Poppy does Chicago

What a weekend--a real culture-vulture marathon, and just generally busy.
Thank goodness I lost my cellphone.

This meant, of course, that I needed a new one. I wanted a new one, anyway. The old one was kind of clunky and didn't do anything but make calls. No camera, no games, no video, no internet.

By buying a new phone at the Cingular store, I could keep the old number, but everything else was new and (to me, at least) ooh-la-la fancy. I got the Motorola Razr. In pink, of course. With the bluetooth ear thingie. If you never hear from me again, it's because I'm playing Tetris on my cellphone.

Back to Saturday. Walking east to Michigan Avenue, the first store I saw was Coach. So of course I had to go in and check out the Coach Lilly-esque patchwork bags. I thought about it for all of ... 20 seconds, and then I bought the medium-sized Hamptons patchwork tote bag. (I blame Elizabeth of The Preppy Cafe for corrupting me!)

Then I headed up to the Gap because we're heading to Florida next month and I need to bump up my t-shirt supply. The Gap was so crowded I couldn't stand it. Never again. I keep forgetting that for some tourists, the high point of their visit to Chicago is heading to North Michigan Avenue to shop at ... the Gap. They did have some very cute striped canvas tote bags and espadrilles, but I couldn't take the crowds. I'll check out the local store during the week when the kids are in school.

I then headed to Sephora because with a new pink cell phone and a new spring bag, what would be better than a new palette?

I checked out Hard Candy, Urban Decay, and Stila, but the palette that really caught my attention was Pop Cosmetic's "Beaming Popette." The palette is turquoise-colored metal (not cardboard) and has a mirrored lid. Four eyeshadows (one pearl, and three in beautiful shades of green) a shimmery peach highlighter, and three glosses.

While I was there I decided to pick up Tarte's "The Toolbox" eyebrow kit. I've used the way-cheap (and unfortunately discontinued) Revlon eyebrow kit, which consisted of a pan of brow color, a pan of brow wax, and a stiff brush. It worked great, but as I said, it's discontinued, and everyone who makes something like it charges $30 and up. Then there's the high end Chanel product: $60 will get you the eyebrow color, tweezers, a mirror, and a brow brush. Or the Anastasia product, which I believe goes for $120.

The Tarte eyebrow kit has: brow color, brow wax, a set of little tweezers, three brow stencils, a brow pencil, a tube of clear mascara, and a brush for applying the color. Pretty much everything you need in a box the size of two lipsticks. The eyebrow color comes in three shades; I opted for light.

Let me tell you--you haven't lived until you've played around with brow stencils. I had eyebrows like a movie star, man.

I also picked up the Tarte doubled-ended lipglosses in Ferris and Sloane. (They're pretty in the tube, but don't really show up all that much on the lips.)

My last stop was at Talbot's. I really try not to be so boring, but I just wanted to pick up a couple of t-shirts. And the pima cotton short sleeved t-shirts are lovely--not at all see-through, with a gorgeous hand, and a nice fit--not the boxiness I have come to expect from Talbot's. I got pink and turquoise. I'll probably pick up a few more colors to finish filling the t-shirt drawer, and then I'm done.

Spring 2006--bring it on! I'm ready!

Do you suppose it smells as preppy as it looks?

This is Oscar de la Renta's new limited-edition fragrance, "Bamboo." It's available at Marshall Field's. Two ounces of EDT for $39.50.

I'm guessing that it smells fresh and green.

But look at it!

Don't you think it should smell like a gin & tonic? With extra lime?

I think I might buy it just for the fun of displaying it on my bureau ... even if it reeks.

Snapshirts Update

Well, today I received an email from SnapShirts letting me know that my t-shirt design was ready. (This t-shirt uses words from my other blog.) I clicked on the link and checked it out. It looks good!

I'm not much of a fan of t-shirts with writing on them for everyday wear, since frankly, that part of my anatomy doesn't need any more attention. But I get a kick out of wearing them when I'm working out, doing housework, or hanging around the house blogging, i.e., right now. And these shirts look perfect for that. They are 100 percent cotton, not terribly fitted, but shaped like a woman. In this respect this shirt will totally outclass many of my other t-shirts, such as my collection of Red Sox t-shirts, which I heart dearly but which were designed for men and look horribly boxy.

And then there is the little matter of the placement of the silkscreening. The SnapShirts people seemed to have figured that out--the placement of this design looks good. It looks like the word cloud will appear over one's clavicle, which is a good thing when one doesn't exactly feel like standing there on display while other people read War and Peace off one's breasts. At times one finds oneself wondering whether one should offer one's reader a bookmark.

(Sorry about the "one"s. I've been listening to the Narnia books on CD, and it's catching. I'm beginning to sound like Lynn Redgrave. Or worse yet, Michael York.)

Anyway, I selected my size and filled out the rest of the necessary information. The website is well designed, and the whole thing took about two minutes.

I think I need a t-shirt for this blog, too. And another one for my other other blog--I could always use a nice word cloud t-shirt to cook in.

When pajamas aren't enough: what to wear to blog

In my blogging perusals (well, I have to do something to keep me busy while I wait for my package to arrive from Gloss) I came upon a site that makes word cloud t-shirts.

You know what a word cloud is, right? The software goes through a document and picks the most popular words, then arranges them alphabetically. The font size reflects how often each word appears. (In the example I've included, you can see that I talk about myself a lot.)

You can just visit the site to come up with a word cloud, or you can go ahead and order a t-shirt. The t-shirts cost $18, not including shipping. They have men's and women's t-shirt styles in different colors, and a choice of 13 ink colors and 3 fonts.

Naturally, I couldn't resist. I made one with the words it found in my other blog, and I liked it so much I ordered a t-shirt.

I picked pink lettering in the classic Times Roman font. Apparently they'll email me to let me know when the shirt is ready. (I don't remember picking a size, though. Maybe I missed that part of the web page ... damn! Nothing worse than an ill-fitting custom t-shirt. My other blog deserves a better designer t-shirt.)

At any rate, I'll post when I receive an update from SnapShirts.

In the meantime, it's a fun site to fool around with (in the off-chance that you haven't been wasting enough time on the internet, that is.)

It's snowing. So I went shopping.

I know I'm supposed to decry the Estee Lauder corporation's acquisition of super kewl boutique brands like Bobbi Brown and MAC ... but I'm a middle-aged, lazy housewife, it's cold and snowy outside, and frankly, I couldn't be more glad that I could just head over to the Gloss website and order what I needed without firing up the minivan and heading to the mall.

What I needed was my favorite day time moisturizer--Estee Lauder's Resilience Lift lotion. I love this stuff because it's light, moisturizes well, gives me a glow, contains SPF15, yet doesn't reek. In fact, it smells like cantaloupe. I'm on my last week's worth of the stuff, and I was beginning to panic, wondering when I could get to a Major Department Store and buy some.

While I was on the gloss website, I decided to pop for a couple of MAC eyeshadows. Usually, on those rare occasions when I can be bothered to mess around with eyeshadow in the first place, I stick to Jane Eye Zings, but MAC has some interesting shades you really can't get anywhere else. So I ordered MAC shadows in Juxt and Vex.

And now, a word about gifts with purchase. In true Estee Lauder style, Gloss has them. (Estee Lauder being the inventor of this excellent department store tradition.) But on Gloss, you get to pick your gift. This means that when I checked out, I could get a sample tube of Origin's A Perfect World moisturizer, as well as sample sizes of a Clinique lip gloss and eye shadow,
which I like much better than the idea of acquiring Yet Another Tube of Estee Lauder "Rosa Rosa" Lipstick in Yet Another Fugly Cosmetics bag. The GWPs and samples can come from any of the Estee Lauder companies, (or Gloss affiliates) which at present are:

Bobbi Brown
Chanel
Clarins
Clinique
Darphin
Estée Lauder
Jo Malone
La Mer
Lab Series
MAC
Origins
Prescriptives
Rodan + Fields
Stila

As I said, I'm pretty much over gifts with purchase--at least, GWPs of Estee Lauder products. Resilience Lift moisturizer is the only EL product I use. But the companies Estee has gobbled up? I'll totally take their stuff.

Oh, and there was free shipping, too--nice!

So that's the good news.

The bad news is that while Gloss works perfectly well for restocking items you've already used or color cosmetics you've already seen in real life, they have the WORST on-screen representation of makeup colors I've ever seen. They are way, way off. So watch out for that.

Blogger is the new Winona Ryder.

And I can only hope that like Winona Ryder, Blogger experiences a long, slow slide into obscurity. Because Blogger has shoplifted two of my posts. Two very well-written, clever posts, too. Designer posts. With labels. One was even a Karl Lagerfeld.

To make matters worse, in one case Blogger has eaten a post, thrown it up, and then eaten it again. Which I guess also makes Blogger the what--Nicole Ritchie?--of blogging software.

I say this so that if by any chance you saw the post about Karl Lagerfeld, or the post where I made fun of Blogger for not letting me upload pictures--and you're wondering where they went--well, yeah. Me too.

Wait a minute--hear that? I think the security alarm just went off again.

In the pink at In the Pink

One of the things that drives me crazy about on-line shopping is registering for a site only to be totally swamped with spam. I mean, I already feel like a loser for forgetting to send my mother a birthday card, but do I really need to be punished with daily emails from ftd.com? No, I don't.

It's enough to make me want to refuse to register at websites.

But one site well worth registering for is in the pink. I became a member a long time ago, and while I really don't need all that many reminders to shop for Lilly Pulitzer clothes, their email reminders tend to actually offer something in the way of information about upcoming collections, or better yet, ways to save money.

This morning an email from in the pink told me that they were offering members 40 percent off current-season sleepwear. I jumped at the chance to score two sets of Lilly "Dreamy" pajamas for $78 a pair instead of $130. I got Phipps Pink Mommy and Me and Bliss Blue Lazy Paisley--the print you see in the graphic I ruthlessly stole from the in the pink website.

For what it's worth, I've ordered from in the pink many times and I've always been satisfied with their service and shipping. Two pink and green thumbs up!