Good boy. Now let's see your polaroid face...

Also, after you read this burn it, and don't tell my mother. I'll never hear the end of it. And I don't need her suspecting all of our neighbors of being thieves and hooligans.