Category Archives: Objects of Desire/Fashion

Sep12

Party With A Purpose; Alex & Ani for Water.org

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Party With A Purpose; Alex & Ani for Water.org

 

Bloggers from The Mission LIst; Carla Molina of Petit Rhody, Laura Rossi of Mysocalledsensorylife & Elizabeth Atalay of Documama host the Alex & Ani Party with a Purpose for Water.org

A few of my own favorite charms

While working on the Water.org campaign for The Mission List  fellow bloggers Laura Rossi, Carla Molina and I realized we all lived in the same area.  We decided to get together and try to augment our social media fundraising efforts with an Alex & Ani Party With A Purpose.  Alex & Ani is a fabulous local company that we love to support not only for their amazing jewelry line, but their positive energy philosophy as well.  An entire division of the company is devoted to Charity By Design which supports various charities through the sales of specifically designed charm bangles for each group.

Their Parties With A Purpose are another way the company gives back.  Parties are hosted in the stores and provide a unique shopping experience that enables the Charity By Design department of Alex and Ani to raise funds and awareness for various charities.  Events are generally two hours long (6-8 p.m. or 7-9 p.m.), and the company donates 15% of event sales to the designated charity.  Co-branded evites are created by Alex and Ani for event promotion, and lite bites and positive energy punch are provided by the store.

 

 

We are thrilled with the results of our Party With A Purpose held at the Alex & Ani Chapel View Store at the company’s headquarters.  In just two hours of shopping and fun we were able raise over $500.00 to be donated directly to Water.org.

Every $25.00 donated provides clean water for life to someone.  That means we just provided 22 people clean water for life!

We are so grateful to all of those who turned out to support Water.org at our Party With A Purpose, and to those of you who have donated  on-line or helped to spread the word by re-tweeting and re-posting our social media efforts.  We have three days left to reach our goal of bringing 100 people clean water for life, and we are so close to being able to do just that.  If you missed our Party With A Purpose but would still like to help us reach that goal, you can still do so on The Mission List fundraising page.

 

Sep11

Fashion Week NYC; Moms On A Mission

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Fashion Week NYC; Moms On A Mission

Click on the photo to see Lisa Rinna dance down the runway and the end of the show.

Last night I got to live out my fantasy of attending a New York Fashion Week show that combined fashion with my passion for causes that benefit mothers and children.  The Strut,  Moms with a Mission fashion show showcased supermoms instead of supermodels. Women like Devi Thomas, the director of the United Nations Foundation’s Shot@Life Campaign,  Chrysula Winegar of “When You Wake Up A Mother, You Wake Up The World”, Holly Pavlika of Momentum.bigfuel.com, and the founders of Strut Denise Albert and Melissa Gerstein all walked the runway with celebrity mom Lisa Rinna.  I joined World Moms Blog founder Jennifer Burden and fellow World Moms Blog Contributer Maman Aya to watch the show, and enjoy the electric atmosphere. We loved the fantastic people watching inside the tents at Lincoln Center, and a fabulous after party at the swanky Empire hotel.

I may not be walking down the catwalk this week but I am a Mom on a Mission myself, working with The Mission List  on our 10 Days 10 Lives campaign for Water.org.  We are working to raise awareness and bring clean drinking water and the dignity of sanitation to women and children around the world.

You can help by spreading the word , donating to our fundraiser ,  start your own fundraiser,  or just learning more about the water crisis. Together we can make a difference.

 Just $25 brings clean water for life to one person, and our goal by the end of our ten days is to provide clean water to at least ten people. I’d love for you to join me.

Now I need to track down the leather leggings one of the models walked down the runway in! I am obsessed!

Aug30

Give Backpack

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Give Backpack

FEED Projects Backpack/photo curtesy of FEED Projects

With our four kids and the start of school we have been in a flurry of household activity gathering supplies, getting ready for the new academic year.  My 8th grader and I agreed that the tattered backpack she has been using the past few years was in need of a replacement.   As we began to search for a new one, I received an e-mail from FEED Projects, about the backpack they now offer.  This is not your average backpack, but a backpack that gives back.  I  always like supporting the FEED Projects when I buy something that I will use daily, knowing that the cost of that item goes towards truly life saving national and international programs.  In the year 2000 the largest gathering of world leaders to date met for the Millennium Summit and adopted the Millennium Declaration committing to a global partnership to meet what they determined as The Millennium Development Goals with a deadline of 2015.

Photo courtesy of The Millennium Villages Project

 

 

The Millennium villages  in Africa demonstrate the success of low cost investments where agriculture, education, health, infrastructure, gender equality and business development are all addressed in an integrated approach to lift the villages out of the cycle of extreme poverty. Community Health Care Workers are a critical piece to the plan, and as a result average community members are being trained to become part of the health care workforce in these villages.  They are each provided with a FEED Health Backpack, which are not only filled with medical supplies, but help to identify them as designated Community Health Care Workers.

Photo courtesy of Millennium Villages Project

 

 

 

 

This is where we come in:

“For each FEED Health Backpack sold, FEED will donate an identical backpack to a Community Health Worker (CHW) working in a Millennium Village in Africa. The FEED Health backpack will help to identify CHWs and establish their community presence as healthcare providers. It will also enable CHWs to better conduct their medical exams, as each backpack is packed with medical essentials.”- FEED Projects

I love the idea of purchasing a backpack that my daughter needs for school, which in turn delivers a FEED backpack filled with medical supplies that a health care worker needs in a Millennium Village.  By contributing to The Millennium Villages Project it feels like we are taking part in something really important and transformative, in our own small way. I ordered her the FEED backpack to use in her daily education at school, but my hope is that is serves a larger purpose.   Along with delivering critical medical supplies to others, I hope that in understanding its true purpose, it opens her global awareness and connectedness to help educate her on the world beyond as well. 

Photo Courtesy of The Millennium Villages Project

 

 

Aug21

Art & Fashion: Tory Burch & De La Vega

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Art & Fashion: Tory Burch & De La Vega

The East harlem artist De la Vega became famous through his art work on the sidewalks of Harlem where he would paint

phrases like “Become Your Dream”. In honor of her new flagship Tory Burch store on Madison Avenue,

and to raise funds for the Tory Burch Foundation, the designer teamed up with De La Vega to create this cool

line of items including Pajamas, a tee-shirt, i-pad case, wallet and tote bag featuring the artists designs.

All proceeds from the purchase of the Tory Burch collaboration with De La Vega go to the Tory Burch Foundation

to empower women’s businesses.

Aug21

Rock Star

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Rock Star

I’ve personally been a rock collector as long as I can remember.  I know the love of discovering that perfect warm smooth stone.  The joy is in the hunt, barefoot in the sand scanning the shore for that quirky shape, striking color or symmetry.  It was a love passed on to be by my mother, who was also a rock collector.  Her specialty were the grey with a white stripe in the middle, which she told me were good luck.  Me, with my birthday on Valentine’s Day, I search for the heart shaped stones.  I am not exclusive to heart rocks, those may be my crown gems, but I love them in all different shapes and sizes.

Stuart Morrison; Rock Star

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So when visiting our friends, The Morrisons, who are a fashionista power couple from Brooklyn spending the month of August on Block Island, I admired the rock accessories decorating their summer house.  When I commented on how great the rocks looked, Stuart confessed in his thick Scottish brogue, that he had actually painted the nautical designs on the rocks in the past few weeks they had been there.  He had such a prolific collection, that I never would have guessed anyone could have produced so many beautiful pieces of artwork in such a short time.  The Brooklyn based fashion designer, stylist, and artist , is clearly a rock star as well.  His painted stones can be purchased for a limited time, and in limited quantities each summer at The Glass Onion on Block Island.