Bye Bye Arms

I recently heard the phenomenom of your lower triceps jiggling around when you wave, referred to as “bye bye arms.”  I like when cute names are invented for these kinds of issues, like when I discovered my total lack of stomach muscle tone after having my son is called “mummy tummy.”   Anyway, a family member recently mentioned that she did not wish to expose her arms at an upcoming wedding but was having a terrible time finding an evening dress with sleeves.  This person actually does not have bye bye arms, just significant modesty.  I  went online to fetch her some sleeves  and was dismayed to find that there are seriosuly almost no evening dresses with sleeves out there for the mall level shopper.  Of course there are mother of the bride type suits, and you can always add a wrap over oneof the millions of strapless dresses out there, but there are weirdly few honest to goodness dresses with sleeves.  Are they completely unpopular?  Too hard to manufacture cheaply? I don’t know. 

 The picture above is of my very favorite evening outfit for a mother of the bride or really anyone looking to wear something comfortable and glamorous;a full ballgown skirt with a white blouse.  Carolina Herrera doesn’t wear this all the time for no reason.  I think it is lovely.  I tried to talk my own mother into wearing an outfit like this at my own wedding, but she snuck off and bought a silk suit at Talbots.  If only this Talbots skirt were available back then she may have gone for it (she likes her clothes to be Talbots approved).  This skirt is an awesome looking duchesse satin and is $150.  And it has pockets.  It also comes in white and magenta. 

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The One Hundred Under a Hundred-#4

Ever since the days of Top Gun I have been a huge fan of aviator sunglasses. If you’re going to buy aviators you should of course buy RayBans. They are less expensive and more timeless than the imitators. I am so glad RayBan recently started making the slightly rounded frames. They’ll keep you from looking like you borrowed them from your boyfriend. These RayBan aviators are on sale for $99. I like them best with the silver frame and gray gradient lens (69mm), but if you’re more of a gold girl those are cute too.

Rwanda Baskets at Macys

The baskets in the Path to Peace Collection at Macys are woven by hand in Rwanda and provide a much needed paying trade to the women there.  The collection has been around for a few years now and it looks like a good selection is available again at the Macys site, just in time for the holidays.  The one above is $46.  The round ones in particular are very colorful and graphic, you could hang them on a group on the wall or just have one as a fruit basket, and of course they would make a great gift.

PB ♥’s PB- All Rugs Edition

A post on our friend Mary’s blog reminded me just how great and reasonably priced the rugs at Pottery Barn can be.  So I decided to devote a post to all of the great and affordable floor coverings at PB.  I’ll stat with Mary’s super cute Dot Rug, starting at $149, which is part practical floor covering and part game of twister.

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Mary Jane of the Month

It’s time for another Mary Jane of the Month!  Our winner for October appears to be just a cute retro heel with a velvet tie, but is actually a super fancy galosha in disguise! Feel free to correct my spelling of galosha, in fact I’m not sure galosha is a word.  Anyway what I mean is these shoes are made of one piece of injection molded rubber by the super fashion forward jelly shoe company Melissa of Australia, so you can wear them in wet weather.  These are $99 in Australian dollars which wonder of wonders converts favorably (for us) to US Dollars.  

Melissa also has a collaboration with Vivian Westwood for two styles of rubber shoes, one of which is a T-Strap,  but I couldn’t feature those because despite what some may say, T-straps are NOT Mary Janes. 

Bee Mine

I spotted this adorable silver honey bee over at Outblush.  The silver plated bee is just about the cutest way ever to put honey out for tea time.  It even comes wth a tiny silver plated spoon for serving the honey. Its just $39.50 which makes it the perfect price for a holiday gift or really nice hostess gift.  And if you think its cute from the rear, check out the little bees adorable facial expression!

A Lotta Links

First of all you should know that I spent almost two hours at Jo-Ann’s fabric and crafts early this morning digging throught the sale fabric (maybe this sounds nightmarish to some of you but I find it an ideal way to spend a weekend morning), and as if that weren’t enough, I then went next door to the Savers (this is like the Salvation Army)  and found a navy blue wool Christian Dior winter coat for TWENTY DOLLARS.   It was awesome, jazz hands on the awesome!  Fun times in the suburbs.

The photo above is of Gwyneth Paltrow’s dining room in Long Island.  Apparently Gwyneth launched a blog/website/newsletter called Goop by Gwyneth Paltrow this week, and it seems to be getting a lot of negative online feedback, apparently people don’t like the idea of a singularly privileged person giving lifestyle advice to the wider world that can’t afford anything they have.   I get that, but the comments I have seen are just a little mean, in my opinion.  Lay off everybody! Good looking rich people have feelings too!  I am almost positive.

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Why Didn’t We Think of This?

Today I discovered a new site called Daily Grommet.  Daily Grommet is a Boston based company that introduces you to one unique product a day.  Hey, don’t we do that?  But the difference is that the Daily Grommet people also sell you that product.  As in, they’ve figured our a way to make money doing what we do.  Doh!  We don’t even have ads yet.  In addition to selling you the product, the Daily Grommet girls provide informative videos about the products and often do interviews with the products creator.  Today’s Daily Grommet happens to be Mrs. Meyer’s cleaning products.   Hey, we posted about that back in May, we are so cutting edge.  Eariler this week they feautured a really cool new mascara, called Imfu Fiberwig, which we have never covered but are kind of covering now.  Each day’s grommet (that’s code for new thingy) debuts at noon.  Check them out!

Fuzzy Feelings

I know Halloween is coming up and all, and I know it is fun, ok, but I am a little bit of a pooper when it comes to this holiday.  I always eat way too much candy and feel sick (not halloween’s fault I know), and I get creeped out when people have extremely elaborate halloween displays at their houses.  When I see that my neighbors have stuffed pants full of batting to make it appear as if a person has been run over by a car in their driveway I don’t get a cheerful feeling.   To me the true meaning of Halloween is that the real holidays are right around the corner! 

I have my eye on this advent calendar from Wisteria.  Normally I wouldn’t have a little felt garland around the house, but that is one of the nice things about the holidays, it is ok to embrace fuzzy little stockings like this.  As an advent calendar, you get to put a little present in each foot to be fished out by your kids each day!  Much more fun than that punch bowl with the frozen hand floating in it.

CB2 for the Holidays

Hiho!  Sorry for the late post today, my high school boyfriend came for a visit.  Weird, huh?  He looks oddly identical to what he looked like in highschool but with slightly less floppy hair.  He also lives in NYC and is of the opinion that Boston condos are weirdly large.  Its so strange how different people’s perspectives could be on this matter because I feel like my place is on the small side.  In other news, the CB2 holiday catalog has arrived!  There are so many things I truly love in the catalog them and in true CB2 fashion they are all soooo reasonably priced.  My favorite thing is the Tesso Bookcase.  Its so streamlined and I love how it looks like a built-in because its attached to the wall.  Coincidentally, it also can’t come crashing down on small children because it happens to be attached to the wall.  Even better its only $299.  I really like how the built-in quality keeps it from cluttering up the floor so your space (whether NYC small or Boston small) can feel as large as possible.