Random Sunday: Deck The Halls

Two things – holiday and a makeup update.  I´ll put makeup at the bottom so you can skip it if you want to.

First – I invite each of you to comment on/link to one particular special holiday tradition you´d like to share with Posse readers.  It can be a decorative item, a recipe – or just a fond memory.   This is a difficult year for many people.  I know some folks far away from their families, away from home for the first time or maybe just kind of alone, struggle with the absence of “holiday tradition.”   Mother March thinks you should put your elf hat on, get busy and start your own tradition, incorporating whatever makes you happy.  Everyone´s holiday tradition had to start somewhere, right? 

So.  We stencil our windows with Glass Wax.  This was not a holiday tradition in my family growing up.   Rather, this was a friend´s holiday tradition years ago when the girls were small and I was looking for something easy and fun they could help me with.  It´s now one of their favorite bits of decorating.  Unfortunately, they stopped making Glass Wax several years ago.  The price sticker on my can says $3.99.   I noticed in horror two years ago that cans were selling for $30 on eBay (I think there’s one on there right now).  Fortunately, my favorite catalog, Vermont Country Store, has recreated Glass Wax as Window Wax and also includes six (unspecified?) stencils in their set.  If you have time to browse and you´re as old as I am, take a Walk Down Memory Lane with their silver tree, their Christmas Villages, their old-fashioned tinsel, etc.  They also sell vintage brand perfumes including Ondine, Woodhue, Tigress, Blue Grass, Heaven Sent… and long johns.  And weird canned delicacies. And other fascinating things.

To stencil, which you do on the inside of your windows, you just hold the stencil up to the window with one hand and dab the wax on with a sponge or a fat, bristly craft/stencil brush.  You can use a crummy paintbrush.  It goes on pinkish but dries a powdery white.  Like the original Glass Wax it’s a window cleaner – after the holidays you just wipe it all off.  You can camp it up with Santa, snowmen, holly wreaths, etc., but honestly – just a single snowflake on each small pane of a divided window is incredibly elegant.  If you’re looking for some lovely snowflakes, I found these on eBay.  If you look at the image on the bottom right you get a sense of how pretty they are in a window.

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Makeup – an interesting/humorous blush update.  Friday night, after I´d posted makeup artist Gina´s advice about moving your blush out from underneath your eyes, further away from your nose and closer to the side of your face (staying north of your nostrils), I sat down and browsed my new Glamour, which has an article devoted specifically to blush application – where they do the illustrations of various face shapes (oval, heart, etc.) and show you where to put your blush – and there it is, all the blush on the “apples,” smack dab under the eyeballs – exactly where you don´t want it.  There´s also a large photo of a woman wearing blush like that and it looks … terrible.  Baffled, I looked through all the various pages of the magazines, at all the fashion spreads, models wearing every variation of blush and contouring and bronzer, and they are … not wearing their blush on the fronts of their faces!!!  They are wearing it out to the sides!  The liars.  They want us to look funny.

Also … I put on that Lancome Absolute Rouge again.   I really want this.  Grrrr.  It’s ridiculously sexy.  Do I need another red?  Sigh.

Also, Louise reminded me and I keep forgetting to mention — for those of you who think we are insane with this lippie nonsense, and what you want is a decent gloss that adds a little volume, we love those spendy ($38?) Lip Fusion gloss plumpers they sell at Sephora and Nordstrom (and probably elsewhere).  They differ from some other “plumpers” in that in my opinion they actually work – my lips are visibly fuller for several hours, and it’s not cinnamon or wintergreen but they do tingle a bit.  Sexy is a sheer, sexy cherry red and Dream is a nice YLLB.   The sizes are generous and last quite awhile even with daily use.  One year they did a set of six minis which is how I got hooked, and I wish they’d do it again.  For sparkle-phobics and mature adults, please note some of these are “shimmer” – but I can’t recall how much shimmer.

photo — I had to do a “holiday” demonstration at the twins’ preschool last year — that’s me in action.