After the Christmas holidays, Valentine’s Day is one of the few excuses to get festive during winter’s darkest days. Whether you’re heading to a party, finishing multiple bottles of vino with your girls (or your cat), or going on a romantic date (which I’ll be doing for the first time in a looonnngg time), here are some Valentine Day’s outfit ideas. 

This year for Valentine’s Day, I’ve come up with a long list of gifts that I could get my husband. Of course, I always wait until the last minute, which means some of them are more plausible than others. But I’m determined to really get him something good this year. Unfortunately, there’s not much time left before V-day. Here are my favorite last-minute Valentine’s Day gift ideas for guys. 

It may be a cheesy Hallmark holiday, but I will take any excuse to enjoy a fun celebration in the middle of winter. It’s a weird holiday to shop for, but I find little excuses to celebrate your love (and to shower your other half with flowers, jewelry or something fun they’ve been eyeing or didn’t know they always wanted) can do a lot for your relationship, so I’m all about embracing Valentine’s Day. Luckily, you have two weeks to shop and plan. If you’re looking for some help, here is my ultimate Valentine’s Day gift guide.

Like many of you, when mid-January hit, we were ready for a vacation somewhere warm. Last year, after much debate, we decided to bring our then baby along on our vacation. I wrote a post about what I learned from our experience. Well, we just got back from another January trip to Florida, and I thought I’d share my vacation with toddler tips after surviving a beach vacation with our crazy two year old. While I felt more prepared and less panicked about traveling with James now that we’ve flown and vacationed with him a bunch, we still made some mistakes this time (and had some wins) and learned a lot.

Unfortunately, with the way retail works these days, it’s the time of year when you have to shop your closet because no one is selling sweaters, coats, boots anymore and while there are some great sales on winter gear, it’s never available in the size you need. Still, I am in need of a winter wardrobe refresh, not summer clothes. So I’ve put together a practical February wish list of items that I want now to refresh my winter wardrobe that I know I’ll wear again next year and a few spring-ish finds that I can wear now and then later when it warms up.

If you get dry, chapped lips in the winter and are constantly applying Chapstick, Kiehl’s or whatever lip balm that doesn’t really work, I am about to change your life. I never had super dry lips until I went on Accutane. (I will write a whole post on that another time, because it was honestly the best thing I ever did and I can’t believe I spent my whole teenage life with acne and didn’t go on it sooner, but that’s another day.) In any event, my lips did get dry as a side effect, and it was horrible. Just the feeling of dry, chapped, peel-y lips is the worst. When my amazing but fancy dermo, who is really the best, but caters to the Park Avenue crowd, said she had a secret weapon to combat my dry lips, I got nervous that it was going to be a pricey balm. And honestly, I would have paid anything at that point for a lip balm that actually worked on dry lips. But then she told me to go to Amazon and order a few tubes of Dr. Dan’s Corti-balm.

When I set out to write a winter bucket list, I was basically tired of…

From gear for the slopes to apres ski wear and warm layers, here’s everything you need to pack for a stylish ski getaway.

I wanted these overalls the minute I saw them even though they’re from one of my favorite maternity lines, Hatch Collection, I knew they would fit because the line actually designs clothes you can wear at all stages — not pregs, pregnant, and post-partum. As anyone who has had a baby knows, your body changes so much during pregnancy and then post, and having high-quality clothes that you actually love that are comfortable and chic is so hard to find.

Let’s face it — going to dinner with couple friends is not just an excuse to catch up, but also an excuse to show other cute couples how cute (and stylish) you are. I mean I don’t know about you, but I’ve got two usual ways of dressing — for the office or for weekends at home. So the only time I get to wear something that’s at all sexy or fun is when we go out, and these days, our idea of a wild night out is a late dinner with friends (god, when did we get so old). But for some reason, picking out an outfit, even if we’re just going to dinner with good friends who couldn’t care less what I look like, stresses me out. It’s probably because I don’t have a lot of “going out” clothes now that hitting the bars and clubs isn’t in my regular weekend lineup. Here are my favorite outfit ideas for going to dinner with couple friends.

Right before we had James, we moved into a newly renovated apartment, and finished decorating it just in time for his arrival. I swore we wouldn’t be those parents whose entire apartment is taken over by toys. I swore we wouldn’t buy James that many toys. After all, they really only play with a few of them and prefer to just bang on pots and pans, I said. And then we had James, and two years later, our apartment is overflowing with toys.

This year, we returned to Park City for the Christmas holiday. While I wasn’t as good about documenting my outfits as I had hoped (sorry, I was too busy running after a two year old, enjoying the snow, and mostly, stuffing my face), I did manage to capture a few of my go-to looks.

So for a twist on my usual week in outfit posts, here’s what I wore on our last ski vacation. 

I like to layer a cute sweater under all my ski gear. That way, I still look cute for apres while staying warm on the slopes. This year, I treated myself to a ski sweater I’ve been eyeing for years, because honestly, my ski layers were starting to wear down and I knew I’d wear this one just as much off the slopes as on. It looks so cute with jeans and boots, and I even dressed it up one night on our trip with black pants and a fur vest.

An organized closet may seem more like a luxury than a necessity, especially if you live in NYC and having a closet is a luxury. But a well edited wardrobe is truly they key to flawless style, especially for those of us who barely have five minutes to think about what to wear, and the first step to editing your wardrobe is to clean out your closet and organize it in a way that makes getting dressed simple and easy.

If you’re like me, you have way too many shoes, and no intention of giving any of them up anytime soon, which is why for part two of my closet cleaning series, we’ll be tackling shoes. Since they take up most of my closet space, I need a good system for organizing them. While over-the-door storage is the space-saving arrangement that makes the most sense for small space dwellers, shelves and cubbies, or better yet a closet just of shoes, would be my ultimate pick were space not an issue, as it allows for you to easily see all your shoes. From there, I prefer to sort by type (pumps, flats, wedges, sandals, sneakers, boots, etc.) and then color-coordinate from there. Here are my favorite ideas and inspiration for organizing your shoes. 

Vacation is officially over, and I for one, am mourning the end. Luckily, it was…

I’ve never really found a great way for storing my bags in a way that makes it easy to find them, keep them in great condition, and swap them out on the reg without tons of effort, so I spent a lot of time in the black hole of Pinterest and researching tons of organizational sites and books to find the best tips for storing purses to help me get all my handbags in order once and for all.

After an amazing ski vacation in Park City, we are back in the city and…

I am the type who totally makes resolutions and then forgets about them a month later, beats herself up, and then does it again the next year. I can’t help it. I love the possibility of a fresh start and a new year. Even though it might seem futile or a trap just to make you feel bad, I think it’s good idea to stop and reset and reflect on what you want to accomplish. Otherwise, it’s so easy to get so crazy on the hamster wheel of life that you find another year has gone by and you aren’t any closer to achieving any of your dreams.

I started this blog as a visual diary to help making get dressed in the morning easier for me. But I realized that if I struggled, and I worked in fashion and gave women advice on how to dress for a living, that other women needed this too.