Bonni Brodnick Blog

While looking at a Christopher Radko display at a New England-y Christmas shop, I gazed over my shoulder and saw this: I didn't want to stare, but damn ... was that Scrooge  eyeing the same Santa Totem ornament? And wait ... did Scrooge actually have TINY TIM on his shoulders? (How brazen in a shop full of fragile Christmas decorations. I could imagine Scrooge saying, "Don't worry about walking around this tight space, Tiny Tim. I've got you. Here, jump up on my shoulders. I'm ony 94 years old. There you go. Keep your right hand up for better balance, but I've got you, little guy.") Being that I am perfectly cool around celebs, I didn't wince and continued looking straight at the holiday display of stockings and ornaments. After a long moment, I realized, though, that Scrooge and Tiny Tim did not move, blink or twitch. (This duo definitely earned their SAG-AFTRA cards. They were excellent.) How did they do it? They were wax figures !! A hefty p...

Real fowl sounds.      Click here .   

Why am I so panicked about hosting at my house? My brother and sister are major foodies. One Thanksgiving I didn't put the bird in the oven long enough. Outrage/hunger/panic/self-loathing ensued because it was after 6:00 p.m. and the bird still wasn't finished. Then there's the part about one guest inhaling a giblet and a run to the ER on Martha's Vineyard. Share my angst.   Click here     for my Huffington Post :                                    "Thanksgiving Turkey: Let's Get Fresh"

                                                        Maren Caruso via Getty Images It's almost turkey time.  Conversations abound with, "How many guests are you having for dinner?" and "What sides are you serving?" and "A re you brining/marinating/smoking/deep-frying/steaming/grilling/rotisserie-spinning your turkey?" Feeling pressured? Check out my  Huffington Post , "10 Thanksgiving Tips for Turkey Day: Keep it Real." (Click here . ) Have any Thanksgiving tips you'd like to share? And is it gauche to make more than three pies if you have 10 guests or less at the table? And do you know how to break it politely to someone that they've got a stray glob of mashed potatoes on their chin? Read on.

If you scroll down the right-hand column of this blog, you will see a google translation gauge that looks like this: There are 84 languages. At the flip of a switch, you literally have the key to breaking down world communication barriers. I have always wished I could write in Japanese.  Now I can!   ( 私はいつも、私は日本語で書くことができます願っています。今私はできる！) I have had a life-long yearning to be able to write in Icelandic because I like the "o"s and "umlaut" is one of my favorite words. ( Ég hef haft að ævilöngu þrá til að vera fær um að skrifa á íslensku því ég er hrifin af "O" s og " Umlaut " er eitt af uppáhalds orðum mínum.) Norwegian is cool, too. ( Norsk er kult, også.) I also feel a calling to Kannada. ( ನಾನು ಕನ್ನಡ ಒಂದು ಕರೆ ಅಭಿಪ್ರಾಯ.) So many choices. ( So many choices.)

Is there anyone in the world who doesn't LOVE melted grilled cheese sandwiches? (If so, I don't think I can be friends with them.) The Big Melt is happening every weekend at Plum Plums Cheese on Westchester Avenue in Pound Ridge. I usually slap together some American on white and throw it in a pan until it sizzles out from the bread. Plum Plums does it with much more refinement. In one bite, Plum Plums owners Gayle Martin and her husband, Michael Riahi, take you to the rareified Land of Gourmet Grilled Cheese. Try their Prairie Breeze cheddar and 12-month cave-aged Gruyere, with a dab of Bonnie's Peach & Ginger Jam. Say what???  Say, real  cheese please. This bonified frommagerie serves cheeses from around the world. In their prime. Want some more?  Check out Gayle on her recent TV appearance on FiOS1 ( click here ). 

Tonight was the first snow. Flashback to last winter. (See below.) Oh,  no !

A friend and I were chatting today about thank you notes. As in ... it takes exactly three seconds to write the two words, "Thank you." Get primed for the upcoming holiday season. Do you have note cards? Something simple on which to write ... (and I'm counting ...) "Thank you." (Whew. That took a good three seconds.) While you consider the importance of TY notes (not to mention keeping alive the United States Postal System), thought you might enjoy my Huffington Post , "Parenting Adult Children: When to Stop Nagging and Let 20-Somethings Grow Up. "  ( Click here .) Writing thank you notes was ingrained in my children when they were 3-years old. They had their own note cards and would dictate to me what to write. (Hint: I wrote upside-down to make it look like they had written the note.) Gratitude is the attitude. For the simplest gift, show your appreciation for the time and thought someone put into y-o-u. Your graciousness will shine....

Let me see ... how can I break this to you easily. AccuWeather has forecasted that this delightful mild weather is just a big fat tease for the Northeast. Right now, daytime temps are mild in the low-60s but by Thursday there will be a steep drop. "Warm coats, gloves and scarves should be kept close by. A December-like chill is expected to settle in across the region by the weekend." And the next paragraph actually mentions ARCTIC AIR followed by the chilling words, "... steadily surging south as the POLAR VORTEX dips toward the north-central U.S."  Followed by  something about an air mass "... usher[ing] in the lowest temperatures of the season so far in the Northeast." "Usher"? Are we trying to be polite?   This is all making me feel good compared to a weather report of 1987 in Washington, D.C. where an early season snowstorm clobbered the area with 17-inches of snow, accompanied by thunder and lightning. Time to face the facts.  ...

On Veterans Day, we honor the men and women who served our country so valiantly.  My Uncle Stanley  fought in the last World War II battle in Okinawa  and is buried at  National Memorial Cemetery in the Pacific  in  Honolulu,.  Whenever you see someone in uniform, please take a moment to stop and say, "Thank you for your service to our country."

Doorbells in Atlanta   Happy 28th Wedding Anniversary to my darling husband, Andrew. A + B = Love 

While watching Diana Vreeland in the documentary, "The Eye Has to Travel,"  I was rivetted by her stunning sense of self, originality, her timeless razor-edge style and the brilliance she brought to the pages of  Vogue. And though she was a legendary arbiter of fashion, art and culture, there was one quote related to surfing that I adore:   "I'm really only envious of one thing, and that is a surfer. I think it's the most beautiful thing. See I'm mad  about water. I think water is God's tranquilizer. To be in it, to drink it, to look at it, and to be a surfer -- oh, between the sky and the water -- would be to me, the most wonderful thing."                                                              ~ Diana Vreeland                           ...

Clocks turned back. Sweaters unpacked. Temperatures dipping into the 40s. Amaryllis planted for holiday-time bloom. Winter is surely here.

I know that The 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded jointly to Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes (LEDs), which has enabled bright and energy saving white light sources, but I just turned a new leaf  to put down all LEDs and computer screens after a certain hour. For years I have been using my iPhone as an alarm clock. Every night I would set it within a few minutes of 7:00 a.m.. On Mondays, I might "sleep in" a little and set it for 7:04.  But whatever I set it to, I always managed to check a little email before going to sleep. Even though I promised myself, " No email . Just set the darn clock." "Maybe just one email," I'd say to myself. And before I knew it, I had gone through 10 of them and was once again jazzed up from not only the bright light of the screen but the content of the emails and the mostly call-to-actions they communicated, e.g., "Let's meet tom...