At Santa’s Workshop




The best gift you can give is a hug–

one size fits all

and no one ever minds if you return it.

Marge Piercy


It’s that time of a very odd year, having had the rug pulled off from beneath us, leaving us scrambling for ways to land on our feet somehow and thrive. Aside from my Empty Nest interruption, 2020 was wonderful in peeling away the non-essentials of our harried lives, less so when we consider the deeper implications of all this isolation and the slow but sure corrosion of our personal ties. We are starved for human touch and the Zoom-minimized opportunities for random connections, though we’d have to consider ourselves lucky when such starvation is not from lack of food on the table. For those more fortunate to have fewer worries than most, life and shopping must go on if only to help the economy and make your favorite people smile –at a distance, of course.



For Him

Take “Family Tree” literally with an original and timeless portrait that you can make into wall art, include in an album for generations to enjoy, blow up as a large puzzle to keep the family entertained through the winter or as an all-occasion greeting card for the many friends and family we’re not allowed to see.




For the Young Ones (and the young once)

Delight in flights of fancy and imagination with unique creations from Etsy.com. For my Game Of Thrones fan, I ordered dragon eggs and a 3D printed necklace as a proper Mother of Dragons should.




For All

One-off gifts or create your own themed collection of stocking stuffers from the practical to the simply fun. Amazon Prime delivers rain or snow, Covid or no, faster than reindeer.




For Her

Can you think of half an occasion when Chanel wouldn’t be a thrill?




For Santa’s Workshop

For quality that’s easier on the pocket and hours of entertainment while saving the planet, you’ll find unique, antique and vintage treasures on 1st Dibs or Facebook Marketplace. Among my favorite finds to cheer up my office is this sleek Italian marble coffee table–fabulously glamorous even if I don’t drink coffee.


Click on “Leave a Comment” (top left) to share your best gift ideas and favorite things of 2020. And have the merriest of Ho-Ho-Hos!

xoxox


Give the women you love the most unique gift

of elegant and timeless portraits with a

Powerful Goddess Gift Certificate

for a most memorable photo shoot for up to three people!

Buy Now Button with Credit Cards

© Sharon Birke

Managing Member, DoubleSmart LLC

201 697 1947

Sharon@PowerfulGoddess.com

www.PowerfulGoddess.com

Glamour Portraits of the Goddess in Every Woman

The Golden Girl

The true New Yorker secretly believes that

people living anywhere else

have to be, in some sense, kidding.

John Updike

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This Powerful Goddess has a thing for moody portraits, yet she has that joie de vivre and a smile more sunshiny than her halo of golden hair.  As a European, she had always dreamed of living like a local in New York City.  What to do with the minor glitch of having a devoted husband whose career didn’t allow for an extended sabbatical?

“I want to live in New York for awhile,” she blurts over their dinner for two last year.

“Say that again?” her husband couldn’t be sure he heard her right.

But he did.  And knowing that this has been a big item on her bucket list, he helped figure out how to make her Manhattan adventure possible: living on her own this side of the Atlantic, taking classes to learn new skills, and expanding her world with new friends along the way.

Now that she’s back home celebrating the next chapter of her fabulous life, these portraits count among her favorite souvenirs of how well she welcomed her golden age, thanks to her great courage and her husband’s grand gesture of love and generosity.

The happiest of birthdays to you, Powerful Goddess!  You must tell your darling man he is a gem truly worth his weight in gold while I practice saying to my husband “I’d like to live in Europe for awhile.” 😉

Click on “Leave a Comment” (above left) to share who has opened your eyes to golden possibilities.

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xoxox

Sharon Birke

201 697 1947

Sharon@PowerfulGoddess.com

www.PowerfulGoddess.com

Glamour Portraits of the Goddess in Every Wife & Mother

Romance and Fools

Life Is Too Short–So Kiss Slowly,
Laugh Insanely, Love Truly,
And Live With Passion.

Andy Vogt

Paris Romance Portraits by Sharon Birke www.PowerfulGoddess.com

If there is truth in Oscar Wilde’s line that men want to be a woman’s first love while women want to be a man’s last romance, where does this leave a woman who discovers she isn’t?  I laughed and cried through If I Were You, a film starring Marcia Gay Harding as a long married woman who serendipitously saves the life and career of her husband’s mistress.  They agree to do what the other says (including pretending that she, too, is having an affair) and they end up starring in a Shakespearean production with Marcia as King Lear and the mistress as the  King’s Fool.

Lear’s Fool is a blend of wit, shrewd innocence, wicked glee, truthful humor and devotion.  It represents our freedom to challenge assumptions we hold dear about justice, the nature of humanity, and the rules of society.  Lear blames everyone and everything for his sorrow (except himself, of course) until he is caught in the middle of a storm stripped and alone.  “Is man no more than this?,” he asks over and over, “Who am I?” then for the first time, places his Fool’s comfort before his own.  Losing everything we hold dear and losing our wits clear the fog of petty pretenses, false virtue, ambition and indifference to what truly matters.

Click on “Leave a Comment” above left to share how you romance your own Fool.

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Paris Romance Portraits by Sharon Birke www.PowerfulGoddess.com

Paris Romance Portraits by Sharon Birke www.PowerfulGoddess.com

 xoxox

© Sharon Birke

201 697 1947

PowerfulGoddess@me.com

www.PowerfulGoddess.com

Glamour Portraits of the Goddess in Every Wife & Mother

Paris Romance Portraits by Sharon Birke www.PowerfulGoddess.com

xoxox

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