Coffee Break: Gilda Slingbacks
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Ooh: if you're hunting for baby kitten heels to get the sliiiiightest bit of height, these Cole Haan slingbacks look perfect.
(Heels this height were always my answer to wanting to commute in flats but wear a slight heel and pointed toe around the office…)
They're available in “dark cuoio” (pictured), black, and white, and come in sizes 6-11 in medium and wide sizes at Zappos, Cole Haan, and other retailers for $109-$160.
Sales of note for 4/21/25:
- Nordstrom – 5,263 new markdowns for women!
- Ann Taylor – 25% off tops & sweaters + extra 40% off sale
- Banana Republic Factory – 50%-70% off everything + extra 20% off
- Boden – 10% off new womenswear styles
- Brooks Brothers – Friends & Family Sale: 30% off sitewide
- The Fold – 25% off selected lines
- Eloquii – $29+ select styles + extra 40% off all sale
- Everlane – Spring sale, up to 70% off
- J.Crew – Spring Event: 40% off sitewide + extra 50% off sale styles + 50% swim & coverups
- J.Crew Factory – 40%-70% off everything + extra 70% off clearance
- Kule – Lots of sweaters up to 50% off
- M.M.LaFleur – Earth Day Sale: Take 25% off eco-conscious fabrics. Try code CORPORETTE15 for 15% off
- Madewell – Extra 30% off sale + 50% off sale jeans
- Rothy's – Final Few: Up to 50% off last chance styles; new favorites added
- Spanx – Lots of workwear on sale, some up to 70% off
- Talbots – 30% off entire purchase w/Talbots card
to each their own – I find heels this height to be the most unstable. Unlike a higher heel, your weight isn’t shifted to the ball of your foot, so your heel is more prone to wobbling on the short point!
I really like the front, though. If these were either a flat or a low block heel, with a back on them instead of a slingback, I’d be all over them!
Good point. I have a pair this height, and now that you mention it, I have twisted my ankle more than once from them.
Agreed. I really like these but for the heel. I don’t think this heel height does any favors for anyone. It just looks off and because it is so unstable makes the person walking in them look ungraceful.
Some stylist put poor Caitlin Clark in shoes like this when she was first in the WNBA and it was painful to watch her try to look elegant wearing them at a time when she was barely used to wearing anything but sneakers. Pretty much any other shoe would have been better.
I had a couple pairs of these early in my career. Yeah, they were a disaster. I don’t wear heels anymore at all, but this height is the worst of all worlds.
not sure if it has to do with the shape of my feet but i find straps like this either don’t stay put or rub. they are cute though.
I have the same issue.
Same, I love slingbacks but can’t wear them.
No slingbacks ever work for me.
Follow up to the alarm clock question –
I realized that a good hack for my executive functioning issues is to set a literal kitchen timer for say 15 minutes. I have a nice-looking kitchen timer that someone had given me. Manual, you wind it around to the time you want. This one has little metal legs and is white.
I’d like to buy another to keep in a different part of my house, that looks less like a stopwatch you’d have in the kitchen and that blends in a little with the decor. Any suggestions for not-ugly timers? Also, what are these actually called?
I use my Alexa device like this.
Anything digital doesn’t work! I need the physical.
Well, Alexa could work. Just can’t be on my phone
Similar to above, but we use the Google mini dots for stuff like this.
A search on literally ‘cute kitchen timer’ turned up this one, which I really like – https://www.nordstrom.com/s/magnetic-retro-60-minute-kitchen-timer-2-75-inch/8239422?color=Red&size=one+size&country=US¤cy=USD&utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=seo_shopping&utm_channel=low_nd_seo_shopping&srsltid=AfmBOor0Vwz2Ba7_gciaKZhmYoLl5IDLwM4Jz58Qw-zb_x7ed-AJMaUVYVw&gQT=1
If you search for “ADHD timers” you’ll find a lot of options!
If you look up Pomodoro timer you’ll find lots. I have a cube from Mooas that I use often, depending on which side you turn it to it counts to 5, 15, 30, or 60 minutes.
I was looking at this one! It had some questionable reviews, good to know it works.
I have one of these cubes! (Recommended here, it was a coffee break item years ago). Not really “cute” but I love how easy it is to set. Mine has times for 5,10, 20,25 mins.
are you looking for a “visual timer”? you set them by spinning in this way (it does look like a clock but if you got a neutral colored outside it would probably blend in.) Usually you can set for up to 60 min.
lots of options here: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=visual+timer&crid=3C004RWR0BB6X
Ah I don’t like how this looks actually! The one I have just has a clock face on the front.
I like the Time Timer MOD model – this is a manuel clock that counts down rather than up, and it shows visually how much time is left. The MOD model comes in different colours.
I bought the Esther block heels from Cole Haan and wore them for the first time (no breaking in) to a wedding and was 100% comfortable. Danced, stood up as a bridesmaid, etc, feet didn’t hurt at all. And it comes in a few neutral colors
Thanks to whoever recommended James Allen for lab-grown diamonds yesterday. I’d been on the hunt for a ring and decided to bite the bullet on one of theirs. Ordered at 3:30 yesterday and received the ring by 11 AM today; the ring is lovely.
Link?
Congrats!
I got this one: https://www.jamesallen.com/wedding-rings/womens-anniversary/14k-yellow-gold-seven-stone-low-dome-basket-lab-grown-diamond-ring-150-ctw-f-g-vs2-si1-item-111578
dumb question, but are you going to do any sort of ceremony to replace your wedding band with this one? (it was an anniversary ring, right?) i hate my wedding band and only wear it but i can’t help but feeling like there is some magic to it that won’t be there with a new band. I’ve thought of having a new one blessed but we didn’t even have a religious ceremony when we got married.
Fun question for today – which TV/movie/influencer’s home would you live in and why? For some reason I really like Steve Martin’s place in Manhattan Murder Mysteries.
The Father of the Bride or Home Alone houses.
The Steve Martin version of Father of the Bride: the house is around the corner from where I live. It’s a very nice house!
Samantha Varvel’s in-laws’ Provence home.
Yesss!! Meryl Davis (the Olympic champion ice dancer) got married there and I know someone who attended the wedding. Sadly my invite got lost in the mail 🤣
Bertie Wooster’s flat in Jeeves and Wooster for amazing period details and beautiful furniture.
The Brownstone in Elementary would also be nice – spacious, lots of potential, no open plan, real rooms with doors, high ceilings, great location.
Side note–Jeeves & Wooster has been removed from Prime (where I purchased about a decade ago–they’re gone). I’ve watched them since i was a child. Where do you watch them now?
Britbox, maybe? I loved Jeeves and Wooster too, wrote a paper on Wodehouse when I was in high school.
Most or all are on YouTube.
I’m not sure it’s exactly my style but I love Allie Provost’s NYC apartment.
Diane Keaton’s beach house in Something’s Gotta Give (Nancy Meyer FTW)
Ted Lasso’s apartment, for the neighborhood
Mrs. Maisel’s NYC apartment
The beach house in Grace and Frankie.
I thought you meant Steve Martin’s apartment in Only Murders in the Building, and I was right there with you! https://www.hausmatter.com/blog/2024/5/30/only-murders
Also the house(s) in Shrinking.
doh you’re right i did mean Only Murders!!
The London home in the 1998 The Parent Trap. Wouldn’t say no to the CA one either.
Gary’s house in the White Lotus
I always had a thing for Joan Clayton’s (Tracee Ellis Ross) craftsman house from the old “Girlfriends” tv show. I just loved her living room and dining room as well as her kitchen. To me, it was a total Chef’s kiss!
There is only one true answer to this: the aunts’ home in Practical Magic. :P
My 13yo now needs ANOTHER dress for her spring concert. I just hope they don’t change the color scheme for next year, otherwise we’ll be up to here in dresses by the time she’s done with HS! That said – any sources for light blue long dresses with some kind of sleeve other than Lulu’s or a m a z o n?
When I was in school, concerts were all black. What a waste of money changing it every year.
She could try a junior bridesmaid type of dress from Azazie. They come in all kinds of colors.
+1. I’d be very annoyed. Concert blacks, all the way.
we went to my 8th grade son’s band concert and i couldn’t believe some of the skirts the girls had on – whose parent lets them out of the house for a band concert, seated on stage, wearing a mini mini that barely covers you while standing? and of course the worst offender was in the front row.
My kid had a violin recital over the weekend. One of the girls was wearing a dress that would’ve been very cute if it had been even 6 inches longer. I am not kidding you, I am surprised her underwear was covered, it was that short. And she was at least 5’7″ so it was, um, a lot of leg for a conservative event!
what size is she again? what’s the budget?
maybe something like this? https://thehalara.com/products/stand-collar-long-sleeve-plicated-side-pocket-flare-maxi-casual-dress
Would your kid be open to something secondhand? It looks like there are a ton of options on poshmark/ebay from Zara and similar stores. Although this Mango dress is super cute in my opinion…. https://shop.mango.com/us/en/p/women/dresses-and-jumpsuits/dresses/long-flared-sleeve-dress_87015731?c=50
Try Altar’d State. My daughter has a solid light blue short-sleeved dress from last year that would be perfect.
Check Macy’s. They’re having a 50% off sale on dresses today.
Same boat and it’s incredibly frustrating. I have a rule that it needs to be acceptable for a house of worship.
I’m looking for lilac dress for a 5’6” girl with a 22” waist. Arshiner on Amazon has worked well so far but doesn’t work this time for the movie premier theme.
I have a very nice Room & Board sofa but now need a larger one in my bigger space. What are recommendations for style/comfort and at least decent quality but at a lower price than R&B?
are you looking for comfort, durability, pet-friendly, kid-friendly, anything like that? and what size? i always think of r&b sofas as huge!
we have 2 sofas in our main living room in an L – could you just do multiples?
Pet friendly with chaise. Mine is only a bit over 70” and now I have room for about 100”. And comfort!
I have the Owen chaise from Castlery and love it. It’s 100 inches long and some of the fabrics are pet-friendly.
I really like my Apt2B sofa. Great quality, made in the USA, and can customize a lot of the styles to fit your space.
Someone here recommended Macy’s couches and I’ve been happy with mine
What’s the best way to get a body smell out of a duvet cover? DH stored our summer weight duvet cover without washing it first. I tried bleaching (it’s off white) and washing with oxi-clean. My next step is to hang it out in the sun for a day. I’m sensitive to smells, so I’d rather not mask the smell with another fragrance. Any other ideas?
I think your sun idea is the way to go. fresh air and sun cure most smells
you could also try taking it to a laundromat to use a giant washer and dryer, even with normal detergent, the extra volume will help it wash and tumble dry better.
If sun and sitting out in a nice light breeze doesn’t cure it, I think it’s incurable.
Sometimes things just need to be replaced.
I’d take it to a commercial laundromat and wash it with washing soda, borax, and vinegar. As a first option you can also spray with vodka which saved one of our soft chairs from BO after a particularly smelly teen boy hang out.
Soak it in the bathtub with vinegar and water, rinse and hang to dry in the sun.
Soak it in degreaser (the kind you’d get at a janitorial supply), then wash as normal.
I bought a sweater second hand which had extremely strong smells of detergent and cigarettes. Freezing it and washing with vinegar helped somewhat but the smell lingered. Repeated washings and wearings eventually wore it down.
If you wash again, Mule Team Borax works wonders on odors.
Wash with a sport detergent–they have special chemicals designed to get rid of serious funk. And then wash again with regular detergent to get rid of the sport detergent smell. I’m sensitive to scents as well. And this approach has saved so many things for me.
Following up from this morning’s thread about burn out (not the OP though) how does one really lean out? Sorry if it is a dumb question, but I think this is the place for generally type A, competent women who have always punched above their weight, and it is SO ingrained within me to give my 500% to everything. I see my staff and younger folks not struggle with this but I really don’t even know how to! Appreciate tips/ resources.
i just read the book “keeping house while drowning” and she talks about how if you have a lot of balls in the air, you need to figure out which ones are glass and which ones are plastic.
this morning’s conversation is also sticking with me. as a mom who has a lot of executive functioning issues, i apparently am failing my children.
I was the OP of that post, and wow, that took a turn that I didn’t expect. I’m not going to just stop parenting because I’m having a hard time personally, geez!
I mean, if you’re literally not scheduling doctors’ appointments for 9 year olds, that’s one thing. If you’re just, like, forgetting to send extra pens to school or something, you’re fine.
I was that 9 year old and my mom would argue she did all the things. I feel like people aren’t very good judges of their own parenting skills. Even before being completely abandoned my mom would routinely forget me at swimming lessons or bail on routine appointments like the dentist.
Ways I have leaned out: if I finish a task early, I’ll chill for a little bit before finding something else to do. If a task is unreasonable to do in the time I’m being paid to do it, it will be done poorly or missing parts. I do not define my worth by how well I am performing at work. Sometimes I call in sick because I haven’t slept well, even if I could power through. I point out inefficiencies in the system once or twice and if there’s no appetite to change it I let it go. If someone else is not doing their job, I do not do everything I can to make their job easier for them, I let my manager know and either he handles it or stuff doesn’t get done in a timely fashion because people aren’t answering my emails like they should.
For me it looks like: taking e-mail off of my phone (only reviewing/responding to e-mails on my actual computer during business hours), not volunteering for extra projects/work groups/committees, blocking my calendar for focused work as much as possible, really truly delegating to junior staff if you have them (even if you have to explain things a few times/it takes more time to teach than to do – ultimately it pays off), and just generally keeping things running but not improving for a short period of time. Big caveat is that when you are working you have to maintain your quality of work and still maintain a reasonable level of responsiveness. People at work who know I don’t have e-mail on my phone act shocked and always say, “oh wow I could never…” but I have a VP-level job and get great reviews.
This is great advice, and similar to how I operate 90% of the time in my director level job. It’s not only good for treating burnout but honestly much more sustainable in the long run.
I’ll add that I adapted to being okay with always having a to do list that doesn’t get cleared, and my inbox is never zero anymore. When I was less experienced/senior I could get everything done with a A+ level. Now I can’t, but my B level effort is better than what my A+ level used to be anyway because I’m just more experienced and better. That was a huge mindset shift though.
I’ve posted this before, but Covid broke me. Working full time with toddlers and no childcare was just impossible, even with a supportive spouse pulling about half the childcare weight. My job had (paid!) leave available and I kept trying to take it and they kept begging me not to and telling me that they needed me, they couldn’t function without me, they wanted me to stay on and give whatever I could and they didn’t care if it wasn’t full time, etc etc. Spoiler alert… (probably not a surprise to many of you) they did care and my reputation and performance reviews took a huge hit, and after that I was just… done. I busted my a$$ for them and I not only didn’t get rewarded, I got penalized. Now I barely work and just do the literal minimum to not get fired. I do a lot of the things the 4:27 poster suggests, including no work email on my phone and not checking email on vacations, but I also just work a whole lot less than 40 hours per week. I work from home and find a lot of other stuff to fill the work day, then I work really efficiently for a few hours per day to get stuff done.
That said, I work in a place where it’s very hard to be perceived as a superstar (and even if you are perceived as a superstar you get crap raises) but also very hard to get fired. So there’s kind of an incentive for everyone to do the absolute minimum. I didn’t have that attitude until Covid though.
Following up from this morning’s thread about burn out (not the OP though) how does one really lean out? Sorry if it is a dumb question, but I think this is the place for generally type A, competent women who have always punched above their weight, and it is SO ingrained within me to give my 500% to everything. I see my staff and younger folks not struggle with this but I really don’t even know how to! Appreciate tips/ resources.
Does anyone in northern Virginia have recs for a good person to cut my hair? It’s straight hair without major issues—just need a good cut w a budget up to $250+tip. My place is DC is just too far for me to keep going to.
Would like for it to be a place w parking.
I’ve been going to Salon DeZen in Old Town for years and love working with Kelly. My cut and gloss comes in under $200 with tip.
Please, help me pick a laptop. My current one is intel core i7, 16 GB RAM. Use is consulting/engineering, lots of software I use is on the cloud. Any brand you love… or hate? Thank you!
Unless your current laptop is dead, just adding more RAM to 32Gig will bring it up to any middle of the road laptop you’d likely buy.