CHARMED

The best part about having our own space in this world - whether it be a single room, an apartment, a house, an RV -whatever space is completely and utterly yours....the best part is the freedom we hold to pick and choose what we would like to surround ourselves with and look at everyday of our lives. What makes you happy? What's your favorite color? What makes you smile? Reminds you of special memories? What is your creative vision? Well, the biggest shock to me personally about people's selections for their homes - is when the walls are decorated with store-bought-dime-a-dozen-generic-general-just-because art/photo prints. Admittedly, I am a photographer and have a professional side-photography-business (www.charmbytasha.com) in addition to my full-time duties as a publicist - however I promise making a beautifully original custom art photo print is easy as pie. Step 1 - Take a photo. Since this is an ART print objective - your photo should be of a place or thing that holds s...

I flippin' love Halloween. {ode of the kitchen towels - and NOTE: my fool proof BAMBOO! I don't lie!} I will be closing this laptop and in about 2 seconds I'll be sinking into that couch right there....looking greatly foward to relaxing in front of our newly installed eco-friendly and energy efficient pellet stove. Best invesment. Ever. I just have to say if you're looking into alternative heating - pellets are marvelous. So affordable, renewable, and you still get that flame that gives you the cozy homey "gather 'round and snuggle in" feeling. Just in love. We'll see what winter brings....but theoretically only $500 worth of pellets is all it will take to keep our little dream home heated for the season! Oh.......and did I mentioned I got engaged on my birthday? {10/21.....no wonder October is my favorite} Whatta week.

Did anyone else not inherit their family's green-thumb-gene? Am I the only one over here leaf-ily-challenged? What is it specifically about the concept of: #1 dig a hole. #2 plant something. #3 water it so it doesn't die. That I don't get? It IS that easy, right? 1,2,3. Ugh. Perhaps it's more horrifyingly embarrassing for me that I need fool-proof bamboo desktop plants (that actually SAY on the tag....NO DIRECT LIGHT and barely needs water so don't worry if you forget for 2 and a half months) because I grew up in a house that could in all likelihood qualify as the next great rain forest after the Amazon. With all of my mom's floor plants and hanging plants and table plants.....seriously, walking up the stairs into the living room might feel to a stranger like hiking in a heavily wooded national park. Now this is not to make fun of my green-thumbed mother - oh no. I'm in AWE of this magnificent woman!!! I just don't know how she does it. Her yard is a bot...

When we moved out of our apartment and into our house, I had a grand vision. Everything would be home-made, re-purposed, re-made, hand-crafted, and all considered 1-of-a-kind via my thrift-loving ways and DIY addiction. Nothing more I hate than a home that looks like a cookie-cutter-show-room. Exhibit #1 - One of my first orders of business was to create a dreamy master bedroom. That evokes the feeling of floating on a cloud and serenely calms your bones the minute you walk in. When I think of a dreamy state I think of things becoming blurry......that lapse of time in between falling asleep and fully waking up where your eyes aren't focused. This train of thought led me to thinking about FADED LIGHTS.....and their soft glow. How I would love to always be surrounded by that. I dragged out our strings of Christmas lights - in the dead of spring - and after the sun set, I secluded myself into the darkest corner and snapped a string of shots. After selecting my favorite shot, I just br...

Hersheys. Ghiradelli. Godiva. Lindt. German chocolate. Belgian chocolate. Swiss Chocolate. Haut-Designer Chocolate to generic store-brand chocolate chips. Chocolate fondue to chocolate syrup. Chocolate chip cookies to chocolate cake. I'm sorry, but some days I really do believe chocolate - of any brand/lightness/darkness/texture......is the answer. Who cares what the question is? Best Chocolate Chip Cookies Ever (proclaimed by me) 2 sticks of butter at room temperature (vitally important!) 3/4 cup granulated sugar 3/4 cup brown sugar 3 teaspoons vanilla extract (I'm big on flavor) 2 eggs 1 teaspoon baking soda 1 teaspoon salt 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour 2 cups chocolate chips (plus a couple extra handfuls for good luck!) Simple enough, the run of the mill blend the butter with the sugar, once creamy add the rest of the wet ingredients, slowly add the dry ingredients until all incorporated - then dump in ALL OF THAT CHOCOLATE. Extra handfuls necessary. And why not throw in som...

CHARM by Tasha {professional photography}

Today is indeed the day my lovely mother borned me into this world - 25 years ago. VINTAGE ME 25 years on this earth I have lived, and it's quite extraordinary to think of what a human can experience in this amount of time. What realizations are reached, what things are learned, what people are met, what situations we're faced with, what range of emotions we feel, what level of self-awareness and world-awareness we achieve. Growing up in a wonderful town, a beautiful state, surrounded by an endlessly kind, loving, and supportive family, making lifelong friends in elementary school, living in Germany with a marvelous family, traveling all over the world, moving to New York and living my big city dreams, graduating college with a degree I'm passionate about (public relations&photography), meeting my perfect match and falling in love, landing my dream job in my hometown of all places in the world, buying a home, achieving what I've always worked hard for.... I couldn...

There's nothing I love more than the warmth and smell that permeates your home when something yummy is baking in the oven. The thing about baking is the general consensus is it's time consuming - to schlepp all of your needed materials out - measure, mix, beat, add, mix more, add more, let sit, put in the fridge to chill, mix again, add more, finally get baking. My friends, THIS IS THE ANSWER. The answer to all the times you fall through the door, home from a long draining day at work - and have zero effort left for crafting anything fancy, but have an insatiable craving for something sweet and not from 7-11. This is the answer to that diet you're on - where you think you can't have a cupcake! And this is the answer to all of you lazy @$e$ out there who can make this, and insanely impress people who underestimate you. This is all it takes to make some freakin delicious (& healthIER) cupcakes! 1 box reduced sugar store-bought cake mix 1 can (12oz) of diet coke THE E...

A sandwich bag full of baby carrots is a staple in my lunch pail. Just kidding, I don't use a lunch pail, I usually just throw stuff haphazardly into a leftover plastic grocery bag. Which needs to change because that's no kind of stable support for food swimming around in Tupperware containers. I'm holding out for one of those fancy neoprene designer BYO lunch bags. Such as below: In any case, as usual I digress. Baby carrots. Now my first thought when it comes to carrots brings me back to Gerlingen, Germany. When I was a young eager girl (hey wait, I still am!) - well, back in the earlier 2000's - I wanted to live in a foreign place and assimilate completely into the local everyday life. So I participated in an exchange program and lived with a family in southern Germany. A family of four, the Boehmlers, complete with a doggie and elder Oma living just down the street. I have to say, grandparent's houses are universally alike. They all have some type of musty old-p...

IT'S dreadful, unpleasant, periodic, involuntary, unavoidable, and at this point we can all deduce that IT'S an inherent part of basic human nature. "It" is: being engulfed in a SLUMP. A slump, or “trudging through a valley on my way back up to the hills” as I like to call it, generally lasts a few days. You know the onslaught has occurred when you encounter a handful of select telltale signs, one being when you wake up and begin ready-ing yourself for the day you all of a sudden feel like a lazy-aimless-slow-moving Zeppelin, looking down into the stadium of rallying ill-fitting-clothes, shouting, shaking their big #1-SLUMP foam fingers at you. Or rather, perceived to be “ill-fitting” clothes at the moment, because I’m pretty sure it’s virtually impossible to gain 5 pounds in a 24 hour period. (however, I always say never underestimate the core-shocking habits of Americans – need I point to the latest TLC show: “My Monkey Baby”….documenting a Tennessee couple who are...

And we're not talking about Christmas. We're talking about the REALLY most wonderful time of the year. At least in the book of Haddad. It's the yellow-electric-hues, the neon orange hues, the blood red hues. The crisp wispy air. The perfect chill that makes snuggling under a blanket just THAT much more enjoyable. The pumpkins. The corn. The crispy leaves. The costumes. The CREATIONS! It's my birthday month. It's mysterious, full of fright, full of family memories, and full of annual apple picking. Jack-o-lanterns. Black cats. Witches. Candy. Hay-rides. Haunted houses. Seriously, can someone name me a month and corresponding-happenings that could ever possibly beat this? Admittedly, I've fallen off of the costume-band-wagon in recent years, however the discovery of the following astounding design by a MAC make-up artist has truly inspired me. I've never seen anything like it. Speechless. Additionally, I've done some serious research on a subject vitally i...