I love everything about this, from the Audrey Hepburn hair down to the delicate heels. Perfect!

Oh yeah, you guys had my back with team cake winning with an impressive 60% of the vote. I will say that terrible cake is truly terrible, but a well-done cake is sublime in a way that pie can never be. Sorry, pie-lovers, but it’s true. My late grandmother used to make this seven layer chocolate cake with ganache and strawberry preserves, and it was TO DIE FOR. It was so rich that you could only eat a teensy slice, even though you wanted the entire thing. I miss that cake, and sadly, no one in my family has even attempted to make it since she passed away.

I’m being fairly schizophrenic today and moving on to a subject completely unrelated to cake or pie. Although I guess you could say that a properly executed one was a pleasurable experience, just like a nicely done baked good. Oh, and dishy stories on said subject are more than welcome!

I have a total crush on this guy and I LOVE this song.

James Dean and his secret makeup addiction.

You know you want to see the bad kitty.

Blogs vs. Social Media.  Blogs lose.

Consumer Reports on  how to buy a cell phone for your pre-teen. 

It turns out you CAN think too hard about wishing upon a star.

Maria Sharapova and her diaper tee  are not a big hit with the Fug Girls.

Are tobacco companies using YouTube to advertise?

Idris Elba continues his winning streak by edging out Eric Dane, although I certainly wouldn’t mind sharing that bowl of cereal with Mr. Dane.  But, I certainly never tire of putting Mr. Elba’s pretty, pretty picture up here.

Can Idris battle his way to the CDF Hall of Fame?

This next contender is someone who has been in the headlines since the 80’s, first as a vampire, and most recently, a man who saves the world in 24 hours or less.

VERSUS

I don’t know what is so hard about the pick-up/drop-off line at school.

You wait your turn, you wait in your car until your child enters/exits the vehicle, the doors of the vehicle close, and you drive off. 

It’s that simple.

But you wouldn’t know it based on the antics at my son’s school.

It isn’t the “I’ll get out of my car and chat with my yoga buddy (whom I will be seeing at class later in the evening) and leisurely saunter over to my car with my child, taking my sweet time and blocking traffic” line.

It isn’t the “I’ll try to pretend I’m taking the exit, then suddenly swoop into the line, enraging the thirty vehicles who have been patiently waiting their turn behind me.”

It isn’t the “door to door service  in which I must make sure that my child is never any further than five feet from the gate” line.

It isn’t the “I will abandon my car altogether, thus creating chaos further down because the line cannot move because the six other twits who have done the same thing are making sure no one else can drive up.”

Nor is it the “The kid has been sucessfully dropped-off/picked up, but for some reason I am waiting for the stars to align before I move.”

If the pick-up/drop-off line is a barometer of our civilization, then it is in a steep and ugly decline.

image via

It is a myth that all mothers know how to do laundry just by dint of being mothers. I don’t know any woman who doesn’t have some sort of laundry mishap in her recent past. If you tell me that you don’t, I will nod my head, but secretly believe you are lying.

I’ve been doing laundry since my early high school days, when I would complain to my mother that she didn’t wash my uniform shirts often enough as they were white and whites were usually the smallest load, thus getting the least amount of washing machine face time. So, tired of my whining, she made me do my own from that point on. If had only known what I was getting into, I just would have worn the dirty shirts over again.

I think my main problem is that I dislike laundry’s multiple stages, all of them distasteful. First you’ve got your pre-treatment phase for stains. Then you’ve got to sort the laundry according to water temperature/colors. Finally, you get to put them in the washing machine, only to have to transfer them to the dryer an hour later. Take them out of the dryer, and you think you would be finished, right? Wrong. You’ve still got to fold them/put them on hangers and then you STILL need to put them away. That isn’t even taking into account anything that has to be ironed. I personally think ironing should be outlawed.

Laundry has tried to be the boss of me, but I won’t allow it. I refuse to spend a fourth of my life dealing with clothes. I mean, I like clothes and all, but I’ve got the rest of my life to live, thank you. My children would like to see me sometimes without clothing in various states of cleanliness surrounding me.

So what’s my solution to the endless drudgery?

I make my husband do it.

A simple, satisfying, and rather painless solution that has the added bonus of me being able to yell at him if anything goes wrong.

So not anatomically correct.

Where playing can lead to dire consequences, apparently.

I think someone paid a bit too much attention to detail here.

They ran out of sand.

I can’t improve upon the original caption from the article:

“And there is a dentist around the corner who makes BANK.”

via

You are way older than me, and I understand Photoshop was used, but day-um.