the girls of portmanteaux

Grilled cheese sammies are one of the simple pleasures in life. Everyone has their own spin on this American classic. I personally have 2: fancy (rosemary ham + fontina) and straight up (sharp cheddar + tomato), always on sourdough and preferably with a cup of tomato soup. This USA Today article delves into a current grilled cheese resurgence in restaurants from a breakfast version to an ultra fancy white truffle spin topping out at $50.

I’m curious - what’s your grilled cheese combination? Leave your recipe in the comments!

image courtesy of wikipedia.org

A couple events have changed my life in the past year. One of them involves a netipot. Another involves muxtapes. I know those words sound like jibber-jabber or Seussian, but sometimes a name is just a name and sometimes life-changing things cannot be confined to existing language. (This is a concept that I can get with, obviously!)

Muxtapes, or www.muxtape.com, started in May, but I’ve just recently jumped on the phenom site’s bandwagon. It turns out that sometimes things really do live up to their hype.

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Those of you non-Austinites (and non-Texans for that matter) may not realize that it’s been summer here since May. And I don’t mean temps in the 80s. I mean 100+. Summer waltzed in uninvited and unwanted, and I found myself woefully unprepared. I still find my inner clock on Midwest seasons, so I went into what I refer to as ‘Summer Shock.’ Angry at the world, sweaty, stinky, and with frizzed hair.

I found a cure for one of my ailments - Sunsilk Waves of Envy Sea Mist. I never thought I could do one of these sprays that promises “gorgeous, beachy waves,” but after receiving a free sample in the mail, I figured I’d experiment. After washing and shampooing my thick, wavy hair as usual, I flipped my head over, shook the Sea Mist, and sprayed liberally. I then did some scrunching and let my hair air dry. The result: shockingly pretty waves that were loose (but not too loose), with that care-free, glam, beachiness minus the frizz. And no frizz all day! I not only found a relief to my summer hair issues, I found a super low-maintenance way to do my hair. Now if only I could figure out a solution to my sweaty knees…

There are few things a 20-something girl can readily do with blind trust in this day and age, like accepting any offers of a home-cooked meal. Another, for me, is to accept any and all knowledge of Lush products.

I’ve been a huge fan of Lush from the time I stepped into their Vancouver shop about 10 years ago, and frankly, they haven’t done anything shoddy to lead me astray. So when I popped in one day to pick up more of their lovely Tea Tree Water toner, the saleslady at the register implored me to try one of their moisturizers on the back of my hand. “It eats up excess oil like Pac-man,” she said, and lo and behold, it did!

Enzymion moisturizer, photo courtesy of Lush.com

Feeling particularly carefree and trusting, “I’ll take one please,” slipped out of my mouth before I could stop myself. When she rang me up, the $35+ price shocked me, but I’ll admit, I have full, blind trust in Lush and everything it does. And yes, I realize this might mean I have a problem. One small price justification is that their product doesn’t come in particularly fancy packaging; you receive a lot more product for your money, and I trust that the cost goes into their ingredients, rather than glass bottles with custom etching and whatnot.

With fruit enzymes and cold-pressed oils, this moisturizer takes seconds to absorb into my skin after a washing, and once it does, it presents a lovely soft and matte texture to my face that is the perfect canvas for applying a little concealer here and there. It’s summer in Texas, and laid-back skin care is required–all I have to do is add a little sunscreen, blush and spf tinted lipbalm, and I’m ready to go!

In order to proceed with this post, I am going to have to admit something embarrassing about myself - I am afraid of bees. Like duck and run for my life afraid. There is a famous story told by my husband involving me, a bee, our old apartment, a bottle of Tums and a towel, but I am going to save that for another day.

Through my job and other sources, I have learned that honeybees are in trouble - they are vanishing. Scientists are speculating on several causes ranging from new technology (cell phones!) to Colony Collapse Disorder to viruses and poor nutrition. Regardless of the cause, honeybees are vital to our crops and food supply. Without bees, eating would be pretty boring. If you visit helpthehoneybees.com, a site set up by Håagen-Dazs, you can learn several ways that you can help. I learned that some of the bushes in front of our house are “bee food,” and sure enough, when they started to bloom, we had bees all over them. Somehow, I put my fear aside and let them be. I feel bad for them and didn’t realize how important they are. Check out the website for information and bee nice to bees!

bee image from helpthehoneybees.com where you can make your very own bee and send it out to friends to raise awareness of the plight of honeybees

I used to be kind of scared of MAC Cosmetics. It always seemed too out there and the makeup artists appeared way over the top. My infatuation started last year when MAC collaborated with Barbie for a collection that included powders and eyeshadows stamped with a retro outline of our favorite blonde’s head. To see the cute stuff, I had to face my fears and go in a store and have been hooked since.

This summer, MAC has released 2 amazingly fun collections: Naughty Nauticals and Neo Sci Fi. Nauticals is sea-inspired and retro. My faves are the Port Red lipstick - a gorgeous pin up red with hits of gold - and the Illegal Cargo eyeshadow - a murky mauve. Neo Sci Fi is a bronzy summery collection with slick bright orange packaging. All of the eyeshadows are fabulous in both texture and color - Expensive Pink, a rose gold, and Magnetic Field, a metallic brown-black - are my faves. Check out maccosmetics.com, your nearest MAC counter or store to spruce up your makeup bag for summer!

photos from maccosmetics.com, top is lipstick in sci-fi-delity, bottom is makeup look ‘naughty nautical’

I’ve said it before, but sometimes it seems like curly-haired girls have all the fun. Wow– just after I typed that, I heard a gaggle of bubbly-haired lasses protest! Regardless of what lies atop your head, you’ve probably always thought the grass was greener on someone else’s scalp. So to speak.

In my adventures of growing out my old cropped ‘do (fascinating, I know), I’ve had a few old hair issues, uh, crop up. Back when my hair was short, I battled flat-head syndrome by simply emulsifying a little product in my palms and pushing my hair around until it was big and messy. Done. But I quite can’t pull that off now, since my hair is creeping just past my shoulders.

TIGI Catwalk Curls Rock Curl Amplifier

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When I last left you in panna cotta-land, I was about to embark on a great potluck picnic in the park, cups of portable panna cotta in tow. Even though two weeks have passed since, I still recall with ease the perfect weather, hilarious kite-flying attempts and plethora of p-foods. Good memories and great times with friends don’t melt away just like that, you know.

So which panna cotta won the contest? The recipe I pulled from use real butter, which also happened to be simpler and more satisfying than Mario Batali’s. You just can’t lose with this recipe; it only has 5 ingredients! This panna cotta was light on the tongue and well, just lovely.

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Fashion mags and designers have begun to ring the death knell for the dress. This fall, it will be about pants. Trousers to be exact. Or so they think. After reading this incredibly interesting article from the NY Times by Guy Trebay, it amazed me how easily the fashion world gets bored with particular clothing items. As Trebay points out in his article though, dress sales are huge and most women have a newfound adoration for them. Dresses are easy, they are an outfit unto themselves. They require little thought. They come in infinitely more flattering varieties than pants. You can be any size and find a dress that looks fabulous on you, whereas this is quite a different story when it comes to pants.

Most readers know that Jennifer and I are both massively in love with dresses. So on behalf of both of us, I say the fashion editors can shove their trousers back in the closet. Dresses aren’t going anywhere.

^ a peek at some of my dresses

This is the new pink chair that resides in my living room. It is every bit as soft and plush and fab as it looks. It was love at first sit.

But my chair has presented an interesting quandry - only women will sit upon it! Whenever we have guests over, males avoid having to sit in it - as if it were really some sort of velour torture device. One male neighbor actually remarked out loud “I am not supposed to sit on that.” Granted, the chair is super-femme, but is it so girly that it threatens one’s manliness? Sigh . . . atleast it will remain stain free.