1. Well of course you know I'm going to say the wonderful, always free library. While you're there, kindly check out Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann, go home, lie on the couch, and start reading. I finished it last night. So good, so much fun. It's Hollywood, it's New York, it's lunch at 21 and drinks at El Morocco. Just a total soap opera, with sex and drugs and...well, no rock and roll, but there are some Broadway stars with issues. It starts in 1945 and goes through to 1965. Susann wrote what was considered a trashy novel, but holy smokes, could she write! I think a lot of trashy novelists today didn't make it much past 7th grade composition class. Go on! Just go get it!
2. Havaianas flip flops on Amazon.com for $14, with free shipping! And in the color I wanted (navy blue--I'm not really a fashion risk-taker).
3. Buy a magazine and a nail polish at Target (or Wal-Mart, whatever). You can do that for about $10.
4. Get a single-serving dessert at the grocery store bakery. Nice big eclair, maybe a slab of carrot cake...your call. $5, tops.
5. Go to Amazon.com and download free music. Amazon puts it directly into your iTunes, once you download their (free, very good) software.
6. In Target, there is a makeup line called e.l.f. (which stands for eyes lips face). Well, don't buy the makeup, since it's made in China. But the makeup brushes (which are also made in China, but you don't leave them on your skin for hours and hours)? Well, you need to own those. I mean, buying good makeup brushes can start at about $20 and go up (and up). And just because they are expensive doesn't mean you won't eventually want to throw them away, even if you are good about washing them. These e.l.f. brushes are either $1 each or $3 each (those are the expensive ones). I am trying to try a little harder with my eye makeup, and since I already had some MAC eyeshadow from ages ago floating around the drawer, I certainly couldn't justify a few new $10 eyeshadows (and we won't even talk about department store makeup prices). But for $4, I got two new brushes, I'm using up perfectly good makeup I already had...well, I'm just so thrifty!
7. I love perfume. A lot. And not just any perfume. It has to be unusual, it has to have certain notes, and it has to be made in France. I decided it was time for a change, so I was on a perfume hunt, but the stores in my travels just didn't have anything that worked for me. So, naturally, I turned to the internet. Now perfume shopping online is risky, at best. You can spend a fortune on a bottle of something that smelled wonderful on the woman in line behind you at the movies, but smells dreadful on you. However, you can get samples (or decants, as they are sometimes called) for a very minimal cost. And there is enough in a sample vial to wear it for a few days, so you can really give it a good test drive. Try Luckyscent.com, fragrancenet.com, and theperfumedcourt.com to buy sample vials. Most samples are under $10 (Lucky Scent has a few that are $12 or $15, but that's for perfumes that cost close to $500 a bottle!), with most being around $3 or $4--certainly cheap enough to get out of the celebrity-fragrance rut. I went to The Perfumed Court to get a sample of the perfume my mother wore when I was a child (Dioressence). Made me feel quite wistful--amazing how scent can instantly take you somewhere in your past.
8. Finally, one of my favorite treats is getting all my housework done early on a Friday, and then spending the afternoon reading or cooking or laying in the sun (with sunscreen on, of course. No, not really. I thought I should sound responsible. It makes me feel goopy. But at least I don't stay out very long, since I get too hot.) or doing something fun like a blog entry. And frankly, a cocktail wouldn't go amiss in any of these scenarios. In fact, I'm going right now to try a concoction of homemade lemon simple syrup, Ketel One Citroen, and soda water. At some point, I'm sure I'll report back.
2 comments: