A weekend in Florence

My husband today ran the Florence marathon, his best run so far that he completed with a whopping 3:27:09. We had planned a family weekend in Florence for the occasion, but one by one we all got sick but him. My mom got sick at the end of last week, so that she and my dad had already decided not to come. In the hindsight, it was a good thing, because my dad got the flu halfway through the week as well. My son started having high fever on Thursday night. These damn European viruses!

It was just me (with a bad cold) and my husband who thus made it to Florence. I had planned a whole bunch of kid-friendly activities, so I felt a bit unprepared when we arrived. We had a great time though, in spite of the anxiety for my son being sick at home.

The wardrobe chest in our hotel room

We travelled to Florence on the high speed train, and we reached our destination in just one and a half hour on Friday night. Our hotel (Riva Lofts Florence), which we had booked again through Mr and Mrs Smith (of whom I am a big fan, as I mentioned in my earlier post) was really nice. I fell in love with this wardrobe chest that was in our room, and I am planning on finding a similar one for our home! 

Hotel guests could use free bikes to go around town

On Saturday, after picking up my husband's marathon pack, we headed downtown. The weather was gorgeous and we were able to have lunch outside on the terrace of La Rinascente (yes, we discovered there is one here as well!) overlooking the Duomo. We spent the afternoon at the Uffizi Gallery, which I had never visited before, and then walking around the downtown area.

View of Florence from the rooftop terrace of La Rinascente

Our hotel's concierge had suggested checking out Flor, a luxury perfume store in Borgo Santa Croce where one can choose her own essences. It is definitely worth a visit, and a purchase!

The luxury perfume store Flor in Borgo Santa Croce

The marathon was on Sunday morning and while I was on my way to the finish line I bumped into an unexpected find: the only brick-and-mortar store of one of my favorite websites, luisaviaroma.com. There I saw, and I am now officially in love with, Proenza Schouler new PS1 multicolor tote. I hope Santa is generous this year :-)

The store of luisaviaroma.com

Proenza Schouler PS1 multicolor tote

P.S. You can find more pictures of our trip on Flickr!

A first

Happy Black Friday!

Did you shop today? Did you score any good deal? I had a first Black Friday shopping experience, in the sense that I did not shop. Why? Well, I think that online shopping deals were really lame this year. Saks' online sale, which started yesterday, had no designer handbags and few sizes of most shoe styles. Neiman Marcus did not even discount regular collections, and offered instead an extra discount on items that were already on sale. Net-a-porter's season sale (the best of them all), was not available for international customers! But hey, I saved 10 euros on a red cover for my iPad...

Stop, relax, and think about your Christmas wishlist

Thanksgiving is over, and I hope you had a great day. I am sure you have wonderfully fed everyone, brilliantly entertained your guests, found time to make it a fun day for your kids, and probably already cleaned up. At least, this is generally me on a regular Thanksgiving evening. Around 11 pm, when everything is quiet, the dishwasher churning in the background, I make it a point to stop, relax, and enjoy some well-deserved "me" time thinking about my Christmas wishlist. 

This evening, I invite you to try to think about yourself for a little while, before the frenzy of holiday shopping, parties, travel begins. I am sure you deserve it too. Plus, tomorrow is Black Friday, so gotta have that wishlist ready...

Black Friday tips | Do your research

Aside from suggestions on specific items that you may consider buying with a discount (such as cardi-coats, which I covered in my earlier post), my best advice whether you are planning to hit the stores tomorrow or to shop online is that it is important to have a plan.

If you are planning an outing to the local mall, check out Madison Avenue Spy's post-Thanksgiving shopping tips. Check also my Twitter and Facebook feed, which I will continue updating throughout the day. And do not forget your tech! Apple has announced a day of big savings for tomorrow.

If you are shopping online, remember to create an account with your favourite stores, enter your credit card information and save the items you like in your wish list. It will then be very easy tomorrow morning to move them to your cart, and avoid seeing them snatched by someone else.

Did I leave anything out? I'd love to hear your feedback.


Photo: Damn Cool Pictures.

Black Friday tips | Invest in a cardi-coat

Happy Thanksgiving!

I am sure you have a busy day ahead, either cooking or attending family events, or both. Do not forget, however, that tomorrow is Black Friday! Hence here comes the first of a few tips I will be posting throughout the day. 

I start talking about cardi-coats because the weather has gotten cold and because holiday seasons generally means a lot of lounging around the house, travelling, outdoors activites, or all of the above. For these activities, one of my best allies is a cardi-coat. At home, I can wear it over jeans and a t-shirt for regular activities or layer it over a fancy dress for Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. For travelling, it keeps me cozier than a big scarf, and it allows me to have a clothing layer underneath that generally remains clean even when I am travelling with my son. For outdoor activites, I layer it under a puffer jacket to remain super-toasty. The added bonus is that a cardi-coat is perfect for  early spring or late fall as well.

Cardi-coats, however, do not come cheap (as you may remember from my earlier post on Fall knits). This is why I concentrate my purchases of cardi-coats after Thanksgiving. If you follow me on Twitter, you know that Saks' Thanksgiving sale has already started online, so you may start perusing there. The Tory Burch grey cardigan pictured above, which is made of a mercerized wool that likely will not pile easily, is now priced around 300 USD!

What is your Thanksgiving style?

I have lived in North America since 1999 and celebrating Halloween and Thanksgiving has been one of the constants of the past years of my life. Halloween as become particularly fun since my son was born, and we have continued to celebrate Thanksgiving with our American friends even after our move to Canada.

I am quite sad that this year we will not be able to keep up with the tradition. To cheer myself up, I decided to at least talk about Thanksgiving style. When I was still a PhD student in the US, I had the wonderful opportunity to celebrate Thanksgiving with a good friend of mine and her family, who are originally from Chicago, Illinois. It is one of the best memories of the time I spent in the US and gave me a good insider's view into a tradition that in Italy we do not have (Interestingly, the only thing we did not do, was to go shopping. In fact, I did not find out about Black Friday neil much later, when my husband and I were already dating.) I thought back about this holiday as I was browsing through net-a-porter's suggestions for Thanksgiving style, which for once hit the spot even for the rest of us. All options, from Home Time to Thanksgiving dinner and the Great Outdoors, are quite wearable, and the suggested outfits can be easily recreated with a lot of basics I am sure you already own. I am actually planning to take inspiration from this selection for my Christmas style!

Holiday season overload

I seem to remember that the cruise/spring collections used to become a new item around Christmas, not so much before! Perhaps my memory is not that good, or this year everything has come earlier because of the economic crisis... But the thing is that I am in fashion overload, with holiday shopping, holiday style and new season's style guides popping up everywhere. In addition, this year I am celebrating two birthdays before Christmas, mine and my mother's, and I am not even going to talk about school-related activities, kids' birthday parties and so on. So much for the most wonderful season of the year. 

If you are in the same situation, let me tell you what I am going to do to deal with the situation. I am going to go back to my motto: keep it simple. When applied to the holiday season, this means:

1. Concentrate all shopping-related activities after Thanksgiving. I will thus buy all presents online around that time -- if you are subscribed to their mailing lists, a few stores will offer "first dibs" even a couple of days before Thanksgiving. The key here is to do your research: I generally create accounts with a number of online sites and store my wishlist there, so that I can see quickly when the price has budged. Certain sites such as Shopbop will actually do the job for you and send you an email when the items in your wishlist go on sale.

2. Identify quickly holiday-appropriate outfits, and fill-in if necessary by taking advantage of shopping activities as in point 1 above.

3. Do not worry about the new season until February, since I am not going onto any beach vacation  -- and even if I would, the cruise collection will already be on sale by then anyway. :-)

NOTE: I wrote this post over a week ago and forgot to post it. I guess this is additional proof to my feeling of holiday season overload!

Birthday party bricolage!

I envy those creative moms who can always come up with new, interesting projects to entertain their kids. I have a few qualities, I think, but that is not one of them. I thus felt quite proud of myself today, because I was able to organize and coordinate a bricolages at my son's birthday party that the kids adored. Since we are close to Christmas, I decided to let them make their own Santa. I printed out on regular paper a standard-looking Santa, and then I bought supplies they could use to "dress" him: red felt fabric for his clothes, cotton for his clothes' trim, black felt for his boots, gold foil for his buckle, and glitter to give a magic touch to the whole thing. It was a success! The kids were really proud with their creations and, for once, I was not envious of anyone else.

Glad I just stopped by

This morning I woke up to a post of The Blonde Salad's Chiara Ferragni that made me a bit jelous. She was detailing what she got of the Versace for H&M collection at a press event last night. Looking at her picture (above) I could not help but think that I had to have that leather trench. I then entertained for a few minutes the idea of actually going to the launch (which I had been planning on skipping, as you may remember from my earlier post), but at that point it was already 8:30 am and I knew it was unlikely I could get in the store before noon -- and by then I was almost sure not to find anything or anything worth of buying. 

I did not think about the whole issue until much later in the day. My husband had decided to celebrate the end of a big project by going shopping downtown with me for a new puffer jacket for our son. (Did I mention that the temperature has dramatically dropped so that we have skipped coat season altogether? The weather is so humid that 5 degrees feel like -10, if you ask me -- and I live in Canada!). While we were going around, we kept seeing people carrying the Versace for H&M shopping bag, so I got curious. How could it be that people still found something to buy of the collection at 5 pm in the afternoon? I just could not understand what was going on. So we stopped by. 


Two things amazed me. First, the abundance of merchandise still on display: I think the only item I could not see were the scarves. Second, the fact that items were really "awful", to quote my husband. I would say: flashy and cheap-looking. I would have never worn the bag and the top I had my eyes on, let alone the trench, without looking... neither age- nor role-appropriate, I realized. Studded trench at the school meeting? Definitely not. To go to the office? Maybe if I would work in fashion. Date night? My husband said he would not take me dressed like that!


Photo: The Blonde Salad.

A little bit of home away from home

I have come to realize that adjusting back to live in a country where you have been missing for more than a decade is not easy, even when the country in question happens to be Italy. Yes, the food is yummy, the people are friendly, fashion access is unbeatable. Yet I miss our quiet life in Canada, our big house, our garden, our friends, what we have built as a family in the country we call home.

Pardon me the nostalgia. This evening I got in the mail Neiman Marcus' Christmas Book, delivered here, to our temporary Italian address. At the beginning the joy I felt for this little bit of home away from home reminded me of that episode of Sex and the City where Miranda receives her favorite magazine at her new Brooklyn address for the first time. Then, sadness kicked in. We will be here for a while, and I will not get to see our garden blossoming in the spring.

Sitting out... probably

You should know by now that the collection of Versace for H&M will launch in a couple of days, in Italy on November 17 at 9 am to be exact.

I am not a hard-core fan of H&M collaborations, but I have done Jimmy Choo and Lanvin back in Montreal. The former was a satisfying experience, but not on the day itself -- I scored the best piece (a pair of leather leggings for 70$) the day after, as I was going to return a couple of things I realized I did not like. Lanvin was a bit more disappointing, but I still got a nice t-shirt that in a regular store would have sold for an insane price. The thing is that, exactly because I am not a hard-core fan of these collaborations, I never went to sit outside H&M at 5 am. I arrived around 7:30 am in both cases, and at that time I was lucky to be among the first group of shoppers. As I am looking through the Versace for H&M lookbook, I am thus thinking whether it is worth the effort. Yes, there are a couple of pieces I would like, but...

A couple of things I would like from the Versace for H&M collaboration

However, if you are planning to go for the opening, let me share a few tips from my previous experience:

1. BE PREPARED. whether you are among the first group of shoppers, and especially if you arrive a bit later, you need to know what you want. The crowd inside the store will be so intense that you will not have time to shop around. The web is your best ally here, and you can browse the complete lookbook on Fashionologie.

2. DRESS WARMLY. This may seem silly, but my first time at Jimmy Choo I froze my feet off while I was waiting outside. The second time for Lanvin I wore heavy socks, gloves and a hat, and that made the experience a lot more bearable.

3. DO NOT TRY THINGS ON. Once inside the store, it will be madness. Lines for a dressing room will be long (especially if you arrive later in the day). I suggest to grab what you can, and try things on at home. Everything is returnable, after all.

4. CHOOSE YOUR TIMING. Most H&M collaborations are sold out within the first few hours of hitting the floor. Either you can get to a store by noon on launch day, or you may be making a useless trip. Rather, go a day or two after the launch and asks for returned merchandise -- you may have more to choose from.

1000 visitors!

It seems like yesterday that we hit 100 visitors and now we have already reached 1000! Thank you all for following us, and stay tuned for more news about sales and holiday shopping!

P.S. The image above is that of a thank you card (no longer available) by Bonnie Marcus, who once worked for Diane Von Furstenberg. I just discovered her lovely collection (thanks The Chic Spy!) and I know where I'll get my holiday stationery...

FW11 trends | All about my platforms

Stuart Weitzman platform ankle boots (Photo: Footnotesonline)

Welcome back blog readers! As you know, I was planning on being busy until Monday with my son's birthday-related activities. But guess what? Today the school called and he has come down with a fever. We thus had to postpone the party until next week, and I will be spending the next couple of days at home. I do not mind either of these things, but I hate when he is sick.

So here I am, trying to keep myself busy while I wait a bit to go to sleep to make sure his fever has come down. I realized our series on Fall trends has been missing a post about shoes, and this is the perfect moment to fill this gap. I have left shoes for last because, as you may remember, I have had a foot injury since earlier this year. Whatever its cause, the result is that I had pretty much no comfortable shoes to wear among those I have brought along from Canada. At the beginning, I have tried to see how could I wear them anyway. The result is that I have spent much of September wearing either one pair of Geox sneakers I had bought during the summer in Belgium or one pair of Prada peep-toes I have had for three years.

In the end, I decided to start fresh and I compiled a list of the essential footwear I needed for everyday use, taking into account the Fall trends:

1. Heels: this season is all about sky-high heels. Even in normal conditions, I am not used to wear them, and because of my foot injury I cannot wear ballerinas either (which are always in fashion and have saved most of my days in the past few years). I settled for mid-heels, in the form of a pair of black patent Jimmy Choos that I have bought on sale at Saks during our last trip to the US, and I still seem to be able to wear. I have then added a pair of Valentino Rockstud neutral patent mid-heels, which I have had my eyes on for a long while.

Valentino "Rockstud" mid-heels (Photo: Divanee)

2. Mocassins: they are the other pillar of the FW11 footwear closet, to match the androgyne trend in clothing. I have tried several pairs and decided that I am not the mocassins type though. Yet I shopped my closet and found a pair of Joie taupe Oxford flats I got last year, which I find still quite comfortable.

3. Platforms: according to my super-trendy, mother-of-two best friend, this season it is all about platforms. Obviously, since she told me, I have really been keeping my eyes open for a good pair. I stumbled upon a pair of Stuart Weiltzmann boots in a nearby store (pictured above), and I have to say that I am in love. They are the most comfortable pair of boots I have, and they make me feel awfully tall.

4. Sparkle and precious metals: Metallics are another big trend this season. Around Fashion Week, Miu Miu sparkle heels were deemed the unofficial shoe of the event by many observers, and in Milan I could see only people wearing silver sandals. Buying sandals in September was obviously not an option, and I cannot wear sky-high heels such as Miu Miu (actually, let's not kid ourselves, even if they would have a lower heels, when would I have ever have the occasion of showing them off?), so I have been hunting for a pair of mid-heels. That has proved and almost impossible task though!

Miu Miu FW11 sparkle heels (Photo: Looking Fab at Every Age)

5. Boots: if you have bought a pair of over-the-knee boots in the past couple of years, hold on to them dearly and wear them proudly. I will do so with my Giuseppe Zanotti black ones. You may want to invest in a pair of motorcycle boots (best if short), which are also all the rage this season. And for the big chill... A pair of Rockstud Moonboots, of course!

Valentino "Rockstud" Moonboots, also available in white (Photo: Valentino)

See you on Monday!

Today was my son's fifth birthday. It was also a school day with afternoon activities, but we succeeded in making it a really special day for him. Last night I had baked him a cake, and we let him sleep in our bed so that we could wish him happy birthday as soon as he opened his eyes. And did I mention the weather was gorgeous? After a few days of rain, we are back at 17 degrees, sunny. I have not yet worn my coat and I am enthusiastic about it! In occasion of my son's birthday we have relatives visiting until next week, plus the birthday party to organize for Saturday, so I'll be offline until Monday. Check back then for my report!

Participant observation

Participant observation in Ghana (Photo: Ricochet Dreamer)

Last saturday afternoon I went to my first kids' birthday party in Italy. It was a small affair, with about 10 kids in total and 5 moms besides me. All other children and their moms had known each other for years because they attend kindergarden together. I was thus the outsider, and I was so curious about this situation that I felt a bit like a participant observer anthropologist who is studying another culture. Here are my observations:

OBSERVATION #1: The setting. Kids had been brought to the party by their moms, and the only dad in sight was the father of the birthday boy. Surprisingly, especially for an Italian man, he took the initiative of leaving us moms to chat in the living room, while he went to attend to the kids!

OBSERVATION #2: The demographics. Because of my profession, this was obviously the first aspect that caught my attention. I fit within the same age range of the other moms, and we all had had our kids around the age of thirty. (The only one who had had her first kid at 27 was almost apologetic about it.) All other moms had at least an undergraduate degree (half also a master's degree, and one a doctorate obtained abroad), and were working full time. Most surprisingly to me considering Italy's low fertility (in the North, the average number of children per woman is less then 1.5), I was the only one with one child: three moms had two children each, and two had three children. In all cases, children were spaced no more than two and half years.

OBSERVATION #3: Work-family balance. I am sure you are now wondering: full-time job + at least two kids = who is helping these moms? The answer is: definitely not the husbands. Let me rephrase: probably the husbands do help, but the helpers who are much talked about are, rather, the grandparents. To give just one example: the mother-in-law who takes the train every morning at 6 am to make sure she can arrive in Milan to take care of the kids before the parents go to work. A nanny is a second-best solution that is chosen only if grandparents are unavailable, which was the case only for one of the moms at the party. Interestingly, nobody counts on friends or other relatives.

OBSERVATION #4: "Work is easy." All moms agreed that going to work is the easy part of the day, because you deal with adults and with situations that you have generally been trained to master. The difficult part is to stay at home with the kids, especially during the weekends. Yet there are no regrets, and nobody complains about it. It is how the world works for us contemporary thirty-something moms.

OBSERVATION #5: Style and fashion. I was impressed by the fact that all moms had a definite sense of style, and took obviously good care of themselves. You can say that only one was "fashionable", sporting over-the-knee black suede boots with skinny jeans. But none of them had messy hair or smudged makeup, and impeccable clothing. I gotta remember this next time I am about to slip into the sweatpants-to-get-groceries trap...

Quick sales update

A few years ago, when I was traveling to the US East Coast more often, I subscribed to the newsletter of Madison Avenue Spy, an exceptional source of information about bargains, sales, and a lot more (you can read more about how the blog started from the words of Lila Delilah, the blogger behind it, here). Although obviously it is skewed towards local happenings in New York City, I find it really useful because in the US the sales are steered by the big department stores, which are present a bit everywhere and now (read: post economic crisis) generally ship worldwide.

So, here is the quick sale update from Madison Avenue Spy: on November 9, Saks is holding its "Private Night", which marks the unofficial start of sale season. As Lila Delilah would say, the best bargains come in the end; but you may want to start shopping around, because the Cruise collection is shipping in a couple of weeks and the stores need to make space!

P.S. You can subscribe to Madison Avenue Spy's newsletter directly from their website.

Sales alert

Don't get too excited, since Black Friday is still three weeks away. Yet I have noticed that this year there seems to be an endless number of promotions that I do not remember from previous years. You can believe me, because I monitor sales (especially online ones) quite closely, and I am proud to seldom buy at full price.

The thing is that, as most other contemporary moms, I have a limited amount of time for myself, and an even more limited amount of time to dedicate to shopping. In fact I have come to almost hate shopping in regular stores, with their often small and confusing display of merchandise and their full prices. This is why I rather shop online, where I never have to wait for the item I want in my size to be transferred from another store and where I can generally find sale prices.

I never pre-order and I always wait for a promotion. This year they are quite abundant and may help you if you need to buy a coat right now, although obviously if you can wait a few weeks until Thanksgiving you are better off. Here are my highlights:

SHOPPING FOR YOUR KIDS
Yesterday I stopped by Jacadi in Milan to pick up a nice pair of shoes for my son's birthday party next week. I found a 30% markdown on most fall items, from sweaters to shoes. The sale is not online in either North America or Europe, but you may want to give a call to you local store. In any case, you can always fall back on Ralph Lauren, which has a vast online sale section for kids' clothing all year long (shipping is limited to the US though, unfortunately for me).

SHOPPING FOR YOURSELF
In Canada, Holt Renfrew has a gift card promotion this weekend (November 5-6). It is, as usual at Holt's, a bit of a lame promotion because most designer brands such as Prada and Brunello Cucinelli are excluded. Contemporary designers such as Marc Jacobs and Phillip Lim are included though.
The sales "Mecca" is obviously the US. Neiman Marcus has an online First Call sale on Contemporary designers and cashmere, and I am sure interesting sales in store as well. Saks has an online sale as well, as usual quite limited (think 12 handbags, literally), but it will have great deals in store. On the contrary, Nordstrom's half-yearly sale for women and kids is worth a visit online, but probably not much in store from my previous experience. All three stores ship worldwide very efficiently, particularly Neiman Marcus (yes, I tried!)

Did you find any good deals you's like to share?

Reinventing the clutch

I just read a terrific post by Design Mom about clutches. As you may remember from my earlier post, clutches are quite trendy this season, either small or large. Yet it is true that the rest of us moms find no use for them considering the amount of stuff we usually need to carry around for our little ones.

Being a clutch-obsessed myself, here are the two ways to put a clutch to a good use on regular work days, even if you are leaving the house with your kids:

1. A small clutch (like this one by Diane Von Furstenberg, which has the added advantage of a hidden chain strap) can be used as a makeup bag and fit into a larger tote. For lunch or after-work drinks with your colleagues, you can leave the tote at the office and show off the clutch!

DVF clutch (Photo: dvf.com)

2. A larger envelope clutch (like this Jimmy Choo clutch, priced at less than 500$) is the perfect iPad/paper pad sleeve and can also be fit into a larger tote. Then wear the clutch to your next business meeting for extra-style!

Jimmy Choo "Zulu" clutch (Photo: jimmychoo.com)

Our Italian Halloween

Spiderweb meringue

I will remember this one as the most different Halloween I have ever celebrated. We are in Italy, so it was a lot about family and food, obviously: at lunchtime, my son, my mom and I watched an Halloween cooking special, and for dinner we surprised everyone with a "eye soup" that was simply delicious (the recipe is at the bottom; I wish I had a picture, but we ate it too fast!). Then there were the sweets baked by the local pastry chef (whose daughter dreams to move to Canada, nothing less). And obviously there were the treats. Since we knew that the locals who live in our small town would have not had treats for my son if we would have just showed up at their door, we decided to improvise. We made small bags filled with Chocolates and then we went to give them to the neighbors. My son was dressed in his dragon costume, but I decided to leave even my witch hat home in order not to look too weird to anyone. The neighbors had one of two reactions when my son offered them the treats: "I am sorry, I have nothing to give you in return!" and "It is very nice of you, but you should eat them!". The mayor's mom, who could not bear if we would have left empty-handed, invited us in for a drink and threw in for good measure a bottle of wine for us to take home.

Bone meringue

My son, who is very generous, loved this trick-or-treating tour. Yet once we got home he looked at us with big eyes and asked: "but who is going to give me treats?" We had an answer ready though: we explained him that in these small towns it is a witch who bring treats to the kids once the night falls. Sure enough, once we finished dinner, we heard spooky noises coming from the garden and... Voilà: the treats materialized for my son's joy. Perfect.

Recipe: Carrot soup with eyes

Ingredients: ingredients for a normal carrot soup, plus 10 mini-mozzarellas and a bunch of green stuffed olives.

Instructions: Prepare the carrot soup and let cool. Meanwhile, halve the olives, and insert each half in one mini-mozzarella. Put two or three of these mozzarella "eyes" in each soup bowl and serve. (You can watch the video here, in Italian).