Recent purchases that are awesome

The L De Lolita Lempicka Fleur De Corail that I reveiwed a few months ago is on its way to me – I found a really good deal at Perfumania. I think this will be a great scent for summer.

Also love these Corso Como wedges…my feet do get tired after a while but man do I love feeling tall…

Moving on to the silver sandals from Old Navy – a great inexpensive summer sandal that goes with just about everything.

The Hayden-Harnett for Target umbrella makes me feel so droll, and it has twice as many ribs so I hope it will resist getting blown inside out like every other umbrella I’ve owned since moving to TX. This one is pretty enough to be used as a parasol as well as for rain!

Last but not least – the Kat Von D for Sephora eyeshadow palette in Ludwig. When I saw this I was like, I would wear every one of those colors. Fantastic. The shadows are very good quality. More than I would usually spend, but again, I’ll actually use every color and the quality is worth it. The brushes that come with it were more like lip brushes though so use your own shadow brush and you’ll get a much better application.

Check out the Morsel Institute of N. Texas

If you have ever found yourself in the Dallas area wondering where to eat – check out this blog.

http://morsel-institute.blogspot.com/

Hacks: I haz them.

I had bought these great looking earrings from Ann Taylor a little while back, to go with the brooch below, but the first time I wore them, one of the jewels popped out! I was just strolling along on my way to the train platform and the next thing I knew one of the earrings was missing a stone. Turns out the jewels are not set as they appear, but rather just glued onto the molded backing.

Unfortunately, I had bought these on final sale, and although Ann Taylor SHOULD exchange a defective item, I didn’t want to deal with the frustration of driving out to one of the only 2 locations here and possibly fighting with the employee to get them to do the exchange. So I went to Michael’s and bought a packet of stick on rhinestones for $2. The royal blue rhinestone perfectly matched the color and although it was a tiny bit smaller than the original stone, you really can’t tell which earring is which unless you look very closely. Even better, I have the back-up rhinestones in case the other earring decides to throw off a jewel. I still love the design, but I’m not very impressed with the quality, and I’m REALLY glad I didn’t pay the full price for these.

What would you wear?

I apologize for not having posted in a while. Right after Christmas I got a nasty flu bug that turned into a cough so I’ve not been able to do much of anything besides going to work.

Anyway, I wanted to share a fun little experiment I did in which you construct a collage of an outfit you would wear if you were the opposite sex. (hat tip to Princess Poochie of Shoe Daydreams)

So here is what I would wear if I were a guy: 

 

Yes, it seems I’m a bit of a hipster douchebag.

 

What would you wear?

Tonight, we make soap.

Jojosmom & I made soap this past summer, and we’re making some more for Christmas gifts. She has the stomach flu so I’m making the basic soap and then we’ll re-batch it together and make it all fancy with scents and so on.

We decided to do an olive oil castile base soap, and an olive oil & goat milk base soap. The castile still has the texture of porridge, but the goat milk one set up super fast, so here are some pictures:

Hot mess.

The block of goat milk soap fresh from the primary mold and cut in half.  I then diced up one of the halves and took a pound of the dices, melted them in a pyrex dish, and poured it into a smaller pyrex dish. Then I stirred in anise fragrance oil and a bit of blue dye. My marbling technique needs work, as you can see:

rebatched soap, unmolded

The rebatched soap, cut into bars

The bars need to cure for probably a few days to a week before they can be used, to allow the lye time to fully react with the oil, or it will be too caustic to wash with.

I need this

My fainting couch! Fetch me it!

perfume review – L de Lolita Lempicka Fleur de Corail

I tried the L de Lolita a few months ago, and while it was nice, it was WAY too sweet for me. It started out smelling like lemon cake and from there shifted into a blast of sugar that stayed at the same intensity all day. I had bought a mini of it so I gave it to a coworker who likes sweeter scents.

I’d been wanting to try the Fleur de Corail also, since it sounded like most of the sweetness of the L had been replaced with salt & driftwood, and that’s almost exactly how it smelled to me today when I tried it at Sephora. There is definitely a sweet flower middle to it, but it’s much less sweet than the L.

Here are the notes, from Sephora: Grapefruit, Bergamot, Frangipani blossom, Orchid Vanilla, Amber, Musk, Driftwood.

I think I’ll have to get a mini or decant of this, since it’s not something I’d wear every day, but it is lovely.

knitting projects

I got some nice yarn at a ridiculously low price recently, so I’m trying to think of cool stuff to make. I only know how to knit rectangles, so besides scarves I think I’m going to make a felted clutch / makeup bag.

There’s also this headband:

It looks cable-knit, but it’s actually two separate skinny knit rectangles that are braided together and sewn.

And I’m going to make some knitted neck warmers for my etsy shop from this:

Think something sort of Victorian… a scarf that only wraps around your neck and buttons.

I’m excited!

I think I finally hung out with some people who like tea as much as I do.

This is not an insignificant achievement.

Let’s just say the Teavana catalog was passed back and forth a lot. They haven’t tried matcha or genmaicha, so that’s something to look forward to next time I see them.

Welcome to my blog

This is a place for me to write about the things that interest me and give me pleasure at this point in my life.

I don’t want things to get too heavy, though occasionally I will post on subjects about which I have strong convictions. Mostly I will be discussing fashion, arts, crafting, gardening and environmental topics. This is not a place to troll or otherwise antagonize your fellow commentators. Trolls will be excuted, and their skulls removed, cleaned, and used by me to drink apple brandy from.