About

Hi there!

I'm J—still clinging to a few threads of anonymity—a gal that's sometimes shy, mostly (benevolently) bossy, always feisty and still says "y'all" despite leaving Virginia about 8 years ago.

I'm married to R (figure he has to be anonymous, too, no?), whom I met while on vacation in his hometown in Sicily and dated across the Atlantic for about 4 years before we got married. We live in New York, but we're hoping that won't be the case for long—there's more about this (and me) in my first post (and here's another with random tidbits).

Other things you should know:

+ I'm full of dueling dualities, like loving living in a city while yearning for the cozy comforts of a country life. Wanting to be Angelina Jolie (in Tomb Raider/The Tourist) some days and Anne Shirley others. Being slightly feminist but not at all minding the idea of lounging lazily about at home reading and making little knitted and crafty doodads all the live long day.

+ I scribble here so I can remember the small (and big) things that make me happy, as I am sometimes entirely too prone to wallowing in self-pity, jealousy, or "why-meeee???"-ness (if it exhausts me, I can only imagine what it does to my friends and family!).

+ Things I dodder on about: life in NYC while preparing for an eventual move abroad, being in a multi-ethinic and multi-cultural marriage, differences between our countries (America, Sweden, Italy—and the process for getting both of us the others' citizenship in those countries), knitting, reading, ways of being better to myself through the foods I eat, products I use, ways I live, etc., and pretty things I find, beautiful places I go and amusing things I read. Basically: a smorgasbord of things that make up my days.

+ Why "sparklingly"? Because I like the idea of a little sparkle sprinkled throughout the day, be it water or wine, wit or snark, jewels or lights, and this is where I'd like to try and capture as much of it as I can.

+ This isn't my first go at this, but hoping it'll stick this time around. If you want to know more about me, here and here are good places to start.

+ You can find me @Sparklingly on Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest or the old-fashioned way via Gmail (which knows me as "sparklinglygal"). Hope you like poking around! (And I'd love it if you'd say "hi"!).


P.S. I'm a prolific user of parenthetical asides, so...I'm going to go ahead and apologize for that now.

P.P.S Anonymity aside, I feel slightly better/less fake-y because my friends really do call me "J" and I really do refer to my husband as "R".