FOR THE HOME
Things that make home feel like home.
COMING NOVEMBER 17, 2026
What if the life you’re living and the life you want are no longer quite the same thing?
You’ve built a life. You’ve taken care of people. You’ve kept going. But somewhere along the way, you started wondering:
Is this it? Am I too old to change it?
You’re not.
This book won’t tell you who you should become next. It will help you remember that you still get to decide.
53 reflections for the woman who’s ready to ask:
What do I want now?
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THIS BOOK IS FOR YOU IF...
- 01
You've built a life you're grateful for, but something inside you is restless.
Nothing necessarily went wrong. You just know the life you're living and the life you want are no longer quite the same thing.
- 02
You've spent years being who everyone else needed you to be.
Mother. Wife. Partner. Daughter. Employee. Boss. Caregiver. Provider. Somewhere in all those roles, you may have stopped asking what you want.
- 03
Life changed, and you're trying to figure out who you are now.
Maybe a marriage ended. The children grew up. You lost someone. Your career changed. Your body changed. Your priorities changed. Or maybe you changed.
- 04
There are parts of yourself you miss.
Interests you abandoned. Dreams you postponed. Places you still want to see. Things you want to learn. Experiences you keep telling yourself you'll get around to someday.
- 05
You've wondered whether you've waited too long.
Too old to start over. Too old to change careers. Too old to fall in love. Too old to start a business. Too old to learn something new. Too old to become someone different.
- 06
You don't necessarily want to blow up your life. You just want it to feel like yours again.
Maybe reinvention isn't one enormous decision. Maybe it begins with a hundred smaller ones.
WHAT THIS BOOK WON'T DO
It won't give you a 10-step formula for reinventing your life.
There isn't one.
It won't tell you to blow up a life that may already contain a great deal you love.
Reinvention can be enormous, but it can also happen through small choices that slowly make your life feel like yours again.
It won't tell you who you should become next.
That's yours to decide.
What it will do is invite you to look honestly at where you've been, reconnect with parts of yourself you may have left behind, and begin imagining what you want the next chapter of your life to look like.
YOU KEEP COMING BACK TO ONE QUESTION:
What do I want now?
If you recognized yourself anywhere on this page, I wrote this book with you in mind.
WHY NOVEMBER 17?
Because baklava became one of my next stories.
Peach Cobbler Walnut Baklava
Where Southern memory meets Greek tradition.
November 17 is National Baklava Day. And that makes it the perfect day to launch a book about reinvention.
Sheer Ambrosia Bakery was born from pieces of my own story. I took the traditional Greek way of making baklava and began bringing in the Southern flavors I grew up with. This Peach Cobbler Walnut baklava is a perfect example: my mother's peach cobbler meeting the pastry tradition I had come to love.
Somewhere along the way, those influences became something distinctly mine. And what started with baklava grew into a business, a community, a livelihood and one of the great reinventions of my life.
So when it came time to choose a day to release It's Never Too Late to Write Your Next Story, November 17 felt exactly right.
Because sometimes writing your next story doesn't mean leaving the old ones behind. Sometimes you take pieces of them with you and create something new.
Mine happened to involve 45 layers of phyllo.
REINVENTING RITA
It’s never too late to write your next story.
I’m Rita Magalde. Entrepreneur. Author. Creator.
At 53, I’ve built businesses, raised two children, started over more than once, made mistakes, changed my mind, followed unlikely dreams and learned that a life can hold more than one beginning.
Reinventing Rita is where I share the stories, lessons and possibilities I’ve discovered along the way, and invite you to start imagining what might still be possible for you.
WHAT IS REINVENTING RITA?
I didn’t start Reinventing Rita because I had figured out my life.
I started it because I realized I was allowed to ask what I wanted from it now.
At 53, I found myself asking questions I hadn’t expected to be asking. Do I still want the life I’ve spent years building? What does success mean to me now? What do I want my days to feel like? What have I outgrown? And what do I still want badly enough to go after?
I’ve learned that those aren’t signs that something has gone wrong. Sometimes they’re signs that we’ve changed.
And I’ve decided I’m not going to spend the rest of my life living by decisions I made for a woman I used to be.
Reinventing Rita is where I explore what it means to keep becoming, at an age when women are sometimes made to feel as though we’re supposed to have everything settled already.
I talk about work and money. Home and health. Motherhood and getting older. Things I’m trying, things I’m changing, things I love, things I’ve learned, and yes, occasionally the things I still make a complete mess of.
“This isn’t about becoming a different woman. It’s about paying attention to the woman I am now and giving her some say in what happens next.”
If you’re asking some of those questions too, you’re welcome here.
THE BOOK
It’s Never Too Late to Write Your Next Story
Reflections on Starting Over, Letting Go, Dreaming Again & Becoming Who You’re Meant to Be
At 53, I started looking backward at the woman I’ve been and forward at the woman I’m still becoming.
I thought about the things I’ve survived, the things I’ve built, the mistakes I’ve made, the people I’ve loved, the things I’ve lost, the dreams I still have and all the ordinary moments that somehow taught me something.
The result is 53 reflections from 53 years of living.
Stories about childhood, motherhood, marriage, divorce, work, money, friendship, fear, home, ambition, starting over and the seemingly ordinary moments that can quietly change the way we see our lives.
This isn’t a roadmap. It isn’t a formula.
It’s an invitation to look at where you’ve been, reconnect with parts of yourself you may have left behind, and begin imagining what you want the next chapter of your life to look like.
Because whatever has already been written, there is still room on the page.
COMING NOVEMBER 17, 2026
DISCOVER THE BOOKMY STORY
I’ve started over more than once.
I’ve been an entrepreneur for nearly three decades.
I’ve owned a mortgage brokerage, built a travel agency, sold my half of it and started all over again with a pan of baklava.
I’ve built businesses. Lost things I thought I would always have. Raised two children. Been a single mother. Started over financially. Made some wonderful decisions and some spectacularly questionable ones.
I’ve lived in Spain. Traveled the world. Built a bakery. Written a book about divorce. Started another book at 53. And somewhere along the way, I became very good at beginning again.
But Reinventing Rita didn’t start because I wanted to build another business.
It started because I realized I was changing.
After years of measuring success by how much I could build, accomplish, earn, carry and survive, I started wanting different things.
I wanted my time back.
I wanted to take care of my health. I wanted a home that felt like mine. I wanted to travel again. Learn another language. Dance more tango. Buy beautiful quilts simply because I loved them. Spend more time with the people I love.
And I wanted to find out who I might become if every decision didn’t have to begin with what needs to get done?
So here I am.
Fifty-three years into my story, still ambitious, still dreaming, still becoming, but paying much closer attention to how I want my life to feel, not just how it looks from the outside.
That’s Reinventing Rita.
“Not a finished transformation. A woman in the middle of becoming.”READ MORE ABOUT RITA
WATCH
Come along. There’s more to the story.
Some things are better talked about than written down.
On Reinventing Rita TV, I share pieces of my life as I’m living them. Entrepreneurship. Starting over. Home. Health. Money. Getting older. Things I’m learning. Things I’m trying. Things I’m questioning.
And sometimes, just things that make life a little more beautiful.
No perfect answers. No perfectly curated life. Just the conversation as it unfolds.
THINGS I LOVE
The things making my life a little better.
I’ve reached an age where I know what I like.
Beautiful things for my home. A really good planner. Products that make taking care of myself easier. Books worth reading. Things that help me work smarter. Things that make an ordinary Tuesday feel just a little more special.
And when I find something I genuinely love, I tend to tell people about it.
So I made a place for that too.
These are things I actually use, enjoy, buy, recommend or simply think are worth knowing about.
No pretending I love something because somebody sent me a link.
Just the good stuff.
HEALTH & SELF-CARE
Things helping me take better care of myself.
PAPER, PLANNERS & BOOKS
Because apparently some of us will never stop loving good paper.
STYLE & BEAUTY
Things I wear, use and keep reaching for.
WORK & CREATIVITY
Tools that make building and creating a little easier.
JUST BECAUSE I LOVE IT
The things that don’t need a category.
Some links may be affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission if you make a purchase, at no additional cost to you. I only share things I genuinely like or think are worth knowing about.
SHEER AMBROSIA BAKERY
The business that became part of my story.
In 2008, just months after selling my half of a travel agency I had spent nearly a decade building, I started again.
This time, with baklava.
What began in my kitchen became Sheer Ambrosia Bakery, a Utah artisan bakery built around something I loved making and sharing with people.
Over the years, Sheer Ambrosia has given me some extraordinary experiences. It has introduced me to people I never would have met, opened doors I never expected to walk through, and taught me more about entrepreneurship, resilience, creativity and myself than I could possibly fit on this page.
It has also been hard.
Really hard sometimes.
And that’s part of the story too.
Reinventing Rita isn’t separate from Sheer Ambrosia. The bakery is one of the chapters that taught me I could build something from nothing, begin again and create a life I hadn’t imagined yet.
“I’m enormously proud of what I’ve built. I’m just not done discovering what else I want from my life.”
Handmade baklava. 45 layers. One pretty remarkable story.
VISIT SHEER AMBROSIA BAKERYSTAY IN MY STORY
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