Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Don't stop because I told you to, or because now that I've mentioned it you've gone red in the face--guilty. Stop feeling sorry for yourself because nothing constructive comes of that emotional posture. Self-pity begins as stress, anxiety, frustration, or disappointment. The mind is a funny thing; sometimes it seems hard-wired to keep us from doing that very thing which would alleviate our emotional burden, whether that's taking action, or ...

Here I am, back again today, to tell you that your house is dirty. Weeee! Our last spring cleaning task was to attack the sticky residue coating your kitchen. (Did you do that, huh? Did ya?) Today, we're covering our bases by focusing on the crumbly bits hanging out all over your kitchen--the ones that normal cleanings most likely miss. Like where, for instance? We may not have solved the mystery of how so many crumbs end ...

Little did Brynn Olson of Brynn Olson Design Group know that her work would one day serve as a mid-week blog eyeball treat, but here we are. A bit of background about Brynn: Based in Chicago, the artist-since-childhood cum designer began her ascent in the world of interiors at Nate Berkus. That's right, I said Nate Berkus Associates was her first professional foray in design, a position she worked at full time while simultaneously earning her degree in ...

The whole point of this Live Simply business is to ask, "Why?" about items which previously have held a place in people's lives, "just 'cause." This is as true for furniture as it is for dental floss, and as true for flower vases as for fruit bowls. The latter of those examples is one which, in my experience, rarely gets rethought. At some point in time (marriage?) a fruit bowl is procured, placed atop the ...

  I watched a snippet of an interview of Oprah Winfrey over the weekend, in which Oprah was recounting how she got her start on television. At one of her first positions,  her news director at the time had evidently said, "We're going to have to do something about that name, 'cause nobodies going to remember it or know how to pronounce it." Oprah had always yearned for a more normal name, a name like ...