Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel: a Walk and Talk
If you live in Colorado, come see the beauty of the Sistine Chapel up close and in person! I’ll be telling the astonishing story of the Sistine Chapel’s renovation and Michelangelo’s beautiful frescoes. Join us!
So, guess what! The Sistine Chapel is in Denver! Well, not the actual chapel, but an exhibit of huge photographs of the chapel -- reproduced to feel as if you are in the Sistine Chapel and UP CLOSE -- far closer than you can be in real life! The exhibit is called Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel, and I have been asked to give a series of talks about Michelangelo's masterpiece!
In case you are new here, one of my books is about Michelangelo -- part-biography and part-travel-to-Rome book. And here's the thing: the story behind the Sistine Chapel is fascinating! Michelangelo didn't think of himself as a painter. The Pope didn't care. Drama ensued. Oh, and no one really thought it could be done... and then all of Rome was astonished.
Anyway, I'm giving four talks about Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel in the exhibit. Two talks will be geared toward children and their families (July 20 & Aug 10) and two will be walk and talks for those with longer attention spans (July 23 & Aug 13). Both will be opportunities to see the exhibit without the normal crowds, too!
So all you Colorado peeps: I would love to see you face-to-face! Come check out Michelangelo's amazing frescoes up-close! For tickets and more information, click the link below!
Ciao!
Angela
Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel
To buy tickets, visit the box office:
Prime Day Deals I Love!
A few of my favorites are on sale for Amazon Prime Day. Check them out!
It’s Amazon Prime Day, and I spotted a few bargains that I wanted to share with you. These are all products I love personally and can recommend highly or that are on my wish list right now. If you aren’t a member, there’s a link above for a free 30-day trial which will allow you to take advantage of all of the Prime Day bargains.
Happy Shopping!
Working
Having a good printer is a must, and I really love my Epson EcoTank printer. I have an older version of this one. Here’s what I love: the ink lasts forever. It is more expensive to buy it, but Epson has changed the printer/ink model. They charge more for the printer, and you don’t have to buy ink nearly as often. The ink also doesn’t come in cartridges. It comes in bottles which you use to fill the tanks — less plastic waste! If you are in the market for a new printer, this is a good one!
When I was traveling more than I do now, I always carried my LaCie Rugged Mini External Hard Drive. It is a great device for offloading photographs while on a long trip — or even for hauling around lots of photos or documents when going to client meetings. Now that it comes in a 4TB size, too, it is even more valuable.
Tired of your office or home never being the right temperature? We recommend a Nest. We have one, and we love it! We easily manage the temperature settings for our house, and save money and energy when we aren’t home without even thinking about it.
Making
I have the Cricut Maker, but this is a great price on the Explore Air 2! And it includes lots of goodies to get you started!
I snagged a set of these. I find I need multiple mats to be more efficient when I am doing complicated projects.
Watercolors just work best on watercolor paper. It’s hard to find it on sale, too!
Reading
As an author, I always try to buy the book instead of checking it out of the library. We have to stick together, you know! But I don’t have room in my house for all of those books! My Kindle makes me so very happy for that very reason. It helps keep our home tidy! Though I do still read A LOT on paper, too!
I can’t stop raving about Madeline Miller’s two novels, The Song of Achilles and Circe. I loved them both, and they are amongst a very few books available for Prime Day. I highly recommend them!
Mothering
There aren’t many books on the Prime Day sale list, but these caught my eye. We love all of them! I Want My Hat Back is especially funny when read almost as a play at bedtime. And the Elephant and Piggie books are fabulous for early readers. The Tale of Despereaux is a sweet chapter book that is wonderful read aloud!
Building
My sister won Aunt-of-the-Year when she gave Bambino the Star Wars Darth Vader’s Castle for his birthday. I am not sure who enjoyed putting it together more — Bambino or my husband.
Bambino also loves this tree house set, and has had hours of imaginative play with all kinds of animals and characters hanging out in the tree house.
This is a great, basic Lego set with some simple instructions for making a frog, a helicopter, and anything else you can imagine. A really good starter or add-on set!
Organizing
I know Marie Kondo says not to buy anything for drawer organizing, but I did buy a set like this which keeps ties, underwear, and tights well-organized in our drawers. You could absolutely do it with a shoe box as she recommends, but I think the dividers in these boxes are just a bit tidier.
I always have a stack of plain paper bags on hand for quick gift wrapping or dropping something off at someone’s house.
My office would be a mess without boxes like these. I keep the clothes that I am selling, unfinished projects, supplies, and those awkward things that don’t seem to fit anywhere else — all in boxes like these. Mine came from Ikea, but I know these are essentially the same. Neat and tidy!
Drinking
Ditch the plastic straws! I like paper straws and try to keep a bunch in my purse, so I can refuse plastic straws when needed. I also like these other reusable options, and just might be ordering some to try them out, too.
Homemaking
Have I mentioned how much I LOVE my Roomba? Nope? Well, it was one of the best Christmas gifts EVER! I absolutely love it, and this is a newer, fancier version which I am eyeing when mine needs to be replaced — but I’ve had it for more than 4 years, and it is still going strong. Dogs? Cats? Kids? Get a Roomba!
My last vacuum cleaner lasted for more than 20 years. I know. It was a workhorse, but when it came time to replace it, I chose one like this Dyson which I truly love. We have had it for more than 3 years, and I am happy with it every time I pull it out to vacuum.
We don’t have one yet, but we just got back from Hawaii where our hotel had Toto Washlets in the bathrooms. It was Bambino’s first bidet experience, and he is on a mission to convert the world now. So this will be on the wish list for our new bathrooms when we renovate them for sure!
Journaling
I am also stocking up on both of these. We go through a lot of glue in our house. I use Super77 when I am art journaling, and both Bambino and I use glue sticks almost daily!
Ok. I don’t have this one yet, but it is on my journaling wish list!
Traveling
Bambino has the best suitcase in the family: a hardside suitcase with spinner wheels. As we replace our luggage, we will all get hardside suitcases like this one.
I’ve written about how Marie Kondo has changed my life, but I’ve never told you about how the KonMari Method has changed my packing practices. Well, it has. And I’ll tell you more about that soon, but these packing cubes are an important part of that practice. They make packing and unpacking a suitcase so much better!
I have a box almost identical to this with which I travel, and it is one of the best little things I’ve ever purchased. I just love it!
If you found any Prime Day deals that I need to know about, leave them in the comments! Ciao!
Confronting my Inner Sexist at the Toy Store
Travel blogger, Rachel Heller, stops by with some reflections on sexism in children’s toys — and her own unconscious bias when buying toys.
Rachel Heller of Rachel’s Ruminations.
Today’s guest post is from Rachel of Rachel’s Ruminations, an independent travel blog based in the Netherlands. I’m delighted to have her perspective on giving gifts to children.
A few years ago, I was planning a visit to my relatives in Israel. This set of cousins included a total of 11 children at that point. I had only actually ever met three of them, but I wanted to give all of them gifts.
So once I decided on the trip, I kept my eyes open for small, inexpensive gifts that would be appropriate for 11 children, aged between 13 years and six months, whom I didn’t actually know.
The day before I was due to leave, I sat down to wrap the purchases I’d accumulated and was ashamed and horrified at what I saw:
My choices contradicted everything I believed about raising children without pre-conceived assumptions or expectations about gender.
For a boy, aged six, I had bought a self-winding flashlight.
For two girls, aged six and almost six, I had bought bracelets: pretty, glittery bracelets in two different colors.
For two boys, aged 11, I had bought harmonicas.
For a girl, aged 13, I had bought a pretty barrette.
For a girl, aged four, I had bought a flowery hair clip.
What was I thinking? Was I a sexist? Why hadn’t it occurred to me that a six-year-old girl would enjoy a self-winding flashlight just as much as a six-year-old boy?
Even the most progressive toy stores are still stuck with sexist packaging targeting children by gender at an early age.
What made me think that a 13-year-old girl would be happy with a barrette?
And what was it about me that I didn’t think about this at the time I made all these purchases?
As soon as I realized what I'd done, I jumped in the car and went back to the store, where I bought two more self-winding flashlights for the two girls. I bought a very small notebook and magnetic bookmarks for the 13-year-old girl, both of them "Gorjuss" merchandise aimed at teenage girls, decorated with rather gothic-themed drawings. (I was horrified to notice a whole section of Top Model merchandise, clearly aimed at even younger girls. Who would buy that for their kid?) I didn’t have much time at that point, so the four-year-old girl would have to settle for the barrette, plus a bracelet.
It occurred to me that I can blame this unthinking conformity to some extent on my own upbringing, and to some extent on my kids.
My upbringing
As a child, I got dolls and stuffed animals to play with. I wanted Hot Wheels cars more than anything, but “those are for boys”. Whenever I visited my only male friend’s house (We were friends because our mothers were friends.), all I ever wanted to do was play with his cars, and all he ever wanted to do was play Monopoly, which he always won.
Because I had no brothers, there were no “boy’s toys” lying around for me to play with. I ended up turning to books as soon as I learned how to read, and didn’t need much else after that.
Lego advertising from 1977 was gender-neutral and egalitarian.
Later, in the 70’s, my mother discovered feminism, and I read every issue of Ms Magazine from cover to cover. By then, though, my own socialization was pretty complete: I knew to keep my knees together when I sat, especially in a dress, and that wearing a dress meant I couldn't climb a tree. I knew that it was good to be smart, but being pretty got you attention. I knew I could choose any profession, but was aware of very few role models outside the norm.
While at that point my mother was telling me I could be whatever I wanted, she continued to fulfill the gender expectations of the stereotypical suburban housewife: she cooked, she cleaned, she did the shopping, and, on the side, to make some extra money, she worked as a realtor for a while and later as a dealer in antique porcelain. My father, on the other hand, was the family breadwinner. He left the house every weekday morning for work, and never did any cooking or cleaning. (I can remember the one time my father ever cooked during my childhood. He tried to follow a recipe for Welsh rarebit but had to ask me what a saucepan was.)
Most families I knew conformed to these standard gender roles. I didn't meet anyone who didn't conform – that I was aware of – until I went away to college.
My kids
Recognizing all of this, I resolved to do things differently with my own kids. My daughter, right from the start, had dolls and Legos and cars and action figures and blocks and books.
I also insisted on dressing her gender-neutrally: blue went beautifully with her big eyes, so my favorite for her was a blue shirt and OshKosh overalls so that she could move freely. I told her how smart and strong she was, but left the comments about how she looked to other people.
Baby dolls only come in pink on these shelves.
Nevertheless, her wardrobe included “girly” clothing because other people, including my mother, bought them for her. And as soon as she was old enough to express a preference, she did: she wanted pink and red. She wanted dresses, preferably with frills and lace. She most emphatically did not want to wear jeans, unless they were red or pink and preferably fringed with lace. Was this some inborn preference, or did she pick it up from her environment?
And as for toys, she almost never played with her toy cars. Instead, she lined them up very neatly along a crack in the floorboards. She did the same with our shoes. But she never rolled them anywhere: just lined them up and then moved on to another toy.
At three, she wanted a Barbie more than anything. All her friends had them, but I refused to get her one. To my great annoyance, she received one on her fourth birthday from one of those friends. She was thrilled. And I was furious at her friend’s mother, but too well-trained in politeness to let her know.
The only way she used her Legos was to build stables for her My Little Pony’s, which she loved.
When she was five, her little brother was born. Again I made sure to dress him gender-neutrally and to give him access to toys of all sorts. And again, it was all for nothing.
He loved the cars: to roll off tables or crash against the wall. Legos were great for making more cars or planes (preferably if a friend did the actual building of the machine and he could just play with it).
He showed no interest in dolls whatsoever. There was some interest in action figures, but only in terms of the violence they could inflict on each other. A toy weapon would have made him very happy, if I'd allowed it.
My son did have a period in which he declared that pink was his favorite color, and he would wear hand-me-down pink shirts from his sister. That only lasted until he went to preschool. One day one of his little friends declared that “pink is for girls” and that was it: he refused to wear pink again.
Today Lego’s Friends line is marketed toward girls and features strangely skinny figures — not their standard minifigs — with sets that conform to more feminine stereotypes.
Lego sets marketed toward boys include sets that promote violence, careers traditionally dominated by males, and weapons marking a documented escalation in violence in Lego toys.
Later, from about the age of nine until he was about fourteen, he chose to wear his hair long. People often mistakenly assumed he was a girl, but that never seemed to bother him. I loved that: his ability to ignore what anyone thought and be comfortable with himself, long hair and all. At the same time, though, he was completely gender-conforming in every other respect.
So as I was shopping for all these children, I was thinking of my own. My daughter, at six years old, would have loved those glittery bracelets. At 13, that barrette would have been perfect. My son would have loved a hand-cranked flashlight at six and a harmonica later on.
I can blame my unconscious gender conformity on what my parents and children have taught me, yet I’m the one who fell into this stereotypical pattern. I have called myself a feminist ever since those Ms Magazines back in the 70's, but I realize now that being a feminist isn’t something that is attained and lasts forever, like a college degree or an appendectomy scar; it has to be consciously maintained and rejuvenated, like tuning up a car or watering a plant.
Perhaps we all need a regular feminism tune-up, to make sure we haven't regressed into facile, complacent acceptance of the status quo: becoming unconscious sexists. My gift-shopping endeavor seems to have done the trick.
Thank you for your candor, Rachel! I know this is an important conversation in our family as well. Be sure to check out Rachel’s website: RachelsRuminations.com .
Budget-friendly gift suggestions for everyone on your list! Lists include:
My Favorite Gifts | Gifts Under $15 | Gifts for Mid Modern Lovers | Gifts for Children | Books to Give Gifts to Make | Wines to Give | Bubbles for the New Year
Gardening Galore!
Learn how to make a Dinosaur Garden for children to enjoy on your patio or in the backyard. Also included: DIY Trash Can Planters and the relaunch of PiningforRome.com, Angela’s travel website.
DIY Dinosaur Garden
Bambino and I spent time this weekend working outside — not the hard work of weeding or tidying up. That still needs to be done. But one of his birthday gifts this year needed to get into the ground: a Dinosaur Garden. Now, to be clear, it isn’t just for dinosaurs. During the inaugural play several dinosaurs moved in along with some cars, a snake, a crab, an airplane, and a magic crystal. I suspect there will be other occupants as well! But I wanted to give Bambino a place in the dirt that was his own — and a fun place to play, too.
This is an easy project. If you have a bit of dirt — even on a patio — you can have a dinosaur garden. We happen to have some raised vegetable beds, so I turned one of those into the garden. But you could use a small tub, a wading pool, a corner of your yard… even an old sand box. You simply need a container that will hold a bit of earth.
I have all of the instructions plus bunches of photos on the Dinosaur Garden project page:
DIY Trash Can Planters
And I am also refilling our trash can planters this week. This is a super-easy and inexpensive project I put together last summer. You’ll find all of the details on the project page here:
Pining for Rome Relaunch
I am late getting all of the summer gardening started this year. We had so much snow well into May, and then our family took a trip to Belize for a week of snorkeling and swimming and sunburning!
Just before we left, I relaunched my travel website which has been under renovation for months! It isn’t perfect yet, but it is completely redesigned and reorganized. Did you know I have been writing about travel for more than 12 years? Yep. I started my first travel blog in 2007, and I have spent the last six months taking all of that content, updating it, and reorganizing it so that it is much easier to use — and better to look at, too. I hope you will check it out, and all kinds of details about Belize will be coming soon!
I recently shared one of my favorite tips for beachy packing on Instagram, and it really is one of those things that makes travel so much easier. I keep these in my travel toiletries kit and never leave home without them. Click the link to learn more!
Newly refreshed and completely updated!
Easy Packing Tip
for beachy or pool trips
One last note: I’m working on launching another exciting tool for my regular visitors. I’m pulling together all kinds of materials into a resource library. If you are a subscriber to my emails, you’ll get the password to the library , and you’ll have regular access to downloads and tools which I hope will make your life easier, prettier, and more fun! More coming about that soon, so if you aren’t a subscriber, sign up! I don’t want you to miss a thing!
So there is lots going on both here and on Pining for Rome! Happy almost-summer!
XOXO
Angela
New DIY Tutorials!
I have several new DIY tutorials up. Check them out!
I have a few new tutorials and a summary page for all of the One Room Challenge tutorials, too. I hope you will check them all out! Seriously — this cute little container for my dryer balls took about 15 minutes, and was super easy! And making duvet covers from sheets: a breeze!
And on this page you will find links to all 14 DIY project tutorials from our Guest Room Refresh — everything from the Ikea bed frame hack to lining a cupboard with wrapping paper and so much more. Enjoy!
March for Babies
Join us and give to this year’s March of Dimes campaign!
Did you get polio as a child? Nope? Neither did I. And neither will my child. That is due in great part to the work of the March of Dimes who helped get polio vaccines to every child in the US.
But they aren't just about vaccinations.
When I was pregnant with Bambino, he benefitted from one of the March of Dimes' programs to fight prematurity. Because the hospital where he was born had signed on to the MOD initiative, he was a healthier baby with stronger, more developed lungs! So every year in his honor, we make a donation to MOD.
You don't have to actually march, but I do hope you will give! This is my mom's fundraising page for MOD. Join my husband, Romano, and I in supporting babies all across the US. ❤️
Mega Planner Addicts Sale
Pre-orders for The Nice List 2019 open this weekend! Plus: get 20% off any order in my shop this weekend as part of the Mega Planner Addicts Sale. And be sure to check out all of the other MPA participating shops, too!
Today the Mega Planner Addicts Sale begins! If you love planners and stickers and all things cute, this is the sale for you! And I am participating! This weekend only if you use the MPA code (MPASALE) you will get 20% off ANY purchase in my store!
That includes Pre-Orders for The Nice List 2019! Starting today you can pre-order your copy of The Nice List 2019 which will ship in October. And if you use the MPA code, you’ll get a sheet of exclusive stickers FREE with your planner when they ship in the fall.
Be sure to check out all of the cute shops participating in the sale on Instagram. There are so many fun shops, and many of them are offering freebies this weekend, too!
Guest Room Refresh: One Room Challenge Week One
Come along as we refresh our guest room repurposing furniture including two twin beds, choosing everything from a fresh, new wall color to bedding, luggage racks, wall art, window treatments, and amenities in this makeover on a budget. Lots of DIY ideas with vintage-inspired decor.
It’s here! The 2019 One Room Challenge! We are redoing our guest room — a refresh with vintage inspiration and modern sensibilities. Check out week one with the furniture we will be reusing, an inspiration board, and the two items which inspired it all: a vintage map and my favorite bakery.
Lots to do! Aloha!
A
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