Attention Shoppers: Black Friday Beauty Recommendations

Black Friday is here, shoppers! So if you've decided to brave the malls today and get your shop on, here are a few Daily Dandy's to fill you or your honey's stockings with a beauty bounty.

Marc Jacobs Body Splash- Shown here in Fig, these sumptuous body splash sprays are a wonderful, light way to enjoy the essence of your favorite scent. It comes in a fabulous 10 oz. bottle, displays simply, and more than a few little birds have told me that they double as a great room spray. At $68.00, me thinks that's one pricey room spray. I have Grapefruit and love it! There are over 10 different varieties in one of a kind scents that never over power. With choices like Cucumber, Orange, Basil, Rain, Grass and Cotton and Ivy, these make for a truly unique gift! These products are available on line or at Sephora, Nordstroms and Bloomingdales.

MAC Cosmetics Brushes- Make-up brushes are a great way to stuff that special someones stocking, and MAC make-up brushes are of the finest quality. This is the kind of gift that most women want and need, but rarely buy for themselves. The three displayed here are my most basic recommendations. The Flat Definer is a super, essential brush for lining eyes perfectly and retails at $24.oo. The beauty of this brush is that it turns any dark eye shadow into an eye liner.

The Powder/Blush brush serves a dual purpose. Great for blending face powders, bronzers, mineral powder make-up AND blushes. At $34.00, this brush gives the user the most for the money. The Medium Angled Shading Brush is essential for blending and contouring eye shadows. It gives you the option of applying both lid color and blending crease color and sells for $24.50. If you want to add a little more to make the gift complete, the Make-Up Brush Cleanser is a wonderful way to top off the gift. These products are available on-line and at most major department stores like Nordstrom, Bloomingdales, Saks and Macy's.

Guerlain Terracotta Bronzing Powder- Bronzing powder is one of my beauty staples and Guerlain has the BEST in the business. (believe me-I have tried them all) A great bronzer can be used in place of a setting powder (365 days a year) to leave the skin with a beautiful, warm, luminous glow. It's long lasting formula controls oils, moisturizes and-get this-protects against free radicals-ie: an anti-aging product! What more could you ask for? No need to worry about matching a color here-it comes in a few different shades, but one really can't go wrong, all shades are for all skin tones. At $44.00 retail, stick with a basic light, dark formula. If your recipient has light skin-go with any light formulation and for darker complected beauties-go with the darker shades.
Best of Bliss Gift Set- Bliss Spa's famous products are most certainly heaven in a tube! A gift from Bliss is a gift to be cherished. During the holiday season, Bliss has some great gift sets at equally great prices. I highly recommend all of them for gift giving-but the Best of Bliss set is my holiday choice. At $55.00, the set contains the top selling Bliss items. Included in the set, The Lemon and Sage Body Butter, which is wonderful and makes a great gift on it's own, the High Intensity Hand Cream (I sold a ton of this to BOTH women and men), a small size of The Youth As We Know It, Bliss' newest anti-aging skin moisturizer, the Triple Oxygen Instant Energizing Mask, a great mask to re-oxygenate and energize over tired, dull skin, and Hot Salt Scrub, a great body scrub that "heats-up" in the shower and supremely exfoliates dead skin. These products are available on line and at Sephora and most fine department stores.

Kiehls Ultimate Brushless Shaving Creams- This is a great stocking stuffer for that hard to buy for guy on your list. The three formulas, Blue Eagle contains aloe for sensitive or oily skin types. The White Eagle, contains menthol and camphor and is their most popluar formula and Green Eagle, which contains a hint of mint for a cool shave without the feel of menthol. The guy on your list will love this product. It retails for $15.50 and can be found on-line or at Nieman Marcus, Nordstom and other fine department stores.


Fresh Sugar Lemon Body Products- These are my go-to-gifts and always on any of my list of recommendations because of the rave reviews I have gotten about these products time and time again. Fresh Sugar Lemon Body Lotion paired with the Fresh Sugar Lemon Bath and Shower Gel make a great gift giving tandem that leave the body with the fresh, clean scent of lemon. Each of the products retail for $28.00. Throw in a bar of Lemon Soap for $13.00 or choose the Sugar Lemon Bath Cubes for $34.00, these fizzy cubes drop into the tub and release a lemony scent to please the senses.

Good luck shoppers! Let me know if you have any questions or any of your own suggestions!

This Is My Brain Today

I've got 35 for Thanksgiving tomorrow and a crapload to do today. This little gem sums up today's events perfectly.

Peace out people!!! I wish you and yours the happiest of Thanksgivings and my best wishes for joy and a safe holiday!

Sign Of Fire

I recently found out that I am a fire sign. I'm sure I knew this fact a long time ago, but I must have filed it away under Z in my brain. I should say that I recently realized that, yes, I was born under the sign of fire. It was then that it clicked. The fact that I am a fire sign explains alot.

This summer, my cousin and I were with our kids at the beach house on Cape Cod to enjoy some bonding time for a few days. Every night we would go down to the beach and light a small bon fire. We had it all set up. We had beach chairs, a cooler, all the fixin's for smores, and a rock pit and every night at dusk we would head down to the beach to light the fire. The kids loved it, but after about an hour, they had enough and retreated back up the house. My cousin and I would stay for hours, till the last of the wood was burned, having cocktails and talking. We still talk about how great those evening fires were and she often comments on my amazing "fire stoking" abilities. It was during one of those evenings that she reminded me that I am a fire sign.

I have always loved a fire. As a little girl, I was a Girl Scout and have fond memories of the camp fire. My outdoor fire pit is my favorite way to entertain my guests, sharing stories and cocktails. There is nothing more satisfying to me than, on a cold winter's night, lighting a fire in the fireplace and cozying up under a blanket in front of it. The flames put me under a trance and I could sit for hours, doing nothing more than watching the fire burn. Am I a pyro? Absolutely. My fire stoking skills go unmatched. I am constantly prodding and stoking the fire, adding just the right amount of wood to keep the flames alive. Now that I know where the love of the flame comes from, the puzzle is complete.

There are three fire signs in astrology: Aries, Leo and Sagittarius. My son, my daughter and myself, respectively. (now I know why we fight each other on every little thing)

Wikipedia says, "According to astrological theory, fire signs represent the life-giving and vital force of the zodiac. The fire signs are termed positive and extroverted, and are supposed to be active, creative, ingenious, dynamic, and highly energetic. They are seen as the leaders and pioneers within humanity, possessing an assertive quality that allows them to act upon the thoughts of others extremely quickly."

In matters of the heart, fire signs are more passionate and committed than other signs. My guy is a water sign. Does this mean we cancel each other out? I don't think so. My water sign guy cut down a ton of dying trees last year in our backyard and had them chopped up into multiple piles of wood, so that his little "pyro" would always be ready to burn. He lights me fires all the time. I love that.

Like my sign, I am outspoken, anger quickly, and extremely passionate about things and people I care about. I am gregarious and friendly, with a competitive streak. I am loyal to a fault, and committed.

But since this past summer, I realized for me what it's all about. If you really want to win me over and get into my heart and my soul, just light me a fire.

HYPOC-RINCH

About two weeks ago I noticed that this radio station in Boston, 105.7 WROR, began a 24-7 format of exclusively broadcasting Christmas music from now until Christmas day. I was dumbfounded when I first realized that, yes, I was hearing Christmas music coming from my radio and no, I was not inside a retail establishment. Now, 105.7 has a tradition of being the go-to-local radio station for "all Christmas music all the time" around the holidays, but I can't ever remember the change taking place this early.

I was pissed. "This is ridiculous", I complained to anyone that would listen, changing the station to punctuate my point. Nearly everyone agreed with me. I just couldn't see the reasoning behind airing the music 24-7 in the early days of November, so soon after Halloween. They even have a drive time spot from 5-7 daily where the kids can call in and talk directly to Santa "from the North Pole" and tell him what's on their list. Every time I came across it while scanning the radio, it would piss me off a little more. I created all these plausible scenarios in my head like:

"They're in cahoots with the retailers"; IE: their advertisers= all important ad revenues.

"Maybe the station had a bad fiscal year and they are trying to mix things up and create a buzz by changing the format WAY TOO EARLY."

What I really thought was that it was a risky move that would alienate alot of their loyal listeners (myself included). I could only imagine what their email in-box and their voice mail in-box looked and sounded like.

105.7 WROR Boston

Listener E-mail

Dear WROR,

I have been listening to your station for some 20 plus years and I am disgusted by your choice of timing in changing your recent format. It's bad enough that I am forced into facing an early Christmas season by every major retailer before I even hand out even one piece of Halloween candy, because now I am left no choice but to escape the constant drone of your untimely Christmas cheer on the drive to and from my job. A once simple pleasure, now ruined by your early exploitation and over commercialization of an already used and abused holiday.

Thanks a lot WROR. I will be taking my listening habits elsewhere. Preferably to a station that respects the proper timing in observance of the holiday season.

A pissed off FORMER listener

That might have been me. I say might because I have realized over the past week that I have been shouting a bit too loudly. I would be remiss if I didn't admit to, while picking up the kids at school or practice and running daily errands, leaving the station on, all the while complaining at it's ridiculousness. I even found myself humming and singing along to a few holiday classics. I have become the thing I hate most, a hypocrite.

As the days go by, I find myself listening and enjoying the music more and more. While driving around this weekend, (doing what?) early Christmas shopping, I was listening. Now the kids are getting into the spirit also. So what am I teaching them? We all agreed that this is just too early, yet there we are, listening and singing right along with WROR.

I decided that this Grinch had better make amends but fast or I am destined for coal in my stocking and not much else along with some pretty confused children.

Could it be that my head isn't screwed on just right, or perhaps, maybe, my shoes are too tight? Whatever the reason, my heart or my shoes, I must stop this whole WROR Christmas-music-hating-ruse.

I puzzled and pondered till I couldn't remember what I was puzzling for. Then I remembered, "Oh yeah, maybe Christmas, this year, means a little bit more."

And what happened next...? Well in our house they say, that mom's grinchy heart grew three sizes that day.

And she proclaimed to all, in an act of contrition, "Every radio in the house will be tuned only to WROR to listen."

I Can't Help Myself...It's A Sickness

It is very well documented here at the Daily Dandy, my love for Tommy. Today it would seem I'm not alone. Check out MSNBC.com's sports guy Matty Blake's hilarious take on his Tommy man crush-edness at it's finest!

My favorite is the scene showing just his leg. Dude-we (Pat's Nation) feel your pain!

Who's your man-crush? C'mon, you know you have one!!

All I Could Say Was...WTF???

No kidding. I really saw this yesterday. This is an outdoor display at a private home in our great state of Massassachusetts. If I hadn't had actually been there myself, I probably never would have believed it.

I went to visit a friend I haven't seen in a while in the Southeastern part of the state. As she took me down the road to this house she told me, "you've got to see this". In the center of the picture, in front of the American Flag thingie is a (I kid you not) Statue of Liberty statue in the middle of a small man made pond. That's right, it's a fountain that I'm told goes on at night, lit up in all of Lady Liberty's glory. In the back, there is a horse drawn carriage complete with a fake guy wearing a straw hat sitting in the carriage and several other random cement statues scattered around that my iphone couldn't fully capture in this shot.

This is the front of the house. The tall statue of a Venus is one of about six that sit atop the fence that lines the entrance. On the initial approach to the home, just before it came into focus, I thought was that she was taking me to see an incredible Halloween display that was still up. This was SOOO much better. And because I'm a freak! I exclaimed wildly that I had to get out of the car and take pictures so that I could display them on my blog. We had a great laugh while I was snapping away with my phone in front of this guy's "constitutionally correct" outdoor expression of patriotisim. ( no biggie, I'm sure he's used to it by now).

Legend has it that the occupant of this house was asked a few years back by a neighbor if he could take down his display, just temporarily, until they sold their adjacent home. What do you think he did? Not only did he NOT remove the statues, he added more, digging in his proverbial heels, so to speak. Needless to say, he's probably not the most popular guy on his block.

And because with every great visual, there has to be a "cherry" that tops it. This is located on the opposite side of of the yard from Lady Liberty. Here is the money shot:

No where else but the great US of A. I dare not tell you where this is. Rumor has it the guy is in "waste management".

Because really, What Would Jesus Do?

Today's Special: Done your way

We here at the Daily Dandy are huge Anjelah Johnson fans, and "Nail Salon" previously posted here is an all time favorite.
My daughter showed this to me and we couldn't stop laughing and mimicking this comic gem. (a great bonding moment indeed)"I will CUT you" is now part of the everyday vernacular. Plus, everyone likes it done their way. Don't they? Yeahhh, I thought so.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZkdcYlOn5M