If It Comes In Pink

Photo source: Lil Bit Old Lil Bit New

My friend Chelsea just unknowingly introduced me to my new favorite website: Make Mine Pink. This is a great little place full of online vendors whose wares are, of course, pink! Be careful wandering around the marketplace, the system for searching these stores is pretty basic. But if you're looking for something particular, it's a great place to start.  

Some things I found that I love include these great Fleur-de-Lis bookends ($19.99) from Vintage to Vogue:

 

Photo source: Vintage to Vogue

this Alice in Wonderland style teacup bird feeder ($18) from Forget Me Not Dreams:

Photo source: Forget Me Not Dreams

and even these fun rose rings ($12) from CarolineAlexander:

Photo source: CarolineAlexander

These boutiques are a great place to find vintage and hand-crafted items of all sorts and at reasonable prices. There are even vendors for furniture! I'm sure Adam will love that. Happy pink hunting!

Cheers, Kate

Lola Summer Survival Kit Giveaway:

I love finding giveaways I can repost for you all. I'd love for one of you to win!

The guys over at NVPerricone are offering one reader of Her Name Was Lola their Summer Survival Kit complete with Citrus Facial Wash, High Potency Amine Complex Face Lift, and the truly remarkable Perricone MD No Foundation. 

HOW do you enter? Become a follower of the blog and leave a comment on the giveaway post sharing why you want/need/must-have your very own Summer Survival Kit ($180 value) by Friday, July 16th @ noon EST (U.S. and Canada only). A winner will be chosen at random.

This is also a great blog to keep tabs on, I love her spread on vintage Diane von Furstenburg. Including this chic blue floral dress:



It's photos like this that make me wish I was A. a brunette, and B. living pre-1970. See more photos of the great DVF here.

Keep me posted on your giveaway entries! Cheers, Kate.

Photos source.

Hot Colors, Cool Nails

InStyle Magazine  posted up a gallery of the top 15 nail colors this summer. I took a browse through them, and while I'm always astonished that nail polish can get so expensive, I did find a couple new shades I'd love to try. Here are my top four. Click on the picture to go get more information about that polish.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="399" caption="American Apparel in Summer Peach $6"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Nails Inc. in Eden Grove $19"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Illamasqua Nail Varnish in Blow $14"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="TopShop in Parma Violet $10"][/caption]

 

 

DIY Removable Wallpaper?

Today I stumbled upon a new obsession: Oh Joy! a great design, architecture, and fashion blog run out of San Diego. There was a discussion from a few days ago about the prospect of wallpapering a rental apartment, along with lots of suggestions of what to do.



Source.

Readers suggested wallpaper designed to be removed, using starch and fabric, and putting up painters tape then attaching the wallpaper to it with double-sided take. Read the entry here. Any thoughts?

Hollywood Hair in Real Life?

I love Elle. It's like a 250-page piece of modern art encased in glitz and silk. An article today talked about how Hollywood is going long and luscious again.

I've been attempting to grow my hair out for almost a year now, and after a brief snafu (my last stylist cut my hair to a right-sided part instead of a left-sided part. oh well), I'm seriously debating extensions. I've never dyed my hair except for once or twice with wash-out dyes, so I'm not sure how synthetic locks will fit in with my own.

Of course the rich and famous, like Ashley Greene and Reese Witherspoon, don't have to worry about that problem.

Here's also a great Elle Video  about extension application. Maybe once they could use a blonde so I know what I'm getting into.

Have you ever tried over-the-counter extensions? Please share tips and recommendations for the chronically cropped.

Cheers, Kate.

Maison Cailler Swiss Chocolates

Someone in the office left a bag of Cailler Swiss chocolates in the kitchen today. I took the liberty of sampling them. If Adam gets to go on assignment in Switzerland, I'll be a very happy girl.

The lait (milk chocolate) was fantastic. Creamy and full of cocoa, this chocolate has a lighter taste than your typical Hershey's bar. I wasn't as big of a fan of the dessert or cremant chocolates. The dessert has traces of praline which I'm not a fan of, and the cremant was a 'extrafine dark chocolate,' and I'm not into that either. 

But unexpectedly, the blanc chocolate was my favorite. Super silky and supple, just like chocolate should be.  What's your favorite international chocolatier?



Photo source 1. Source 2.

Year of the Tiger 2010

This year, in honor of 2010's Year of the Tiger, Barnum's Animals Crackers has teamed up with an unusual partner - Lilly Pulitzer! I stumbled across a box of my favorite childhood snack unexpectedly in the Giant snack aisle near my office. Decked out in signature Lilly pink and green with authentic Lilly jungle animals playing across the box.

While I was a bit disappointed that the actual cracker's hadn't changed shape, it was nice to see such a great effort by two classic, niche brands. Both are arguably household names, though I'm sure the houses where Lilly Pulitzer is common place might not be the same as these treats, and they have teamed up to support the World Wildlife Foundation's mission to rescue tigers across the world. According to the box, there are only 400 Sumatra tigers still in existence, with just over 3,000 tigers alive in the wild. Barnum's is supporting the WWF with a $100,000 donation. And Lilly is sending its fans out across the country searching for these boxes. Good luck Lilly Lovers!

Year of the Tiger 2010

This year, in honor of 2010's Year of the Tiger, Barnum's Animals Crackers has teamed up with an unusual partner - Lilly Pulitzer! I stumbled across a box of my favorite childhood snack unexpectedly in the Giant snack aisle near my office. Decked out in signature Lilly pink and green with authentic Lilly jungle animals playing across the box.

While I was a bit disappointed that the actual cracker's hadn't changed shape, it was nice to see such a great effort by two classic, niche brands. Both are arguably household names, though I'm sure the houses where Lilly Pulitzer is common place might not be the same as these treats, and they have teamed up to support the World Wildlife Foundation's mission to rescue tigers across the world. According to the box, there are only 400 Sumatra tigers still in existence, with just over 3,000 tigers alive in the wild. Barnum's is supporting the WWF with a $100,000 donation. And Lilly is sending its fans out across the country searching for these boxes. Good luck Lilly Lovers!

Peanut Butter

So over the last few days I've gotten into too many discussions about words we use back home. In a backpackers community, the first thing you talk about is food. Peanut butter is in fact as American as one could get, except maybe apple pie or Cheerios.

While its fun talking about the things that could be mixed into Champ or the contents of a Dutch breakfast, peanut butter is about the only thing I eat every day that reminds me of home. I now am a 3-cups-of-tea-a-day girl and even eat tomato sauce which tastes nothing like ketchup. All I want to eat for dinner is Hursey's pulled pork bbq sandwich and a huge basket of hush puppies with a whole case of Bud Light (beer is ridiculously expensive here, like $12 minimum for a 6-pack).

So since my birthday is in about a month, here's a list of things from home I miss that could potentially be shipped internationally:

Heinz ketchup

J. Crew anything

Kraft 3-Cheese Shells Mac N Cheese

Hursey's BBQ sauce

Whatever new CDs have come out (anything country, John Mayer's, etc. Music is like 4 months old here)

A flash drive with all the episodes of The Office, Greek and Gossip Girl I've missed

An Elon sweatshirt

An Alpha Chi baseball hat

And hugs. Can't wait until Adam gets here and we head down to go skydiving!

Citrus & Mint: Free PINK Travel Bag!

The past month, Victoria's  Secret was giving away a free travel bag full of goodies if you signed up for their PINK Nation online program. You had to buy something from the PINK line and have the coupon, which I did, so I figured I'd check out this sweet deal I found on www.Frugal-BonVivant.com.

I'm a big fan of the citrus and mint body wash. It wasn't too overpowering, but smelled nice in the shower. The same-flavored lotion however was way too strong, and the scents did not go well together at all. The 'refreshing spray' is really just a body mist, but has a nice citrus scent, not  too bad. And the lip butter I absolutely love. I wish the tint would actually show up as color on my lips, but it's a great little add-on to this package.

All in all, I'd say worth trying out if you managed to snag one before they stopped distributing them.

Chanel, Mademoiselle?

One frustrating thing about backpacking is the limited space for cosmetics.  Scent has always been an important part of my life, from baking chocolate spritz cookies to a gentle breeze across a bouquet of drying roses.  My current perfume list includes Romance by Ralph Lauren and Stella by Stella McCartney.  While it's possible to buy small bottles, they tend to spill and your jeans have now become a parfumerie.

Last summer a sorority sister introduced me to the travel-friendly Stella fragrance complete in its compact, roll-on applicator shaped like a tube of lip gloss.



This would seem like a simple solution to a fragrant disaster.  I was disappointed to find even this sophisticated travel mate leaking when my purse tipped over.  Clearly Stella just can't make the cut.

So on recommendation from a fellow intern, I'm working on collecting miniature sample-sized fragrances.  My first goal is a vial of Coco Mademoiselle

and hopefully I can score a few on my next trip to Pentagon  City, along with that bottle of Coney Island Cotton Candy OPI nail polish I've been craving for two months while refusing to pay the $8 price tag.  Maybe this time I'll suck it up in favor of a few more sample sized products, and hopefully Sephora's section of Beauty Mini's holds a few other travel mates I can test, without breaking my bank.