What worked for me this summer, or the Almost-Labor-Day-Blues

As the season draws to a close, I'm thinking about packing away my summer clothes, moving my winter clothes out of storage, doing inventory, and figuring out what I need--and whether what I need has any relationship whatsoever to what I want.

(Usually it doesn't.)

But have I actually started doing it? No, I have not. Not when it's not Labor Day yet. There's time for a few more Mojitos before I have to do all that, right?

So I thought I'd dedicate a few posts to the things I'll regret packing away. And I'll begin with an astonishing item:

White shoes

I don't know what hit me, because fashion experts have been railing against white shoes for years. I can hear the chorus even now: "They only look good on brides!" "They make your feet look huge!" "Only if you're a nurse!" But instead of looking dorky, like a farm machinery salesman from Sandusky, they looked fresh and clean and summery.

I wore the hell out of this pair of Kelsi Dagger Women's Ivy Espadrilles. They looked good with pants, but were particularly nice with dresses and skirts. And the wedged heel made them incredibly comfortable.


The other pair of shoes I'll miss is also white, wedged version of an espadrille--this time in white patent leather from Michael Kors.

Now, I think of espadrilles as very preppy. Thirty years ago, preps wore Jacques Cohen espadrilles. Nowadays you'll find espadrilles being produced by prep favorites like Ralph Lauren and Kate Spade.

But I opened the Zappos box, I couldn't decide whether the big silver MK and all that patent leather didn't so much say "preppy" as "retired Vegas chorine." Seriously. I don't do patent leather. Or logos. I felt edgy! But oh, my goodness, were these comfortable. And I loved them with white jeans.

Ah ... summer.

My non-BlogHer loot, or why it pays to make friends with people who have friends who work at Chanel

One of the unexpected benefits to blogging is the friends you make. I know so many women who started blogging with the idea of joining a community, but when I started, I saw it as a way for me to torment the internet with my drivel. And of course, it is.

But I've made more friends than I've believed possible. In fact, I've made more dear friends from blogging than I ever did from volunteering at my kids' schools, serving on non-profit boards, or joining gyms.

(OK, that last part was kind of a joke, because who makes friends at the gym? Not I.)

Who'd have thought that by holing up with my laptop, I'd meet so many wonderful people? People who do things like send me this:

See, blackbird has a good friend at Chanel. A Chanel Connection. And the loot can be a little overwhelming to a very small bird, so when we got together at BlogHer, bird presented me with the overload:

• A refillable purse spray of Chanel No. 5 Eau de Toilette, plus two refills
• Two eye pencils, in Le Crayon Khol in Marine and Le Crayon Yeux in Seafoam
• Two Glossimers in Sunset Gold and Pin-Up
• Nail polish in Lilac Sky
• Eye Makeup Remover
• Three mascaras: Extracils in Brun, Mascara Volume Intense in Smoky Marine, and Inimitable in Brun Noir
• Two AquaLumiere lipsticks in Waikiki and Monte-Carlo
• and a Rouge Allure in Intuitive

In a word? Squee!

Dr. Murad's assistants, or, what I did to bump up my skincare regimen

If you've been reading The Beauty Boomer for a while, you might remember that last May, I popped for a Murad Resurgence 90 Day Kit.*

I never really reviewed the kit, because I felt that I hadn't given the products enough time. I didn't want to be one of those Makeup Alley reviewers who use a new moisturizer and are all "Squee! Holy Grail!" and then two weeks later are leaving another review saying "THAT CRAP GAVE ME HIVES."

But at this point, I think I can give a pretty thorough review of the products, and explain why I added some additional skin care products to my regimen.

Mostly it's because the Murad products are so gentle. I have dry, fair, freckly skin, so you'd think it would be sensitive, right? But it really isn't. And I don't know ... maybe it was Death Becomes Her, or too many episodes of AbFab, but I kind of equate effectiveness with a degree of stinging, redness, and/or peeling. When a product warns me that my skin might react, I'm like a kid at a horror movie. I think "Cool!" grab a tub of popcorn, and get ready to watch the show.  What can I say? When it comes to complexion flaws, I'm a little bloodthirsty.

So I ended up being a little disappointed in the Murad products. The very slight tingle I felt the first couple of times I used Murad Resurgence Age-Diffusing Serum dissipated pretty quickly, to the point where I started using it every night. In fact, of the four products I received in my starter kit, it's the only one I've almost used up. But honestly, it's just an AHA product, and the stuff at the drugstore is probably just as good.

As for the other products in the kit, I've got about half a tube left of the cleaning cream and the AHA BHA Exfoliating Cleanser. Just as I had suspected, the cleansing cream didn't leave my skin feeling particularly clean, while the exfoliating cleanser was so incredibly gentle, it didn't feel like it was doing anything at all.

The Murad night time moisturizer is lovely, and I love its cake batter smell, but I find it a little rich for summer. So I'm saving it for colder weather, when my skin will appreciate it.

Long story short, the Murad kit is only OK. So I added a few products to my regimen. Here are two products I've liked. And one I've hated:

1) NuFountain® C20 Vitamin C Serum (19.99/1.0 oz.)
NuFountain's serum comes in a brown bottle (since Vitamin C degrades with exposure to light) and is dispensed with a dropper.

You're advised to start by putting five or six drops in the palm of the left hand, and painting it on with the right. This is another one of those products that warns you your skin might react to it. It has a pH of 2.5, so it's sort of like applying lemon juice or vinegar to your skin. I didn't have a problem with it at all, and since it's only 19.99/bottle, and since the manufacturers warn you that the product will degrade over time, I've been applying it all over my face, neck, décolleté, hands, and rubbing what's left on my lower arms.

I can't really describe what I think it does. I've seen some lightening of age spots, and my skin feels firmer, but more than that, there's a kind of ... well, the word is glow. I've gone through two-thirds of the bottle and will definitely be ordering more.

2) Avene Eluage Cream ($40/oz.)
This is a retinol product, where the retinol is suspended in a very emollient base. I've used both Retin-A and Renova, Retin-A's supposedly more moisturizing little sister, and Eluage feels completely different. It has Hyaluronic Acid Fragments and feels like a luxurious night cream. I've noticed no particular benefit from it, but I've also noticed no dryness or peeling from the retinol. Again, the price is right, and even if it only has a slight effect on surface lines, it's a keeper.

3) Retin-A (by prescription only, unless you sneak some of your son's supply)

OK, leading up to BlogHer I felt a certain pressure to look AMAZINGLY YOUTHFUL, stylish, slim, and gorgeous. Naturally there was nothing I could do about the slim part of things, but I got my hair color refreshed--no tell-tale roots on the Beauty Boomer--stuffed my Stila train case full of fabulous makeup, and made sure I left my baggy t-shirts and Mom Jeans at home.

But I also dipped into my son's supply of Retin-A.

I know, I know. Bad Poppy! But Internet, I couldn't help myself. He gets 11 refills in the next year! There's no way he could use even half that, and it would just be going to waste.

So this is how my skin punished me for sneaking dabs of someone else's prescription and blithely applying it every night for five nights:

OW. BURNING. PEELING.

And that's why this beauty blogger used nothing but Vaseline on her face for a few days before BlogHer.

Of course, when I showed up at Blogher, I was probably DIVINELY EXFOLIATED. But I don't recommend it.

So here's my current regimen:

A.M.

• wash face with uber gentle Murad cream cleanser
• apply nufountain Vitamin C serum
• apply Garnier Nutritioniste eye cream
• apply Garnier Nutritioniste SPF28 moisturizer

PM

• remove eye makeup with eye makeup remover of choice
• wash face with uber gentle Murad cleanser
• apply Garnier Nutritioniste eye cream
• apply Murad's Age Diffusing Serum/Avène's Eluage on alternate nights

--
*This link, as well as most of the other links on my site, goes to Amazon. Full disclosure: I finally managed to get the Amazon Associates doohickey set up properly, and last time I checked, I had earned forty cents! So feel free to click through and purchase stuff I link to, even though at this rate, it will take me until Christmas to earn a cup of Starbucks.

this, or, my lightbulb moment in a meme

This is what I know: there is a moment when you stop mourning the end of summer and start anticipating fall: wool clothes and real shoes and serious skin care and a full face of makeup. And when that moment occurs, jump on it. This is what I think: everyone who thinks their feet look terrible in the winter hasn't seen mine after a summer of going to the beach and wearing flip flops. I got home from New Hampshire on Sunday, and my first order of business was to give myself the mother of all pedicures. With the good pumice stone, not that useless one I bought in NH. WHAT A DIFFERENCE. This is what I'm wearing on my toenails: O.P.I. Crimson Carol. It's bright red, sparkly, and it's just the pick-me-up I need. This is what could change my life: OK, Funny you should ask. My son came home with a few first day of school questionnaires, and that was one of the questions. Or more specifically, "What would you change about yourself?" And I immediately thought: I'd lose weight. About 30 pounds. Maybe 40--it depends on how well my metabolism has handled the seafood and ice creams of summer. Which made me realize something. Losing weight? Talk about an attainable goal. I mean, it's not like my number one desire is to be six inches taller. So what's my problem? Easy. It would take a year to do it right.  But I'm going to be a year older, anyway. Why not be a year slimmer, too? This is what I'm eating: a sandwich made from last night's leftover lemon chicken breasts, lots of lettuce, hold the mayo. See above. Meme courtesy of blackbird and Badger.

Travels with Poppy, the Glamour Don't

Greetings, Internet. I'm blogging from a Best Western in Elyria, Ohio, which is just as glamorous as it sounds. We drove for 14 hours today, and I'm makeup-free. And I'm wearing my summer travel outfit: a black t-shirt, a pair of olive green cargo pants, flip-flops, and piles of jewelry.

The jewelry breaks one of my own rules, because I firmly believe that it looks younger and/or hipper to resist the temptation to pile on jewelry. But what happens when you've finished packing the car and find your favorite bracelet and ring next to the kitchen sink? You put them on and clank around all day.

The flip flops are for ease and comfort and for those moments when I want to stick my feet up on the dashboard. Everyone knows it's tacky to keep your shoes on when you put your feet on the dashboard.

The black t-shirt is for when I'm drinking a full cup of coffee and hit a bump in the road. OK, it doesn't look so hot, but it beats wearing a bib. It's pretty sad the way I can predict spilling food on myself. Sad, but accurate.

And the cargo pants not only give me a place to put my phone when I'm pumping gas, they also give me a place to stash the other stuff I discover that we've forgotten to pack. Which is why I spent a good part of the day carrying around a big tube of toothpaste. "Is that a tube of toothpaste," Mr. Buxom asked, "or are you just glad to see me?"

Obviously, I need to face the facts: 1. summer is almost over, and 2. I need to clean up my act!

This is not a BlogHer recap post

Even though I spent three days at BlogHer, I don't really have a BlogHer recap. For one thing, I actually spent very little time at the actual panels--two on Friday, and none on Saturday.

Nothing against the panels, really, it's just that it's my fifth blogging conference, and after a while, panels start to repeat themselves. And seem more trouble than they're worth.

One of the two panels I attended was Susan Wagner's Style Bloggers panel (if you missed the panel, there's a good write up here on Fashionista) and I left the panel with more questions than I'd come in with. Which is probably good, because it means the subject was much bigger than its time slot.

It's also good because it means the panel made me think.

In my last life, I spent a lot of time going to academic conferences, and I got used to the way they run panels. It's a big deal to get on an academic panel, and while it helps to be a big name in your field, you still really have to make a point. And it should be a good point--preferably something groundbreaking or paradigm shifting or as Faux Fuschia likes to say, visionary. You get 20 minutes to make your point. Then, if you're lucky, people ask questions.

There are fewer points and many more questions at BlogHer panels, which means the quality of the panel depends on the quality of the questions, which may explain why blackbird of Say La Vee and I escaped and went shopping at the Hermes store. Where I bought a scarf and two bracelets, but this is not a haul post.

No, this is a series of questions about fashion and style blogging.

(BTW, were you acquainted with "haul posts" and "haul videos?" The term was getting slung around a lot at the style panel, but I hadn't realized it had reached such a saturation level that no one felt the need to define it. So click on the links, if you're not aware of the phenomenon.)

Now that BlogHer is less about mommyblogging being a radical act and more about women-owned business blogging (because let's face it; monetizing your blog in any way is running a business) I'd really like to see some other people at blogging conferences. Because we are not all mommybloggers. Not even those of us who have kids.

I'd really like to see more style bloggers. I saw Susan Wagner of Friday Playdate and Kalisah of I'll Be the one in Heels. I met some new (to me) style bloggers, like the gorgeous Amber of Brown Bombshell Beauty, and Treacle of The Lingerie Addict, and Tracey of FashionForward40, who was everything good: smart, funny, curvy, and stylish.

Tracey in her wrap dress and double strand of faux gray
South-Sea-style pearls--me in Lilly

But seriously, the personal blog has been around for years. The monetized brand-crazy mommyblog has too. So enough already about privacy, the internet, and our kids. What about privacy, the internet, and What I Wore Today? 

And what's a design panel when nobody's addressing something that I've been wondering about for a while: why, with our eyes for design being so finely honed, do bloggers like Faux Fuchsia, LPC of A Midlife of Privilege, Alexis of J. Crew Aficionada and I still use the Blogger minima templates? Why don't style bloggers feel the same need to use huge splashy headers and custom-designed blogs?

How about a panel on fashion photography--specifically, on photographing yourself for your blog?

How about a panel on being an old broad? What about issues of aging in the blogosphere? After all, simply by virtue of being 53 years old, I'm way outside of the 35-year-old white, suburban mother-of-two stereotype. Even though I'm white and suburban and a mother of two, I feel distinctly ... other.

What fashion/style/design issues would you like to see covered at a blogging conference?

My 15 minutes has arrived.

.
Originally uploaded by MaggieMason

So please learn from my experience. When your 15 minutes arrives, be wearing lipstick.

(This is the incrediblly photogenic Susie Sunshine and me at Maggie Mason's get-together last weekend at that women's blogging conference you may have heard about.)

a post (short) from BlogHer

I'm borrowing blackbird's laptop to write this, so I've decided I'm borrowing her title, too.

I've been in New York for over 24 hours, and I'm already exhausted. I attribute this to a combination of things: being surrounded by literally thousands of blogging women, all talking at once; sitting through panels and keynotes and lunches; sharing a room with blackbird so that the talking and laughing literally doesn't stop unless we're asleep; a general lack of caffeine, and the weather, which is just what you'd expect, if you've been hearing about New York's record-breaking summer-long heat wave.

Also, I'm frustrated, because I'm having trouble accessing the internet.

You know those posts people are always writing about what to bring to a blogging conference? Well, one of the most important things to bring is a laptop.

But guess who left her laptop at home in Newtopia? And bought herself a compensatory iPad? That's right, me. And for the most part, I love it.

For one thing, I've downloaded sample chapters of all kinds of style books, like RuPaul's Working It, Daisy Fuentes' Unforgettable, Rachel Zoe's Style A to Zoe, and The Color of Style. So I'll be able to sample them at my leisure, impulse buy them, and then review them on this blog. Which is where you come in, internet.

Unfortunately, the wireless connector on my new iPad is a little fussy. It does not like BlogHer or New York or the Hilton. So I've spent a lot of conference time struggling with it. And that's why blackbird took pity on me and let me borrow her laptop.

So. What we've done. Yesterday, we attended a party at Martha Stewart's offices, where we drank frozen Lillet and basil slushies and ate miniature whoopie pies. Then we went to the People's Party at the hotel, where they were pouring the bourbon with a very heavy hand. And we paid court to the Bloggess in the ladies' room, which has become something of a BlogHer tradition.

Today blackbird and I went to see our BlogHer Style boss, Susan Wagner, moderate a panel on the business of fashion blogging. I discovered that alas, I am a dinosaur, because I'd rather talk about the return of the pointy-toed shoe than about marketing my brand.

What am I wearing? Yesterday, a turquoise/lime green cotton lawn Lilly Pulitzer tunic, white bootcut jeans, and Michael Kors white patent leather and rope wedge-heeled sandals. And my hair up in one of those monster butterfly clips because hello? IT WAS HOT.

Today, it's a white stretch pencil skirt from Banana Republic, navy blue Lilly polo shirt and Kelsi Dagger wedged espadrilles with white leather ankle wraps.

And I'm carrying this bag

because it's all about MY BRAND.