honey.

Today I caught up on DVR'd shows, on-demand movies, and napping. I also watched perhaps the most depressing love story ever, "The Way We Were." If you haven't seen it, and you're sad about lost love, DO NOT watch it. Especially with wine. Trust me on this. My therapist told me a long time ago I should see it, after a hard breakup with a great guy with whom I was not meant to be with. Her point, I see now, was that sometimes you can love each other greatly, but it still isn't enough and you're still not a match. Um thanks, therapist. I'll be calling you again real soon.

Anyway.

After sobbing myself into a nice long nap, I woke up and went about my day (read: watched more movies, laundry, more sobbing). I ended up in the bathtub, as I am wont to do when feeling emotionally fragile. Which brings me to the next portion of this post: beauty reviews!! It's been a really long time, but I thought tonight was as good a time as any to review some of my fave products -- because while I haven't been blogging beauty products, I've been using beauty products. The theme of tonight's bath was Honey. Honey and its lovely, restorative, softening, swoon-inducing properties. I lurve eet. Here's what I used tonight:

• MMU's JoJo Honey Face Buff. If you have a chance to use this decadent mask, DO. It will leave your face silky soft like a baby's. Seriously. It is technically a "scrub" and has tiny little jojoba beads in it. But how I use it is I get in a hot bath, let my skin steam for a few minutes, and then apply it to my face like a mask. I then leave it on 5-15 minutes (depending on the length of my bath), then gently rub in the beads. I then rinse it off, and oila -- amazingly soft, amazing-smelling skin. It's a little sticky during the process, but sooo worth it. A little goes a long way.
• LUSH's Mange Too massage bar. OMG. This is decadent. You will smell simply edible after smoothing this along your warm, bath-soaked skin. Lush's massage bars can of course be used for massage, but hard-core Lushies know they also double as lotion. Solid lotion, if you will. Smooth one over your legs, arms, whatever, wet or dry, and it will melt upon contact just enough to leave a film of sweet-smelling moisturizer. It soaks in quickly, leaving you supple but not greasy. I like using Mange Too because it smells of -- you guessed it - honey. It is yummy beyond belief. Note: if you don't have access to a LUSH store and have to order these online, don't do so in the summer months; they will melt. If you do get a melted one, just pop it in the fridge for a few hours and it will solidify again -- it won't be as pretty, but will work just fine.

That's it for now. I am going to cuddle into my bed with a nice serial killer suspense novel and drift into a sweetly scented slumber. Tomorrow is Monday and I have to be ready for anything.

ciao for now.

Balm for the soul

I just threw away my very first tube of Burt’s Bees beeswax lip balm. This is significant because I never, as in n.e.v.e.r., finish lipsticks or lip balms. No kidding, I have had this tube for years. I don’t know how many years, probably at least three. I know, it’s sick. The thing is, I’m so fickle that I am always trying to find the next lip product that will fulfill my deep inner longing for …well, I’m just fickle. I have TONS of lip products, but this is a first, actually using. one. up. I get this from my mother. But more on that in a bit.

So what usually happens to them, you might ask, as you picture a purse logged down by hundreds of lipsticks, glosses and balms? Well, my purse currently has 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8—9 lip products inside. It was 10, until I ditched the BB. And there are more all over my house. In my remote control basket thingie on my coffee table. By the front door. In my makeup drawer in the bathroom. On my bathroom counter. In my desk at work. Everywhere. And anything I’ve thrown away over the years has not been because I used it up, but because it started to look gross, it melted in the car (which shouldn’t happen now that I’m no longer in TX), or it started to smell like old wax. Unlike my mother, who still has lipsticks from the 70s, I throw away lippies when they begin to smell “off”. When they crumble as you try to apply them to your lips, it’s time to say bye-bye. Especially if they’re gift-with-purchase (read: free) lipsticks, MOM. :D I swear she still has lipsticks she inherited from my late Grandmother, because she never threw it away either. So you see in comparison, I’m MUCH better about it! I will throw it away, even if it pains me. [Incidentally, my mom/grandmother also horde/d other things, like shampoo, cleaning products, old towels – NOTHING ever discarded. But that could be a whole post unto itself: The Packaging Evolution of Windex, circa 1960 to Present” – just look under my mom’s kitchen sink.]

So, the point. The point is I’m heralding this using-up-of-the-lip-balm as a symbol of my new life in Colorado. I’m finally getting through my old stuff and truly starting fresh. Ta-da! See how neatly that all comes together??

Now I think I’ll break out the brand new, sealed tube of BB I bought last week, in anticipation of this dramatic event.

the sky is falling

or rather, the moon...

I just had an unfortunate shower incident. I am still traumatized, and thought perhaps writing about it would purge me of the dreadful memory.

The accident involved dropping this lovely, large, LUSH soap:



While lovely, yes; creamy, yes; gorgeous and fragrant, yes; that mofo is slippery. It is like holding a slimy boomerang in your hand. It is much larger than my hand, so I had to grip it around the face, which you would think would be nice and secure. Not so. In any event, my lovely moon-face soap now has a lovely dent, as does my foot. At a critical moment, I accidentally flung the slippery moon-face soap into my shower window, where it bounced off, knocking three bottles of shower gel and two soap dishes full of other soaps out of the window sill -- and I witnessed all this with soap in my eyes and a razor in my hand. Thank Heavens I jumped in surprise or surely my feet would have been crushed by the falling rubble. As it turned out, I simply have a red "egg" growing on the side of my left foot where the moon-face itself glanced off the side before schizing down the center of my tub and collecting with the other asundry items that were now clogging the drain.

The moral of the story: shaped soaps are indeed lovely, especially those from LUSH, but they are f-ing slippery and overall, dangerous if you live alone and like to shower at 1 am. By candlelight. ahem.

Perhaps that was more than you wished to imagine. But it is the truth, people, and I speak nothing if not the TRUTH.

Beware soap that has a face.