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.

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

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.

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?

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.

My fainting couch! Fetch me it!

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.

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!

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.