In honor of the holidays quickly approaching and our love of all things festive, we’ve brought in Zena, our Low-Cost Costume Maven 2009, to give us some tips on holiday shopping at Goodwill. In our interview below, Zena gives us her thoughts on the best holiday buys at Goodwill, how to decorate your tree for the biggest WOW factor, and what it’s really like working in Goodwill’s Harrison NJ store (at 400 Supor Blvd) come the holiday rush. Enjoy!

Our Low-Cost Costume Maven shows off her own Goodwill tree - and tips for decorating your own.

So Zena, what does Goodwill have for the holiday, besides amazing coats and sweaters?

Just about everything, like the Christmas trees, Christmas wreaths, ornaments, Santa hats, stockings and animated Christmas toys at an affordable price.

Wow. You’re reminding us how much shopping we have left to do. Yikes. Speaking of, we still have to buy our tree… What’s your advice for decorating a holiday tree? Any tips on color, ornament size, tinsel, lights?

I have a 4 1/2 foot tree this year that I purchased at Goodwill with white lights and white poinsettias. And, yes, I love tinsel. With a Christmas tree, just have fun with decorating it. With a lot of lights or not that may lights, with a little tinsel or alot of tinsel, just have fun with it.

Besides the tree, which looks stunning, what is the best holiday decoration you’ve ever found in a Goodwill store?

There are just so many beautiful things I found over here, it’s so hard to narrow it down to one. The best one I found this year so far was the Christmas singing hat. It sings “New York, New York” and the bell jingles while it plays and the rim of the hat lights up.

We love it! With all the shoppers, the sales, and the singing hats, it must be a scene working at Goodwill during the holidays. Tell us, what is it like?

Wow. What a place to work at! Everyone is friendly and it’s like working with your family. We always play Christmas music and customers love the music. We are always happy to greet our customers with a smile. It’s just a wonderful store – come see us in Harrison just to buy or just to say hello. We’ll be glad to see you there. Have a wonderful holiday.

Thanks Zena!

Follow Zena’s advice and be sure to stop at your local New York and Norther New Jersey Goodwill stores for your holiday shopping – Christmas singing hats and all.

Seasons Greetings!

“…and they loaded up their truck and they moved to Beverly, Hills that is…”

And some of us are moving to Zena, OK and the trailer will be loaded on Tuesday. I just wish we were taking everything, but not enough is finished in Oklahoma to move it all, so we have settled for moving several large pieces of furniture and a lot of boxes.

Actually the biggest and most important things we will be moving are our three cats, Madeline, Bristol and Antonia. We took Bristol to the vet to learn about sedation since he is a screamer. He was all upset just going to the vet. Imagine 1500 miles!

The alpacas aren’t going with us immediately since the fences aren’t up yet and we have finishing to do on the inside of the barn. So this time we’ll have to settle for getting the apartment into reasonable order, setting up the barn and figuring out where those all-important fences go.

Tom has an appointment on December 3, hence the trip down now. Of course it won’t hurt a thing to have these infernal boxes moved. There are 20 boxes of books right now and probably another 20 to go and we won’t even go into the clocks (my father worked on clocks in his later years), and I am into crafts, spinning, knitting (fledgling) and of course, alpacas.

Speaking of alpacas, here is a photo:

Tika is actually an appaloosa.

While Tika looks like she’s a solid color, she has more than a dozen spots in her blanket alone, so I guess she should have been included in the photos of multis, but it’s easy to glance at her and forget she’s not a solid color.

Since I don’t have much time this morning, this will have to do. …And I know I own you photos of the cats too.

We love the holidays. It’s not even Thanksgiving yet, and we’re picturing pine-scented living rooms, glowing fireplaces, twinkling menorahs, and all those blue-white-red-green delicious butter cookies.

Santa comes in peace, even if it's a little early this year. Get in the fun and visit your local Goodwill for affordable, adorable holiday charm!

Yes, we here at GoodwillNyNj love the holidays – and so does Zena, GoodwillNyNj’s Low-Cost Costume Maven 2009. Click below to join Zena and the whole Goodwill Harrison NJ team in a little early holiday spirit – and get excited for a season full of warmth, family, laughter and cookies!

You may remember Zena from her great Cotton Candy Low-Cost Costume that won our competition last month — but her skills go way beyond your average Halloween creative. Zena, along with the rest of the team at Goodwill’s Harrison NJ store (at 400 Supor Boulevard, Harrison, NJ 07209), has decked out an enormous holiday tree for you to see.

Here's the perfect tree for your family room - a tree so alluring, it has even enchanted the local wildlife!

And all of you living in tiny studio apartments, well, don’t you fret. You too have a tree waiting for you at Goodwill’s Harrison NJ store!

This Goodwill Christmas tree may a bit compact, but it's got a lot of holiday love, and sparkle, to give!

Keep tuned to A Good Look this winter season – we’ll be bringing Zena back for a guest post on how best to deck your halls, no matter how large or small, this winter.

In the meantime, get yourself to your local Goodwill and snap up these holiday steals! Sure, it may seem like a long time ’til December now, but just you wait; the mistletoe is right around the corner…

Pucker up – and Happy Holidays!

Zabitím hrozil svojej manželke 29-ročný Patrik z Krompách v okrese Spišská Nová Ves. Pri vyčíňaní mu bránila jeho iba desaťročná dcéra. Nešlo o prvý incident v domácnosti. Ako informovala košická policajná hovorkyňa Jana Demjanovičová

viac cez google.sk : Patrik z Krompach

Švedska luteranska crkva ima novog biskupa u Stockholmu.

Ona je lezbijka.

U stabilnoj vezi.

I imaju trogodišnje dijete.

Ne naročito veliko iznenađenje od crkve koja omogućuje i homoseksualne crkvene brakove.

I dok će se razni “pravovjerni” križati da kuda svijet ide, ja ću samo reći da se meni čini jako logično na vodeće mjesto “religije ljubavi” smjestiti ženu koja voli, voljena je i pruža birgu i ljubav djetetu. Sigurno takva može kvalitetnije propovijedati o obitelji i ljudima nego gomila mizantropa u haljinama koji nikad nisu imali obitelj (osim eventualno zabranjenih avantura i krevete žena (djevojčice i dječake da ne spominjem) koje nisu “njihove”).

Čestitam švedskoj luteranskoj crkvi što im “ljubav prema čovjeku” i “jednakost svih ljudi pred Bogom” nisu samo prazne fraze.

A čestitam i novoj biskupici (ili kako bi se ta “blasfemija” zvala na hrvatkom) Evi Brunne i njenoj obitelji.

Izvor

Pre par dana sam dobila mail sa sledećom tabelom od mog najboljeg drugara. Fino sam se nasmejala, onako baš baš od srca. Naravno uvredi ili bilo kakvoj sličnosti nije bilo mesta
Dobru zabavu vam želim! Neka unese malko smeha u ovaj maglovit i tmuran ponedeljak!

* kliknite na tabelu za veći prikaz

Ulazi žena u prodavnicu i pravo s vrata upita prodavača:

“Mogu li da probam onu haljinu u izlogu”?

Prodavač će na to: “Svakako gospođo ali mi imamo i kabine!”

Looks like I’m safely booked up for the next couple of months. Maybe the summer drought is over.

More Tools: There are some more folks chiming in on the “Tools of the Trade” thread:

• Larry Wright
• Justin Williams
• Filip Tepper

And a few other odds and ends:

• Representative – Create XML representations of Ruby objects through a declarative markup style.
• Coming soon: Push API – To Codaset, that is.
• Zena – Another entrant in the Rails CMS horse race.
• Productivity FTW: a Ruby server to enhance productivity – A proxy server to keep you from browsing to sites that you know you shouldn’t.

Zena Holloway

Zena nació en 1973 como hija de un piloto de línea aérea. Después de unas vacaciones de buceo de Egipto a la edad de 18 años, unió trabajo y afición a la fotografía convirtiendóse en una gran fotográfa.

Sus fotografías las habreís visto ya en campañas publicitarias internacionales, cómo esta de Nike Women.Zena Holloway es muy conocida además por su serie Underwater.

Sus trabajos creativos han sido galardonados internacionalmente por su personal iconografía, mística y onírica, que nos transporta a un mundo de sueños imaginarios “bajo el agua”, Undewater. Zena estuvo realizando esta serie durante 10 años. Sus imágenes han sido portada de innumerables revistas y se han editado varios libros.

Los que me conocen ya saben mi pasión por la fotografía por eso mi amigo Juan José me ha enviado un power point de ésta magnífica fotógrafa que yo desconocía.

Os añado un pequeño vídeo-muestra de su trabajo pero mejor todavía entrar en su  WEB para los que queráis ver susobras y conocerla mejor.

http://www.zenaholloway.com/zena.html

Uno stalker è una guida non officiale esperta del territorio. Rifacendomi alla figura del film di Tarkovskij vi condurrò per un territorio poco conosciuto ai più in angoli incantevoli e ricchi di storia, e lo farò raccontandovi una storia che mette insieme cenni storici, geografici, filmici…Una citta, una “zona” che sta sparendo agli occhi, laddove non è già stata distrutta, abbattuta. Angoli cari ai genovesi, ma anche interessanti per turisti o interessati. Arrivederci al prossimo post che inizierà questo blog al suo vero scopo.

First Ape Woman: Meet Your 4.4million-year-old Ancestor