Teeny Manolo

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.

As I mentioned before, Stila was ever so generous with me, and even though I am giving away a ton of makeup, I also got to keep some for myself!

You may or may not know that I love lipstick.  Actually, I have a confession to make. I am a complete lipstick whore.  At this moment, I have approximately twenty liptsicks.  And it isn’t enough.  I will never have enough, I tell you!

Ahem… Back to the review.

When I saw the High Shine Lip Color, I knew I had to try it.  The packaging (as always) is so pretty, with little vines and leaves etched onto the inner tube. 

The lipstick itself goes on fairly lightly, it isn’t greasy or heavy.  Stila describes it as buttery, and I would have to agree. And I have to point out that there is a large difference between “shiny” and “glittery” and this has a lot of shine with not a lot of glitter.  Which is fine with me, because my days of nightclubbing are a thing of the past.  It wears well, and it has now become my favorite everyday lip color.

If you think you might want one for yourself, go and enter the Super Fantastic Stila Giveaway, for the High Shine Lip Color is just one of the many goodies in the first prize package. 

It’s time to announce the funniest caption for little Darthleen Vader here. It was a crowded, talented field, but there can be only one.

Oops, wrong speculative fiction franchise!

K. B. Says:
August 2nd, 2008 at 2:30 pm

Darth Barbie, Star Wars less-popular evil villain was best known for her awesome ability to accessorize.

Yes, newcomer K.B. takes the hypothetical i-trophy. Now, what shall we virtually present her to wear to the imaginary ceremony?

The superfantastic futuristic Giuseppe Zanotti Mirror Argento!

toothpastefordinner.com

People will start saying you don’t love your baby when they see him pathetically gumming an Arrowroot cracker. Remember when Britney was looking into getting her baby’s teeth bleached…only the baby didn’t have any teeth yet? That’s the market for these things.