A Magical Mystery For...Lush Lovers

I love that Lush creates all-natural products in small batches with little to no packaging. I also love that all of my toiletries can be found in solid forms at Lush (this means no packaging at all, plus no preservatives to deal with). I love Lush's knot wraps and scents and sense of humor. Really, this post could be just a long list of what I love about Lush, but there is a point to me writing it, I promise.

Lush is releasing a new product line called Emotional Brilliance, but they won't say what Emotional Brilliance is. The site page shows a picture of a woman shushing us. Her lips are a bright pink, and the same color spells "passionate" on her finger. Her nails are painted nude. That's it, except for a link to this music video by Lush's "resident chanteuse" Mira:




The only clue to what the product is comes at 2:50, and is a shot of bottles in multiple colors with the Lush logo and small black tops. Guesses have included bath dyes, eye shadow, lip stick/gloss, hair dye, room scent, and nail polish. My money is on nail polish. What do you think?




UPDATE (SPOILER ALERT): A quick Google search search shows that Emotional Brilliance is a full make-up line based on color therapy. Some people are excited, some not so much. Apparently Lush used to have a make-up line called B Never Too Busy To Be Beautiful, detailed here. Honestly, I hope the Emotional Brilliance line is more toned back, as a big draw for me to Lush is the simplicity and versatility of its products. I guess I'll just have to wait until July 21 to find out.

Google Reader is My New Favorite Thing

The internet has things worth my time.

I used to spend hours on the internet going through a bunch of bookmarked sites that I wanted to keep up with. I don't know why I never tried an RSS feed, I just didn't. However, a few months ago I started using Google Reader, and I absolutely love it. I get all the content from all the sites I love, and I only have to go one place for it. Initially I spent just as much time keeping up with my favorite sites, but having everything in one place helped me better limit my reading time and cut out sites that didn't inform me well or bring me joy. Once I realized how to save time, it became an easy thing to do, and now I get to writing just as often as I read (which explains my recent return to the blog-o-sphere).

Another technological advancement that has saved me time? My Amazon Kindle. I can read books, magazines, and newspapers all on one device, it's easy and guilt-free to highlight things, and I can look up word definitions in seconds. This might be sad to admit, but I love my kindle (which I named the Kimdle) so much that reading regular books is actually tiresome. The Kimdle is easier to transport, easier to find things on, and so much more versatile than regular print media. While I'm a complete convert, my fiance likes his only for novels because he finds reference materials too bothersome to flip back and forth for.

All of this sort of got me thinking (and by sort of I mean I had to think of something else to say because this post is shorter and more self-indulgent than usual) about the value of technology versus the feeling of a physical thing that will show wear, tear, and love over the years of its life. The first thing that comes to mind in this somewhat tired debate is my favorite gardening book ever, Garden Anywhere by Alys Fowler. I have this in book form, as it's not published on the kindle. Over the years I've added notes, drawings, and addendums to the wonderful text that Fowler authored. I wouldn't dream of throwing  this book away, because of the amount of growth and living documented in it's pages. However, I've chucked a number of my other much-loved books as soon as I got them in digital format. The deciding factor for me is whether or not the object can serve as a journal of my life. The books that were passed down through my family and now belong to me tell stories outside of the printed words and pictures they contain. Other books, whose tales I love, but whose physical being tells no specific story, I have released into the universe, perhaps to become a loved prop in someone else's life story.

Ultimately, why we all read.

For me, the Kimdle lets me read more and in a better way. I have a  box of books and journals that mean more to me than they would to someone else, but I now mostly read on my Kindle because I can find material easily and quickly, as well as read through them with better understanding and interaction. Likewise, with Google Reader I can keep up with a lot more of what's going on in the world and in a lot less time. Rather than mourn the loss of analog and physical formats, I rejoice in how easy it is to find inspiration now, and compensate for my cold digital consumption by creating warm analog offerings of my own, like my garden,  homemade meals, knitted goodies, and little stories or essays, all of which, ironically enough, I share with the world through digital means.

When I saw this I knew I had to share.

This is So Cool

This is too cool not to share.

Here's Your Daily Dose of Smile

This made me laugh; I hope it does the same for you.

A Little Video

I might like to go to Burning Man.

Lazy Wedding Planning

My sister (very thoughtfully) gave me a wedding planning book for my birthday, as I'm engaged, but the very thoughtful gift is making me think way too much, and now I'm starting to go a bit wedding-crazy. Not in a bridezilla way, but just in an overwhelmed, frustrated kind of way.

So to distract from the frustration, and the fact that my brain is too tired to write a funny post here, I present the weekly wrap-up:

Things I Wrote:
A review of different reusable egg carton options. There are actually a lot more of these than I thought there'd be, but they're kind of hard to find.

Things I Thought Were Great:
A Teavana store opened in my area. I'm in morning cuppa heaven.

Things I Did:
I made my own homemade lotion. The recipe still needs a little tweaking in my opinion, but the resulting lotion bar was perfectly usable in the meantime.

I took this fun picture of the in-laws' dog:

He wants to steal the raw-hide that's right in front of his face (despite appearances, that's not a dildo), but he knows he's being watched. I love watching little doggie brains try to work around problems.