I received my February Birchbox this past Saturday—a perfect little Valentine’s weekend treat. Whoever is creating the graphic design on these boxes is just nailing it. February’s box is sort of a pastel neon peach hue with illustrations that would be really cute as tiny tattoos:
1. Bioré Deep Cleansing Pore Strips: yup, these are still around, and are still as fun and gross as ever! #sorrynotsorry for the image of all the blackheads I ripped out of my skin… 😛
I don’t know if there are any “official” rules about Throwback Thursday needing to be a photo of yourself, but I wanted to share this photo taken in Snowmass on a family vacation we took in March 1987. I love the rainbow pop of color from the hot air balloon…and why on earth does it appear to be flying so low to the ground?!
Last week’s HelloFresh experience was a frustrating one for me, starting with the delivery. To be fair, I’d never had an issue with HelloFresh’s delivery in the past. I had scheduled my box to deliver on February 1st but it arrived on February 2nd. I don’t know if they recently switched carriers, but this box came via UPS and required my signature, whereas whichever service delivered the previous boxes left them on my porch (which I was fine with). Anyway, the late delivery sort of mucked with my cooking plans for the week, but it ended up working out alright—and HelloFresh did give me a $10 credit when I contacted them about my box arriving a day late.
So, what were last week’s vegetarian dishes? Read on to find out…
Swiss Chard & Wild Mushroom Penne with Chili and Parmesan.
1. Pitch Perfect 2: I finally got around to watching the sequel to the breakout hit about college acapella groups, and I LOVED IT. There’s something about voices singing in harmony that just sucks me in. I’ve listened to the soundtrack to the original movie a million times, and as soon as I finished watching the sequel I bought the soundtrack on iTunes. The regular, non-Blu-ray DVD is only $9.99 on Amazon so I’ll be ordering myself a copy as soon as I finish this blog post.
My January k-beauty Birchbox was great for three reasons: it renewed my waning interest in Birchbox, it turned me on to a whole new world of fun beauty products from Korea, and it introduced me to Soko Glam, a website filled with Korean beauty products curated by esthetician Charlotte Cho. After playing around with my k-beauty samples (all of which I love except for the TONYMOLY lip tint), I became a little obsessed with browsing around Soko Glam for some goodies to order and try out. I signed up for the website’s mailing list and received a 10% off discount code via email, so I was extra motivated to place an order! I finally settled upon three products:
I’m going to try to make it a habit to post a Throwback Thursday each week…or at least, to do these posts more often. This week’s #tbt is a simple but sweet one:
1. Sephora Virtual Artist: prepare to spend all of your free time playing with this online app. I have no idea how long this has been around—for all I know, it’s been on Sephora’s website for years—but I just discovered it yesterday, and it’s magical. You either upload a photo of yourself or allow the site to access your webcam to take a pic. Then the app allows you to virtually try on lipsticks from a ton of brands sold by Sephora. If you’re a lipstick geek like me, you will spend hours playing around with this. And if you know your Color IQ number (I had mine done in-store a couple years ago) you can input it and it will recommend lip colors for your skin tone. You’re welcome.
My first Stitch Fix of 2016 makes an even dozen Fixes for me! I can’t believe I’ve already received twelve of these boxes. This fix was supposed to arrive on the 26th but was delayed a day due to lingering post-blizzard delivery issues. Boo, Jonas. Not a big deal, though—the box arrived safe and sound late yesterday afternoon.
I haven’t done a Throwback Thursday post in a while (and I’ve only done one of these before) so I figured it was high time to do one again! My first #tbt blog post was about our honeymoon, and my next one is going to be about another vacation, this time to the Florida Keys. I won’t recount the entire trip here, but I’ll share some of the highlights!
We left on February 1—so just under a year ago—and flew down to Fort Lauderdale, where we and rented a car and then drove to Miami for a one night stay. We stayed at the Avalon Hotel, an iconic art deco hotel on South Beach’s main drag, Ocean Drive. The Avalon is the hotel with the vintage car permanently parked right out front:
