My new all time all time favorite place to eat is Le Bec Fin. Here’s how the night went down:

The ladies and I beat traffic . . . → Read More: No Sex and the City – Philadelphia Restaurant Week]]> You may have heard the buzz or seen the paparazzi scrambling for the hottest shots, but yes, The Ladies and I went out for a night of fun during Philadelphia Restaurant Week.

My new all time all time favorite place to eat is Le Bec Fin. Here’s how the night went down:

The ladies and I beat traffic and arrive and hour early are whisked away for a quiet cuppa coffee.  We sit in Starbucks and chew the fat act fabulous.

We stroll fabulously to Le Bec Fin.

We are greeted adoringly by staff: Hello, Welcome, Good Evening, Thank you for coming, My aren’t you fabulous, Hello, Hello, Welcome, Please don’t touch anything.  You know, the usual…

The inside? Off white ceilings, floors, walls, table coverings. Spectacular chandeliers!

The Suit shows us to our table and pulls out my chair.  I try not to fall off of it.

The Suit places our napkins on our laps.  I try not to pass gas dump the contents of my purse on the floor.

Another suit (the sommelier maybe?) provides Charlotte with the wine list.  We fistfight decide between a lovely Reisling and beer something drier.

Sommelier brings out the Maddog 20/20 Reisling and allows Charlotte to chug from the bottle taste it. She approves. Sommelier pours a round.

Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and I quietly fight discuss what we’ll choose.

Carrie chooses the fancy schmancy something something salad. The roll guy rolls a blunt brings rolls.

Miranda chooses the same thing as Carrie. Is offered Grabs a roll.

Surprisingly, Charlotte and I order the same thing: Burger and fries Pate with a burgundy colored squiggly sauce on a plate.  Grab a couple rolls from the next table roll guy.

Blah blah blah we are fabulously talking about fabulousness as we drink our fabulous wine.  Glass is never allowed to get empty.

Appetizer comes. Mine looks what the heck was i thinking? tasty! Gonna need to pee more wine.

First course is cleared away in time for The Suit to bring the Main Course grub.

Carrie and Miranda get the runs scallops with brown stubby little things.

Charlotte and I get the pan seared Salmon. Ours is cooked medium cuz I slipped The Suit a fiver asked The Suit if I could.  It was served with teeny weeny beanies pieces of celery and surrounded by bubbles.  Looks fabulous!

Halfway through my salmon I pass gas realize I’m gonna need more wine cuz being fabulous makes one fabulous thirsty. I order a single malt liquor glass of a dry Chardonnay.

Sommelier (yay!) brings me the bottle to chug examine.  I burp approve.

We continue to laugh and drink and eat and be fabulous when The Suit announces its time for the sex dessert.

I order key lime pie, Miranda and Carrie order the creme brulee, Charlotte orders the brownie. We whine and complain ooh and ahh about how beautiful it all is. Then we chow and wash dessert down with coffee.

We are then asked to leave sit around and allow others to partake of our fabulousness.  I check out the bar and the ladies room.

Then the bill comes.  The Suit begs us to leave let him pay for our meal because our beauty outshone the chandeliers.

Reluctantly, we realize the place is packed and the next seating is prolly waiting outside to get in. crying. prolly.

We sashay towards the door.  Everyone asks for my number I do not knock anything over.

I stumble out the door am sad to leave.

We fabulously make our way to Max Brenner for drinks . The chocolate smell is disgusting overwhelming. They sell syringes full of chocolate!

At the bar we are drinking and talking and laughing and being fabulous when a woman next to me asks for my number bumps me. I clock her with Carrie’s high heel shoe smile at her.

this is what i wish i wore.

It was a fabulous night.  Thanks Philly for a memorable evening!

What is Restaurant Week you ask?

It’s a time when, two weeks in Center City Philadelphia, you can eat at some of the finest restaurants without applying a lien to your mortgage.  Without breaking the bank. According to several websites you . . . → Read More: Ladies Night Out – Center City Philadelphia Restaurant Week]]> Thursday February 2, I will be going on a girls night out and participating in Restaurant Week!

What is Restaurant Week you ask?

It’s a time when, two weeks in Center City Philadelphia, you can eat at some of the finest restaurants without applying a lien to your mortgage.  Without breaking the bank. According to several websites you can get dinner for a fixed price of $35. That is unheard of! Naturally the price doesn’t include alcohol, but it’s still a great deal.  Parking is discounted too. Sweet!

The list of excellent restaurants is exhaustive (click here  for the list) but the one I’m most excited about is Le Bec-Fin.  I’ve always ALWAYS wanted to go to Le Bec-Fin and have been bugging The Man to take me there since I moved here in 2004.  So that’s a lot of nagging asking.

Fortunately, a bunch of us ladies decided to have a girls night out and since my one friend knows I’ve always wanted to go there, that’s where we decided to go.

I’m totally excited to be going and my biggest problem now is what. to. wear.

My favorite Ralph Lauren pants shrunk in the closet.

The pair of winter white lined pants i tried on at Kohl’s were too tight. i’m sure they were mislabeled with the wrong size.

Hopefully i’ll find something in my closet that the ladies haven’t seen me in already and become FABULOUS!

It’ll be like Sex in the City all over again (without the Sex).

But we‘ll be in the City!

And honing we did.

Taught by the enigmatic CecilyK . . . → Read More: Philly Social Media Moms (#PSMM) and Me]]> On a very snowy Saturday morning one January, I braved the frozen tundra and headed for my first Philly Social Media Moms (#PSMM) workshop.  Since I’ve decided to put alot more effort into my freelance career I decided that I needed to attend more workshops to hone my skills.

And honing we did.

Taught by the enigmatic CecilyK of Uppercase Woman the writing workshop reminded me of skills I hadn’t practiced purposefully since college, which, since I’m 27, was like, last year.

PammyPam is, of course, the perfect student so I took a few notes.

I also took a few photos, which can be seen here and here (see below).

Cecily’s most  obvious writing tip is this: “the best way to become a writer is to WRITE.”  Well, aside from this most obvious advice, many of us wonder if we really are writers.  Cecily suggests that if you write for seven hours a week, then you are a writer.

That said, if you consider yourself a writer or are aiming to become a writer, here are a few tips to improve your writing.

• Kill your internal editor.  It’s hard but it does not deserve your time.
• Write what Cecily calls morning pages.  Write three pages worth by hand with a pen.  No corrections, no editing, just get it all out and write forward.  It clears the deck and your internal editor.
• Your writing needs a beginning a middle and an end.  Everything needs an end: tweets, blogging, interviews, etc.
• Leave out what doesn’t matter.
• Say the most with the fewest words. Why? The average blog post peple are willing to read is 350-450 words. So, you have to be concise and get your point across.
• Your story is your version of truth, not someone else’s which means that everything has a touch of memoir.  When telling a story, hone down the rough edgs. You don’t have to tell every single detail for people to get the feeling.
• When you  write from the heart, your story becomes both beautiful and universal. Tell people how youre feeling.  This will involve letting go of your fear (of being vulnerable and visible/opaque??) and allow your writing to become beautiful and universal.

After feeding us some valuable advice, we then had to practice writing.  The first exercise was a timed free writing exercise which we did not edit or do anything with, which was difficult for me.

The second exercise was a six word short story and the example we were given was one written by Hemmingway: For sale baby shoes never worn.  I found this exercise to be challenging and couldn’t do it, however, when I tweeted about it, someone pointed out that my tweet was six words!

The third exercise was a 25 word short story, title included.  I found this exercise to be easier.  Editing was allowed.

The final exercise was writing our own bio, keeping it brief: fifty words. We were told to “Think about our bio as telling a story of you.  Answer some whys.  Tell who you are”  Many of us found this difficult because we had to brag about ourselves, which Cecily insisted was ok.  It should be a call to action to YOU.

We learned that a good place to place our bio is on a site called about.me.

After writing our bios, Cecily personally offered constructive criticism for each of us!

Here’s mine:

Pam is an educator librarian who is drawn to the little ones. In her purse you’ll find a cup of coffee, a book, and her iPhone.  She loves social media, writing book reviews, and curating children’s literature.  She is an information specialist, maven, connector.

This was my Cecily-fied version. She told me that she thought I was funny (YAY!!!) and that needed to show more, hence the “in her purse” portion that I added.

Such a wealth of knowledge and personality she is.  It was the best time!

I look forward to attending more Philly Social Media Moms events. Real Soon.

I hope you learned something too today!

That’s french for good morning friends!

If you’re like me, you are always on the quest for a good cup of coffee.  To be sure, if it’s black and hot i’ll drink it, but my preference is good.

i have the most trouble finding good coffee at home. for whatever reason, when i make coffee it’s . . . → Read More: the pefect cup of coffee. a tut. en francais]]> Bonjour mes amis!

That’s french for good morning friends!

If you’re like me, you are always on the quest for a good cup of coffee.  To be sure, if it’s black and hot i’ll drink it, but my preference is good.

i have the most trouble finding good coffee at home. for whatever reason, when i make coffee it’s often hit or miss.

this morning’s coffee was a hit (YAY me!) so i thought i would create a tutorial (that’s tut for those of us in the know) of how this yummy cuppa joe came about.

and the best part?

it’s in french!

why?

because i’m bilingual and i want to share my knowledge with the masses.

and because i just felt like it.

ready?

commencer (that’s ‘begin’ or let’s start or something, in the french)

Un (1)

first you need le coffee beans

they must be fresh

deux (2)

second, you need to pour some coffee beans into your handy coffee grinder and grind them.

must be freshly ground or it is le crap

trois (3) you MUST have the official coffee scoop to get the perfect amount of grounds.

the exact measurement is one scoop of grounds per two cups of coffee.

no more

no less.

4 (4)

next you need le coffee filter.

now here is the trick:

put the filter into the coffee maker receptacle thing

pour a little bit of water in the filter and slosh it around to wet the bottom of the filter

yes, yes, do it!

dump the water out and replace the whole thing back in the coffee maker

cinq (5) you must have

monsieur coffee maker

i’m sure other coffeemakers work just as well, but this tut is only for

monsieur coffee maker

pour the COLD water in the proper place

add your FRESH GROUND BEANS

and turn on the coffeemaker

meanwhile, step sept (7)

you need soymilk

and a commuter mug (to keep the coffee warm)

pour some soy milk (approx 1/4 cup) into your commuter mug

huit (8)

put in microwave (yes really) and heat soy milk for 25 seconds

do NOT put the lid on the coffee mug

vingt cinq is 25 in french

and my age

neuf (9) have you had e-neuf of my lesson yet (ahahahaa!)?

add approx 1 teaspon of le sucre to the warm soy milk

i prefer sugar in the raw but whatever suits you is fine, je pense (i think)

and finally, dix (10)

fill the commuter mug until it is approximately 2/3  full of hot coffee:

i add coffee to the soymilk until it is the color of my skin (too dark: too strong. too light: not right)

mixed with the warm soy milk it makes everything the perfect drinking temperature!

stir in le sucre,

put on the lid,

and

enjoy the perfect cup of  cafe (coffee)!

it’s almost like being in France!

tell me how it went for you!

PammyPam

why the heck not, you ask?

i’m not really sure, other than it takes too much time to coordinate an outfit around them.

it’s easier to throw on just about anything than to hafta put together an outfit. . . . → Read More: Fashion Friday – Skinty Jeans update]]> Well here we are again at fashion friday!  Believe it or not, i havent worn my skinty jeans since last friday.

why the heck not, you ask?

i’m not really sure, other than it takes too much time to coordinate an outfit around them.

it’s easier to throw on just about anything than to hafta put together an outfit. yeah i know, i’m frumptastic.

anyway, today i made the effort and put together a skinty jeans outfit!

you’ll hafta excuse the flash cuz, well, just cuz and the photo quality isnt that great cuz, well just cuz and here’s the pic:

You’ll notice a couple things in the pic:

*  Bailey followed me into Pumpkin’s room to make sure i didnt try to leave the house without walking him

* the big old giant flash is annoying

* you cant hardly see my outfit

ok all those things aside, i think i did a better job of coordinating a look. i’m wearing

*my skinty jeans

*a longish sweater with shades of grey (to cover my bootay)

*grey boots with jeans tucked in, thank you very much

*grey matching purse

*grey matching scarf

I ran alot of errands this morning and i was afraid i would be cold in my new skinty jeans, but i was just warm enough. WIN WIN!

how’s your fashion friday going?

So you’ll probably want to tidy up his office.

Tidying up his office leads to finding an old pink office chair that can be donated to . . . → Read More: If you take down the Christmas tree – A Story]]> If you take down the Christmas tree on January 18^th you’ll trip over things and discover that The Man’s office is a mess and you can’t get to the Christmas storage area.

So you’ll probably want to tidy up his office.

Tidying up his office leads to finding an old pink office chair that can be donated to Freecycle.com

Finding something to donate makes you feel like finding other items to donate.

So you check your craft supplies and find a basket full of thrift store picture frames.  Next to the picture frames you find a bag of old shopping bags, which you decide to recycle.

While carrying the bag of shopping bags to the recycle bin, you trip over The Man’s new snow boots. Tripping over his boots means that there is no room in the coat closet for them.

So you rid the coat closet of a few pairs of his old shoes, box them up, label them and put them in storage in his office.

While in the coat closet you discover that it hasn’t been vacuumed in forever.

So you get out the vacuum and Bailey barks at you nonstop.

While vacuuming the closet you realize that the foyer is dirty as well as the area where the Christmas tree was.

So you vacuum the foyer and the formal living room where you discover partially cleaned dog puke on the carpet.

When you’re putting away the carpet cleaner, you discover your old birthday cake on the kitchen counter which reminds you to take out the trash.

And taking out the trash reminds you that you need to put away the Christmas tree.

The End.

I’ve never . . . → Read More: Fashion Friday Newbie]]> You might not know this but PammyPam closely follows the fashion trends.  Sure, I might look like Mrs. Frumpy when I go to work (sitting on the floor playing with toddlers doesnt really require high fashion) or when I’m sitting around the house, but when I go out to functions, I likes to look nice.

I’ve never had good body image and up until just recently I was scary skinny (5’9″ 115lbs). So, the past few years have been about adjusting to my new, bigger, healthier looking body.  No matter what size I am, I have always liked designer clothes.  To be sure, if it’s summer time and I’m just bumming around, I don’t mind wearing Walmart or Target but if I’m going out of the house, it’s gotta be something else. Designer. And it’s gotta be at a discount. But that is another story.

My style has stayed pretty much the same over the years as my body weight has shifted: I like classic, clean, tailored clothes.  I guess you could almost call me preppy from the 80s. A while ago  I worked with a lovely woman who helped me choose my colors and pick out a wardrobe.  You can find that story here. I’m the same coloring as someone really beautiful!

I don’t go much for trends, although every once in a while I like to try new things, but usually I’m unhappy with how I look.

What’s the point of this diatribe discussion, you ask?

Well, today I am showcasing myself as I try a new trend:  skinny jeans.  I vowed I would never wear skinny jeans cuz I didnt think they were for anyone my age.  I might have been wrong.

This Fashion Friday Newbie is wearing SKINNY JEANS!!!! Did you hear that?

I said Skinny.  Jeans.

Or as we call them at my house: SKINTY JEANS.

Yep, Pammypam is wearing skinty jeans.

And you know what the best things are about these skinty jeans?

• they are Lee jeans, one of only two brands of jeans I will wear
• i got them at Ross for $9.99 YES. $9.99
• they are full of that yummy stretchy material

They aren’t too tight and they feel great!

I’m not sold on how I look in them or how to wear them yet, but they sure are comfy.  I’m sure there’s a better way than with a hoodie and a scarf, but I’m working on it.

I cannot thank enough the very sweet @MaricrisG of Zensible mama for answering my Twitter call  for help in mustering the nerve to wear these things out of the house.  Please go show her some love. She gives it right back.

What are your thoughts? Ever tried skinty jeans? Ever tried a new style and loved/hated it? Tell me!

I am linking to Fashion Fridays with Musings of a Housewife.

well here i am talking about . . . → Read More: i hate insomnia as much as i hate aunt flo]]> yep. here i am ranting about insomnia again.  you may remember for a while i was on a loooong rant about insomnia.  if you’re interested, you can visit one of my many posts about insomnia.  she and i have been bffs since i’m 15, which is like 10 or 12 years.

well here i am talking about it again cuz i’m having another bad bout of it.  had trouble falling asleep last night. then i woke up at 3am.  farted around on my phone for over an hour (4:25am). tossed and turned barely sleeping (unsleeping) until people left the house at 7am.

got up at 7 am and did my thing.  by lunchtime i was dragging.  drrrrraaaaggggging.

so i laid down on the couch and covered my face with a blank.  the dog joined me. i did some unsleeping and woke feeling unrefreshed.

what’s the opposite of refreshed? stale? i dunno but whatever it was that’s how i felt.

that feeling stinks because i had plans to meet a couple girlfriends for our annual birthday dinner thing and i wanted to be refreshed and delightful, not tired and cranky.

i went to the dinner (Cheesecake Factory!) and i ate the following:

half of a half a bottle of Veuve Cliquot (my fave) champagne

1 glass chardonnay

1 order of cheesy crab cake appetizer thingy

1 crab cake sandwich minus the bread

1 1/2 cups of coffee

so…here i sit after 11pm with the dog with a full belly (mine, not his) and wide friggin awake.

and my head hurts cuz i’m tired.

but i’m not tired

and i cant stand the idea of doing the insomnia olympics in my bed.  i’m a gold medal champion.

this is gonna leave a mark tomorrow.

ouchy.

and aunt flo? she’s not here cuz i’m missing those parts but that is another story.

Thanks to the brilliance of Amy, I have used this site for years (ok hours) now and i love it so . . . → Read More: Where do you go when your blog is acting up?]]> Where do you go when your blog is acting up? You know those times when people say your site is not working or they’re getting some kind of error message (who came up with 404 anyways)?

Thanks to the brilliance of Amy, I have used this site for years (ok hours) now and i love it so much i want to marry it!

The site is called Down for Everyone or just me and it’s here: http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/ cuz havent we all just really wondered if its you or them? Cuz if youre like me, youre sure it’s your site’s fault.

The great thing about this site? It tells you whose fault it is.

Problem is, it doesnt tell you how to fix it.

But at least you know it’s not you and that’s worth a cookie, right?

riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

check it out and lemme know how you like it.