The wonderful thing about growing up in New Jersey, right outside of New York City, was the cultural diversity I was exposed to at an early age.  Communities were formed on the foundations of ones heritage and children were brought up knowing were they “came” from.  I myself being from an Italian family was raised to appreciate our heritage and… eat lots of good food.  My home town actually was mainly Irish Catholic and I could never understand why I couldn’t wear the fun costumes my friends wore and do Irish step dancing after school like them.  Oh, how I wanted to wear one of their sparkly flouncy skirts and dance like Michael Flately on stage.  I also had a playmate. Alexis, who lived across the street, who happened to be Russian Orthodox.  I would love to go to her house and play with all of her Russian trinkets (which we weren’t supposed to touch)…. beautifully painted decorative eggs, some square banjo looking thing and wooden nesting dolls.  Oh how I loved the wooden stacking dolls, otherwise known as matryoshka… I was enamored with them!  I of course knew nothing of the significance of them, I just knew that in my very Italian house, we didn’t have anything like them.  I was so jealous and would want to sit and play and stack the wooden dolls into one another for hours… Alexis on the other hand probably just wanted to ride bikes.  You can only imagine my delight this year, as more and more matryoshka are showing up on everything from housewares to clothing… after all these years, I am finally going to get my very own!

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Lauren

Measuring cups, Chess Set, Melamine Plate, Advent Calendar, Keychain, Clothespins, Zippered Case, Lavendar Sachets,