Nature at it’s finest, at the Sakura Matsai cherry blossom festival at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden this weekend. Gorgeousness everywhere I pointed my camera—it was nearly impossible to take a bad picture. Photobomb, flowerbowb, cherry bomb!

On Tuesday in Gävle, Sweden, it was -1ºC (30ºF) and sunny. Little snow crystals formed glittering rain as they fell from the tree tops.

The skies were blue and the air was fresh — perfect winter weather.

It was my mom’s birthday and we had lunch at an Italian café.

Afterward, we took a walk down to the stream to enjoy the last bit of the day’s sun rays.

Then a bit of shopping before we went home and made mushroom pasta for the whole family who were coming over for the birthday party.

Oh, such a perfect day.

Popped over to Norma Kamali‘s 5th Ave store yesterday at lunch time. Turns out there’s an amazing Wellness Café there that I had never known about! (NYC’s just too big to keep track of everything, but that’s what PR people are for, right?)

Kamali is obsessed with olive oil and has her own line of oils and beauty products, made from olives straight from her own orchards.

The café has pretty displays of good stuff like Himalayan sea salts, rock salts & bath salts…

…and books.

Best of all, there was an Organic Avenue juice counter, with free samples! OA’s juices are completely natural, organic and amazingly fresh — I think I’m about to get obsessed with them. Kamali drinks them every day and told me they’ve changed her life. She opened the wellness counter beacuse she wants to share her discoveries in holistic health, beauty and nutrition. Quote of the day, Norma Kamali on juicing: “you know, fashion people would rather starve than do something healthy like this.”

Check it out: Norma Kamali, 11 W56th Street (@ 5th Avenue).

TRANSLATION:
Yesterday I kicked off my day with a breakfast event at Bergdorf Goodman. One of my favorite natural beauty brands, Kahina Giving Beauty, was celebrating the opening of their own counter in the beauty department. It’s a pretty big deal that a company who sells simple, organic, natural products is finally allowed in with all the big brands, in one of the world’s most famous department stores! Kahina’s products are all based on argan oil, that is harvested by a women’s cooperative in Morocco. Founder Katharine L’Heureux forgot her face cream on a trip there and tried what the Moroccan women used. It turned out to work wonders for her skin, and that’s how the idea for the product line came about. You can even eat the argan oil! (A point proven by providing samples and bread for dipping.) That, to me, speaks volumes about how safe and natural this product is. I cannot imagine there is much else in the bathroom cabinet (or Bergdorfs’ beauty department) that you could eat without suffering unpleasant consequences.

TRANSLATION:
Today fabulous Iman will receive a lifetime achievement award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America. Isn’t she just the most beautiful 55-year-old in the world? She was discovered by Peter Beard in 1975. He brought her to New York and, to spur interest, said that he had found her ein the jungle (not at a Nairobi university which was the true story). A year later she was on the cover of Vogue and quickly became a muse to designers like Gianni Versace, Calvin Klein, Donna Karan and Yves Saint-Laurent. She’s married to David Bowie, host of Project Runway Canada, founder of her own cosmetics company, and a dedicated defender of human rights. A true inspiration. For more, read this story on her in the weekend’s New York Times.