Teeny Manolo

We’ve been together so long, but (as much as it kills me to say it) it’s over now.

I remember the days before we got together. I’d go by your store just to look at you, just to make sure you were still there, still waiting for someone to pick you up. I’d had it with the one I was with at the time; it just didn’t fulfill my needs: I don’t care what the self-esteem gurus say, size DOES matter!

Somehow it seemed so much less mercenary, so much more meaningful, at the time.

I scraped and saved for weeks to get enough money to take you home, but one beautiful Autumn day just about two years ago I finally had what it took to make you mine, and we went home together.

I thought it would last forever. It’s true, at first you charmed my friends with your sassy attitude and sumptuous good looks as you had charmed me, but early this year they began to see the signs.

I’m always the last to know.

They saw things starting to unravel. They saw the wear and tear. They saw that you would not be there for me eternally, and they were right.

But that doesn’t make it any easier. I can’t keep fixing what’s wrong, I can’t just toss you aside, and frankly none of my friends would be seen dead with you at this point. I must find a way to move on.

There are plenty standing in the wings, ready to help me get over the pain of losing you, you synthetic (although passable) heartbreaker:

Kelly, my first love:

But sometimes a girl’s head is turned by sheer charm, such as Eric Javits’s Lil Circles:

Or something a little different, a little smarter, a neat, Hermes-clad military number

Whatever happens, I know better than to continue to be seen with some ratty hanger-on who’s likely to dump all my innermost secrets all over the sidewalk the next time we go out in public!

Fall is in the air, is it not?

Well, it isn’t actually here where I live yet.  But, that has never stoppped makeup trends, and a hot one this fall is red lips.

I won’t lie, red lips are hard to pull off well.  You really do have to have the perfect color for your skin tone, or it just looks really bad.  And unfortunately, the best way to pick that perfect red is to try it on.  Use any other method, and you are likely to end up making a return trip to the store.

Some general guidelines are if you have fair skin, choose a red with a blue undertone. If you have a bit of color, you could spring for something with some orange undertones.  If you are tan or have quite a bit of color, rust overtones look good.  A true, London-bus red looks good on everyone, but they are hard to find.

So what I will do is give you tips on how to make your red lips look fab:

1. Use lip liner to give the color something to grab onto, because “bleeding” red lipstick is a horrible, horrible thing.  A liner that matches exactly is best, since manufacturers often offer liners in the same color as the lipstick. If you can’t find one, a liner that matches your natural lip color as closely as possible will also work.

2. Always use a lip brush to apply red lipstick, using the longest strokes possible. 

3. Make sure that you cover your lips entirely with the lipstick, including the corners.

4. Also key to keeping that color on your lips is blending concealer, preferably with a brush, around the edges of your mouth after the lipstick has been applied.

5. Gloss is optional, using it will soften the impact of the red.

6. Keep your eyes light.  A heavy, smoky eye competing with red lipstick is going to have people thinking you are off to a Halloween party.

And there you go! Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?

One lipstick to try in a nice, true red like the one I mentioned above is Christian Dior Premiere.

When I was younger (in my late teens, early twenties) I used to think that I had no need for mascara.  I was blessed with fairly dark, fairly long lashes.  Then a co-worker suggested that I try mascara for some extra pop, and I’ve been hooked ever since.  Thanks, Monica!

Since Lorac went ahead and changed their formula or something (hello flakes where there used to be none!) I have been searching for a suitable replacement.  Many of them were good, including the Lancome High Definicils I’ve been using, but not quite what I was looking for. 

Then, along comes Givenchy Phenomen’Eyes. 

Mascara wands have been the same pretty much since, well, the introduction of mascara.  A long wand with a long band of bristles at the very end.  Now, the bristles would sometimes be fat, or thin, or a combination thereof.  Recently they have been changing the bristles to rubber instead of nylon, and doing crazy things with the size, the angle, making it double-tipped, curved, you name it.  But the basic shape and style of the brush was always the same.

Givenchy decided to change all that, and it’s about time.  Instead of a wand with spaced out bristles, it has a full, spherical tip that gets to lashes in a way those other kinds of mascara can only dream about. It gives you lashes where you didn’t think you had any. We are talking crazy, crazy lashes.

This is not a mascara for the timid. It is not a mascara for the weak. And to be honest, it probably isn’t a mascara suitable for the PTA meeting. But, if you want knockout lashes, this is THE mascara to get.

My sincerest apologies for not posting the winners on September 6, as I said I would. A family emergency pushed things back a couple of days, thank you so much for your patience.

First I would like to thank the wonderful, generous folks at Stila Cosmetics, without whom, none of these giveaways would have been possible. I was thrilled when they contacted me, and it makes me happy to give away such fabulous products to our readers. Glinda adores spreading beauty and super fantastic-ness!

I would also like to thank everyone who took the time to pen a haiku and enter the contest. With over 80 entries, all were so creative and fun to read. I have always maintained that the readers of Teeny Manolo are some of the most intelligent women on the internet, and this contest proved it.

So after much deliberation between Raincoaster, the Manolo, and myself, we finally have our winners!

Our Runner-Up is Pepper, who wrote this amusing gem:

Tears make raccoon eyes
Lipstick smears on his collar
I curse cheap makeup.

And finally, our Grand Prize goes out to Eileen with this evocative haiku:

When I was little
I rouged my face with chapstick
and hoped for beauty.

Congratulations!

Look, I know it’s Fall. I can see my breath already, and I even brushed my teeth! And unfortunately, Zeus and his little … Zeusettes? have also noticed the change in the seasons and have begun causing a bizarre, yet pervasive phenomenon whereby water droplets condense in the mid- to upper atmosphere over a wide range, precipitating along a course dictated by gravity towards the center of the Earth, only to be stopped upon the surface, where they congregate in forms known as “puddles.”

Yeah, but what are you gonna do about it? Well, if you’re at all like my mother, who was wont to spiel forth with the words “go outside and play” in weather that would keep a polar bear indoors, you shove your kid’s feet into breadbags (in case of soaker) shove the plastic-wrapped for freshness feet into rubber boots, wrassle the kidlet into a raincoast, preferably the kind with the very satisfying snaps like a real New Englander’s, stick a floppy plastic hat the size of Prince Edward Island on her head, and shove her out the door with a cheery, “Be back at six!”

Then you pour some vino and go watch your stories for a few blissful hours while the neighborhood children solemnly play Noah’s Ark yet again with their sodden teddybears and long-suffering Maltipoos.

Oh, it’s a Philip Larkin tale for sure!

But since the sun may not come out tomorrow or, where I live, until next June, we might as well do what we can to brighten the miserable, leaden gloom. Otherwise our children will all grow up to be Goths, right?

Nobody wants that, my friends.

So, to stave off a precocious fondness for Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson, and black nailpolish, we present the unmistakably brilliant Children’s Color Wheel Umbrella from MOMA Online:

You could even get a full-sized one for yourself, should you feel a nostalgic appreciation for The Cure coming on.

You couldn’t make it easy on me. Noooooo, you couldn’t just bring me George Stephanopoulis for my Labour Day long weekend and get it over with, could you? Oh, fine!

You want to win on merit alone? Okay with me. But next time I’m going to up the bribe ante to… I dunno, Anderson Cooper? We could watch classic movies and drink Martinis and bitch about our friends. Sigh.

In a heated contest in which seemingly everyone except me took the high road, we have a winner:

Elizabeth Says:
September 1st, 2008 at 11:30 pm

It’s amazing, next to John McCain EVERYBODY looks like a little kid!

Congratulations and imaginary swag to Elizabeth! With what patriotic hypothetical shall we gift her? How about a rather sexy reminder of the importance of national security, the Juicy Couture padlock leather bracelet:

You’re all just too nice. Or maybe you retain a fondness for our subject from all that unresolved sexual tension back when Diane shared a desk with that sexy biatch Sam Donaldson. But you didn’t really go for the jugular with last week’s Friday Caption Contest and for that we can only say: you are better people than we are. All our personalities agree.

Among the entries, only one can take the crown (pictoral evidence aside) and so it is time to choose:

Meg Says:
August 24th, 2008 at 12:08 pm

Thirty plus years trying to be a serious journalist and this is my reward? Screw it, I’m heading for the bahamas.

As predicted by qc, Meg indeed wins. And what does she win for so convincingly getting inside the mind of former beauty queen but also highly-experienced, award winning journalist Diane Sawyer? How about this sassy, sexy, leather-trimmed newsboy cap from Nordstrom:

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner! Looks like the terrifying twosome scared off most entrants, but two brave souls stepped up and from them one commenter has been chosen as the winner of the prestigious Last Week’s Caption Contest!

Jennie Says:
August 16th, 2008 at 10:45 am

OK son, lets try that again…One, Two, Three…

Dressed up like a million-dollar trooper
Tryin’ hard to look like Gary Cooper (super duper)
If you’re blue and you don’t know
where to go to why don’t you go
where fashion sits
Puttin’ on the Ritz

Congratulations and imaginary swag to Jennie! And what Darth-tastic, space-age swag it is, too: Cloche Vader!

What time is it? Overshare time, my friends! It’s time the ol’ raincoaster dished the dirt on her beloved Mom; and why? you ask, or perhaps you don’t but just play along, willya?

Because of this bracelet from tefsjewels on Etsy, passed along by a sharp-eyed and practical reader:

It’s designed with a charm which you move every time you nurse, so that you always know when the next feeding is due, even if the baby has been squalling like a flock of seagulls for the past ten hours straight and you’re trying to get by on two and one-half minutes sleep, a situation not unknown in households which have recently welcomed the pitter-patter of little feet. Why two of those feet never belong to a butler is one of life’s little injustices, but that’s as may be.

Should you breastfeed you can, of course, switch it from wrist to wrist. It’s flexy like that.

But what does this have to do with raincoaster’s mom? I can hear you ask or maybe not, but humour me, okay? You’ve come this far.

My mother, you see, was as absent-minded as she was over-cautious, and so as a baby I enjoyed approximately as many feedings as the entire livestock of the local zoo. If my mother had been possessed of such a piece of personal bling, I might have started life with a keener understanding of portion sizes and an easier time of it, when I finally decided to heave myself into an upright position and attempt a waddle.

Which I am sure I did only because the kitchen wasn’t going to come when I called it.

Well, the weekend has come and gone, the placenta is buried, the comments have accumulated, and it’s time to announce the winner of the Friday Caption Contest.

gemdiva Says:
August 8th, 2008 at 9:33 pm

Taking only what they could carry, The McConaughey clan set out in search of a better life and a gas station with clean bathrooms and a baby changing table.

And what virtual swag shall we hypothetically present to our champion? Obviously nothing other than the MARC BY MARC JACOBS ‘Dr. Q - Lil Riz’ Pleated Hobo bag. If she’s rolling with this packmule posse, she’ll need both hands free.