customers...

1. MZ, former owner of A to Z, carrying large fuzzy brown bag
2. photo of Ellie and her mom - eli put together her very colorful pink outfit
3. Charlotte playing with the bird calls
4. Charlotte's mom and Ellie's mom exchanging info about necklaces
5. BD, carrying great looking black shoulder bag
6. Two women came into today, interior designers, who I found out went to Brearley and Spence and I went to Nightingale! Small world...
7. W. from Nike stopped by yesterday - was in town to put together a new showroom designspace
8. B. came in to order another Flora ring in size 1.25!! "we are such stuff that dreams are made on" - Shakespeare

texture of the week...

personality tests...

I was reading Alicia's blog : (http://bloom-grow-love.blogspot.com) and then clicked on a link to a site called "blogthing". I have just spent the last 5 mins taking various quizzes... that one can then post onto their own blog...

Your Extroversion Profile:

Activity Level: Very High

Friendliness: Very High

Assertiveness: High

Cheerfulness: High

Excitement Seeking: Medium

Sociability: Medium

How Extroverted Are You?

Halloween '06

To have so much hair is a dream however a bit warm under all the chandeliers at work... it was fun while it lasted! However I may bring it out one more time this year. Stay tuned... -mk

still life from last Saturday

This combination of merchandise was bought by a friend of mine. Hammered silver plate boxes sit calmly next to Victorian style boxes.

on the outside looking in...

I spent this afternoon at our offices in Brooklyn. I wanted to pick up some more gift wrap for the store to actually use to wrap gifts and see replenish some inventory. When I arrived I saw that we had received more graphite objects, so I checked it all in and took the entire order to the store, along with more Jean Rouget boxes of paper, tubes of pencils, gift wrap and letterpress cards. I was carrying so much that I ended up taking a car service back to ABC. It was nice to goto the office and get some stuff done. Hopefully once I find a part-time person I can spend one day at the office and the other 4 days at Cursive... we will see...

the drawing doll...

Monday, Sept 25th

Unbeknownst to us, at Cursive, Rachael Ray featured the "drawing" doll on her morning talkshow and by 2pm we were inundated with phone calls regarding the "drawing" doll. Our phone has never rung so much in a day then in the last 3 days. Don't get me wrong, it is great and the # of orders we've received is amazing! You go girl (Rachael Ray)!!

Mostly women have called in, though there have been a few men calling for their wives, who seem as perplexed about the whole process of finding out what this doll can do as we are about explaining what is ABC, why one cannot buy off of ABC's website, why they've been transferred from one dept to another and why no one knows where this doll is sold elsewhere in the States!

All in all it has been a great phone experience and I've met some very nice people in Texas, Colorado, California, Wisconsin, Maryland, Indiana and Ohio.

my daily notebook

weekly flower post:



I keep a collection of notes in a hable construction journal. This is my 2nd journal which is jammed with postcards, logos cut from shopping bags, business cards, post-its that inspire me. I write out lists of SKUs that need to be printed for new merchandise arriving that week, take down messages from friends or editors, and in the back of notebook are business cards/contact info from recent acquaintances that have walked into the shop etc... I have numbered them and have 66 "friends/networking" contacts so far...


September 13th
Goo-gone applied to a teardrop vase inspires the word of the day: "viscous" as well as its noun form "viscosity" - eb

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Friday, Sept 21st
I love the ease of this outfit. It was worn by a customer who reminded me a bit of Bobbi Brown, the make-up artist. She was wearing a fabulous collection of rings and bracelets, silver birkenstocks (which she swears by), wide-legged jeans, and a top by Lulu Lemon (pronounced Le-mond) bought in L.A.



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The difference between having a conversation with eb and with me:
eb: you will have a good time. It's all about the customer
mk: we will trade information and network. I will have commented on something you are wearing or that you look familiar etc...

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September 26th: df's phrase of the day: "sometimes a gal needs lumber"

It's another week and I am already pooped! I just worked 7 days straight because one of my employees, AP, is in France for a month visiting her elderly mother so EB and I must pick up the slack... I gave EB yesterday off so I worked my first Sunday which was fun but also a bit too quiet for my tastes.

My first customer was a mother and son. While the mother looked at rollerball pens, I distracted her son with our graphite object that writes like a pencil. The son is 5 years old, loves trains and just had his first swimming lesson yesterday. The mother ended up buying a rollerball pen, a large square Binth notepad, a box of Jack and Lulu "Neopolitan" cards and a mini hourglass with white sand. I think the mother has bought from us before because she looks really familiar.

The rest of the day was quiet with a sale here and there...

I'm a bit overwhelmed with photo projects and trying to re-design my bedroom. I have a gift certificate (won at a raffle from the ZT benefit) for the elfa shelving system from Container Store that I want to use as my stuff is taking over my room. I did organize all my clothing so that I can find things to wear every day...

It's 1:30am thursday morning and I want to download photos from my camera onto my laptop unfortunately my startup disk is full and so I must delete files. The easy way out is to buy more memory. I do have an external hard drive except that I am still trying to figure out the easiest way to transfer all my photos onto the drive... Nothing is ever that easy...

SLR digital camera

I am attending a wedding this weekend and also photographing it for my friends. I met up with the groom at Adorama this afternoon to look over the digial SLR camera they rented for me. It will be my first event using a SLR digital and I am really excited to try it out...

October brings the Fall/Holiday season and I am really excited to bring in the new merchandise to the store. One of the pieces that has done well for us is a necklace I wear by Jeanine Payer:





This photo of a single horse chestnut was featured in the Sept 2006 issue of Oprah Magazine. We've sold 2 pieces from this great press!

it's raining once again...

I manage a small 200 square foot shop which carries fine stationery and
high-end curiosities. I love interacting with customers especially our
repeat customers. I can't wait for our holiday items to come in
because I think we will do really well with them. Today I am going in
for 3.5 hours to relieve EB, one of my employees, so that he can have
1/2 day off. EB and I are both working through our days off since my
other employee took 10 days off.

Yesterday afternoon I spoke with two very cute and articulate 3 year
old boys. Both boys were with their mothers. The 1st boy was holding
hands with his mother. He exclaimed to me (without provocation) that
they had a banana nut muffin in their bag and that they would be eating
it in the car because he didn't want to get the store all messy. The
2nd boy happened to come into our shop 10 minutes before closing. His
mother is the owner of Giggle. This little boy mentioned that they
were having a mommy's day, had been to Times Square and were doing
mommy's errands. Two nice conversations within a very quiet day.

We re-merchandised the shop yesterday so it looks neater and fuller.
We hung some collages from Clare Goddard, an artist from New Zealand
and mixed around collections of journals and boxed cards. Also the
jewelry cabinet is stocked once again!

Cross your fingers that today will be busier.

this morning it began to pour so hard that the rain was coming down west to east however it wasn't raining in Brooklyn... it's so odd how the weather works. It is almost as if each neighborhood of NYC has a different weather system.

concert in the park...

11:41am on a beautiful Sunday in New York - I am sitting in my livingroom listening to "wait, wait don't tell me" on NPR and thinking I have to log off and get ready to leave the apt in 15 minutes. My sister and I have invited our friends to join us for a picnic and music this afternoon. It will be groovy tunes by the husband + wife team Amadou + Miriam performing at Rumsey Playfield.

more later....

Sunday in the Garden

It's 11:25am on Wednesday morning and I am trying to complete some of my many mini projects before going into work. One mini project is writing a letter to my 13 year old cousin, Maryann, who is at a camp in Connecticut. I remember opening up my mailbox at camp and finding personal mail from my parents or sister. It makes one's day that's for sure!

Sunday, my sister and I went up to the New York Botanical Garden to view the Dale Chihuly exhibit. It was amazing! She had gone up the day before with a friend of hers and had actually paid the $20.00 to see the exhibit HOWEVER they don't check your tickets so if you do go, pay the $6.00 admission fee, and you can see both the gardens and the Chihulys!

KM sat outside while I spent almost 2 hours in the Conservatory. She knew that I would want to take a photo of everything in sight and boy did I!

We had perfect summer weather - not all bright sunshine but just enough to get some color - and just enough of a breeze to keep us cool. I've widdled down the 250 digital photographs of the Chihulys and of flowers to my ultra favorites:

Zaha Hadid

Just got back from viewing Zaha Hadid's exhibit at the Guggenheim Museum. I had not been in this museum for a long time and now the facade is blanketed by scaffolding for who knows how long... I was able to get in free by showing my MAD ID. I should try and get to all the museums before it expires in October... Zaha Hadid's drawings was difficult to understand however the colors she uses to detail her drawings were brillant and bright. Her furniture specifically flows and looks extremely comfortable to sit on. Most of her drawings were from different angles and overviews of cities. The part I loved was towards the top of the museum. Large photographs of Ms. Hadid's work were blown up and covered the curves of the back wall of the museum. Models of these projects were on the opposite side. It created narrow passageways for the public to go through however it seemed like another one of her projects. Pushing people to move around one another while viewing her work.

A strange day weather-wise. Meredith and I missed the torrential cats & dogs storm while underground on our way to dim sum go-go. We were 1/2 hour late meeting mom and dad, fumiko and jorge and rick and elizabeth sanford. Elizabeth is Brazilian and speaks Portugese. Mom thought it would be fun for Jorge to meet her and also discuss her work at the UN. The food was delicious.

colds & reunions

I caught a cold on Saturday... I know when I caught it too. The evening of my 20th high school reunion. I tried to keep it under wraps so that I felt ok for the dinner.

I attended a small school so I knew it was going to be fun to re-connect with my class which had 29 women in its graduating class. Here are some factoids:
- out of 29 women in our graduating class, 11 showed up
- 7 of whom are married.
- out of those 7 women, 6 of them have children
- we all grew up in New York - 4 of us have settled here, the others are in L.A., CT, MA, MD, MA, GA, CA and our exchange student from England settled there too.

The women who were not able to make it are scattered along the California coast, East Coast and a few landed in Ohio, Colorado and Wyoming. How funny that we all still sound the same and haven't really changed that much in personality. Our school is not the same internally anymore as it was renovated about 5 years ago. However we all still have fond memories of our school.

easter and baking

It was soooooo hot today at work. There was no air-conditioning on the 1st floor. The air was thick and dry. The 2nd - 6th floors had cool air. The temperature outside reached a high of 77 degrees however inside it felt like 90! Ugh... It made us all feel sluggish and our customers didn't like it either.

I finally hired a full-time person to take the Sunday - Thursday shift which hopefully means I can take back my Sunday/Monday days off... He started today and worked for 4.5 hours. It's a bit overwhelming for newcomers as there is a lot of information to take in, however he said he was fine with the information so far... He probably will not be left on his own for a week or two... We met on a benefit committee 3 years ago. He has no retail experience however he's got an outgoing personality and is raring to go.

Tomorrow is Easter and the store is closing at 5pm, thank goodness. At least this way I will only be 2 hours late for Easter dinner. I just baked a chocolate chip cake. Dad is baking an apple pie! We will have lotsa dessert tmrw.

It's time for me to turn out my cake from the pan.

sunny days are not too far off...

It's 12:08am Monday morning and I'm very tired yet somehow I keep myself awake until at least 12:30am because I cannot turn off my brain. This weekend I worked both Saturday & Sunday and will also be working tmrw. This is what happens when one has not staff... that's ok, lesson learned.

I'm thinking of bringing my laptop to work so that I can do some real work while waiting for customers to show up. It would be great fun if I could connect to someone's wifi... hmmm... I must not let it distract me from cursive and our customers... and how to secure my laptop to the desk is another thing to think about. Maybe wrap ribbon around it and one of our boxes of stationery so that if someone tried to take it I would hear it fall... Or just place it in the middle drawer... now i am getting even sleepier... time to shut off the computer.

cheers for now.

have you ever been to Cape Town?

The highlight of winter 2006 was our trip to Cape Town, South Africa for a childhood friend's wedding. My father didn't go however my sister, mother and I spent a glorious 8 days in Cape Town. I didn't realize that it takes a day to travel there and back so I would have extended the trip to 12 days if I had known...

We spent 3 1/2 days touring Cape Town, 2 1/2 days in Hermanus where the bride's family has a beach house and 3 days in Franschhoek (similar in feeling to Napa Valley, C), where the wedding took place. We knew the entire groom's family and all of the bride & groom's friends so it seemed like a continuation of summer dinners out on Long Island just a few more miles away.

More to write and with photos... Must dash off to work now!

Fridays rocks!

It's Friday, WoooooooHooooooo! I am going into work at 2pm so I can play catch up at home. This is what is on my mind right now:

We are in the throes of soliciting donations for the 11th annual Zero Tolerance benefit happening on June 6th. Every year we have a chinese raffle/auction and this year the responses have been amazing. Now it is time to get started on putting together a collage of all the company logos who've donated product. This will be hung at the entranceway and cocktail area of the benefit to get our guests excited!

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It's been a crazy month being short staffed at the store. Thank goodness traffic is slower this past month so having one person on the floor has worked out ok, though slower traffic means slower sales which isn't good... I've been putting in a lot more hours however since I love managing the store it's fine with me to be there all the time. Though come summer this has got to change... It is very difficult to find good staff.

soundtrack music

Thursday, April 5th - I was on the subway going home and as the subway crept from the tunnel to the outside, "Suite" by Rachel Portman from the movie "Mona Lisa Smiles", began playing and as I looked around the car, with the apt buildings swishing by in the background, I realized how fitting the music was to the scene before me:

An older gentleman wearing a cap, three women and a youngish man, were all in a row sleeping with their heads all slightly bowed towards their chest. There were 6 of us, scattered throughout the car, either sitting or standing, listening to our ipods and 3 people took out their cell phones and began texting whomever. The subway car was silent, no extra loud music, no talking, just the whispher of the subway as it slowly entered my station.