Kihana is 14 months and has some first words now! She says "Ola!" "ba" (for ball) and "ba ba" for blankie. She also plays with cars a lot (as those are the only toys we have) and usually she even makes the car sounds like her big brother- it's pretty cute. She seems to be very extroverted, as she is...

Click here to view the embedded video. I love this quirky little how-to clip, mostly because the audio doesn’t match up to the video, making poor Leila look like she needs her own mandated visit to the house of corrections. But I can relate to Leila and her message, and I’m willing to admit that...

A few people left comments the other day saying they were curious about my design process. I just finished a new doll so I thought I'd run through how I got from a to b. The "a" here was actually a freak out realization that I'm raising a girl and a slow rising panic about the chal...

So I was asking for post topic suggestions with that giveaway and I jotted down some of your ideas before I started having a panic attack at the deluge and edited the post to not ask for suggestions. But I will check everything off that list eventually. Someone asked about pictures of my kids didn&#...

I almost choked on my Sunday morning pancakes when I read Daphne Merkin’s recent piece on Rachel Maddow’s “Lesbian Glamour� in the New York Times Style section. Aside from a score of other issues I have with this article (probably best for a different blog), Merkin seemed to miss, I think, o...

As most readers probably know, the city manager recently appointed Lt. Ron Mathias as our interim police chief. There are a few things that I've been keeping to myself while working to improve police and citizen relationships, but I've decided that it's time to put it all out on the table. I first h...

It's only February but I'm using Junebaby's birthday as an excuse for my vintage toys on ebay habit. Have to do my part for the economy right? So, I'm obsessed with vintage doll clothes and having no luck. It is almost impossible to get a good deal on on ebay. It's crazy. I'm...

Out of My Skin By John Haskell Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 224 pages, $14 John Haskell’s first book, a collection of stories published six years ago called I Am Not Jackson Pollock, was a weird little work that almost seemed to take fiction in a new direction, by being based in fact. Each piece was...

What's the awesomest gift you can give someone? Their life back, right? That's what I had been thinking for a while. And so, I had been looking into donating a kidney. From my research I knew that the surgery was really safe (only 2/10,000 fatality rate, lower than for appendectomies), and that you ...

oh domino, originally uploaded by Hillary Lang. I was so sad to read Domino magazine is folding. It was such a wonderful magazine and I'm so glad, I think I have every issue. Recession sucks ass. At least I have pretty new Orla Kiely boxes to house them....