Okay folks, here’s the scoop. My photo shoot with Better Homes and Gardens yesterday was the real deal! I’ve been flooded with questions from readers and friends about the experience so I’ve compiled answers to the most frequently asked questions (and a few I made up).
Q: Were you actually in a magazine photo shoot?
A: Fo shiz. (See above.)
Q: Did you get to keep the clothes?
A: No, sadly. All the clothes, shoes, and accessories I wore were samples on loan from various clothes makers, which make advance copies of fashions then show them off to retailers, who submit orders. None of the stuff I wore is for sale right now, but when the magazine comes out in July the clothes will be in stores and the outfits will look fresh!
Q: What was the shoot like?
Insane. Surreal. Tons of fun. The whole thing was like something you’d see on TV. There was a hair stylist named Mitch that made my hair curly in a few snips. When he blew it out I was rockin’ the original Charlie’s Angels look! Anthea the makeup stylist shared her drugstore make up secrets while doing me up. The before and after pictures are remarkable!
After getting my hair and make up done, I was a dress up toy for a stylist named Jonny and his assistant (see me and Jonny at right). “Try this on,” he’d say. I put it on. “Oh no, that’s not right.” I take it off. “Try this on,” he’d say. I put it on. “That’s cute but not right.” I take it off. “Try this…”
When he was satisfied with the skirt or dress, we’d move onto tops, then jackets/sweaters, necklackes, bracelets, and shoes. You don’t know how many pairs of shoes I tried on!
Q: Tell me more about the shoes.
A: Well, okay. There were dozens of pairs all lined up. Mostly heels but some flats. Strappy, peep toe, classic pumps, espadrilles, platforms, you name it. I tried on a lot of pairs because they were so cute!
Q: Did they plan the outfits ahead of time?
A: No, but they borrowed dozens of dresses, skirts, tops, jackets, sweaters, and shorts from Talbots, Banana Republic, Ali Ro, Old Navy, Nautica, and others that fit the theme of the issue, which comes out in July. There was a lot of red, white, and blue, folks.
Q: Did all the clothes fit?
A: No! A lot of them were too small or too big.
Q: How do they make everything fit perfectly, then?
A: Pins! “Now you know why everything fits in a magazine,” the stylist, Jonny, said to me. “Because it’s all pinned.” (He’s fixing something on my top below.) Once clothes were pinned I couldn’t bend down so they put my shoes on for me. Bizarre.
Q: Did you get naked on set?
A: No, there was a make-shift changing area with fake walls and a few racks of clothes that I changed in. At first, Jonny and his assitant Becky left every time they asked me to put something on, but pretty soon I was stripping down to my undies and bra in front of them. I didn’t care, and there were so many outfits to try on!
Q: What happened after they dressed you?
A: The stylist and his assistant would lead me onto the set, where the main stylist for the magazine, a gorgeous woman named Amy, would give her approval (actually, once she sent us back for an outfit that was too immature). A photographer and his assistant would fiddle with the lights, the hair stylist would run on set to fluff my hair, and the make up stylist would freshen my lip gloss. Then the photographer would say, “We’re ready,” and start taking pictures of me.
Q: Did someone really come on set and fluff your hair?
A: Yes, about 72 times. Mitch always wanted to make my hair look better. You can tell we had a lot of fun, below.
Q: Was everyone a total fashion snob a la Devil Wears Prada?
A: No, everyone was super friendly and made me feel at home.
Q: What did your set look like?
A: A super cool version of my office with a sleek Mac laptop (I used a Dell), a clear chair (at home mine is on loan from the dining room table), and a fashion manequin (um, I suppose this correlates to my faded red courdorouy chair).
Q: Did they feed you?
A: Yes. The shoot was catered and the food was uber-healthy: yogurt, berries, and OJ when I arrived at 9:30. Lunch was spinach salad, asparagus soup, sauteed brocolli, veggie patties, and duck over beets and grains. I didn’t dare touch the flourless chocolate cake before squeezing into the clothes, but I did have ice cream to celebrate after dinner.
Q: When can we see the pictures?
A: Check out the July issue of Better Homes and Gardens!
Q: So you’re like, famous now?
A: No. I’m still my old self. And tomorrow I will go back to writing about saving money. I promise!
Supersentido/Flickr
Two weeks ago an editor from Better Homes and Gardens emailed me. Would I be interested in being their Style section’s “real woman” for an upcoming issue? It would involve a stylist picking out clothes for me, someone doing my hair, another person doing my make up, and a photographer taking my pictures.
Um, yesssssssss.
So last night I flew to New York City and spent the night at the Holiday Inn on someone else’s dime.
Is this really my life?
Apparently so because today I’m wearing my cutest wintry outfit (it’s like, 34 here!) so that I will look fashionable before I change into two outfits selected by a man whom I have never met. He knows my bra size, but nothing else.
Here’s what I’m wearing (before I have to take my clothes off):
Purple-gray courdorouy mini-skirt worn over black tights and fishnets (the studio where we are doing the shoot is down the street so I won’t get cold)
My super comfy black cowboy boots
A V-neck top that has black and gray stripes under a thin black V-neck wrap
My sister’s black leather motorcycle jacket (which is awesome except the zipper needs to be fixed)
A thick wooden bracelet my Dad made with thin leather bracelets from Africa, and a doubled up strand of purple fresh-water pearls
Black scarf
Wish me luck. I’m a bit nervous. I hope they can photo shop out my angry spots!
It has been a year exactly since I left my steady job as a reporter at the Los Angeles Daily News and launched BargainBabe.com. I’ve published 1,012 blog posts, learned how to write a monthly business budget, and surpassed my earnings at any previous job.
Thank you to anyone who has sent me a tip, signed up for my email list, or told a friend about BargainBabe.com. You rock!
Blogging is different than any job I’ve had. I’ve learned a more diverse skill set (writing is only about 33% of what I do) and put in more hours than I expected. My income fluctuates and maintaining my focus is challenging.
But blogging satisfies me. I’ve made many new friends, been exposed to great opportunities, and am constantly learning. Through blogging I discovered my down-to-earth writing voice and re-created my career.
Coincidentally, my birthday falls near BargainBabe.com’s anniversary. Over the weekend I went dancing with girlfriends to celebrate. I was telling one friend about an upcoming business trip to New York.
“What are you going to New York for?” she asked.
“I’m going to be in a magazine shoot.”
“What?”
“A magazine shoot – for Better Homes and Gardens.”
“WHAT?”
I laughed. She hugged me.
“That’s awesome, Julia!”
“I know, I know,” I said, thinking of all the ways it could fall through.
“No, you need to stop and realize your dream is happening, Julia. Everything you set out to do, it’s happening.”
I dismissed her then. There is a lot I haven’t accomplished! But now I realize she is right. So I’m taking a moment to appreciate my success.
…
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Ahem. Back to work. The blog must go on!
PS. Giant, heaping, armful of thanks to Andrew, Ginna, Julie, Sean, Sarah, Aicha, my Mom, my Dad, Greg, Alex, Meital, Mariel, Steve, and Connie for your help and support.
You may have noticed there were no new blog posts yesterday. That’s because my weekend camping trip to Catalina was extended by one night when the Coast Guard didn’t let our ferry boat come pick us up Sunday. Why not? The waves were 8 feet high!
We could actually see the watery horizon was roiling – it was very windy – so we opted to take advantage of the ferry company’s hotel discount offer. A teeny tiny hotel room with two queen beds for $60. Somehow all five of us fit with our over-sized backpacks. What a bargain!
This is soooooooo worth watching, even if you hate kids. It is a 3:45 minute video of what happens when you leave a kid alone with a marshmallow.
I’m not able to embed the video, but if there’s anything you do today – watch this!
PS. Did you know if you squish a marshmallow between your fingers for long enough it turns into taffy?
This post originally appeared on the Bargain Hunter blog, which I wrote at the LA Daily News.
A lot has changed in the past eight years, but when it comes to finding bargains on September 11, I feel the same way I did last year. I cannot do my job. A few years ago I told you why and here’s that story again.
Forgive me for not posting any bargains today, the eighth anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Trying to save $3 on a sandwich or find a shoe sale seems silly and out of place today. Instead, I’m going to try to give blood, something I wasn’t able to do that day in New York.
So many people tried to donate on September 11 – we expected waves of injured people to flood the hospitals – that the blood bank was full. They turned us away.
Walking to and from the hospital everyone we passed was talking about the twin towers, you could see it on their faces and hear snips of the awful truth in their conversations.
I was stunned, like so many other people. Was it really possible those two massive buildings that stood almost twice as tall as any other building on Manhattan could collapse? But they did. I saw it from my kitchen window.
We lived on the third floor of a brick building adjacent to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. One of the things we loved about the apartment was its three large windows that looked onto lower Manhattan.
We had a picture perfect view. On days when the air was crisp and the sun bright under a brilliant sky – almost impossible to imagine in hazy LA – I ate my breakfast cereal in front of the window, just staring at the buildings. My own New York postcard.
September 11, 2001 was one of those gorgeous fall days. I had just started grad school at Rutgers in New Jersey and had planned to go into campus that morning. But as it turned out the CDs I needed to listen to had arrived the day before in the mail. Otherwise I would have taken the subway into Manhattan, transferring to the NJ PATH train at the World Trade Center. With the CDs at home, I slept in.
The sound of sirens finally woke me up. I got out of bed at about 9 a.m. and I remember thinking there were more sirens than usual that morning. You get used to a lot of noise living in New York City. Then I saw a trail of smoke from the first tower. I went back into the bedroom and woke up Hubby, who was then my boyfriend.
“There’s something going on,” I told him, nudging him awake.
I turned on the TV and one of the people being interviewed on the BBC was declaring this was an act of war. That seemed drastic. Maybe this was just an accident?
When the second plane hit my gut told me it wasn’t. From my window I saw the terrible gash the second plane created on the side of the building. There was a lot of smoke. You could see flames.
We tried to guess how many people might work in the two buildings. Tens of thousands, we decided.
Then the buildings collapsed. Dark, smokey clouds billowed.
I bristle when people ask me what it was like to watch. What do you think it’s like seeing thousands of people die in a few minutes? It is terrible.
But there was one part that was beautiful. After the towers collapsed – but before the wind blew a blanket of smoke and debris over Brooklyn – the brilliant sky glittered.
A sparkling arc reached like a hand over the bay from Manhattan to Brooklyn. It was incredible and I watched it for a few minutes before closing the windows so the dark air would not foul our apartment. Later I found out it was reams of freed office paper catching the sunlight.
The air cleared and we went to the hospital. We wanted to give blood, to do our part, but we couldn’t. Today I am going to try again.
Join me in giving blood today. You can find a donation center through the Red Cross by clicking here.
You may have heard about the Los Angeles wildfires, which, at 122,000 acres, is the largest ever in LA County since 1897, according to KPCC radio host Larry Mantle. This video compresses the smoke clouds that have been mushrooming over Los Angeles into a few minutes.
Thanks, Amy!
I’ll tell you the truth. I got into this mess because I had blog envy. Back then all the other reporters at my newspaper, the Los Angeles Daily News, were talking about how many hits and comments they got. I wanted a piece of the action.
I was a business reporter covering retail, real estate and whatever else came up. Basically, I wrote about money and I wanted to create a blog along those lines. I find the way people spend – and save – their money fascinating because it says so much about them.
At the time I was trying to invest my 401 (k) and absolutely HATED IT. Ug, that high finance stuff still puts me to sleep. But I loved saving money on say, a sandwich, or new top. If I loved saving money on everyday stuff, I bet a lot of other people did too.
That was the premise of my first blog, Bargain Hunter. Within a few days I was churning out 10 posts a day, avoiding assignments for print stories, and talking non-stop about blogging. Addicted? You betcha.
The Bargain Hunter was a hit and my editor asked me to write a weekly column based on the best blog posts from the past week. Hundreds and then thousands of people signed up for my daily email with that day’s deals. Universal Press Syndicate offered me a 10-year contract to syndicate the column.
Not bad for someone who studied music in college. I thought I was going to be a music writer. While earning a master’s in Jazz History and Research at Rutgers University Newark, I took a class called Arts Criticism with Terry Teachout. He is an author and drama critic for the Wall Street Journal.
I wrote reviews of plays and movies for Terry and I loved it so much I began spending more time on his assignments than the rest of my degree. I was not a good writer in college – I struggled to get a B- in English. But in Terry’s class and for the first time in my life, I controlled the words. I could put my thoughts on paper.
The next semester I took an independent study class with Robert Snyder, who heads the journalism department at Rutgers Newark. He handed me a pad of paper and told me to cover the Sept. 11 memorial in Penn Station. “You want me to, like, talk to people?” I asked him. “Yes,” he said. Nothing terrified me more.
I dragged myself out to Penn Station in New York City, found the memorial, and started talking.
“Hi, My name is Julia Scott and I’m writing about this Sept. 11 memorial for the Newark Metro. What do you think of it?”
Today my pick up line has barely changed. Neither has my bewilderment at just how many people will talk to me. That day in Penn Station busy New Yorkers took 5, 10, 15 minutes out of their day to chat with me. One woman started crying. Many opened their lives to a stranger with a notebook.
I realized that a reporter’s badge is a passport into other people’s lives. And that talking to people is a lot more interesting than listening to music.
I started putting together a portfolio of published clips with the goal of becoming a reporter. My first clips were from online websites willing to publish a complete unknown. Then I approached the monthly and weekly papers. Eventually I landed a reporting gig at the Jersey Journal, a daily newspaper.
Later I moved up to the N.J. Star-Ledger, where I contributed to stories that won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news coverage of the resignation of then-Governor James E. McGreevey. He resigned because he had a gay affair with a staffer. My role was to stake out McGreevey’s new apartment in case he came home. I talked my way into the building and got a tour of an apartment just like McGreevey’s. Then I got kicked out.
From the Ledger I moved west to the LA Daily News, where I started the Bargain Hunter blog and column. I was flattered by the syndication offer but decided, because of a number of factors, to go off on my own. I left the paper in January and launched BargainBabe.com, which helps people save money on everyday expenses. In July, I launched a second site, BargainBabeLA.com, which uses Google maps to help Angelenos find and share local deals.
I’ve been profiled by NBC, and written about in the Washington Post, Reader’s Digest and the LA Times. I’m still a journalist, but I’m also a businesswoman. Straddling these two worlds while helping folks save money is my current passion.
No, I don’t have a brain tumor. But my friend Marla Jo, a fabulous writer at the Orange County Register, does. Or did. She had surgery recently to remove it but I didn’t find out about the whole ordeal until just now.
Marla Jo wrote about dealing with news of her tumor in a way that made me laugh. I bet you will too.
My sister Aicha is spending the summer observing women and children with HIV/AIDS in Africa to improve treatment. She has been in love with Africa ever since she went there as a Peace Corps volunteer ten summers ago. Her specialty back then was agroforestry, which meant she taught farmers in the Fouta region of Guinea basic farming techniques.
My mother bought me a plane ticket to visit Aicha, above, in Guinea for my college graduation present. Three days after leaving New York City we arrived in the remote village of Poredaka and settled in for a four week visit. Roads? Ha! Electricity? Ha! Rice for every meal? Yes! Well water that must be boiled? You betcha!
When I arrived my sister had been living in Guinea for a year already. Two things struck me about her concrete, one-room home. The toilet and shower drain were one in the same. And there was a dog-eared copy of Where There is no Doctor by her bedside.
Aicha, who had no formal medical training then, relied on that book for 28 months. After she introduced me to just about every person in the village, I knew the people of Poredaka didn’t even have a book about doctors. Everyone had a festering wound, missing digit or noticeable scar – things that ibuprofen and Neosporin would do wonders for. And that was just what I saw in four weeks.
During her two years in Guinea Aicha trained many farmers, but she realized she could help a lot more people as a nurse. She has returned many times since leaving the Corps, but this is her first time in Africa as a nurse.
This summer she is working for ICAP, the International Center for AIDS Treatment and Programs, in the Ivory Coast (Cote d’Ivoire). You can read about her adventures on the Africa Nurse blog, which is written by another nurse named Mara, who is working closely with her.
One recent post on Africa Nurse blog tells of six things Mara learned since arriving in Africa, including the art of the bucket bath, the importance of having an African name, and just how little locals know about AIDS. A snipet about going dancing:
Last night, as nostalgic for our friends as for the running water in Abidjan, we decided to suck it up and check out “King Discotheque” next door. It did not disappoint. The music was just as good as it was en ville, and the setup was exactly the same. The culture of going out dancing here has nothing much to do with pairing up—quite the opposite, actually. With my sample size of two dance clubs, I can now conclude that what you’re supposed to do is get dressed to the nines and then go dance by yourself in front of the full-length mirror that will inevitably cover one of the walls, staring at yourself. All night.
Also, the the music will inevitably be interrupted every few minutes by a DJ shouting something or other. Last night’s interruption-shouting theme was “Aaaaaaaaicha!”, and some form of my name, alternately, “Maaaaara!”, “Maaaaaria!”, “Maaaaaariam!” or “Maaaaariama!” It’s the most famous I’ve ever felt.
Check out the Africa Nurse blog!
Ever wonder what it takes to write a knock out blog? Check out my story on the difference between writing for print and online, published today in Media Bistro. The site requires a paid membership, but I’ll share the intro.
Succeeding as a blogger comes down to three things: creating appealing blog content, choosing a topic that has natural commercial potential, and promoting your blog to no end. The last two don’t matter a whit unless you have mastered the first. Technical hurdles aside, many print journalists struggle to make the transition to blogging. This article aims to ease that pain by outlining…
I hope you find it useful! If you’d like to know more about the transition from print to blog, I’ve lectured many times on the subject. Shoot me an email if you’d like to know more.
Sunday’s NY Times had a funny Op-Art piece that parodies the iPhone ads about which apps save you money (some are free, others cost $.99 to $30 to download). You may recall I gushed about these ads, which have been running on back page of the NY Times’ front section.
The Op-Art piece reads: “iPanic: helping you deal with the loss of your life savings, one app at a time.” A sampling of the “apps” including:
Never Mind: $3.99 “Choose a vacation from more than 1,000 popular destinations, dinner at a restaurant you’ve always wanted to try or a round of golf at any one of your favorite courses. Never Mind calculates the money you save by not going.”
4merly Hot: $14.99 “Tired of economizing alone? Upload a picture of yourself when you had money, then use your iPhone to meet other singles pretending they still have money, too.”
Fantasy Finance League: $9.99 “Field your own 401 (k). Make imaginary trades with stocks you used to own. FFL keeps score, compiles stats and automatically updates when you could have retired.”
2 Late Now: $7.99 “Create, edit and save spreadsheet files documenting all the things you wish you’d never bought.”
Scrape: $6.99 “By using your iPhone’s GPS, Scrape lists part-time jobs within a five-mile radius of your current location. Find the opportunity to match your experience and skills, from valet parking to wearing a taco costume.”
Hmmm…the message I’m getting is that even as we watch our life savings disappear, we continue to pay for luxuries like the iPhone (guilty as charged!) But in my defense, I only download free apps.
So maybe you don’t have an iPhone, but I bet you have some other secret spendy habit that you are loathe to reveal to other bargain hunters. Spill the beans!
I’m sad to report that the baby crow that landed on my deck and was learning to fly has died. After I took the flying video he spent the night under our bench, huddled quietly out of sight from the cats, and woke the next morning. He pooped a few times and then died.
Hubby double checked by poking him (gently) with a stick. Had we known him longer (or had a dirt yard) we would have given him a pet funeral, like my Mom always did for our rats, cats, guinea pigs, chickens, dogs and hamsters. She would call us out to the yard and we would take turns saying something nice about the pet while crying.
Instead, Hubby called animal control, which sent a policeman with a strong knock. “He didn’t make it, did he?” the man said when I opened the door. “The parents probably kicked him out of the nest because they could tell something was wrong with him.”
I shurgged and showed him onto the deck. The policeman scooped up the baby bird into a black garbage bag. This way the other babies have more to eat. Survival of the fittest.
If you’d like to watch the video of him learning to fly again, click here.
Hubby and I returned from a long weekend away to find a wounded bird on our deck. It’s feathers were disheveled and it cowered when I came near instead of flying away. Hubby called animal control, which was closed for the night. So the cops came.
Turns out, the bird is not wounded. It’s a baby crow that’s been kicked out of the nest to, ahem, encourage it to fly. Here are two minutes of flying lessons (sideways, unfortunately).
Am I the only one that finds this highly entertaining?
This is an excerpt of a blog post I wrote about my future. It was published today on the forward-looking website Journalism 2.0.
Four months ago I gave up my job as a reporter, blogger and columnist at a mid-size newspaper to launch my own personal finance blog. I knew in my gut that this career path, though uncertain, held more promise.
I prepared for longer hours and brainstormed creative ways to make ends meet. But I didn’t account for a 180-degree shift in perspective about what it means to practice journalism in the Internet age.
My new perspective came about while attending an intense, week-long training program at the Knight Digital Media Center on the campus of the University of Southern California. I was one of 15 mid-career journalists eager to soak up the business skills needed to practice our craft independent of mainstream news organizations…keep reading on Journalism 2.0.
