By Anne-Marie Kovacs, Chief Wife
Wine aficionado, wine snob, wine geek or sommelier in training? We all know one. Or want to become one. Well, here  are some great kits to up the ante by Le Nez du Vin by Wine Aromas.

Le Nez du Vin make the optimal oenophile training kits. Each kit – and there are 6 of them – contains petite vials, each filled with different aromas and notes imbued in wine.
“Le Nez du Vin Series is a discovery tool to educate and develop your sense of smell and enhance your enjoyment of wine”.
The foundation principle of Le Nez du Vin [...]

These Father’s Day gift ideas are brought to you by GGAB, aka the Gift Giving Advisory Board’s in our Second Annual Sponsored Father’s Day Gift Guide. Enjoy this novel selection from independent creative businesses that excel at delighting us with their ingenious new products. 

By Anne-Marie Kovacs, Chief Wife
Father’s Day is coming up. Might you have a rabid vintage music fan as a husband, father, brother? Or a wannabe music historian? The Burton History Trees are for them. What an absolutely fantastic – and exciting – gift idea for those hard-to-shop-for men.
The Burton Trees are unique kind of wall art, a visual & artistic rendition of music history. These graphic “trees” document music history along the recognized “format” of the family tree. Each tree is arranged by chronological order, where the roots describe the “building blocks” of an era, a band or musical genre. The [...]

By Audrey van Petegem, Chief Editor
Recently, I wrote an article about feeling beautiful as I age. In the article I included BOOMbox Network’s beauty survey that asked the question, ”How do women over the age of 45 REALLY feel about ‘beauty’ at their age”. A not-so-surprising finding is how important hair is to women. Healthy hair defines our youth and can determine if we age “gracefully” or not.
I have a dear friend, you all know her, who has always had gorgeous hair, and for 20 years I have been jealous (yes, jealous) of her hair. Beautiful thick, silky long mane of hair. I [...]

By Anne-Marie Kovacs, Chief Wife
I’m a wannabe locavore (that means eating locally produced food all year round). But, living in the Midwest, it’s just not practical. I need food with color all year round, not just in the summer.
With farmers’ market season rolling in, I can play the locavore part  - for a few short months at least. I get ambitious strolling down the market, poking fruit and veggies and asking questions on how to prepare obscure produce such as garlic scapes or salsify. All this freshness is so tempting that I invariably stock my basket with much more than my family can [...]

By Audrey van Petegem, Chief Editor
I was given a sample pair of Dear Kate panties to try. I thought that the bikini with the full protection were cute and I could see the benefit of them for my age. Dear Kate was started by a young woman who saw a need for leak resistant underwear for her heavy periods. She did not want to compromise style with practicality, so she came up with a line that she would want to wear. When she realized how popular they were, not only heavy periods but also for women with bladder control, she [...]

What kind of Mother’s Day gift do you buy for your mom or that mother-figure in your life? It often seems like women have everything. So, how do we give them something special and meaningful? That’s exactly why you need the Gift Giving Advisory Board’s 3rd Annual Sponsored Mother’s Day Gift Guide – presented to you here.

By Anne-Marie Kovacs, Chief Wife
My 10 lbs clown-of-a-dog Toy Poodle is actually a real scaredy cat. As much as he’ll let any visitor to our home know to “beware” ’cause he’s watching them, he’s also the best snuggle-bunny when he’s just with us. And, he also turns into a nervous mess as soon as the skys thunder in the slightest. It does seem that his anxiety has gotten worse with age (he’s celebrating his 9th birthday this week).
I discovered the ThunderShirt at the International Housewares Show this past March and got a sample. I knew I wanted to try this on Skippy [...]

By Audrey van Petegem, Chief Editor
You may already be familiar with these handy little Stick-Um!, but, for me, they were an Uh-huh moment and I find them just brilliant! As the namesake states, UM! is the first sound made when you have an epiphany. And each of their products are genius solutions created to make our life a little bit more organized.
Each product uses nano-suction technology; meaning that there are millions of little suction cups that allow the products to stick to a clean, flat surface. When you touch them they feel sticky but really it is just all these [...]

By Anne-Marie Kovacs, Chief Wife
I’m a baby boomer. And I think that I speak for many of us when I say that, despite all of our bravado that speaks of how much more confident we are as we age, how much better we feel about ourselves now that we are no longer caught up in the angst of youth… there are still a bunch of things that suck. Like thining hair. Arrrgh.
It never even occured to me that this would happen. I expected wrinkles, waistline expansion, gravity taking hold of various body parts… But thining hair? That was never something that [...]