THE NOT SO BLONDE TRAVEL

Most girls care about Valentine's Day. Flowers, romantic dinners, gifts and bla bla bla ...  I am not going to lie. I was very happy to get flowers yesterday morning. But not because it was V-Day, just because I love flowers. If I were given flowers once a month, I think my life would be pretty much perfect, and/or if I win the lottery.  But out of curiosity, I googled top Valentine's Day gifts to see what I was missing out on by not celebrating V-Day, and here is what I found in the top 10: a heart-shaped waffle machine, a lucky bamboo plant trained to form two hearts, a 400 piece personalized jigsaw that features a heart- shaped puzzle, and best of all , "smitten mittens" so you can hold hands in the cold and literarily be attached at all times. the SMITTEN MITTENS I am not going to lie. I thought many of these presents were a bit cheesy, but I expected them to be since V-Day is cheesy. They made me laugh more than anything. However, here ...

Us New Yorkers love black. We live black, we breath black: black is our color. But we also love red lipstick, and bold bright accessories are our bff's. What better than a statement necklace or a funky clutch to brighten an all black outfit? So for those of you that are in "need" of bright and beautiful accessories, there are three designers that you have to check out: AMULETTE Creation by Samia Mbarek, TAMARZIZT by Oumaima Tamarzizt and DS by Dorra Sassi. All three are from my native country, so perhaps I am biased, but I don't think so. I truly believe their work is beautiful and that all of us should be all over them before they are huge super stars and we can't afford buying anything from their beautiful collections. I could go on and on about how original their creations are, but pictures are sometimes worth a thousands words. And honestly, I wouldn't even know how to describe their work. I am not a professional jeweler, I am just a professional shop...

Anyone who has ever tried to put four girls in the same picture knows how difficult it can be, not to get them to take the picture, that's easy the part, but to get all four of them to agree that all four look good in one single picture and one single setting: "it's never the right profile, the right angle, the right look, the right filter and so on ..." It never ends. One of the girls will always claim to not look good enough. Us women like to complicate things, it is a fact. So what did I decide to do? Well I thought it would be fun to organize a girl's trip with a bunch of very different girls who mostly don't know each other. Sounds crazy, Right? But I have done it once with two girlfriends of mine who didn't know each other, and it all worked out. One glass of champagne in our cozy Business seats, and all three of us were BFFs for the rest of our Istanbul adventure. So why not try with more girls? Well because as a Facebook virtual friend of mi...