Ericka Getting Married

When I first met Ericka nearly two years ago, there were three things I learned about her straight away. The first was that she was named for Erica Kane, and her mother’s special fascination with the glamorous long-running soap vixen.

That said, how could Ericka not live up to my second discovery, as a young woman with a distinct and somewhat historical sense of style. I noticed it the first minute I met her; there’s something about her the flow of her feminine frocks that reveals a past life of the ‘30’s or ‘40’s.

Thirdly, though diminutive in stature, Ericka is a powerful little lady with a hawk’s eye attention for detail. There’s a reason I nicknamed her Little Miss Fingerprint. I wouldn’t want to be caught leaving a fingerprint behind for Ericka to find! (And if there is one to be found, just know that Ericka will find it.)

It was about 6 ½ years ago that Little Miss Fingerprint met Jose when they were both students at Hunter College. It wasn’t until two years later that they went on their first date, and it was last fall, on a trip to Aruba, that Jose (a field technician for an Internet/phone provider) proposed with a vintage-style diamond under a Caribbean sky.

I thought it might be fun to countdown the months towards Ericka’s wedding together, and so, I asked her a few certifiable “girl talk” questions about her and her newly betrothed.

How did you meet Jose?

I met him on my way to class one day. I was on the escalator and he was standing 2 steps behind me. He tapped me on the shoulder and told me I had thee most beautiful eyes. He took me by surprise – I swore up and down that he was just a cute construction worker going to school when I looked at him!! I thanked him so much for the compliment and told him he had made my day; I was already having a bad day. He told me that he was glad he could do that and hoped that I have a great rest of the day.

What made you look twice at him?

After we ran into each other in the hallways of school we kept in touch and hung out. A few things made me consider Jose as a ‘future’ possibility. After I ended my 3 year relationship with my ex boyfriend, Jose stood by and listened as I cried and poured my heart out almost every night. He never said one bad thing against anyone. He just listened. I knew that by that time, he didn’t just care for me as a friend; he truly cared about me unconditionally. For any guy to put up with a girl at a time like that must have more feelings that one could imagine. I knew after a few months of dating that I couldn’t let this relationship pass me by. After about 6 months, I decided it was time to let go and try it out with Jose. We were great and by the time 10 months came rolling in, I knew it was time to let go of the past and start something new with Jose.

When did you know you wanted to marry him?

Jose has so many good qualities I didn’t know which one exactly drew me to him. For one thing, he knew how to love and love unconditionally. I’ve never met someone who was so giving and considerate. I knew I wanted to be with someone who could understand me just the same. It’s going to sound funny, but I definitely knew that I wanted to marry Jose when he gave me a great foot rub! I’m really picky about any one touching my feet especially, but when Jose grabbed my feet and soothed the pain away I knew it was the beginning of something great! As funny as it might sound, it’s just nice to know that at the end of the day, there is someone that will take care of you no matter what!

What do you consider to be your wedding style?

My wedding style is both modern and traditional. I chose not to have the wedding in any hall or ballroom because I wanted to have a more relaxed setting where people could enjoy the outdoors but still enjoy dinner and dancing indoors. I wanted a garden feel to my wedding so I opted to have my wedding reception at a Golf Course where I have the option of having a tent overlooking the course while people can roam inside the manor house or the patio.

For the ceremony, Jose and I had already agreed that we wanted something traditional so we decided to have our vows exchanged at one of our churches. We decided on my church (Most Holy Trinity- St. Mary’s) in Brooklyn.


What’s most important to you with your wedding?

The most important part to me is the ceremony. Words can probably never express how much love and respect Jose and I have for one another and I don’t think I can really explain how deep that love is. I would love to be able to express that deep commitment at our ceremony; to be able to exchange our vows in from of our family, friends and loved ones.

Aside from that, I sincerely and honestly hope that everyone has a great time at our wedding and just enjoy the celebration.


The date, my friends, is May 30th 2010. So follow us, at the end of every month, as we keep you updated in the ins and outs of this stylish, spunky little bride’s journey down towards and eventually down the aisle!

Pretty, Perfect Pomegranates

My earliest pomegranate memory involves my mother and my brother, after my brother had brought a pomegranate into Lakeside School for show and tell. During his demonstration, he cut the ripe fruit opened and proceeded to try to consume it, only to have his teacher let out a warning shriek that the savory fruit’s seeds were poisonous. (Yes, you heard right, she was a teacher.) My mother, perhaps as a form of protest for the teacher’s ignorance, always kept a pomegranate in the house, rarely consumed, sitting proud and constant in the fruit bowl in the kitchen.

My brother’s teacher clearly had no idea that the Greeks consider the pomegranate to be a symbol of abundance and good luck, often making an appearance in weddings and other festivities.

In China they are associated with fertility, cut open during the wedding ceremony, the seeds inside signifying the amount of sons the couple will have.

In Buddhist mythology, a pomegranate was given to a wicked woman who ate children – and was cured of her horrific evil ways!

It seems as though pomegranates came very much into vogue within the last several years when everyone finally learned their extreme anti-oxidant potential.

Try this recession proof facial scrub made with pomegranate and sugar, a perfect exfoliater and mmm-mmm goodness for your skin. (It smells so delicious, that’s reason enough alone.) It’s so easy, you simply have no excuse.

½ cup pomegranate
½ cup white sugar
2 teaspoons avocado oil

In a small bowl, combine sugar and pomegranate seeds, and crush together with a spoon. Mix in the oil. Massage gently into damp skin, and all over your body, if you feel so inspired.

L'Anguria (aka The Watermelon)

Nothing says summer like a luscious, ripened watermelon. I’m a huge fan (as anyone who’s ever sampled my watermelon margaritas…yummmmm). I found this delectable recipe I simply had to share, from one of my all time favorite homey-type mags, Better Homes and Gardens. Just double click on the image to super-size it.) I can’t wait to bring a big tray of watermelon coolers out to my side porch for a summer gathering of friends.

Zoo Review

Once upon a time, a Ralph and Elizabeth Space bought ¼ acre of land and opened a modest general store and repair shop in Sussex, New Jersey.

When the Great Depression hit, and families couldn’t pay for necessities from the store, they would barter with family heirlooms, which included toys of all varieties, now collected in a shed-like museum, surely inhabited by the ghost of Vincent Price.

Their lives were to change forever the day Ralph bought home a New Jersey cougar, put it in a cage, and the Space’s began charging admission. Flash forward 72 years to 2009, and you have over 400 acres of the largest, privately owned wild animal kingdom you can imagine. Upon entering, you’re instantly greeted by Goliath, who, when alive, was the largest Kodiac Bear in America, standing 12 feet and weighing in at over 400 pounds!!!

The walls are neck-to-neck wild beasts: bison, moose, elk. Anything unspeakably large and taxidermy ready.

There’s even a plaque with proudly states that all of the animals were captured by the Space Farms family themselves.

After scanning the collection of cobras and rattlesnakes in the lobby, and older gentleman—looking a bit like the ghost of Space Farms himself!—opens the door to an unbelievable expansion of animals. The turkeys and chickens run free, and strangely, share a pen with a black panther, who paces his cake and, once in a while, futilely spies some nearby poultry and licks his chops.

The animals are all encaged, and at times (as with the panther), rather strangely. But it’s this strange arrangement that brings a fiery fascination and makes one want to job from pen to pen. I have three favorite animal experiences, and the first was definitely the peacock, trying with all his might to woo a could-not-be-less-interested peahen. He’d fluff his feathers whenever she was around, and make an attempt to impress her by forcing them to vibrate fervently. Usually she would just walk away, distracted by corn and dirt, but I thought it was pretty cool.

The second was the new Kodiacs, not anywhere near threatening to steal Goliath’s 400 pound title away, but still so utterly enormous that he could just barely handle his own hind legs when he walked.

I’d passed a goose, who’d decided to make a nest just off the side of the road (very poor planning, but determined to keep her little chicks warm and safe with plenty of hissing!), a pregnant kangaroo (indicated by a handwritten sign not to scare her – because she was expecting), sleeping lions and tigers, plenty of deer, caribou, and a heartbreakingly forlorn monkey.

But I think my favorites of all were the lemurs, who were such a bizarre fusion of human and feline characteristics. They were very sweet and calm, and yet slithered in and out of the tree branches with such ease. Right away they attempted to call attention to the machine on the other side of where we first met, the one where, for a quarter, you can buy corn to throw through the chain link, which they would, with discrepancy, pick and choose their favorite kernels.

One the way out you can’t help but notice the one room schoolhouse, no bigger than a garden shed.

There’s no entry allowed, but peering through the window one can see a shadow box of days of old, complete with lessons still on the chalk board, notepads on the desks, and an apple on the teacher’s pulpit. It’s nice to know the young ghosts of space farms are educated!

All in all, a unique and interesting way to spend a Tuesday afternoon, one I would highly recommend if not for its historical value, than for its surreal, David Lynch-esque wild animal experience.

Birdhouse In Your Soul

There’s a beautiful Asian folktale about a young woman bribed into marrying a bird, and through her dismay, burns his birdhouse to the ground. The bird-man immediately becomes desperate, shrieking, “How could you? The birdhouse was my soul!” And he’s immediately removed from the house, until finally the woman builds him a new one, and awakes, one day, to find him perched outside. She had, as instructed, dedicated the house to the soul of her husband.

When I first saw my little house in Pennsylvania, two things immediately came to mind: 1. Gingerbread, and 2. Birdhouses.

I’d made the decision to decorate the house with a bird-like theme, collecting birdy pictures and items from my travels.

Can't you see the striking resemblance???

It wasn’t until I’d moved in did I realize that facing the front of the house was the most elegant, aged birdhouse I’d ever seen. Looking into this birdhouse it’s difficult to argue that it indeed has a soul.

Not all birdhouses are created equal, mind you. Mine is obviously weathered, lived in, and, to use a real estate salesperson’s euphemism, “in need of a little love.” For months I’ve been thinking about the little house and wondering if and when the birds will come.

The most common birds of this area include bald eagles and humming birds, neither of which would be appropriate for my little house, but certainly beautiful birds to watch. The resident woodpecker seems content to pick and spot and knock-knock-knock all summer long. The wild turkeys make their daily hikes through the property in late summer, early autumn in groups as large as 20! Not sure where they’re going, but they seem to be, however wobbly, on a mission. Chickadees are very common for this area, and are such gorgeous little birds. I wouldn’t mind if a family of chickadees made my made my birdhouse their new home.

My neighbor advised me not to fill the birdhouse, as the black bear family have no problem climbing the trees to snack on birdseed. (Here’s a picture of my grandma “fighting” a bear at the World’s Fair many years ago.)

In Tuscany, I was once lucky enough to watch a family of birds being fed and weaned by their mother of the course of several weeks, growing strong enough to leave the nest just before I boarded my plane back to New York City.

It took me a few years to realize that my treasured birdhouse charm that I unearthed in Oregon…is really a tiny outhouse.

Does that mean that one woman’s birdhouse is in the eye of the beholder? I like to think so!

A Pearl Of A Girl

When I was a very little girl, my family took a trip to Disney World, and as a treat we paid a diver $5 to swim down to the bottom of a tank full of clams, pull one ashore, and pry it open in front of us. We understood from the outset that we were not promised a pearl, but my brother and I were lucky enough that each of our clams did in fact contain a pearl. My brother’s, if memory serves, was light blue. Mine was a deep, dark gray, so gray in fact it was nearly black. For thirty years I’ve kept the pearl in its original baggie, and moved it from jewelry box to jewelry box, hoping to one day make something out of it in effort to preserve this precious childhood memory.




There’s much folklore about these glorious treasures of nature, starting with beautiful Venus, who was said to have risen from the ocean on a clamshell, as depicted here in one of my all time favorite images, thanks to the great Botticelli.

Legend has it that pearls are ruled by the moon, can be worn to strengthen the mind, and even help control anger and increase memory. It’s also said that pearls have a calming effect, and my theory on this is that they immediately spark a sense of warm tradition.

It’s understandable that the traditional white pearls aren’t for everyone – and there’s no need for them to be in order to receive all the incredible cosmic benefits of this magical stone. When I saw these hot pink pearls, I knew I need to have them! They’re the perfect three-strand necklace, because they go just about anywhere, yet never allow an onlooker to mistake the wearer for a school marm.

Even white pearls don’t have to be so formal. But losing formality never means you have to give up on elegance. The off-set chocolate and cream colored shells give this white pearl choker a perfect touch of whimsy.

My friend Christine and I are HUGE fans of these delicious yellow pearls – we both own a strand, and every time we wear them people always stop and ask, “Where did you get those???”

I confess to having a pair of coin pearl earrings that I wear with just about everything – everywhere. Coin pearls, as with other freshwater pearls, come in so many fantastic colors.

Sometimes the simplest pearls make the most elegant statement. Here’s a picture of me, modeling a lengthy strand of freshwater pearls with mixed glass crystals. It’s the kind of necklace that can be perfectly accessorized with a formal black clutch, or a Caribbean sunset.

Considering pearls are said to bring wealth, fame, popularity, good health and happy marriages, it’s a wonder why, in these tough times, we don’t see women utterly drenched in them! Maybe I should wear mine more often.