In fact, when she realized my husband and I were marrying with a justice of the peace in my apartment, she raced out to get a cake and champagne to make it more special. She hosted Shabbat dinners in our pretty Hollywood Regency courtyard and always had something inclusive happening, always supporting charities, especially our first beloved Beverly Hills first responders. After our baby came and we moved a few blocks away, I’ve watched from a distance, being wrapped up in my own ambitions and mothering, but occasionally we would come together for different events and referrals. She IS tikkun olam, a word I learned when I studied judaism.

Tara has since recreated Tesoro the Greatest Gift Store Ever in at least these venues, in no particular order: pop ups at Neiman Marcus, brick and mortar on Third, two spaces at Fred Segal; at one point she even did a pop up at Tesoro’s original location! I know there’s more because my baby is now an adult, and Tara is still bringing beautiful thoughtful artfully wrapped gifts for any budget.

I haven’t seen her in person in way too long, as our part time LA status has kept us really busy on the ground. I meant to go by her new place on Canon to catch up before we go full time in Mississippi, ten I saw her story on social media this morning.

Right now I I am praying that this is not a closed door, but another door opening for her. I can’t imagine the grief she must feel, so all y’all who actually pray for people, pray for Tara. I think she’s probably in shock now but if we can give her some tikkun olam, I will find out and post it here and on all my social media.

Merry Christmas, y’all. Thank you for being here.

Prior To handing over said turkey centerpieces to my husband to deliver to her home so she could have them in place before the dinner starts, we made two trips to the Dollar Tree and had a midnight Walmart delivery order of two glue guns and a bag of glue sticks at midnight. This was in the flow crafting 101. If you don’t know what emergency crafting is, this may not be for you. Im pretty fortunate my dear friend knows I’m extra.

Happy Thanksgiving, y’all!

I’m really not sure where to start: the dorm room and related launching kid in college? The weekend in New Orleans with old friends? re-injuring my sacrum again and being laid up for two solid weeks? The almost finished kitchen and condo saga? planning the new studio? being back in Beverly Hills after four months?

In contrast to the original BeverlyHillsMom, my readers seem to like shorter stories, so that makes it easier to be more consistent. I really thank you so much if you’re still here, thank you!

Under the Mimo Tree has found its place in the Pacific Northwest. I’m so thrilled the collector installed the piece featuring Dandy the Russian tortoise in the dining room so she’d see it many times a day. Congratulations to my collector on her beautiful happily ever after, and many thanks; it’s a simply beautiful and warm space.

I was sent this meme last week from a friend who is quietly snickering at me about The Dorm Room. She knows good and well that I am over here in the Bay, creating gigantic piles of organizational goodies and matching cute stuff for my boy’s room. I tried really hard not to, but I could not help it. I had to do the Southern Mom Dream Dorm.

I have attacked this with the same energy that I would a design project in Holmby Hills. I have designed custom duvet covers, ordered a cheap futon with big red pillows. I have pulled the trigger on so many cartsful of merch from my POD (print on demand) suppliers, Walmart, Amazon, HSN and Ebay that I am simultaneously exhilarated and weak. I’ve enlisted a storage service in his college town to receive about half of said merch, the other half will be dragged in my car in Seward trunks.

I had a trunk like the two I’ve ordered for him. Mine was purple, and it’s in storage now. I used that thing in every dorm and apartment to move and store my essentials. It also served as a smart cocktail table in the early years, we are carrying on the trunk tradition. I think this scenario plays into a sort of movie montage fantasy I have since seeing Joe Versus the Volcano. In the film Joe (Tom Hanks) is a young man doing a big task for a millionaire who outfits him with a gentleman‘s accoutrements for its execution. Joe is gifted two Louis Vuitton trunks filled with customized couture and supplies, but he has to jump into the mouth of a volcano at the end of the journey. My kid gets a pair of Sewards, but he just has to make a B average or higher.

Wish me luck. It’ll be a hundred degrees out and we have a time limit. Progress report soon.

Tonight there will be a little gathering of some old friends here in my former hometown to meet my son before he becomes an official college student. As I lie in the hotel room while my husband and son have breakfast together I was thinking about the drive.

Our drive from the bay to Jackson - three short or very long hours, which as a child of divorce with one parent on the Gulf Coast and one in Jackson, I traveled quite frequently and in many modes of transportation, from my own BMW to the Greyhound. I had lots of comments along the way about nostalgia I had for certain weird places on the road that I had no idea what they did when I was an child and still don’t.

The best part of the drive with my boy is our music. He plays DJ with his phone using Spotify and he chooses some tracks, then I choose some songs. His genre is rap; that’s it, nothing else. Mine of course is all kinds of music and on this drive, I was particularly interested in songs I could sing along to; songs with great lyrics.

Certainly, he would roll his eyes and gag a little at my Jackson prep choir voice riffing along to Stevie Wonder’s “Love’s in Need” or James Taylor’s “You Are my Only One” or Carole King’s “You’re So Far Away”. I requested those songs because I wanted nostalgia and I wanted to sing but also because of the WORDS. I’m an adult now. I now understand a lot of these songs in ways I didn’t when they were new, so it occurrs to me that my son is not listening to songs in which a boy is telling a girl he loves her or a woman wails about her cheating man, and how much it hurts. Or how distance makes the heart grow fonder. Or how they’re dreaming of having a big life one day.

That was probably my main revelation as a parent as we drove through the thick pine forests all the way to the bold new city. Next week: Ole Miss!

If you’re new to my writing, you may not know that my BeverlyHillsMom personae created an opportunity for me to advocate for PBS and it was really an honor and my pleasure to be their guest at their biannual Press Tour and Annual Meeting events, particularly for the children’s programming. PBS Kids gave a group of us parent bloggers intimate access behind the scenes to their highly researched programming, and we shared to our communities. This video re-appeared today and I thought it needed to be shared. After hosting a really fun last hang before graduation over the weekend for the kid in the hat, I’m feeling really sentimental.

There are a lot of ways you can support PBS:

Subscribe to PBS Kids

Donate to Your Local PBS Station

Subscribe to Masterpiece Theatre

Since I last wrote about this process of winding down a life in one place and migrating to a new (old) place while seeing our son graduate and go to college, I am becoming more secure as I see the fruits born of all the tee-ing up that I did last year that family did not understand. My LORD I think the worst argument my sweet husband and I have ever had was on the way home from our young man sitting for the ACT. (check!) I have a lot of mixed emotions about how much I’m helping him in contrast to the level of help I got at that time. All I know is that my Gen X version of parenting was being part of the process that I remember tripped me up, but getting a teenager to understand the deadlines I missed as a freshman was not easy. To be clear, no parents I knew back in college were involved on the level that we are now. We have Facebook parents groups now to guide one another. I have to say that worrying about what dorm choice my son would have was at a likely unhealthy pitch. Now that we know where my senior / freshman’s university (check!) and housing (checkcheckcheck!) will be, I am so relaxed that now I can go prep the candy buffet I’m assembling for the grad party coming up shortly. Wish me luck!

It was late 2007.

Two years earlier I met my husband. One year in between we married and we had a baby in May 2007. In the midst of advanced maternal age (42!), taking care of an infant and figuring out what on earth I’m going to do with myself and this baby, a client’s assistant recommended a mommy and me that saved my nerves by preparing me for night terrors, croup and autism. .

My next saving grace was a message board called Citymommy. Citymommy was one of the most singularly efficient places on the internet that ever existed. A mom with a problem could log on at 3 AM to ask other mothers (who also were awake)what the hell is the weird sound / face / movement your baby was making. There would be some other mom on your wavelength, able to answer any question you had because they’d been through it and lived to tell the tale. This raw unfiltered communication led to moms flocking; passionate pleadings on all the topics moms talk about - vaccines, private school vs public school, preschool panic, swimming lessons, bullying, IEPs, deals at Disney, soccer coaches, orthodontists, Hebrew tutors, taekwando, cake bakers, event planners, and more. Once we all got a community vibe going there was THE anal sex thread, which to this day is the most epically cringe and hilarious thread I’ve ever read. At the height, I counted Citymommy (anecdotally) as having about 10,000 engaged moms checking in around the clock. It was a very serene community; there was debate but appreciation for each other. Then the 2007 election really rattled our cage.

When approaching sore subjects, I have always preferred real life to online, so I did what all Southern ladies do: invite everyone for cocktails. It would be a large guest list with vastly differing brands of moms, in style, background and politics. Heavy hors d’oeuvres and booze for two hours; old school Mad Men cocktail hour. If you were on Citymommy you were invited. You can read the story about the party on the archive here - everyone was cordial and did not argue politics. If they started I just shoved fresh cocktail at them.

Later Citymommy was sold, and the parenting resources that the community built over several years were unceremoniously thrown in the trash. It was upsetting and quite a scandal back then. But we’ve moved on.

Since my two hour cocktail soirée, a core group of us have continued meet and celebrate every now and then. Im sure some of you who are reading are able to easily drop in on a friend daily to visit, and I envy you. In LA, that is logistically near impossible, so when we do get together, we aren’t wasting time. No talking surface LA industry bullshit, although a couple of our moms’ families are in “the industry”, it’s not what we talk about. Their exciting Hollywood news is balanced evenly with another’s acceptance to college, another’s new job, another’s groundbreaking on a vacation house, a cruise. We all are there for the good news. We’ve celebrated our Georgie’s 50th and 60th in Palm Springs. We did our annual holiday party via zoom during the pandemic. We are REAL when we get together about what’s been happening in our lives. As times evolved, we’ve continued to meet quarterly, and every holiday season Heather has us out to her place in Topanga (her house did not burn!) for pot luck and Dirty Santa. We have endured.

I just got home from hanging out with all but three of our CM Hookers tonight. All but two of our kids are graduating this year and we are starting to talk travel unfettered by children.

In 2009, we bought this place and I vowed that it would be a place toddlers could run around and I could relax - no exposed electrical outlets, no rickety floor to ceiling windows, no valuable or dangerous items within reach of littles. Everything a toddler would break or swallow was out of reach and I went full 70s in my design scheme - an ebullient colorful mix of preschool art with pear green and the original parquet floors. This was the first home I’d lived in since the 70s with carpet. The previous owner purchased the unit when it was new in 1975, and had never used the GE appliances. Loving the idea of cooking in a kitchen exactly like my Aunt Sylvia’s, we opted to only install a new fridge and just do minimal cosmetics like a red bevelled acrylic sink and faux terrazzo floors. These were design choices I never would have made before (see below), but every choice was made in the name of making housekeeping easier and home making fun. I vowed to do a full kitchen remodel after five years and upgrade.

Five years came and went; we were still happy with the serviceability of the kitchen and we were starting to think towards retirement and how we wanted to allocate our resources. Then, in 2019 we bought our ever after house near New Orleans and all my efforts have gone in the direction of making that place home.

But now it’s time to give the ol’ condo some love. The next big step after this is retirement and selling the place (tbd; but we are planners). This time I’m talking clean surfaces and white on white. Undercounter everything. Luxury vinyl plank flooring (hardwood is a hate crime toward your neighbors below) throughout, maybe a pop of color, but this time, it’ll be full Beverly Hills glamour. I will use every Lisa Vanderpump trick and if we never decide to sell it, I will look gorgeous in all the filtered light and sparkle from my mother of pearl backsplash.

There will be updates.

I’m very nostalgic these days. We have so many life changes going on that I find myself taking extra care to be present when I see my LA posse. Today I realized I should write about my posse and who should be first in this series - a classically cool LA friend.

Today I went to Juan Juan Salon for my bimonthly (yup; my hair grows FAST) root touch up with Jennifer J. I lingered a bit to visit at the counter before I left because Jen and I go way back. Both our boys are graduating seniors this year and we reminisced about the good old days when they were still so little. We talked about how her boys are entrepreneurs and mine is into math and music. How they really are just going to be who they are, and how excited we are for what they’ll be. We talked about the day on the first grade playground I mentioned that my hair colorist was retiring, and she said “come see me!”

Jennifer is probably the Los Angeles friend I have seen most consistently for the last twelve years and not only does she do fabulous hair, she’s as attractive as many of her celebrity clients. She rolls with billionaires but loves a designer dupe and has been my barometer for cool when I’m not sure I’m keeping up. She can hang at Burning Man because she has a preternaturally perfect body for running around in a bathing suit for a week and brings her own RV.

One look at her insta and you’ll see her very impressive roster of Oscar and Emmy noms and winners. I’ve seen more celebrities in her salon than at the Peninsula lounge, but she doesn’t talk about them. A super famous guy was there today and she said “he’s still hot! Such a nice guy!”, but she has never uttered one bad word about any of them or anyone else. I think that’s probably the secret to success in LA (or anywhere). Be great at what you do and know when to be quiet, and she’s a pro.

Cheers to my beautiful Jennifer xoxo

jenniferjbeauty

A post shared by @jenniferjbeauty

Fun fact: one of my good friends is bffs with an executive producer who was involved with NBC and Real Housewives at the very early stages. My friend wanted me to audition for RHOBH and I gave it a hard pass. I was / am at the stage in my life that I don’t want the drama. I’d filmed pilots and I didn’t really enjoy it. I have a really difficult time faking anything, in fact I distinctly remember saying “I would never say that? / but that’s not my purse? / but why drive up in that car if my car is nicer?” Seeing anything I’ve filmed is excruciating, as I don’t spend the time they do on anti-aging.

I also understood the difference between my lifestyle and my clients’ lifestyles. I loved designing their homes, but I don’t WANT a 10,000 - 40,000 square foot house. I LIVE for a nice leather handbag from a young designer that isn’t a mortgage payment; lately the only high end couture that could entice me to pull out the card will probably be a Mardi Gras costume or decorations for my holiday tree on the *Coast. I don’t think I’ll ever go under the knife again, just a little botox and skin care please. I also like privacy when I’m not doing business. I’ve witnessed up close and personally how hard being famous is, no matter the perks.

In recapping the RHOBH With a girlfriend, I found myself thinking that maybe the schism that happened to the Manhattan housewives franchise is starting to happen with the Beverly Hills franchise, in that the original cast members are aging out of a time in their life where it’s cute to be drunk (well - mean and drunk) or it’s interesting to be fighting or getting divorced, going broke, being duped by a guy, etc.  For those of us who started watching Housewives as aspirational programming, we want to see them get better. We want to see them healthy, and in good relationships and enjoying their hard earned fortunes. I really felt that barb Erika shot at Garcelle in the reunion last night. Is being financially stable, healthy and enjoying a real life not “interesting” enough? What a shit lot that is, to be as successful as Garcelle and be told by Erika that her life is boring? Would Bravo execs be willing to take a look at that?  Do they have the stones to embrace the non dramatic affluent 60+ market? I think maybe it’s time.

@bravotvWe told you nothing would go unsaid... settle in for Part 1 of the #RHOBH Reunion on April 1st💎 #GarcelleBeauvais #ErikaJayne #RealHousewivesOfBeverlyHills

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

Years ago I filmed a pilot for reality TV and my then roommate was asked what people would find surprising about me. Without batting an eye she said “she never sleeps. She’s always watching a movie or working or making something.”

I’ve just returned from our vacation home in Mississippi and had such a great trip I forgot to take photos (well not many). As much as I love going there and enjoying Mardi Gras in New Orleans, the great food, the VERY funny, wonderful friends that I get to see when I’m there, it exhausts me. In fact, everything does. Then it dawned on me. I am now too old to ignore that I’m actually an introvert.

I love to see people and have drinkys. I love to visit. I love to go out, but I need a lot of downtime after I’ve done these things. That is something that I was able to overcome when I was younger by quietly binge movie watching until I had words again. I also believe this is why I stay up after everyone else has gone to bed and have always existed on four hours of sleep. Now I have *FOMO but I go ahead and MO because I LOVE to stay home.

I came to the full realization of this after the contractor left, as after having two appointments where I basically talked nonstop for a total of four hours, I fell asleep in my chair, sitting upright. I used to take meetings like this all day and then do my actual work in the middle of the night so I could also be a lady who lunched.

I really have to think about this more and how it will affect my art. Martha Stewart revealed recently that she only sleeps four hours a night and she’s 82. After I get this kid ensconced in college I have a lot of Martha-ing to do.

For now, there will be naps and four hours a night.

*Fear Of Missing Out

(Shout out to the White Pillars for a really fantastic brunch and I would have to turn in my Southern Beverly Hills Lady card if I didn’t take a picture of these gorgeous silver trays on Royal Street in New Orleans. Let me know if you want information on them.)

I was a high end interior designer for twenty years, first in hotels and then on my own I designed properties from Calabasas to Holmby Hills. The largest residence I ever did was 38,000 square feet, with two satellite cottages on the property that were about 2,000 square feet each. It was a massive undertaking that I installed not once but twice, and some rooms thrice. Two points of pride in my work: I was the one you called when the person published in Architectural Digest bailed, and I am extremely knowledgeable (by LA standards) in period furniture.

After I had my son, I was momming hard as an mommyblogger and only doing design work that fit in the toddler naps, then later all the activities like taekwando and Scouting took my time as well. It became harder and harder to do the work that required I coordinate so many people to install, so in 2019 I decided to move my painting hobby into the front burner.

Since then I’ve completed about forty paintings, not including the teeny tiny ones I make for new collectors. I have a special technique I developed drawing, trimming and painting cotton paper on canvas. I call it Modern Decoupage. I found a gallery in New Orleans that is a great fit for my work. They are wonderful gallerists a curators and now my art has a home.

As all this is shaping up, I am checking the parents’ Facebook group at my boy’s future university to possibly meet folks. A couple of pals to commiserate with will be amazing. I am so excited to start realizing our future. The hubs and I are already talking about all the things we will do as far as empty nesters and it’s a lot. He is a really good photographer and wants to spend more time on that; I want to make art and costumes and do all the shenanigans New Orleans and the Gulf Coast have to offer, like seven hour cocktail lunches and Mardi Gras parades. My glue gun is ready; I’ve just got to get through graduation, the remodel(s), and getting the boy ensconced at school. 💜💛💚

I’m finding this is a season in my life of reminiscence. As much as I am excited for all that comes for our one one bird leaving the nest, I also notice how you can’t get back the time. As I go through our shelves to rid us of holding onto things we no longer need, I have a twinge of sadness at tossing the unused glitter and glue sticks, yet I’m lighter in not keeping them.

We don’t need those anymore.

Every day I’m acutely aware of how life is moving on and while it was so great to see my friend, it did kind of give me a little bit of a morning for the old days when it was just so much easier to get together and do fun things. It was a great visit; we managed to have a really great breakfast. We enjoyed the farmers market in Calabasas; I got gorgeous flowers, fruit, and a lead on a contractor for our kitchen remodel.

Apparently the ACT went well. My kid is a champ. I’m almost embarassed at how relieved I am that’s he’s finished. You’d think I was the one who took the test - so exhausted that I dozed all day Sunday only to fully awaken for the Super bowl half time. I thought Kendrick Lamar was great - the production quality was super cool. I am loving this time of spilling the tea.

If you clicked this it’s probably because you either (a) have no idea what Badge Magic is or (b) know what Badge Magic is and are wondering how it crossed into the land of Substack. A few (very few, my high school senior is quick to remind me) of you may remember my blog, now archived at AlexandraBeverlyHills but the url that gave me an insider view of mommy blogging was BeverlyHillsMom.com, a lifestyle blog that covered stories where style and design, television (primarily kids’), beauty and Beverly Hills momming met.

As a native of the Deep South living in the most photographed city on earth, it afforded me dream access to all the most exciting stories happening and was endless fun for my family. I was raising my child in a place I grew up watching on television. It gave me a great creative outlet while my baby slept and by the time Instagram and influencer culture rolled around, I was ready for a new focus. I picked up painting again and have been fully immersed in pursuing everything in that practice.

I decided when I erased about the tenth snarky comment I had begun and refrained from posting on Facebook, Instagram and Tiktok (after it came back, ha), I decided that I really need an actual outlet to write again. The old blog is archived and rickety but you can reference it any time, so I’ll be writing here on Substack, at least until I get BeverlyHillsMom.com built for all the feelings I have about this time in my life.

But I digress. I do that. You came to find out what the haystacks Badge Magic is and why I cried.

I am in the final stretch of having a child become an adult and leave for college - this twelfth grade mom existence is BRUTAL. The finite toll of time rang in my head when I was purging a cabinet of all the arts and crafts and sewing supplies, and there was the *Badge Magic, a special adhesive precut to fit Cub and Boy Scout uniform badges so Mom doesn’t have to sew them on. I swear, if an actual knife had gone in my heart, it wouldn’t have hit me any harder. I realized that I was never going to need the magic again, and I cried like someone stole my puppy.

*this is not a sponsored post

Subscribe now