after a 3-year quest

Hello. Jo here. A lot of stuff has been going on. Although this is not a life blog, where we would tell you what we think and how we feel, part of the purpose of fashion is to affect your feelings, your thoughts, mood, life.

Part of my life at the moment has been dealing with high maintenance people, a chore which deserves a prize when concluded. For my prize, I picked these:




The Gammbble, by Steve Madden.

Seriously, searching for the past three winters, these are the first non-$500 boots that I have fallen in love with. They are definitely not $39.99 payless boots, but at $109.95, they were doable, and after searching for three years, I thought I'd better snatch them up.

They're cozy, just the right height, and after 2 days, they still fill my car with the smell of leather when I get in and shut the door.

Speaking of Paintnolish...

Warning: This post will probably seem to rebel against the "low budget" part of the title. We would use the 'quality over quantity' argument, but as you can see, this is quite a large quantity of high quality paintnolish.

It is so unnatural for us to call it nail polish. Years ago, when our youngest sister was very young, she called it paintnolish, so that is what we have always called it too. And we must continue to do so.

This is Jo's collection of OPI. It has been built thoughtfully and carefully over the last 5 years.


Isn't it fun? OPI is the best. It is not worth it to use anything else, unless you're just not serious about the color staying on your nails. (Although Essie always attracts us, but when we spend $$$ it's almost always OPI.)

Other brands of paintnolish do not deserve such a place of honor, and are tossed in packages, boxes or bags (name that movie!) and kept in the cabinet.

nails -- Happy Monday!

This is Jo.
I know it is a sort of grade school-ish thing to do, but this weekend I was inspired to paint my nails all different colors. Actually I picked 4 colors, and doubled a different one on each hand:

Right hand: (my thumb is not shown because it had a mishap, but it is the same color as the pinkie.)


Left hand:

The colors are a little washed-out in this one, but I wanted to show a full hand shot.


The cast of colors:
Lincoln Park After Dark by OPI
Quarter of a Cent-cherry by OPI
Sweet Memories by OPI
Mint Candy Apple by Essie

I have to say, I had so much trouble deciding on the order of colors, but I think it turned out quite fun and, like most things I do, did not merit as much stress as I put into it. :)

Must-have shoes

Nine West is having some good sales right now. Not among the sale merch, however, are these wonderful orange pumps.


We imagine wearing them with a mostly neutral outfit, or beige, or even a touch of ballet pink, and dark jeans. Or maybe a lot of navy. Or maybe anything in our closet. Want, want, WANT!

Talking makeup with an old friend

Tonight, even though it has been months since we posted--months!!-- we (Jo & Liz) would like to share a special conversation we ran into online yesterday.

We grew up in South Texas with a lovely, hilarious girl named Amy, and before that, our father grew up up with her father! Anyway, she was beautiful, and could make you die laughing no matter what she was talking about. Not only was she a few years older than us, she was a ballerina, so we always thought she was especially tall and glamorous, and special. We were obsessed with her bright red birthmark and wanted one too. And she gave us lifelong inspiration to be able to do the splits. (We're still working on that.)

Here she is at Jo's wedding:

See, she's the one wearing the awesome green sweater.

Well, yesterday we ran across this interview with her in Talking Makeup dot com. She is so lovely and funny. We are very interested in the wild rose face cream she mentioned, and maybe someday we'll work up the courage to eat sardines, as she recommends as well. Anyway, go check out the interview. :)

I know it's just a link but it's the best we can do right now for a post. More later! (Not saying how much later, though...)

my new favorite quote

I don't understand how a woman can leave the house without fixing herself up a little - if only out of politeness. And then, you never know, maybe that's the day she has a date with destiny. And it's best to be as pretty as possible for destiny.

~Coco Chanel

it's not the mascara, it's the brush

It's Jo. And it's October!!! I'm really sad that Liz and I never update this blog! We were full of ideas of what to post about until we finally made the blog and then we just got too busy! ugh.

Anyway, I do have one thing to say:

Christian Dior mascara has always been the best for my short, stingy, pale, easily-broken lashes. And by best, I mean it makes long, flowing, sweeping lashes where other mascaras leave hard, stubbly, slender black stumps. But it costs $24.00, and this is supposed to be a budget-friendly blog. Come to think of it though, I'm not very budget-friendly myself (just ask my husband!) so maybe that's why it's so hard to update here--I can't confess all my price-y makeup purchases. Maybe I should start a non-budget-friendly blog also. That would be fun.

Anyhow, needless to say I don't actually buy Dior all the time, because it seems too extravagant (even for me) but I spend probably even more money buying $6, $8, $12 and $15 mascaras that I think might be almost as good. They never are. Until now:

So, yesterday, at Wal Mart, I found some mascara that does exactly as well as Diorshow. It's Maybelline Great Lash, but not the normal kind, the new kind with that great big lushy brush. (Lushy Brush: say it out loud!) Stunning. And it's like $6. Same old mascara, different brush.



Which supports my long-held suspicion that all mascara is the same, it's only the brushes that are different. Oh, I'm sure there are different formulas and allergy-free and organic and whatnot, but if they have a skinny brush, they all work the same way: they don't. (except maybe for people who already have awesome eyelashes, and those people should shut up because they don't know what it's like to have eyelashes like mine.) So I am very happy that a drugstore brand finally stepped up to the plate.

It's about time. What's with all these super-skinny, comb-like, plastic brushes these days? It's a fad, but why? I guess that's always the question with fads. It's so weird to live in such an affluent, advanced and "enlightened" society that we can devote hours of thought and paragraphs of ramblings (and in some cases, chunks of our paychecks) to something that makes our eyelashes longer and better.

Wishing you all luck with your eyelash endeavors,
~Jo (& Liz)

*Lushy brush is our made-up description of this brush, and does not appear anywhere on the packaging of this product. But it's really fun to say.