Julep Support Center Offices - Transformation to Holiday Workshop

Here's a sneak peak at our Holiday Gift Set preparation! I LOVE our earth-friendly ribbon - Recycled and Recyclable, with our elegant-but-cute-as-a-button leaf cluster printed with soy-based ink. I want to send it to Project Runway for someone to make me a dress with it. (But Kate would kill me if any of her holiday goods went missing - as she's clearly laid out in multiple post-it notes throughout the office).

And how about our eyecatching environmentally friendly shopping bags? We've only got a handful of these first edition bags! Someday, I hope to be kicking myself up-side the head for not keeping mine in better condition to sell for huge bucks on Ebay.

Our shared wood-paneled Support Center office is brimming with boxes and boxes of lovely holidy gift set goodies. True to our goal of learning and getting better everyday, our holiday preparation this year was in full swing MONTHS before the "H" word even crossed our minds last year.

Speaking of our Home away from Home (or right next to our homes, for me, Kate and Jeanne), apparrently we've sufficiently aggravated our co-tenant/landlord with all of our clutter that he's banishing us next door - where we will have access to more space and light, but not free heat/water/phones. And, most importantly, we're going to have to leave behind the wood panels. Kate is so excited she can barely concentrate in yoga class.

When I first told Kate where our office was located, she was pleasantly surprised to learn that the building wasn't a front for a porn studio, as her husband had concluded based on the perpetually pulled blinds, the non-descript company name taped inside the window, and the presence of scantily clad women smoking cigarettes outside the back door. (But it just turned out that the building houses a legitmate photo studio that works for local spas - or so we've been reassured).

Anyway, now we will have a room of our own. (That's two literary references in the same month! Reading this blog will make you smarter!).

Our chairs are FAMOUS (on SNL!!)

Marylee emailed me over the weekend to tell me that she saw our orange chairs on a Saturday Night Live sketch - Don Draper's Guide to Picking up Women.

We've seen Vanessa Williams in the sexy white version on Ugly Betty, but not in our Italian leather deep orange.

Come to Julep - sit in the chair that all the stars are sitting in!

My baby sister is getting married

We're down in California for my baby sister's wedding this week. (This is where I'm totally psyched to have an awesome team at home - especially since after scouring the land for months and months, we finally have some live prospects for a Julep on the Eastside! Thanks Kate and Tracy!).

I love that my sister has found someone who wants to go to the airport as early as she does - especially since she comes from a family where flight times are taken as merely suggestive.

My sister Alice is nine years younger than I am, so I've spent my whole life equippping her with all the tools she needs to be a happy, responsible adult, including mandatory essays on E.M. Forster's Howard's End at age 9. All my life, I've worried about her, pushed her, nagged her, basically did everything my parents did to me that I found as profoundly irritating as it was ineffective.

But I love her such a "big, gi-normous much", as my daughter would say. Being a sister to Alice and my other (already married) sister Jenn has been one of my life's greatest joys. I really love being a sister.

And yes, I used to love making my sisters act out the "Sisters" song from White Christmas. ("Sisters, sisters, there were never such devoted sisters . . .").

I once read an article about a pair of sisters who were 98 and 100 respectively, and the 98 year old was still waiting for her older sister to stop bossing her around. I'm just barely perceptive enough to know that this is NOT an appropriate wedding present, but I might try to dig it up for my sisters nonetheless. . .

Beyond "Red State Blue State"

The whole nation was holding it's breath tonight - and the verdict is in. All the pundits are calling it on every network. Julep's beautiful fall colors are in - deep indigo, true turquoise, rich wines, gun metal grey . . . We're far, far beyond just red and blue.

I'm wearing "Maggie" these days (the first bottle in the row above)- and there's something about beautiful color that just makes me smile. I love that it's colorful but still sophisticated and grown up. I want to bathe in this shade.

After you register to vote (deadline in Washington state is October 4th!), then come pick from our rainbow of colors while you contemplate what you want November 4th.