Yes, you guessed right, this gal hit the big 4–0 late last week and, I swear, with age comes mem­ory loss. It’s been chaos this week­end in between a retro Dancin’ on Air tap­ing for a spe­cial that will be air­ing this Thanks­giv­ing on PHL17 to get­ting the Sous­Pug ready for his stitch removal (hope­fully this is the final stretch with his major health issues and he can just rest for a change). I def­i­nitely fore­see some Cruzan in my imme­di­ate future after this roller coaster of a year.

Over the week­end, I decided to unplug and take a step back from the com­puter and gather my thoughts as well as think about what’s ahead in this new chap­ter of life. So, in true Aly form, I fig­ured I’d shake things up a bit with a lit­tle Fab Mon­day action.  Here are a few things that I am obsessed with currently…

1. These Mark + James Dan­nie boots caught my eye recently. I saw them in a teal color and am kick­ing myself now for not buy­ing them when I saw them. Cur­rently, my stilet­tos are crossed that these lovelies get put on the sale block at one of the sam­ple sale sites.

2.  Con­fes­sion: I am hor­rid to shop with some­times. When it comes to big ticket items, I hes­i­tate, chan­nel my inner Suze Orman and, for the most part, can indeed behave (except when it comes to Williams Sonoma or Sur La Table or cook­books – after that, all bets are off!) There are some huge things that I am still obsessed with (like my favorite Crate & Bar­rel French Mar­ble Island) but I can’t jus­tify the expenses so close to the hol­i­days.   After a recent excur­sion to NYC, I saw a cou­ple Kate Spade bags that I could NOT get out of my head. Every time I would go into Bloom­ing­dales, Nord­stroms, etc., I would look at those bags (specif­i­cally the Kate Spade Maryanne and the Cob­ble Hill Leslie ) and would do a men­tal cost per wear depre­ci­a­tion in my head to see if it was, indeed, worth it. After get­ting an email about the Friends & Fam­ily sale cur­rently hap­pen­ing at Bloom­ing­dales along with 6% cash back from Ebates, I bought my first “40 and FABULOUS” bag – specif­i­cally, the Cob­ble Hill Leslie in this gor­geous stormy grey that will last a lifetime.

3. I did a lit­tle retail ther­apy this week­end and fell head over heels for this Mar­ble Cheese Board from Crate and Bar­rel. They showed it up against my favorite Cam­den stoneware set that I’ve been lust­ing after for­ever and it just looked stun­ning – talk about a way to make a sale.

4. I’ve tried the French Press, the espresso maker and even a drip cof­fee maker and, con­fes­sion time, my cof­fee mak­ing still leaves A LOT to be desired. This Chemex 6 cup cof­fee maker is gor­geous to look at and, I’m plan­ning on using Anne Thornton’s Spiced Cof­fee recipe. If I fail with that – you have per­mis­sion to slap me upside the head because, clearly, a cof­fee fiend that CAN’T make cof­fee – shame­ful *sigh*

5. After read­ing this arti­cle from Saveur about Whoopie Pie Pans, I decided that I could actu­ally do more with it than just make the typ­i­cal whoopie pie (which I have yet to attempt).  I picked up this Wilton Whoopie Pie Pan and I’m fig­ur­ing that I might attempt mak­ing a few things like the “Muf­fin Tops” and other good­ies with it around the holidays.

6. Speak­ing of bake­ware, I am still on the fence about “pur­chase or not to pur­chase” this All Clad 8-in. Square Bak­ing Pan. I’ve bought some typ­i­cal 8×8 pans before and, after repeated use, they really don’t last as well as I would like them to. I have been seri­ously con­tem­plat­ing this All Clad Bak­ing Pan for some time now – just a ques­tion of “Do I really want to spend THAT much and have it not work?” Has any­one used this and could maybe give a lit­tle insight?

7. I went a lit­tle “cook­book crazy” and picked up a few books that I just “had” to have. I know I will be using them like crazy over the hol­i­day sea­son and, of course, using a lit­tle recipe inspi­ra­tion from them for here. One of the lat­est acqui­si­tions was so good, I couldn’t wait for it to come over from the UK and bought it on the Kin­dle app for the iPad – Lor­raine Pascale’s Bak­ing Made Easy. If you haven’t caught her show, Sim­ply Bak­ing, on the Cook­ing Chan­nel – you should. It def­i­nitely has shown me that the only com­pli­ca­tions that I asso­ciate with bak­ing are clearly just in the mind – it’s not as dif­fi­cult as I once thought. Her recipes are stel­lar and, you should be all set if you have a dig­i­tal scale.  Her show def­i­nitely reminds me of some of the early Nigella episodes – very casual and a wealth of info.