Tea(pot) Time

So, I guess I’m now a person who Goes To Tea.

I’ve gone to a few teas in the past year and next weekend we’re going to my sister’s house for a non-$30/person tea and it sounds like it will be fun! Since that’s the Mexican side of the family, everything is skewing south-of-the-border (I may wear one of my Mexican peasant blouses to keep it real, haha). Any tea that involves taquitos is an okay tea in my book. I still need to go get some tea to bring, and I looked at Cost Plus but nothing jumped out at me. I will likely make a stop at Teavana at the mall, or maybe even look at Peet’s.

A couple weeks ago (Feb 2), I met up with Malvina and Katie at the French Bakery in Lafayette where we enjoyed a high tea. Not quite up to par with Lovejoy’s, but still nice. (After the tea Malv and I went to Ulta where we each purchased one of the new Urban Decay Oz palettes – and a week later both simultaneously emailed each other about how much we loved them, lol.)

One of the things that is fun about going to tea is that everybody gets their own teapot. Generally speaking these are nice and English looking, however me being me, I found the following teapots at Cost Plus and snapped them right up:

DSC04606 DSC04607For those keeping track… yes that means I have two elephant teapots (one’s mostly just for show, though). I have no normal teapots. However, my mom hit the teapot motherlode at a thrift shop and I may try to get my mitts on this cute orange one she found:

DSC00011Super cute, right???

Anyway, any day with Mexican hot chocolate and taquitos is an okay day in my book.

That will be a fun weekend – I’m taking off the Friday to go to Stitches West and maybe buy yarn – definitely want to look at patterns and stuff but I’m not really in the market for anything (not that that’s stopped me before!! LOL). I did see that Cephalopod Yarns (formerly part of the Sanguine Gryphon, my all time fave) and Zen Yarn Garden will be there, so we’ll see what strikes my fancy!

Cashmere, most likely.

 

 

February 2013 Birchbox

Birchbox time!

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I got my Birchbox on Wednesday, a day after the tracking info said it would arrive (what else is new, right??) and so I managed to not spoil myself by checking on the website what I’d be getting. Not gonna lie, some months I just want to know, and I like that you can check your account to see what’s in your box.

So, what’s inside?

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Birchbox wants us to be RED CARPET READY apparently, for all those awards shows we all go to, all the time. Well, I can’t remember the last time I watched the Oscars, let alone any one of the other self-serving, back-patting awards bonanzas that Hollywood puts on for itself, so that doesn’t really apply to me, but hey samples, so let’s go!

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Upon first glance, I’m like, hmm, not a lot of stuff. But I did need to see what was in that box thing.

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So:

Color Club nail polish from the Fiesta Collection. This deep turquoise emerald color is Wild Cactus. It’s a bit thick, but smooths out nicely in two coats. I’m not a creme fan but I think this would make a great base for some of the glitters in my ever-expanding collection. Plus, emerald is the color of the year, right? 😉

Beauty Protector Protect & Detangle. This smells nice, though I haven’t used it enough to see how well it works. I just bought Kerastase so everything else may pale in comparison, haha.

Dr Jart BB Cream. Haven’t tried this yet, but it looks promising. I like the idea of BB creams but I would prefer to find one that doesn’t have sunscreen in it, since parts of my face are allergic to the chemicals in sunscreen (basically what I’m saying is that if I get sweaty and it somehow gets on my lips, it is not pretty and hurts like a mofo). I should probably look at tinted moisturizers.

Juicy Couture Couture La La perfume sample. Here’s what the Birchbox site says about this perfume: “Created with the fearless free spirit in mind, this brand new scent from Juicy Couture is a punk rock update on the original Juicy Couture. One part fruity, one part tart, and one part floral, it’s neither too sweet nor too girly. Plus, the glam bottle is worthy of a front-and-center spot on your vanity.” Nope. I must not be a perfume person because most perfumes smell the same to me, and this is definitely true for the Juicy brand. I personally think I either can’t really distinguish scents the way other people are able to, or my body chemistry is such that everything settles on the skin the same way. Weird. Also, Juicy skews younger, and let’s get real, I’m not a teenager anymore.

Birchbox Extra: Ghiradelli Square in Milk Chocolate with Caramel. Who doesn’t like Ghiradelli chocolate squares?

In conclusion: this was an okay box, but not my favorite.

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Birchbox is a $10 monthly subscription service where you fill out a profile and receive high-end samples to try out. Sometimes you receive full-size samples. You can purchase full-size products at the Birchbox store.

If you’d like to sign up for Birchbox, please click here. Not gonna lie: this is a referral link and I receive points if you sign up using my link.

I’M PRETTY SURE I’M UNDEAD AT THIS POINT

On January 2, mere hours after I'd driven 360 miles home from LA, I came down with a bad cold, and as of today (January 31st), I've still got it! UGH.

I haven't been sick in ages. I had some quick-moving virus thing in November when I had a fever during our last week of budgets, but I managed to get better pretty quick from that (3 days, I think). The spring of 2011 I was sick for months, though, so I guess I'm about due. I remember after Jason died, after being healthy for so long (because if we gave him a cold, it could have turned into pneumonia and killed him), my immune system went totally kaput and I was basically sick from January through April that year, culminating in a fabulous three week flu and I haven't been that sick since. 

However, I'm finally on the mend after a full month of being sick – I had two colds, back to back, and am halfway through my second bottle of Nyquil. HURRAY. My favorite part of this whole thing was A) coughing so much/hard I threw up and B) just when I thought I was getting better from the first cold (two weeks ago) I came down with a fever and vertigo and missed a day of work with the onset of the second cold. HURRAY. 

Anyway, that is pretty much the reason why I haven't been good at updating this here blog, as I wanted to update at least once a week, but man, I've been pretty out of it. I mean, I've been so out of it that I haven't even seen the Hobbit yet

And that is just sad. 

But anyway, so before I got sick (or, haha, while I was getting sick) I was down in LA for New Years with Sarah, Bill, Sam, Malvina, and Bill's friends Dana and Jimmy. We had a delicious spread of appetizers and played an epic game of Cards Against Humanity (like Apples to Apples for horrible depraved people… it's pretty much AMAZING and hilarious)

(You motherfucking sorcerers!)

and I also made a trip down into HOLLYWOOD where I never go when I'm down there but I heard about this huge Walgreens that opened up at Sunset and Vine where a Borders used to be and I was like, let's go there! So Malvina and Sam tagged along for this trip and Malvina and I spent some time looking at the high end products they have there in the special Look Boutique or whatever and we also indulged at the juice bar and took a look at the froyo counter and sushi bar.

It's a pretty amazing Walgreen's, is what I'm saying. They're supposed to be opening up a similar flagship store in my neck of the woods (San Francisco) this year around summer time so maybe I'll have to make a special trip over there and also check out the Fluevog store and actually buy something this time.

Anyway, so then I went home, got sick, was sick for the rest of my vacation and most of the next week till I finally felt better enough to join Sarah at EJ Phairs in Concord for a cover band fronted by one of her choir buddies from high school. I am definitely sure that kid did not remember me from high school, but whatever. It was a nice evening hanging out with Sarah and another friend, Kirsten, sans kids. Sarah doesn't get up here that often so it's nice to see her any time she does manage to make it to the Bay. 

That following Wednesday I got Round 2 of the cold/flu. I woke up around 6 am and was extremely hot and sweaty, and considering my house is like 61 degrees at night, this was not good. When I tried to get up, I had a terrible case of vertigo and could barely make it down the hall to the den, where I logged into my work email and was like, "um… not coming in today, I am sick and can't even walk let alone drive." Back to bed for me until noon, till I dragged myself back into the den for an afternoon of crime shows, which would have been more fun if I didn't have that epic vertigo! Suck! Made it back into the office the next day, but man, I was pretty wiped. 

That weekend I managed to make it out to the reservoir with my dad for a walk (our slowest walk ever, haha!), and he disinvited me to Sunday dinner, based upon the amount of coughing I was doing and the presence of my grandma. It was actually pretty funny the way he said it. He was all, "Were you coming to dinner because… I'm disinviting you." LOL I love my dad. 

Anyway, so that worked out fine (I was not planning on going to dinner anyway) and Malvina came over to bring my sickly self some coffee and we had a nice afternoon just hanging out (and me coughing).  The following week I managed to get through and start feeling better, and last weekend I finally felt good enough to run around and do some errands (err, drive 25 miles to the Brentwood Ulta) and we went to the reservoir again and made better time (not hard considering the crazy long time we did the week before, hah), and I did manage to get to my parents' house for dinner, yay!

So, that's what's been going on with me. It's been a frustrating month to say the least! Can't wait till I'm back at 100%, right now I would say I'm at 80%, which actually is doing not too bad. I wish I had more to report, but this has been a boring month in terms of doing anything! This weekend we finally booked a tea with Malvina and Katie so we're doing that on Saturday and also hitting Ulta in Dublin. 

Ending on a sad note, my cousin R died on Monday and we have the viewing tomorrow night. He wasn't very old, and I didn't see him very often, but he was a good guy and I'm going to miss him.