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I was fortunate enough to reconnect with one of my delightful high school classmates a while back at our reunion. Since then she has become a consultant for Rodan and Fields, a cosmetic product line developed by two esteemed female dermatologists.
My classmate recently sent me some samples of her product to see what I thought. Now I will have to disclose that it is difficult to say with any real conviction in such a brief period of time that these are the next wonders of the world but I did read her brochures and information and liked that the central theme seemed to be that you don't have to spend major dollars to achieve healthier and younger looking skin.
This line of products are certainly less expensive than a visit to the dermatologist but they are more costly than what you would find in the discount stores. I have used Lancome and Philosophy for the past several years and I would say this line would be comparably priced to those department store cosmetic products.
Rodan and Fields have several product lines for different types of skin issues such as anti-aging, acne, and sensitive skin. I was most interested in the anti aging products.
The items that I used in this product line were the Micro-Dermabrasion Paste
the Night Renewing Serum
and the Lip Renewing Serum
but after reading the product guide I was also thought their eye cream and broad spectrum sunscreen were also something I could be interested in.
The exfoliating cleaner that I used is applied after washing your face. It helps to slough off those stubborn dead skin cells - a process that slows down as we age. My first thought was that the product felt a bit greasy but it did rinse off easily. I have used a similar product from Philosophy that I incorporated into my regimen once or twice a week. I would probably do the same with this exfoliator.
I was more impressed with the night serum. It left my skin feeling softer, smoother, but definitely not oily. The product seemed to just bond with my skin.
The lip serum was very much the same. It also came in those small individual pellets. It is a matter of personal preference but I felt like there was a lot of product in those lip capsules and I could probably use one pellet for two consecutive nights. Fine lines around my mouth haven't become an issue for me yet but I like Rodan and Field's philosophy that "The best wrinkle is the one that never happens".
These products are not available in stores. Instead you need to find a Rodan and Field's consultant in your area or contact my friend Lisa.
There are two schools of thought to this. Yes, it may seem like it is a bit less convenient and you need to plan ahead so you don't run out of product. I did see that you can sign up for automatic shipments though and that is a nice feature.
The other way of looking at this, is that you have a personal consultant that you can discuss your unique skin issues with and discover the best workable options for you.
To find out more about the entire line of products click here.
To confer with Lisa click here.
Hope you are all having a fantastic weekend.
Don't forget to stop back tonight for this week's Motivated Monday.
xoxo,
p
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It seems like I have been working on this one forever. This is a vintage piece that I found in a flea market almost ten years ago. When I first brought it home it looked like this.
To tie in with the black and white I have going on in here and to give a nod to the Hollywood Regency style that I have been embracing lately, I decided to dress it up with a coat of black and white paint.
I started by taping off a design as a mask.
and I removed the broken carved embellishments. The one on the right door had been broken since I bought the piece and I knew I would never be able to match it.
I only sanded the rough chippy spots thinking this was an old flat paint and that the finish was already fairly smooth.
Big mistake!
I coated the body of the piece with a coat of glossy black paint and let it dry.
I was so excited to lift the tape and reveal the graphic design below.
Unfortunately, when I did that the paint on the top lifted right along with the tape like a sheet of vinyl.
Uff-da!!!
I had never had that happen before. I am guessing that there was some sort of wax that kept the paint from adhering. Lesson learned. Always sand before painting.
I am the queen of short cuts though so it was only a matter of time before this happened to me.
So now I had to start all over.
The same design never turns out as well the second time so this round I came up with more of a Greek Key layout.
I didn't have a lot of the white paint so I decided to sand and repaint the top black before adding my new design. There were going to be more steps involved this time around.
I ran out of the green tape half way though so I had to switch to another brand but the same width. I don't ordinarily use two different colors of tape.
I drew my pattern idea out on paper first then measured from the edge of the top and started taping off my design. Measuring and cutting my tape as I went.
Because I needed the pattern to be white and there would have been way too much math for me to figure it out in the reverse, I opted to trace around my tape template with a white paint pen.
Then I lined up my tape again but this time with the outside of this pattern to help create straighter and cleaner edges.
I was more than a little nervous to lift my tape this second round but I was relieved to find that this time my design was revealed without any major mishaps.
As usual, there were a few minor bleeds but I went back in and touched them up with a sharp edged foam brush and some black paint.
The end result? Some new pulls and a Hollywood Regency style outfit for my old shabby chic vintage victrola cabinet.
So what do you think? Should I maybe go out and find a pair of wooden embellishments for those doors? Would that touch of glossy white glam on the doors be too much or the right finishing touch?
Thoughts?
xoxo,
p
PS I will be linking up my Hollywood Girl here:
Primitive and Proper
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A few weeks ago I wrote about our needing a new cocktail table for our family room and I asked for input from you, the readers. Thank you so much for all of your thoughtful suggestions and ideas. Some of you confirmed what I was already thinking and others gave me new food for thought.
In the end though, the decision has to be what works best in this room.
Every room has issues and in this one it is allowing for a traffic path.
Let me show you what I mean.
Our family room is in the center of the back side of our house. As a result you have to be able to walk through those french doors from the dining room
through this door toward the other rooms on the back side of the house.
This means that with the exception of the media center the bulk of the furniture lines up on the south side of the room leaving a large open space that results in an off balance feel.
The media center needs to be on the only wall without windows. As you can see, I don't have a lot of furniture placement options here and so I have chosen my pieces for this room with this thought in mind.
The sofas and chairs were new early this year but the existing table is something I have had for years.
I still love this trunk but it is undersized for the room as it is arranged now and a bit too rustic for the look I am going for.
My goal was to choose a piece that would help me fill in the center of the room better and to visually pull some weight toward the media center.
I would eventually like to add two small benches or stools to the right side of the new table to help distribute the weight of the room out even further. Something like this.
House Beautiful
With my room in mind I went looking for a table.
First of all I knew it had to be over sized. Really big.
All other things being equal I would have liked to have had a round table in the center but after thinking it through I realized that square would be a more functional option allowing access to the table from most of the seating.
So then I had to think about wood or upholstery. Because we like to put our feet up here I decided upholstered was more comfortable.
I knew it when I saw it. I only have the factory image but I went with this table from Norwalk.
It's an over sized 47x47 inches square and the best part is that it opens up for additional storage. Something an old house like ours never seems to have enough of.
Finally I had to decide on a fabric. I wanted it to wear well and with all of those windows I really needed it to be fade resistant. I was also hoping for a vibrant splash of pattern and color.
So what did I decide?
Well I went with the Norwalk storage ottoman in this Sunbrella fabric.
I can hardly wait for it to arrive.
It isn't what I first imagined but we all have not only style to consider but also shape, function, and size.
I think I'm going to like this here.
Stop back later this week for a reveal of my black and white Hollywood Regency inspired painted cabinet, a review of a new skin care line, and some very easy fall decor ideas that will take you beyond Halloween.
xoxo,
p
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Even though our Traveling Door Show has been postponed I have been continuing to paint away. I occasionally buy clearance items that need a bit of TLC but sometimes I am fortunate enough to be able to recycle something from home like this wine box. Last Christmas Mike received a bottle of wine from one of his vendors in this great wooden box. The wine is long gone but I thought it would be fun to do something with the box. It was just a plain cherry stained box with the vineyard's logo on the top until I gave it the BeColorful touch.
I kept it rather subdued this time and blues are a total break out color for me.
I painted the entire box a navy blue then added the silver stripes using painter's tape. I am not very good about planning ahead. I should have painted the lid silver too and then use my Silhouette machine to create a mask that I could put down and then cover with the blue paint. That would have been much too easy. So since I already had the top painted blue I still used the Silhouette machine to create the letters. I forget the font that I used. Then removed the letters from the vinyl to create a stencil and filled that in with silver paint using a small round sponge brush.
Open it up and you have an emergency survival kit that just might come in handy over the upcoming holidays.
:D
Don't want to wait for the show?
You can view this and more of my work by clicking on the
BeColorful Designs Album at the top of the right margin.
So glad you stopped by.
xoxo,
p
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Yes, you read that right.
I am using my phone to help me make better choices at the grocery store.
It is like having my own personal nutritionist in my back pocket. Gotta love that.
I'm talking about the Fooducate App for iPhone and Android.
This is a resource of nutritional information that has been garnered via scientists and nutritionists on a wide variety of packaged foods and then each item has been given a letter grade.
It is so easy to use and the very best part is that it is FREE!
The concept is simple. You scan the bar-code, receive a nutritional grade for the product, and if you don't like that grade you are offered a list of healthier options.
You can download the app onto your iphone here and the android app here.
After downloading, open the app and you will be greeted with this screen.
You will be asked some basic marketing information questions about your gender, age, and weight. Then you will be questioned about any particular health concerns. Answering these questions will help Fooducate to customize the best food choices for you personally.
After these preliminaries you will have a home screen that looks like this.
From this screen you can either browse for foods by name or brand or gain information on a particular item by scanning the UPC bar-code.
To scan you just tap the scan image and then hold the phone over the bar-code of the food item. You don't even have to have the bar-code perfectly centered.
I was amazed by how quickly this app works. Within seconds a new screen would open up with a stock image of the item I was scanning along with a corresponding grade and alerts to possible concerns with the product.
I found this example on the internet.
Don't want all that sugar and food coloring?
Tap the healthier options tab in the bottom right corner
and an extentisve list of smarter, healthier choices will appear.
How great is that? I love technology. I felt so geek chic, oh okay, maybe nerd bird going through the grocery store. My first time through I was scanning everything like it was my job. I think it took me two hours to get through the store.
:D
There were a few items that I was interested in that were not in the Fooducate library but when that happens you will be prompted to send a picture of the product and an image of the ingredients and nutritional information. Because you set up an account when you first registered for the app, Fooducate will send you information on the item and add it to their extensive and growing registry of products.
As I was looking for some images to help with my post I found that there is now a Fooducate App for diabetics too. That would have to be so helpful.
Way to go Fooducate. With your help and my iPhone I may be able to reach that goal weight yet.
xoxo,
p
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Welcome to this week's albeit delayed Motivated Monday. I was traveling this past week with a friend and because I was the one driving and since I think it is rude to make the other person sit around while I blog, I decided that in the interest of manners and safety I would delay my post until today. Even after I got home last night there were other things that needed to take priority like making plans for the upcoming week, soothing some ruffled feathers, unpacking (still haven't finished that), laundry to be started, mail to read, blah blah blah. You know the drill. So thank you, dear peeps, for your understanding.
Enough of my droning though and on to why you really stopped by here today.
Again, you thrill me with all of your creativity. There were some especially terrific design posts this week. I wish I could feature them all but here are a few that I didn't want you to miss.
First up, Worthing Court shared a very informative break down of this showcase house in North Carolina.
Not only does she shower us with some great photos but she also highlights what is working in these rooms and some helpful hints on how to create some of these looks for yourself.
If you are just beginning to rethink a room, you may want to start with a coat of paint and Love With an H reminds us of how much bang for the buck we get with this relatively simple update.
I am also really feeling that grouping of smaller black and white tables to create a larger and noteworthy cocktail table look. Nicely done.
This faux wainscoting effect created by Life on Walnut Street has me inspired too. I have seen similar projects but I really liked her interpretation of this look for her bathroom.
Toss pillows are an easy and one of my favorite ways to refresh a room but what to do with all of those off season pillows? Well recovering what you already have is one option. Don't have a sewing machine? Not to worry! Smart Mama has the solution and you will want to stop by and visit her here for her no sew pillow tutorial to create clean edged and neatly tailored pillows like these.
One of the more unique furniture restorations this week was this one from Petite Passions who inherited an old telescope from a friend. She needed a table in her living room and didn't have the room to store the wooden box that the telescope came in so she came up with the ingenious idea of creating a one-of-a-kind, DIY table by out of the box by adding a decorative tape wrapped board for a base and four table legs.
There were also a number of timely posts for fall and Halloween including this incredibly simple recipe from Fair and Fickle for pumkin muffins,
and this wonderfully haunting mantel from Madtown Macs.
I think the entire mantel is terrific but what I found especially intriguing and dare I say "Viral Pinterest Worthy" :D was her idea for creating that sophisticated wall art piece in the center using only a rumpled piece of packing paper, some tape, and a bit of spray paint. Thank you Charisa for this. You know that copying is the sincerest form of flattery right? So if you stop by my house don't be surprised to discover that I have created my own version of your artful inspiration. :D
Andrea over at A.Steed's Life crafted these delightful black and white pumpkins using her Silhouette machine but if you aren't that fortunate you could still recreate this look by downloading and printing her typography and then transferring it onto a white pumpkin and filling in the letters with black paint and a fine brush.
Finally, and this has nothing to do with fall or Halloween, but would be a thoughtful gift for any one and at any time was this breakfast in a bag idea via Happy in Red.
Ester has her own Etsy shop and you can see more of her cheerfully modern bags here. I love her idea of adding a coordinating vintage cup and saucer and dry breakfast ingredients to create such a heartwarming and inspired gift.
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A month or so ago I reviewed Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl, a book that grabbed me from the first page. Even though I am not typically much of a mystery/thriller reader I really liked Ms. Flynn's writing style. In fact, I liked it enough to go back and see what else she had written. The blurb for Dark Places was intriguing enough for me to hit the Buy Now button on my iPad and I'm very glad that I did.
Dark Places is a story that vacillates between current day and January 2, 1985, the night of the gruesome murders of Libby Day's mother and two sisters. Libby, who was only seven years old at the time of the murders was also in the farmhouse that night but was able to escape and hide out in the snow covered fields beyond the farm house. Being so young, she was very malleable and was easily convinced to testify that her fifteen year old brother was the person that committed this horrendous crime.
Now, years later and living off the meager remains of a trust fund that was created for her by sympathetic well wishers shortly after the murders, Libby crosses paths with a member of a Kill Club. Kill Club is a surreptitious group that follows sensational crimes and now the members of this group have come together in their belief that Libby's brother has been wrongly accused and convicted. Ultimately this group has now deemed it their cause to prove the innocence of Libby's brother, Ben Day. Libby, who is in need of money, reluctantly agrees to the Kill Club's terms that they will pay her in return for her talking to and gaining information from a line up of people connected to that dark night in 1985.
Through Libby's current day encounters with these people from her past and the author's technique of telling a tale via the various view points of a number of characters that were involved in the shocking events of that cold January night so long ago, the reader is slowly given more and more of the details of what happened in that doomed farm house. As the story slowly unfolds I found myself going back and forth on who I thought might have actually committed this evil act. The book is a haunting psychological study of parenting, financial hardship,teenage angst, bullying, and moral integrity.
I finished the book almost two weeks ago and it still drifts into my thoughts from time to time. I always think that is the mark of a better book.
Be forewarned that there is an element of devil worship in the book. That is something that I found disturbing and there is also a chapter on animal mutilation that I feel the story could have done without. If you choose to read the book, I would say feel free to gloss over that chapter if you find it as repulsive as I do. You really won't miss anything crucial to the story.
All in all, I would give this book three and a half out of five palates.
I'm a tough grader.
:D
xoxo,
p
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