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About Me
The Well Informed Housewife began at my kitchen table. Yes, the legendary American kitchen table, where every day I read the papers, sip my coffee, find something that piques me, look up, and say to Mr. Herr, “I may be just a well informed housewife, but this well informed housewife says . . .”
Mr. Herr has told me I’m wasting my wisdom on him and that I should share my thoughts outside the friendly confines of my kitchen because I had a point of view and the beauty of this country is that anyone with a point of view can share it.
The toughest of crowds, my four kids, no shrinking violets among them, agreed and after some trepidation, here I am and here’s some more about me.
I grew up in Philadelphia, I graduated from Penn, with an undergrad degree from Wharton, worked as a Big Eight accountant (when there were still eight), met my husband at a drunken Jersey Shore beach party nearly 40 years ago (he was drunk, I was sober, so I have no excuses) and raised four children and 11 labradors. I’ve always loved fashion and come from a family of interior decorators and architects. I taught myself how to knit when I was in high school because I loved the handknit sweaters by Perry Ellis and Ralph Lauren and couldn’t afford to buy them on my babysitting money. I learned to sew and made a lot of my own clothes in high school and college and made the curtains for all of my single girl apartments and for the many houses Mr. Herr and I have shared. I owned a knitting and needlepoint store for 5 years. After, the last of our children went off to college ,and I was no longer spending my summers running from tournaments to recruiting camps, I started a garden. . I’m largely self taught as a cook, as a seamstress as a gardener and I have learned a lot through successes and failures.
I’ve also learned a lot about fashion, my first love and was struck by how few woman of a certain age are posting on Instagram about fashion and about the message that “embracing your age” doesn't mean going gray, wearing comfortable(read baggy shirts and pants) and cutting your hair because it’s easier. I think that’s the opposite of empowering. I think regardless of age, whether you’ve just had a baby, you can wear high fashion, that you can wear fitted clothing, that you can wear your hair long and that you don’t have to quit.
At age 61, I finally summoned the courage to give it a go, so here it is, and as Bette Davis said in All About Eve “Buckle your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.”
Let the fun begin.