By Audrey van Petegem, Chief Editor
What does your perfect Mother’s Day look like? For me, it is breakfast in bed with the newspaper and my young girls competing on whose school-made gift I will open first. It is either going out to lunch or walking the dogs with my 20 year old son, who knows that spending an afternoon together has been our tradition on Mother’s Day for the last six years. Simple, right? How easy for us to enjoy this day that became an official celebration for mothers over 100 years ago.
Not all countries, mind you, have a day [...]

By Audrey van Petegem, Senior Editor
I don’t know if you remember back in 1979 when Penne Laingen’s husband, who worked at the American Embassy in Iran, was taken hostage. Inspired by the song, Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree, Penne tied yellow ribbons around the trees in her front yard to symbolize her desire for his return home. I remember thinking it was such a powerful image and people were encouraged to tie their own yellow ribbons to show support.
Yellow ribbons were resurrected again as the symbol for the soldiers to return home safely from fighting in [...]

The Succulent Wives are taking a little (very little) time off this summer. While we are still actively working on bringing you new content and ideas every week, we have also decided to bring back some of our favorite posts from the archives, those that are still timely, relevant, useful and that deserve to be revisited. Thanks for allowing us to recharge. We promise that we will be coming back with more new ideas and recommendations for cool stuff than you’ll know what to do with…
By Audrey van Petegem, Senior Editor
We wrote about the movie, Waiting for Superman, two years [...]

If you have been reading us for a while, it’s pretty clear to you that we love products and businesses with a good story. This is one such GREAT story AND cause. It’s about Arzu Studio Hope.
Arzu (which means hope in Dari, a variety of the Persian language spoken in Afghanistan) was founded in 2004 by social entrepreneur Connie K. Duckworth. Connie left the world of finance to start this enterprise with the mission to promote women’s rights and economic empowerment in Afghanistan. She knew nothing about that country or about international development and nothing about rugs but she knew [...]

By Audrey van Petegem, Senior Editor

Here in the United States, the month of March is dubbed Women’s History Month, but today, March 8, is globally known as International Women’s Day. You did not know this? Well, I don’t think you are the only one. Although it is an official holiday in almost 30 countries world-wide, with some countries giving all women the day off, as in China, Madagascar and Nepal, it is not that well known here in North America.
Believe it or not it has been around (known as International Working Women’s Day) since the early 1900′s. It started more [...]

Throughout the pages of The Succulent Wife, you will see numerous articles about companies and products that contribute to making this planet a better place to live on. Whether it is about helping the environment or about helping each other, we are always passionate about sharing their stories.

Thus, this Gift Guide is near and dear to us. The ideas shared here show us that we can all be conscious shoppers, make our gift recipient happy and, all at the same time, also greatly impact the life of someone less fortunate. It becomes a win-win for everyone. And it’s so easy [...]

Anne-Marie and Audrey van Petegem met Robin Smalley, Director and Co-Founder of mothers2mothers, at BlogHer 2011 in the Johnson&Johnson room. She shared stories of the women and the babies that mothers2mothers helps, the role that Johnson&Johnson plays in financially supporting global health issues and the bright future for women with HIV and their children. The energy, passion and dedication that Robin has towards these women and their babies is nothing short of being heroic. She found her true calling after she left the high profile world of being an award-winning television director/producer for shows such as Entertainment Tonight, Lifestyles of [...]

By Audrey van Petegem, Senior Editor
Have you noticed recently that there seems to be a lot of men sporting new mustaches? There is a reason for this. By now, we are well aware that October is Breast Cancer Awareness month (we wrote about it last month). This month is Movember (mo is slang for mustache) where globally, men are growing mustaches to raise awareness and funds for men’s health issues such as prostate cancer.
My brother-in-law Brian had prostate cancer and supports the cause of early detection through PSA (Prostate-Specific Antigen) screening (he is always asking my husband, Scott, what his [...]

By Audrey van Petegem, Senior Editor
I know that I’ve mentioned that my mother-in-law is a breast cancer survivor. I know how passionate she is about the fight to end cancer, because even as a very, very private person, she is very open about being a 6th year breast cancer survivor, she wears lots of pink and supports cancer research in a multitude of ways.
So, when I found out about Save the ta-tas Pink Hair Project,

By Audrey van Petegem, Senior Editor
We love to support companies that do great work here and abroad. By now, we are all now quite familiar with (and wearing) Toms Shoes and we love the great work the company does around the world (Did you know that Toms does eyewear now, under the same One-for-One principle).  In fact, we wrote about them three years ago already. Here are some other shoe companies that also do great work in their own way, whether it is helping the environment, fighting poverty or helping women.
 
For the Young Ones
Chooze Shoes – Here are some perfect [...]