Christmas Cheer!

Christmas was a bit more mellow this year but just as fun. Happy and her crew went to Mark's family in Virginia and Pop and Dot spent the holidays in Ponte Vedra. So it was just us, Gay's crew and my grandmother, Yaiyai.

We woke at 9am and mother began her dance of a thousand baking pans. We started out with a strawberry/cream cheese souffle and mimosas!
Then we checked our stockings and had 'The Great Rip Off'. Paper went flying and I wound up with some great books, door mats from the Whitney, vases from our Portugal trip and other fun trinkets and much needed cashola.

Later I jogged and collected trash that inconsiderate people have littered all over our street and then, in a Tony Duquette inspired moment, taped all the bottles and debris around the 'NO LITTERING ALLOWED' sign. I must say it looks very festive and hopefully will catch peoples eyes.

At 2 Gay and her family filed in and we had rip off part deux. I came away with a much needed pair of LL Bean duck boots for wintery days in NYC.

Mother made, as usual, an amazing lunch of turkey, ham, stuffing, dressing, spinach casserole and sweet potatos and we all had seconds and thirds. Ashley and I almost finished a bottle of wine but I drink so much anways it was no great feat to polish one off on Christmas!

The rest of the day was spent cleaning, lulling and reading.
That evening we popped in a dvd from my new Noel Coward collection (which was given to me by Noel's former assistant!) and watched Hay Fever, a hysterical play of his that was a BBC special in 1984.

A night of Noel was the perfect way to end a special day of family, food and festive attire.
Cheerio!

Home for the Holidays

This year, coming home is more like a test run for my month long stay here in March. So I havent decompressed as quickly, but getting there!
Saturday was spent at my cousins home in Covington where we have an annual reunion of all the ladies in the family, or as my niece titled it this year, "Estrogen Fest 07"
I, for some reason, am always included in this. I guess because I always sat with the ladies at holiday events discussing fmily gossip, culture, travel and fashion while the men gathered round a TV and grunted over football, hunting and beer. Can you imagine?

Sunday I spent at my aunts farm running around grooming and talking to as many horses as possible. It was too wet and muddy to ride so we just chatted with the stable staff and gave some holiday love to some of the animals.

Sunday night I had a 'Gays Gone Wild' annual booze cruise with Adam and my ATL gang. It wasnt as wild as usual, Thank God, but we managed to get pretty poppin. We spent the evening in Avondale Estates at the James Joyce pub and then at Track Side for some merriment. The polar bear mask was a huge hit!
Check out the post on www.gayzofourlives.com shortly.

Big news!! I bought a car! Since I am here for 10 days and then back for a month renting a car was going to be a huge hole in my drinking budget. As luck would have it my 87 year old grandmother is getting rid of her car so I am now the proud owner of a 1993 Lilac Cadillac Sedan de Ville! With tape deck for all of my old mixed tapes!

Adam nicknamed it 'The Tank' and we had fun pimping around town from Lenox to Midtown.

Good times!

Seeing eye horse

Yes, you read correctly, my aunt's horse trainer has been training a miniature horse to be a seeing eye guide.
An opera singer in NYC who is an avid horsewoman recently realized she was loosing her site. In order to keep horses a part of her life she looked into www.guidehorse.org.

She soon found little Romeo and asked the trainer to help her out with teaching the little bit how to be a guide horse.
Seeing eye horses get the same privileges as seeing eye dogs so expect to see Romeo on planes, in restaurants and crusing the mall!

I want a wee video camera attached to its lead so we can see peoples reactions. Stay tuned.

Frankie's Surprise 30th Birthday Bash

It was a lot of work but Darian, Yadim and I pulled off a fantastic evening of fun and fantasy for Frankie’s big 30th.
Bart and Anthony's arrival from Atlanta was Frankie's first surprise. They took him out and about all day Saturday so we could prepare for the evenings fun.

Guest for the 'Gold and Glitter' themed party began arriving around 6 and the surprise star of the night, Amanda Lepore sallied up at 7:15 with her entourage.

At 7:30 Frankie and the boys came up the stairs and everyone gave a big hoorah. After he had settled into the excitement, Amanda parted the crowd with a large black phallic birthday cake and cooed Happy Birthday to fits of laughter from the crowd.

The evening went on into a downward spiral of booze, banter and LOTS of pictures with Mandy. She was the perfect guest and I assure you I will try to invite her to as many of my events as possible. She mingles, she smiles, laughs and to many peoples surprise is a great conversationalist. I guess I would be too if I was flown around the world for events and had Vivienne Westwood created couture pieces for me. She was gutted when she had to leave to head to the East Village to host her own party. People told me all she talked about at her party was how much fun she had at ours!

The soiree wound down around 4:30 am when Lucy and her friends stopped by after a night out on the town.

I think Frankie was truly surprised and had a smashing good time.
Success!

Art Basel for Style.com

So I have crossed to the other side and decided to blog for style.com instead of my own site for this years Art Basel in Miami.
Its AMAZING how many more invitations I get by saying I'm writing for Style.com instead of catorsparks.com. Hmmm...

Check it!
http://www.style.com/peopleparties/parties/scoop/121107ARTB

http://www.style.com/trends/blogs/style_file