Ever since our beauty product-purging blitz, we’ve become obsessed with reading the fine print on makeup and skin-care packaging, scrutinizing them just as carefully as food labels. And we can’t help but notice the same buzzwords — is it all just BS? We asked the experts for the truth.
No matter how fantastic our legs look in our favorite heels, after a long day in fashionable footwear, the heads turning in our direction are not in admiration of our shapely gams, but concern due to the fact we’re hobbling. Andrea Padilla, founder of Spare Soles, has felt our pain and often found herself and other women dancing barefoot at weddings — a comfortable, if unsanitary practice. She created Spare Soles (from $25) — soft, foldable flats that can be transported in a small pouch and unrolled when feet are tired and swollen.
Fitness-shoe powerhouse Reebok is seeking to grab women’s attention by promising “asstounding” booty-shaping results with its new EasyTone shoe. At a celebrity-sprinkled event DJ’d by Samantha Ronson in a private mega-mansion in Beverly Hills this week, the company showcased the sneaker-style shoe and touted its claim to proprietary “balance pod technology.”
Our thoughts have turned to finding cool two-wheeled transportation after the recent flurry of events surrounding the Bicycle Film Festival in New York. Aside from being an eco-friendly, economical and fitness-minded, biking is now also high-style, thanks to designer Cynthia Rowley. That’s right, the fashionista (and biking enthusiast) is offering limited edition bikes in retro-chic designs on her website and in her stores — including the newest location in Boston.
Flip-flops tend to turn up missing every summer — misplaced at beach bonfires, tucked under couches or accidentally abandoned at outdoor festivals. Indeed, they may be the summer equivalent (along with sunglasses, of course) to gloves and scarves in the loss department. Lucky for us, Havaianas has come up with a fun and practical solution: glow-in-the-dark flip-flops!
We like unwinding with a nice glass of Shiraz from time to time, but sometimes it’s tough knowing how much is too much. How can we avoid those pesky extra calories, not to mention regrettable impromptu karaoke moments? Wine drinker Gail Curtis came up with a novel solution for keeping our indulgence at a healthy level: Wine-Trax, a wineglass satin-etched with markings at the 4-, 6- and 8-ounce levels for discreet portion control.
We’ve never been one to coo over cute veggies — save for baby corn, perhaps — but Tanimura & Antle Artisan Lettuce is simply adorable. Not to be confused with baby lettuces found in salad mixes, the petite, fully mature heads of lettuce are available in two-, four- and six-count packages ($1.99–$4.99) that cradle the greens in a scallop design, which uses 12 percent less materials than similar packaging.
We recently joined Facebook and were feeling pretty smug about our social networking savvy — until we noticed that even strawberries had beaten us to the site! Yup, the berry, as represented by the Oregon Strawberry Commission, is on Facebook to let its friends know when ruby-red Totem, Tillamook and Hood fruit is ripe.
We’re making our diet more eco-friendly by buying local and organic vegetables and sustainable seafood whenever possible. So we’re eager to try the light and environmentally sound recipes from the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch Program and Earthbound Farm, the largest grower of organic produce and specialty salads. The Seafood Watch program provides information about bycatch (fish and animals caught and discarded, often dead), habitat damage and overfishing, as well as a seafood guide and an iPhone application.
We’re all for staycations: We love saving money on airfare and not having to decant our shampoo and conditioner into those teeny-weeny bottles. Then again, nothing beats the jolt of something new and unexpected. Happily, we were able to experience both ease and the exotic on a recent outing to Ventura, CA, a seaside town about 65 miles north of Los Angeles.
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