Future Style

My cousin Molly made me do it!   The title is her idea.  

Seriously, though, Molly and her husband, Richard, have been saving to build their dream house in the Berkshires but still live in Manhattan and want to enjoy their lives while they're waiting for the project to be finished.  In their attempts to budget their money, Richard actually asked Molly one day, "Well, what would Leenya do?"  Though some would translate this as being called cheap or thrifty, I took it as the ultimate compliment.  Both Molly and Richard are fabulously stylish and successful urbanites and the fact that they would look to me for some example of living  was an honor.  

When I first moved to New York City fourteen years ago, I learned how to live on savings and paid my proverbial dues, but ever since my first Broadway show,  I have been walking red carpets and hosting parties for the  semi-famous, sometimes in my street-find furnished apartment.  And though my husband, Ted, tells me not to admit it, when complimented on an outfit, I still proudly announce that I bought my skirt at Sally Army (Renaissance Girl code for the Salvation Army) and then altered it myself, found my earrings at a street fair for three dollars, and inherited my fabulous early '80's knee-high boots from a Bitch and Swap (Broadway actress' party where we trade clothes we no longer want).   

From the beginning, though, it was my artist Mother, Lynn Rideout, who taught me during a childhood of having to do without the popular expensive toys and clothes how to make lemonade from lemons and have a blast doing it.

So at the root of my foray into blogging is not just the desire to save money (though God knows it's motivation enough these days), or to find your own style and present your best self to the world, or even to help the environment by recycling, but to explore a more creative, fulfilling, and fun way to live. 

I hope you find an idea or two in my daily musings and that you share your own adventures in what I call future style.