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Okay so all of you know I love Tucker so much I'm ready to marry it.   

*If you just started following recently check out the ongoing love affair here, here and here  for starters, but it's scattered throughout in photos.*

After posing in the field wearing my Mrs. Roper throwback, I received a wonderful email from the people at Tucker who kinda loved that outfit on me as much as I did.  Suffice it to say extreme excitement ensued and the next thing you knew I was jumping up and down possibly letting out shouts of glee (hehe) before gathering myself momentarily only to read on and discover they wanted to send me their Holiday Lookbook aka my marital vows.  When I received the package late last week on hell day (where coincidentally I donned more Tucker to cheer myself up), the heavens opened and the Chef's credit cards ran and hid in the corner.  Ladies start your wallets....it's time to devise your Christmas/Holiday lists! 

I can't share the whole book with you (because I'd be scanning until 2011 on my useless scanner and by then it would all be gone), but was sent the following images to tide you over until the entire line is unveiled.  It will be available by 11/1 on their site:  www.tuckerbygabybasora.com - and all I'm saying is think shawls, maybe a cheetah print coat, a smattering of velvet, more gorgeous outerwear, and, of course, their signature rich prints in the most amazing colors yet.  Let your mind wander with every possible way a silk print can be made into a garment and you will find it in this collection.  The pieces are incredibly innovative and whimsical.  I have yet to recover and basically look at the book 50 times a day swooning like Felicity over Ben Covington when he signed her yearbook on the grass after graduation (can I hear it from all the Felicity fans who still remember the pilot episode?? woop woop!!).

For as long as I can remember I've been in love with pony hair items.  Shoes, rugs, upholstered furniture - you name it and I'm a goner.  Four or five years ago Natuzzi made a chair that caused my heart to flutter.  I was visiting a friend in Canada who ran an interior design business, and while waiting for her happened upon said chair in brown and white. The rest is a blur.  I came to with her standing in front of me snapping her fingers.  It was bliss.  And of course that same chair was nowhere to be found in the Western United States (believe me I was calling Natuzzi like a woman desperate for her last shot at love), and there was no way I was spending something like $500 + duty just to ship it from Canada. Uh, no.  Instead I soothed my wounds with a pair of slippers in the exact same print.  Sure I couldn't sit on them, but it softened the blow.  At least for my feet.

That being said, I have never forgotten that chair - nor have I ever seen any of its brothers or sisters - which in some small way relieves me.  Instead of pining endlessly for it, I carried on triumphantly viewing its rug cousins all around LA.  The more I saw the rugs in cow, pony and zebra print - the happier it made me.  Perhaps it was all those years growing up on the farm *insert smile here*.  I never bought one of the rugs - and then recently I heard someone say they were, like, yesterday even though the Zoe has them everywhere.  A light in my heart kinda went out, but I still kept on loving them anyway. I was never big on following the rules much. hehe

Cut to this past weekend when the Chef moved out of his apartment and temporarily "gifted" me with one or two of his choicest items.

Man, if we could only see the feet, this might be a cinch! But of course they are obscured.

So let's move on to the other field marks. Looking at the small bill and overall shape we know this is a warbler, right? Good. What else do we notice?

Well, if you remember your Streaky Fall Warblers chapter from Identify Yourself: The 50 Most Common Bird Identification Challenges (please see page 296) you'll remember that we divide the confusing fall warblers into Streaky Fall Warblers and Plain Fall Warblers. This little dude is definitely streaky.

The Streaky Fall Warblers include magnolia, pine, Cape May, blackpoll, bay-breasted, and prairie.

The "maggie" has a necklace, a dark head, and a yellow rump, which this bird lacks.

The pine is a super-chunk bird with a stout bill. Again, not our bird.

The Cape May is dark above, pale below, with dark face, and a limeade rump. Nope.

The prairie is very yellow below, with noticeable white tail panels, which it shows off by flicking its tail. It also has a very obvious yellow face, with a yellow crescent below the eye. Our bird's face is olive.

OK, look at the eye on our bird. See how it has a dark line through it? That's the line that makes the blackpoll look "mean" while the eyeline-free, plain face of the bay-breasted looks "sweet."

A streaky back. OK that narrows things even more. Wing bars? Good to note, but that doesn't get us much closer to an answer.

Non-uniform underparts: pale throat, yellow breast, streaky belly and flanks. Now that's notable. If this were a bay-breasted warbler, the underparts would be uniform. And the flanks might show a hint of the "bay" or chestnut color. But this bird has plain flanks.

So this bird, a Streaky Fall Warbler, is a blackpoll warbler. Oh, and the clue about the feet I mentioned at the outset? Blackpoll warblers show yellow feet (and often yellowish legs). But that's a field mark that can be difficult to see on a tiny, flitting migrant. So start with streaky versus unstreaky, and go from there.

Get it? Got it? Good!

For me fall signifies a time to get serious.  As a child it meant returning to school with sharp HB pencils in my new pencil case, crisp outfits, and the smell of books in the beloved library.  Every year, no matter where I am in the world and what the weather may be, I instinctively become more solemn as we round the corner to September and tend to stay that way for most of the winter months.  It's school's fault I think - it forced me to shed the lazy days of summer and get back to business.

This also goes for my wardrobe.  It is true that growing up in Canada meant a free-for-all of amazing and wearable fall fashion from plaid and wool to velvet and fur, but it also meant a purposeful acquisition of basics that could be worn mostly together or intermingled between other trendier pieces.  I was a basics lover long before my Gap days, but it was my tenure there that instilled an appreciation for the good stuff - a plethora of white, black, navy and grey t's in long and short sleeves always kept on hand, be sure to include leggings in those same basic colors,  and don't forget denim in light to dark washes in tops, bottoms and jackets.  These lessons I learned at Gap are, in some ways ironically, as valuable to me as an adult as some of the things I learned in high school and university (shhhhhh don't tell!).  As long as I have the essentials in wardrobe basics, it is easier to maneuver from season to season without breaking the bank.  Fall is a time when I find myself rediscovering these wonderful pieces that have rested patiently in my closet through most of the brighter summer months, and this weekend was no exception.


Outfit details:  Tom Ford - Sunnies, Big Star - Denim Jacket, James Perse - T, Gap - Tank, American Apparel - Leggings, Target - Leopard Flats, J.Crew - Canvas Bag, Melinda Maria - Rings

Can I just say that we miss you Boys of Summer? It's just not the same around here without you, as the days get shorter and the air gets cooler.

Have a nice winter, but don't forget to come back home, OK?

I think the bloody heat has gotten to my mind.  Yesterday morning I woke up from a dream where I was begging my friend Amber to bring me a Pepsi Slurpee from 7-11.  It was the weirdest thing - right in the middle of the dream I remembered I don't even like those and started pleading for a glass of water.  Why I couldn't get my own is beyond me.  All I know is it was hot in that dream, and when my eyes opened it was hot in my house.  (But thankfully I had not sleep-dialed poor Amber! Can you imagine??). 

Do you ever have mornings where you wake up and just know you should stay in bed until the next day?  Like the gong show is just waiting to gong your life all day long?  Well I had that day yesterday.  First was the sweaty, drink-less dream. Then I rolled into my office after a shower where I could barely get cool water - only to discover my internet provider had lost service to at least a thousand customers in my area.  Isn't that special?  Not so much.  How, pray tell dear people, is a person to do their job sans internet?  Oh and never mind the fact that I pay my bills online and several needed to be paid by noon PST.  That's not happening!  I decide I'm going to be productive and do some laundry and clean-up...only to walk into my mudroom and find it filled with smoke from the new next door neighbor who sits in his yard and cigars it up all day and night while the breeze wafts over his fence and into my home.  Welcome neighbor!  When are you moving out again?!?

I could go on, but I'll stop and spare you the details.  Suffice it to say by 11:30am I was huddled under the bed with nothing but a peep hole to the tv where I could see that Victor Newman is being sued by his daughters.  (All I could do is hope the tv didn't go up in smoke like the time my blowdryer almost lit my hair on fire - true story).  Thankfully the Chef stopped by and rescued me from spontaneous combustion.  We strolled the streets and took in a new sushi restaurant before returning home late in the evening to realize My Generation starts at 8 and not 9pm.  Fitting, isn't it?