Hat on Top, Coat Below
« previous archives home notify list e-mail next »
Of Magazines and Me
December 4, 2025
Yesterday Miriam did a post about some items she’d clipped from magazines to comment on, which reminded me I have a folder of clippings sitting on my desk that I set there to write about during Holidailies. As I’ve probably mentioned before, in saving magazines and clippings therefrom, I take after my mom. When my brother and I cleaned out her house after she died, I found so many caches of clippings. A few of them I saved and will come across again when I’m ready to go through those boxes; many I let go of. As I’ve also probably mentioned before, now that we have the internet I question whether I need to keep any clippings at all. If I want ideas, there are so many at my fingertips to be summoned with a search. Except now that search results are contaminated by AI slop, I feel maybe keeping pre-AI physical artifacts around to flip through is a good idea. Even if I don’t use the ideas in the articles, their content gives a peek into what I felt was important or what my goals were at the time I saved them.
From Prevention, October 2010: (just hush about the dates here … yes, it’s been a long while since I did any sort of serious weeding out/organized of my clippings).
—Slow Cooker Comfort Foods This is one of those aspirational saves, as I’ve never used my slow cooker very much but it always seemed like such a good idea, especially when I was working. Now, I have an Instant Pot (which has a slow cooker function, though my understanding is that’s not a substitute for an actual slow cooker), which I do use regularly.
—Salmon with Noodles This one I might actually try, though I’ll do the salmon in the Instant Pot instead of the oven as the recipe calls for.
—Snooze News You Will Use Actually, no, I will not use it.
From Allure, October 2010:
—The Hedonist’s Diet They had me at “rich, creamy, fatty”. Not a structured diet, but 10 guidelines: eat a fatty breakfast, power up with caffeine, be a dairy queen, indulge yourself, savor every bite, seek a sugar high, don’t count calories, drink a little, eat the best, and sleep in. The problem I have with this plan is it calls for moderation, and I am not good at that.
—Popular Mechanics A photo essay about the fall fashion collections, featuring a typically skinny female model in the clothes and a male model dressed as a robot, photographed by Patrick Demarchelier. I wasn’t interested in the clothes but liked, still like, the story to be told about the rich lady and her human robot construct.
—One Great Haircut Sometimes I think about cutting my hair into an actual style, which last had done in college, but it’s just so easy to let it all be one length and let Mr. Karen trim some inches off a couple times a year. This one great haircut is two inches below the collarbone, with jagged ends, face-framing layers, and side swept bangs.
From More, October 2010:
—Exercise Aches You Should Never Ignore Oh to be back in the days when aches were only from exercise and not stuff like “slept wrong”.
—Living Your Dream About small space living, which continues to fascinate me though I know I am not cut out for it (though thinking ahead, I will likely be in an assisted living place one day and then I’ll have to live small whether I like it or not).
—Mad Women Essay by Pam Houston on anger during menopause. Relevant. Though I was angry before menopause, too. And with what’s going on in this country, am likely to remain so for quite some time.
—Love the Job You’re With Well, this can go. I have no job and hope to never have to have another.
—Childless by (100% Regret-Free) Choice At that point I tore this article out, Mr. K and I had long since made this choice. I wouldn’t say I have regrets, just sometimes I wonder what if we’d made a different choice.
From Fast Company, October 2010, the Masters of Design issue:
—Hand-Me-Downs Objects described as “heirlooms-in-waiting”. My eye was caught by a gold bangle and earrings with organic shapes (the artist, Alexis Bittar, is still around) and a quilt with a street grid design by Haptic Lab.
—The Graphic Exploits of Architect Bjarke Ingels Not sure why I saved this … maybe because the interview was conveyed in graphic novel style.
—Super Style Me About the design evolution of McDonald’s restaurants.
—Canon camera ad I liked some of the images, like of the Big Bambu sculpture and a foam net from a fancy tomato lit as an art object.
From InStyle, Makeover 2010 issue:
—Find Your Perfect Hairstyle This starts with finding your face shape, which I’ve never been sure about, and, as previously mentioned, I’m content to just have plain hair that I don’t fuss with much.
From Quilters Newsletter, October/November 2010: various pictures of quilts I liked, not necessarily with the whole article they were featured in.
There were a few more, but nothing surprising. I wonder what I’d tear out faced with the same magazines today.
On this date in 2024: iPhone Storage is Full
2023: Spider Mums, Spider Mums
2022: Festive Decor
2021: Stu-stu-studios
2020: My Friend the Creek
2019: Getting Stuff Done
2018: Only 10 Hours on the Road
2017: First World Frustration
2016: Sifting and Sorting
2015: The Crowdedest Place on Earth
2014: On Still Not Acquiring Sock Monkeys
2013: On Not Acquiring Sock Monkeys
2012: On Shimmer and Glitter
2010 and 2011: No journal entries
2009: November Check-in
2007 and 2008: No entries
2006: Many Pictures, Few Words
2004 and 2005: No entries
2003: Memory Lane
2002: Ugly on the Inside
« previous archives home notify list e-mail next »
2 Comments Leave a Comment
December 5th, 2025 at 7:20 pm
Re: the quilts, someday I should really go through all the knitting and crochet patterns I’ve clipped over the years. I think I also still have some of my mother’s pattern books, though I have given several away. And a few issues of Mon Tricot from, uh, the 1970’s.
December 6th, 2025 at 1:52 pm
Happy Holidailies! Glad to see you here again also. My husband and I were talking about magazines not that long ago. I used to love getting magazines in the mail and would read every word. I had a huge stack of Teen and Seventeen magazines from the 80s that I tossed when I was moving and decluttering. How I regret that now!