By Audrey van Petegem, Contributing Editor
Don’t know what to get for your son or daughter for graduation?  If they are music lovers and they already have the latest iPod, iPhone, iMac, iPad and anything else that starts with an ‘I’, then this would be the perfect gift. Bughouse Art and Design is a Los Angeles design studio that has music inspired art and furniture made with images of old LPs and cassettes (do you remember what these are?) and home stereos. Several musical genres are depicted in their designs such as classic rock, jazz and reggae [...]

Like many of you, I’ve just celebrated Mother’s Day. At brunch today, instead of basking in the glory of my achievements as a mother (and all my shortcomings, but there is no assigned holiday to wallow in that), I was mainly thinking that I was no longer that cute young mom that has to keep her toddlers in check, forcing them to behave in the white-tablecloth and fine china setting. That part was a relief to me. But it came with the mixed feeling that it took years to get there and that those years took their physical toll. I’m [...]

Haven’t gotten anything for your mother’s Mother’s Day gift?  Here are some great ideas, all of them affordable and all from Ikea:
For the coffee lover – BLOSSANDE is a set of coffee accessories with 3 different stainless steel stencils and 2 shakers. Simply shake the shaker that is filled with either cinnamon or chocolate powder over one of the stencils to make a lovely pattern on your morning latte. What a special way for the mother in your life to start her day off. They also could be used to sprinkle a powdered sugar design on cookies or cupcakes. $12.99
 
 
For [...]

By Kym Tolson, Guest Author
Hypnosis is fantastic for promoting healthy sleep patterns. You can use self-hypnosis to help induce a deep state of relaxation that will lead to nights of deep uninterrupted sleep. Using my P.R.E.V.A.I.L system from my last article, you can practice self-hypnosis to induce long lasting subconscious changes to eliminate insomnia forever. The following is a step-by-step guide to help you sleep more soundly.
(P) repare your environment
Prepare yourself for success.  Eliminate all caffeine after 11:00 am.  Exercise early in the day. Arrange your sleeping area to become a sleep sanctuary. Make sure your bedroom is [...]

Until I discovered someecards.com some months ago, I had been feeling very sad about the sorry selection of ecards (Please. No. Not another teddy bear, rainbow, balloons and cheezy platitudes). But, admittedly, someecards are perhaps a wee bit too irreverent to be appropriate for everyone and every occasion.
This is where VerveCards.com comes in: colorfully designed and clever with a great choice of very “appropriate” ecards when that is required. Nancy, co-founder of VerveCards, apparently as appalled as I by the dismal choice of reasonably decent ecards ( I know, it’s just totally outreageous!), actually did something about it. Her moment [...]

Susie Lennox, one of the founders of Yes® Pure Intimacy, worked in the pharmaceutical industry for years. She was having an issue supporting products that could actually do more harm to people than help them. So, she and a colleague decided to quit and create a new company with integrity. The product they created was a Certified Organic lubricant.
I loved discovering Susie’s sense of humor as I listened to her story. Just the name of the website Yes!Yes!Yes!.org shows it. On a serious note, I loved what she had to say about this product. Currently, Yes comes either as an [...]

We’ve been hacked into. Again… No worries, our site is safe for you to visit. But in order to secure it, we had to restore every.single.freekin.file. Thanks to my web master extraordinaire, Matt Rochow, the restoration process is almost complete.
So, please pardon our appearance as tweaks and retrieval of files  is still going on. A few pages and functions are still looking rickety in the process.
Thanks for your patience!