wallpaper decals

Erin Boyle of Reading My Tea Leaves and Gardenista and her husband live together in seriously small quarters—a 240-square-foot studio, to be exact. She agreed to share her surprising tips about how to make it work (and not drive each other crazy)...Read More >

My aunt Lulu is visiting this week (we're all ecstatic!) and of course on Monday night we drank wine and watched The Bachelor. She was totally into it, but kept saying, "Who are these poor women? Why would they put themselves through this?" And I remembered this fascinating New York Times article by Andrea Seigel about the psychology behind the reality TV shows, including the Bachelor...

*****

Just as “Survivor” isn’t really about enduring life on a deserted beach, “The Bachelor” isn’t really about dating or marriage. It pretends to be about romance by using props like red roses and satin evening wear and shimmering-wet driveways so that it looks as if the mansion just got hit by a John-Cusack-movie rain, but it’s really about science — which you might even think of as the opposite of romance, especially if you aren’t a scientist. In fact, if “Survivor” is about being unable to escape who you really are when you’re dropped into uncomfortable conditions, then I would say that “The Bachelor” is about forgetting who you really are when everybody around you gets lost in the same overpowering fiction. The show is this generation’s Stanford Prison Experiment.

“The Bachelor” is the prison guard, and his potential fiancées are the inmates. I’m not suggesting that the dynamic is inherently abusive, although it can be—this past season, Bachelor Ben would shut down any woman who expressed fear of his rejection, which was especially weird, seeing as how he was rejected himself during the previous “Bachelorette” season while down on bended knee.

From the first night of the season, the producers keep the alcohol flowing, and the contestants stay awake until it’s nearly sunrise, working hard to get the attention of one person. One person who has generally been pretty lackluster. With every new season, people complain that “The Bachelor” has proved to be a terrible model for building lasting relationships, which is like complaining that politicians are just trying to win votes. The show could improve its track record only by setting out to make matches between S.-and-M. partners.

I’ve always believed that if you’re truly in love with someone, you shouldn’t be able to answer the question “What do you love about him?” with any kind of real satisfaction. The things you’re able to articulate should leave you at least a little hollow. Contestants on “The Bachelor” will usually have to answer this question for his family, and there will be the usual adjectives like “kind” and “generous” and “funny.” It’s not that I think anyone is intentionally lying, but that they’re describing traits that belong to the set of circumstances more than the person. “The Bachelor” is kind because he has no reason not to be; if he becomes disillusioned with you, he can just send you home. He’s generous because he has a production team purchasing intense, expensive experiences for your dates. He’s funny because you’ve both been flown to a charming village in Switzerland and a funny little cow wandered up behind your picnic. If you want to insist that the show is about falling in love, then it’s more accurate to say it’s about falling in love with being on vacation.

I became especially fascinated with the 13th season of the show, when Jason Mesnick first proposed to Melissa in the finale, then decided that he was really in love with the runner-up, Molly, by the time of the update special. What happened with Melissa during those six weeks of engagement? “The conversations, which were so great on the show, were completely different,” Jason tried to explain. What I think he was really saying was, So we went to a movie in a normal theater. With other people around us. With bad popcorn. Walking out of the theater, she said, “That’s my new favorite movie!” I thought to myself, Really? That movie? And in that moment, I realized that was going to be our whole lives.

*****

Read the full article here, if you'd like. And the women are't even allowed to watch TV or read books; their only escape from the house is to go on a date with the bachelor, right? Talk about losing perspective! Do you watch the show?

This month, we're featuring delicious meals that you can make using a single bowl. First up: Kathy Brennan and Caroline Campion, authors of the fantastic cookbook KEEPERS, share their recipe for lasagna that you can make in a skillet (yes!)...
Read More >

My sister sent this vocabulary test over the holidays, and our family went nuts for it. Since I know a bunch of you are word nerds, too, I wanted to share it...

Take the quiz here, and leave your score below!

P.S. Can you read emotions?

For the holidays, we went to Palm Spring and Los Angeles for two weeks. It was great to get a blast of California sunshine, and a few funny things happened during our trip...Read More >

Hello! I'm back from a three-week blogging break, which was by far the longest break that I've taken since starting Cup of Jo seven years ago. Thanks for coming back! How are you? It was a rare treat to be able to step back and think in an overarching way about the site, and I'm excited to be rolling out a few changes. Here's the plan...

This past fall, I was feeling pretty burned out. Part of that was postpartum depression (quite similar to what happened after Toby was born—more on that later—and I'm so thankful to have come out the other side). But part of it was that I was so swamped by day-to-day work and upkeep that I didn’t have enough time to write as many longer, more thoughtful posts or produce the types of original series I wanted to. I felt a little like I was on a treadmill!

When we were in California for the holidays, I realized that it might help a lot to bring on a few awesome, likeminded contributors. That way, they can contribute great posts, and I will have more time to write longer posts myself. Overall, the blog will keep the same tone and feel—including family anecdotes and personal posts—but there will also be more original content and series that I hope you'll really enjoy. We're just taking it up a notch, basically!

It will be a very slow and careful process, so everything will look the same for now. My hope is to slowly roll out new elements throughout the year. Please let me know what you think as things move forward! Obviously I want you to be happy and enjoy the site even more.

Meanwhile, I'd love to know: What are you up to these days? What’s on your mind? What are you excited or worried about in your life right now? What would you like to talk about or read about or discuss with other readers? Any topics you'd love to have covered? Or questions you have?

Anyway, I've missed you! And I have so much to share now after being off the internet for three weeks, holy smokes. It was awesome to get a break, but I’m happy to be back! Hope you're having a wonderful month. xoxo

P.S. Blogging as a career.
P.P.S. Thank you so much for the amazing job applications! I'll be reading through them this month and will get back to those of you asap.

(Photo by Kari Herer)

I don't make them. But I do try to do better than I did last year. And I try to get my shit together a little more each year. I've got a long way to go.

However, I was reading at this blog the other day about using January as your cleaning month. The only thing I have actually done is to clean up my inbox from all of those obnoxious e-mails and unsubscribing from them (Loft, Old Navy, Printstagram, Good Housekeeping, Ebay, etc.). And let me tell you, you will feel like a new woman (or man if Drew is reading this as my only male reader). Also, if you're like my friend Sarah you just need to clean out your inbox in general from the over 1,000 e-mails you're keeping "just in case." It stresses me out and it should stress you out.

Another thing Drew and I are doing this year is something I read on a blog whose name I can't remember but we are exchanging a list of 12 books we want the other to read and each month we're responsible for reading one. We have very different tastes.

Drew's all fantasy, sci-fi, and fiction. And I'm all historical, education, and non-fiction. So it shall be interesting. His first book is the Autobiography of Malcolm X and mine is the first of the Harry Potter's. Before you ask, the answer is nope. Never read them. If you know me you know my dear mama worried about wizardry/witchcraft/Halloweenie things in our youth. So that leaves my sister reading them at 20 and me reading them at 24. I hope they are still as magical at this age as everyone assured me they were in their tween years.

Other ways I'll try and better myself: being more thoughtful. I tend to get caught up in my business and forget that people are going through some serious stuff. Everyone remembers to check on you when your husband first leaves for basic training or when your divorce is freshly filed but what about in the months following. You still need a pick-me-up sometimes. My hope is to make more of an effort for all of my friends this year. Nine days in and it's a success. But we got a long way to go.

Also, the attempt to better myself that I know I'll break the fastest is the one where I say I'll try to enjoy cooking more. Yeah, it's all easy to research and prepare food when I'm sitting on my ass all day watching the Barefoot Contessa. But what about next week when I'm in class all day? I'll turn to Domino's, I just know it. But for now:

Chicken chimichimichangas (Drew insists on two chimis in his changa).

The filling and the finished product. Find the recipe here.