I have sent out my last Besotted Brand parcel from the California studio, sigh…With regret, I am going to have to close the shop for the month of May.  I couldn’t see any way around it, we are driving for a week, looking for a place to live the week after and once we do find a place I will have to unpack the inventory–June is the grand re-opening!  I am pretty excited as I want to bring in a lot of new offerings.  I have new DIY stationery sets, initial hand stamps and so much more.  I have been working with photographer Jamie Simon of Intertwyned Photography to help me with my product shots and I couldn’t be happier.  I am really looking forward to the next phase for Besotted Brand and I hope you are too!

I’ve had a Sephora gift certificate in my wallet since Christmas.  Yes, of course it was burning a hole in it, I am a hardcore beauty addict, but since leaving my job and starting a new business the luxury of shopping at Sephora had become a thing of the past. I was saving the gift certificate for when I really needed it.  I started to hear about this new miracle make-up from Smashbox and I decided I really, really needed it.  The product is a 5-in-1 item- it primes, moisturizes, has SPF 35,  nice coverage and something else I can’t remember (maybe it does your laundry?) it’s their new BB cream (‘BB’ stands for beauty balm). I am pretty picky about my foundation, I have dry skin and hyper pigmentation (from years of hanging out in the sun with Crisco and tin foil, or something like that). I have never had any luck with tinted moisturizer and I really love the Nature Luxe I’ve been using, but…this is a 5-in-1 and I am driving cross country, if I can bring one product instead of 5 (even though I can’t remember the 5th thing it purports to do), well I’m going to look into it.  I’m giving it a huge thumbs up!  I wouldn’t consider this a tinted moisturizer, it gives great buildable coverage and is not as sheer as a  tinted moisturizer, for me this is a good thing, for someone looking for a tinted moisturizer maybe not so much. The first time I tried it without using moisturizer but I found I needed more moisturizer underneath, so the next day I tried with a little dab and it was much smoother. They say you only need a pea size amount and ‘they’ aren’t lying.  A  little goes a long way, this tube should get you through the entire summer and maybe the first couple weeks of fall.  Every time I have worn it my husband has complimented me and said I looked pretty, he also mentioned that he likes me like this– ‘fresh faced and no make-up’.  I like myself with this ‘no make-up’ too.  It’s light enough to still show your own texture through so you don’t look like you are wearing make-up, but it covers everything you want to cover–flawlessly.  It’s a keeper.  Oh, total extra bonus, it supposedly diminshes lines and improves skin moisture in five weeks (guaranteed). They sold me, maybe I’ve sold you?  I ended up using the entire gift certificate (I obviously have no self control) so I will be bragging, sharing my thoughts once I test everything else.

I am trying to find the bright side to packing.  I hate to pack, the only thing I hate more then packing is unpacking. I read once that there’s a Four Season’s in Indonesia that will unpack for you when you arrive.  It has become one of my #1 dream destination spots, solely based on this rumor.  I would love someone to unpack for me. Okay, so there has been one positive and that’s finding all these cute shoes that I forgot I owned.  My closet is pretty organized, everything is color coordinated and shoes are in neat rows, the problem is I have a sliding closet door that has been broken for awhile thus making it impossible to see into one side of my closet. I had to summon Herculean strength to move the door the other day and found quite a few pairs of shoes that I must have bought in an obvious cute shoe buying frenzy.  Shoes that I have never worn and shoes that I hope to wear more often.  I tried wearing a pair the other day when we were going to get bagels & coffee, but my husband refused to get bagels whilst I was wearing ‘that get up’.  Which was actually all casual with a pair of Gucci high heel clog knock-off’s, that may not sound cute, but trust me they were good knock off’s and they were super cute. I think it must be bad enough that his wife will not go outside without 52 coats of mascara on, the high heel clogs must have put him over the edge.  I should really get back to packing, because willing these boxes to fill themselves does not seem to be working.  Eight more days to go, I am freaking out a little  lot.  I am wondering what I have got myself into? What the heck was I thinking when I agreed to move 2500 miles away from home to a place I have spent less than five days in? Oh gosh, I must be crazy….

I thought this little vignette of plates was quite charming.  I don’t think I would ever do anything like this in my own home, but I can appreciate the cheeky nature of it.  My style is more airy and comfort driven (at least I’d like to think so), so walls of mismatched plates would not work for me, but they do work here on this boutique hotel wall. I suppose when I am on the East Coast I will have to go to Miami to get my quirk fix in, there’s nothing like this in NYC that I know of and you’d be able to blow me over with a feather if I saw a hotel like this in NC.  I’ve never been to Miami, unless you count the time I was stuck in the Miami airport for 5 hours, (I don’t).  One of the things I am looking forward to most about this relocation is the ability to easily travel to other states.  I haven’t had the opportunity to see much of the U.S. and I have always wanted to explore more. How about you? Been anywhere amazing in the states? Don’t say California, it’ll make me homesick before I leave and I can’t have that now can I?