"Carry Out"...

For at least the past week, I've been hearing a song on Z100 that immediately makes me want to dance and wiggle around and generally make a fool of myself.  I had no clue what it was called or who sang it, but was inherently drawn to it and completely loved it.  Like a moth to a flame, if you will.

Today, I finally decided to do a little research, and now completely understand why I immediately loved this song.  See if you can guess :o)



*sigh* It's as if my subconscious perked up and was screaming "It's Justin! You love him!" before I had any clue what was going on.  I am powerless to his charms. :o)

myshape.com...

This post is for the ladies!

Allow me to introduce you to one of the most fantastic websites I have ever discovered, myshape.com. This website is great to me because it allows me to avoid one of my least favorite things: spending hours in the fitting room under unflattering lights, and faced with too many mirrors, constantly guessing at sizes and having to get undressed and re-dressed countless times as you try to figure out what size you are that day, and in that store.  As we all know, each designer cuts their sizes differently, so an 8 at one place is a 6 at another, and a 10 at another.  Ugh.  It. Is. The. Worst.

Enter myshape.com.  Enter your measurements, all of them, and honestly (which is a bit painful, I'll admit), and myshape.com will make the sizing decisions for you.  If you don't have a tape measure, they'll send you one for free, and they have handy little videos on the site that tell you exactly how to take the measurements, and constantly reminds you not to cheat about while you measure your waist and hips and thigh circumference (sigh) b/c if you cheat, the clothes won't fit!  But, once you get through that first painful process, and then tell myshape your fit and style preferences, the pay off is huge, because you then have a personal shop full of clothes that you like, that flatter your shape, and will fit like a glove.  Heavenly! Plus, free shipping.

The first dress I bought from myshape.com was a funky strapless dress that I have gotten more compliments on than any other item of clothing I have ever owned.  Seriously.  And I never would have bought it if myshape hadn't suggested it, and I got it for like $40 because of the awesome sales that myshape has every few months. And it fit me amazingly.  I've never had a strapless dress that I didn't have to yank up every five minutes, until this one.  And from that point on, I was in love.  (Of course, I no longer fit into that dress, and have had to update my measurements, emphasis on up, this year, but....let's move on. :o)

So, let's talk about the sales.  I think that at least once/month I get an email from "Sarah at myshape" giving me 40% off of all sale and clearance items.  This is the only time I usually buy, because a lot of the clothes on myshape are a little pricey, from higher-end designers, which I love, but can't justify buying just yet.  But I can when they're on sale!  Here's some stuff I'm close to clicking "buy" on:

Some nice classic pieces, as I try to start building a more adult wardrobe.  (Sorry the pictures are so small, it's all they have on the website!)  With the sale and an extra 40% off, I'll get each of these items for about $23, and there's Calvin Klein, Michael Kors, and Kenneth Cole in there!  Yaaaaaaaaaaaay sale prices!!!

Last, but not least, one of the best things about myshape is "SIZELESS dressing."  This means that I say I want the item, and they send me the size that is best for me.  No stressing about the numbers, no sadness when those numbers have increased!  Awesome.

Happy shopping, ladies!

the right shade...

so, this is what my pink highlights should have looked like all along:

 

Not this:

 

 

I know, right?! Sooooo much better.

 

Last weekend, two days after getting my highlights done, which admittedly were pretty light and tame to begin with, I went on a spa weekend with hubby, which was wonderful and deserves it's own post, but also resulted in me washing my hair many times over the span of two days.  When I got back from the spa, relaxed and exfoliated, my highlights were no longer anywhere close to pink.  They were orange-y, coppery, brassy, and not the slightest bit cute.  Not cool.  So I called Diane, and she fixed it for me, and didn't even charge me again for having to re-do it, even though it was at least partially my fault!  I do think that she didn't really believe me about how bold I wanted the color the first time, and this time she added a lot more red to the mix, and this time it's exactly as loud as I want it to be.  :)  Aren't I such a rebel?  (I know...not really.)  Also, when I showed it to hubby, his response was only this: "Oh, it's...kinda purple.  Oh, and a little pink, too, I guess."  That's it.  Whatever, I think it's awesome.

Now I just need to find some emo kids who need a lead singer.

Kindle...

It is 2:22 am.

For some inexplicable reason, I can't sleep/have not been moved to turn off the computer and go to bed.  This doesn't make any sense, since today has been long and physically tiring, what with the snow shoveling and the meetings and the therapy-ing.  My back has been in excrutiating pain since about 9:20 this morning, when I did something really bad to it while trying to help hubby un-stick his car from the snow/the middle of the street, where it had become...stuck.  :(  And yet, for the past hour I have been alternately playing Bejeweled Blitz (badly) and drooling over the Amazon Kindle 2, which I have coveted since it came out last year.  So, now I blog about it.

My obsession with the Kindle makes sense, I think, as I have always been "a reader".  I have many, many memories of trailing behind my mother as she would go about various errands after picking me up from school, all the while holding a book in front of face while I walked, somehow managing to keep my eye on her and not run into things while devouring whatever book I was into at the time.  I would read at the dinner table, holding the open book in one hand, be it hardcover or paperback (no easy feat, actually), while I ate. (For some reason my parents allowed this, though I think it was actually very rude of me, but...thanks parents, for letting me read!).  I would usually be in the middle of 3 or 4 books at once, and always knew what page I was on in each one, without any bookmarks.  I just kept the page numbers in my head.  All of them.  I'd have various books scattered throughout the house so that I could pick something up to read in every room...I still do that, now that I think about it.

Anyway, as I've gotten older, I've had to let go of my tendency to walk-and-read :o), and as I've muddled through college and grad school have often been so bogged down in academic reading that pleasure reading didn't seem so pleasurable anymore, which always made me sad.  But now that my course work is over, I've been getting into reading for myself again, and I'm again in the middle of at least...5 different books, if you count the many audiobooks I'm also listening to right now.  And it feels so good.

And so, all of this, and my return to my former, constantly-wanting-to-be-reading-a-book roots, makes me actually kind of excited about the fact that I will most likely spend many hours a week for the next year on a train, traveling to and from my internship (hopefully!).  Rather than be annoyed about all that wasted time, I've only really been able to think of those hours of commuting as a wonderful gift of time to read.  How awesome! How dorky!  But, I don't, of course, want to have to lug heavy books around with me everyday (especially since now I'm more interested in reading newly released, hardcover fiction), and so... the Kindle is calling my name.

Have you seen the Kindle?  It's sexy.  See?

So pretty!  And small.  And this little beauty can hold up to 1500 books. 1500! Ridiculous and wonderful.
It also, of course, is crazy expensive, which is why I am at this point only drooling and not buying, but I have picked out all of my accessories for the Kindle that I will someday have.  Would you like to see? No? Too bad! :p

First up is the all important case.  My obsessive reading of all the customer reviews tells me that the Kindle is kind of slippery, not to mention very valuable and something that you maybe don't want to slide out of your hands or get dinged up in your bag.  And of course, any case of mine must be some shade of pink, so here's what I'm liking:

 And then of course I have to get some sort of girly decal for my Kindle, in a coordinating shade, like one of these:

Or maybe I should get a silicone sleeve, like everyone has on their phones? Like this:

What do you think?  Is that enough pink?  Mmmm, I don't think so.  I need some lighting, since the Kindle is not backlit, and I do like to read in bed (and those trains can be, um, dark?):

Ta-da!  And that, my friends, is what I just spent waaaaaaaaaaaaay too much time, in the middle of the night, doing.  Researching my Kindle accessories.  For the Kindle that I do not own.

Thank you, and good night!

pink hair!

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaay! Finally!

After many years of being a wuss, 4 months of internship hell, and two weeks of having to "wait for my hair to recover", it's finally happened! I have pink highlights!  And it feels so good.  Amazingly, I think it could be a little brighter, but I think Diane (my stylist soul mate) didn't quite believe me/didn't think I really understood how bright it could've been/how ridiculous I may have looked if she had completely listened to me, so she made it a little more subdued than I probably would have voted for.  But! I did tell her what my ideas were and that she then could make the decisions that she thought would look best on me, so that's what she did, and I do love it.

She also gave me a little "peek-a-boo" of color behind my ear.  Super cute:

I left the salon armed with several new hair care products, a "color lock" spray and something that will, in theory, allow me to get away with "wash and wear" (something that I have never gotten away with, btw) while I'm luxuriating in the many pools, saunas, and jacuzzis of my impending spa weekend (a post on that later!), so we'll see how that goes...But anyway, I love my hair!!

What do you think?

OPPOSITE DAY: Grammy looks...

I completely missed the Grammys last night.  I knew that they were on, but the idea of watching them seemed tedious to me, so I passed.  From the headlines I've read, it seems that Lady Gaga/Elton John and Pink gave good performances, and that Beyonce's performance was weird.  Meh...whatever.

I do, however, need to share some of the pictures that I came upon as I looked at the red carpet arrival shots (which actually interest me more than the actual Grammys).

Reasons why this picture bothers me:

1. Whose face is that?  It doesn't look like Lady Gaga, does it?? It looks like...Cher dressed up as Lady Gaga. And/or, a drag queen dressed up like Lady Gaga.  Which I guess is nothing new.
2. Look at the shoes:

 Are these not the most absurd things you've ever seen??  They just seem unsafe.  And clearly uncomfortable.  Which really seem to be the only two things Gaga's ever going for with her looks (see: the outfit she wore after her performance.  Ouch).  As a woman who has recently embraced the low heel/flat shoe, I really just cannot get over these.

      3.  Giorgio Armani designed the dress.  This Giorgio Armani.

Another picture that completely frightens me is this one of Nicole Kidman:

Look how big her head is!!!!!  Look how skinny her body is!!!!!!  I've often heard Kathy Griffin (my favorite comedienne) talk about how Nicole Kidman is really just a hangar with a head, and I always thought she was being a little harsh, but now I get it!  There is something very unnatural about her, at least in this picture.  I cannot stop staring at it and being freaked out.

And this is just sad.  What happened to her?  Or, perhaps more to the point, what happened to her stylists?  Nothing about this outfit makes one lick of sense.  Poor Britney.  At least she looks happy.

Photo credits: John Shearer/WireImages.com (Lady Gaga);  Lester Cohen/WireImages.com (Kidman); Christopher Polk/Getty Images (Spears)

Music widgets...

As I was doing some of my best procrastination to date this morning, I discovered Amazon.com's MP3 widget, which you can now find at the top of my sidebar, dear reader :o).  The widget lets me add songs that I like, and then you can click and enjoy, and/or judge and look unfavorably upon my song choices.  The choice is yours!

I'll try my best to keep it up-to-date with songs that I'm currently enjoying/obsessed with (see: Bad Romance, by Lady Gaga), but I also would very much appreciate song recommendations in the comments! I tend to be really slow on the uptake with new music, and, if  I had my druthers (did I just say "druthers"? Yes, yes I did.), would just listen to N'Sync CDs until I'm old and gray.  So, as you can see, I need your help :)

My first selections are a bit all over the place, but they're the songs that popped into my head that I wanted to hear and share, so...Enjoy!