lucky

I am home, it's 7pm and I was just thinking how lucky I am. Work has been tough with the economy lately but it's my own company and I have options. I can work harder, be creative and make a mark in my industry. I am having a glass of wine and I have my music blasting throughout my house. After the fire I decided to get my entire house wired. Each room has a keypad for CD, Satellite, TV, Radio, my god who has it better then me! I need to remind myself of that more often! My son has a 3.5 grade point average for his first year of college, I got my health back (we can talk about that later) and I get to dance in every room of my house (and thank god I have a house)!!!! Michael, if you read this I want you to know how incredibly proud I am to have a son like you!!!!!!!! We're Irish so we would never voice that sentiment so I thought I would write it. To coming home tomorrow, I missed you!!!! MOM

The House Fire

So in the middle of trying to make a business bloom, we also did major renovations to our home mostly by ourselves. Michael and my brother made concrete counter tops. We removed thousands of staples in the beautiful hardwood floors hidden under linoleum and carpets, put together kitchen cabinets by Ikea. A note on Ikea, you need to consider these cabinets, they have a 25 yr warranty, come in so many styles and the drawers are molded plastic so they are so easy to keep clean. We did our whole kitchen for $3,000 and anyone who sees the cabinets think they are custom. So anyway, we were nearly finished, had a great Thanksgiving and Christmas and on a freezing bitter cold Sunday night in February I turned in early. I had a bad cold and needed to be at Lincoln Center the following day to receive an award from Forbes Magazine for my companies achievements. I took some cold pills, put Little Miss Sunshine in the DVD played and fell asleep. At 1am my son Michael came into my bedroom and told me we needed to get out of the house that it was on fire.  I told him to go get Darina and the dog and I would go downstairs and check it out. As I made my way down the steps, thick black smoke overcame the house. Michael thought the fire was in the laundry room so I made my way over there, hit the light switch and heard sizzling. I immediately thought it was an electrical fire and screamed to the kids to leave everything and get out of the house. We stood out in the street in 10 below weather with only the clothes on our backs watching thick black smoke coming out of every crevice in the house. I called the fire dept. and our neighbors let us in as we watched 6 fire trucks and tons of fireman go in and out of our house for the next five hours. When it was all over we were told by the fire inspector that the fire was caused by spontaneous combustion. We were refinishing a piece of furniture in the basement and we left rags with stain on the concrete floor. The rags combusted in the middle of the night and spread to everything in the basement and made its way up the walls to the first floor of the house. The fire Marshall said we were lucky, if our dog Guinness didn't wake up Michael by barking non stop, we would have been overcome by smoke inhalation within minutes. Of course I was unconscious because I took a cold and flu medication and when Michael woke me up I told him he could take off from school and to go back to sleep!!! The kids and the dog saved my ass! When the smoke and flames subsided reality crept in. We sat in the driveway in the car with my insurance agent who told us to each get a garbage bag and take clothes for a day or 2. All our belongings would either go in the garbage or would be taken out to be cleaned. We gathered our garbage bags and headed to my office to figure out where we were going to live for a while! I'll continue later..... 

Michael My Son

I just read my last post and realized why Michael and Darina decided to go to college in South Carolina last September. They must have needed the rest and relaxation!! Guinness is still stuck with me! Here's my Michael with a future family graduate, Catherine my godchild. 

My Dog

Here's the star of the family, Guinness the dog who saved us from our house fire last year! I see him as absolutely adorable with a mush face but most (for some strange reason) see him as a scary dog!

So I will briefly tell you about the lovely 2007 we had as a family (Me, Mike, his girlfriend Darina and Guin). We moved from Darien CT (the most pretentious, obnoxious, self absorbed, judgmental place I have ever been. Where how you dress, where your from, how much money you make, what you drive and who you know makes the person) to Nyack NY. Nyack is a beautiful, artsy river town located 20 miles north of NYC on the hudson river. I used to drive from the Bronx when I was young and look at houses telling myself I would live in Nyack one day and now I do!

CT was a major mistake, my sister and her husband lived there which is why I tried it (they don't live there anymore). I am not going to get into the whole experience of Darien CT today, but I will tell you my son was arrested (for attending a house party with 300 of Dariens finest children (at least in their prescriptive drugged parents minds), my house was raided by 16 policemen in 7 police cars. My son was also arrested for riding his dirtbike. I was continually followed by police cars, my house was always watched and going to the grocery store in my sweatpants and baseball cap with no makeup was like attending a yankee game and standing on the pitchers mound in my underwear! The neighbors were horrified!!!! Good riddens to you Darien, may you all continue to pretend to live perfect lives while hitting up the medicine cabinet with your children!

Anyway, my son, Darina and I (with our Guin) moved into our 1966 contemporary with hudson river views in February of 2006. I had a vision!!!! We all looked beyond the red, white and blue shag carpeting, linoleum kitchen floors, pink and blue bathrooms and a painted white wrought iron banister and saw a diamond in the rough. Everyone nicknamed the house "The Brady Bunch House". Many nights I would wake my son up holding a sledge hammer telling him another wall had to come down. We ripped out the kitchen ourselves as our neighbors watched us in our pj's laughing our asses off trying to carry pieces of the kitchen that weighed more then me into the dumpster (one of 6 dumpsters in 7 months). One night I decided we could re-do the copper pipes under the kitchen sink and install the new faucet without the help of a real plumber. What the hell, if you can read instructions what's the big deal. I went and bought the kit with the soldering gun, flux, sandpaper, the whole nine yards. Of course it was the middle of the winter and we had to shut the water off which meant no heat until we fixed the pipes. We thought the more solder you put onto a copper pipe the better the fitting. Every time Michael went into the basement to turn the water back on, water shot up through the connections on the pipes. I was up in the kitchen screaming "shut the water off" as I got soaked along with the kitchen floor. We would then run to the fireplace, get warm and then back to soldering. This went on from around 7pm until 2 in the morning. I finally got online and read everything there was on copper pipes and plumbing. I can flux, sand and solder my way through any copper pipe these days! We worked like dogs, had so many laughs and I have so many tips for designs that are creative, look gorgeous and cost little. I will try to post some before and after photos if I can find them and also give tips along the way.

My mother is here at the office and is hungry and wants to go out to dinner now so I have to sign off and will continue writing later. Sorry but when mother wants food and a jug of wine we go.

moms sauce

I could get addicted to this blogging thing and end up with no life! I'm home after my day of playing with flowers and just replaced the candles on my dining room table. I will post a photo of what my table looks like because the most cost effect and bang for your buck decor is so simple. I bought 6 various height and style glass and crystal candle holders that I have scattered down the center of the table with 12 glass votive candles interspersed. You can pick up candlesticks at garage sales, ebay or any homegoods type of store!!!! I will post a photo tomorrow. I always made it a point, even if we had macaroni and cheese, when my son and I (or a house full of guests) sat for dinner it was always by candlelight, this was my rule. So no matter how shitty or stressed your day went you couldn't help but be soothed by a full belly, huge glass of red wine and the way candles made everything appear beautiful! I am cooking my mothers tomato sauce, it is a tradition in mine and my siblings homes. She brews a fresh batch every time my son comes home from college. It is the Irish version of sauce and I will post the recipe if she allows me, it's to die for.

I need to run so I can finish cooking for my boyfriend whom has the strength and courage to come to my house even after my dog Guinness (yes the Irish beer) attacked his mother and sent her to the ER for stitches in her arm. God I will let you know the details and my dog tendencies for aggression later in the week. I am going to post photos of my endearing puppy. I think I need a survey as to who thinks he looks like a beast and who thinks he looks like an angel!

where have all the good guys and girls gone!

Politics is not going to be a huge forum for me on my blog (the candidates bore me to tears) but I wanted to chat about our senator Hillary Clinton. This particular incident has bothered me for years! From the first year I started my business in 1996 until 2002 my company only provided event designing and planning, my retail line did not exist up to this point. In the summer of 2001 (I was living in my shop from 1997 until late in 2001) I was desperate to get ahead and of course I was not going to give up. I decided to write a letter to Oprah introducing my company. I also sent her photo copies of pictures from events we had done. I told her if there was anything she may need in terms of event coordinating or event designing to let me know. Of course everyone in my building complex along with the couple of employees I had laughed their asses off when I told them what I had done and let them know Oprah would be calling! 3 days after I sent the letter the phone rang and it was a woman calling from Oprah's office. She informed me that Oprah loved my work and wanted me to come up with a retail item that could be shipped anywhere in the country. I created boxed in blooms and it was due to go into her magazine on her "O" list in November 2001. September 11th 2001 the world trade center was hit and the world changed. I had one brother who is a NY City Fireman, another who had just resigned but was called back into the NY City Police Dept. New York stood still as we all tried to comprehend the totality of this tragedy. As friends and family in Pearl River NY (huge population of Irish, cops, fireman, policeman, nurses and teachers, most transplanted from the Bronx) attended funeral after funeral for a year, I struggled to hold on to my business. As event work disappeared in the city and elaborate parties came to a halt I had the Oprah magazine coming out in November and thought that would sustain my company so there was light at the end of the tunnel and I just needed to hang on. Then around September 21st the phone rang and it was once again Oprah's office informing me that under the circumstances they were changing the layout of the November issue due to the events of September 11th and they would call to let me know what issue we were going in. I waited and waited and waited. In the meantime I thought of our dear senator and thought she was there for the people of NY and represented women and our struggles, god was I wrong!!!! I wrote telling her how my business was devastated and we were trying to keep afloat. If there were any suggestions on networking with other women, any organizations she knew who could possibly help us while we tried to figure out how to get business back into NY would be greatly appreciated. I emailed Hillary 8 times over the next few months and never once did she respond. Hillary was not there for us New Yorkers, nor was she there for a fellow woman but Oprah was and my boxed in blooms was featured on the "O" list in February 2002. My retail line was born!

welcome to my blog!

I am so thrilled I now have a voice thru my site. I have a big mouth in real life and wanted an opportunity to share tips on floral designing and decorating, as well as share incredible highs and lows as I navigate and try to grow a small business from the basement of my home in the Bronx to the pages of Oprah, Instyle, People and more! With no investors, PR firm, business loans or partners I hope to give insight and humor into the daily struggles and triumphs of running a new york company that employs not only me but my sister, her 3 yr old daughter Catherine, my mom, the ex-husband, the ex husbands childhood friend, my son part-time, Brooks, Yolanta, Norma and more. In the world of big business, big bonuses and even bigger bail outs, step into and get personal with the little guys!