whet your whistle!

so here are some upcoming features to whet your LWS whistles, toot-toot!

- lioco wine
- dry shampoo report
- a beer off - racer 5, ranger and pliny the elder
- leather bag restoration
- a fond remembrance of candy from the 70's

catch you on the flippy, long weekend stylers!

she she she shines on . . .

cherie currie, lead singer of the first all girl group the runaways, has an updated version of her "neon angel: a memoir of a runaway" biography that drops today. complete with a forward by fellow runaway band member/guitarist extraordinaire joan jett, "neon angel" chronicles the runaways' story from cherie's point of view. complete with the requisite sex, drugs and of course, rock and roll. because what's a biography without those things?

available currently in hardcover from amazon.

we love rock and roll indeed.

keep on keepin' on long weekend stylers!

back in black

like most people, you probably have almost an entire wardrobe consisting of mostly dark clothes. and what is the absolute bummer about dark colored clothes? well, eventually, like the rose on the vine, like beauty, dark clothes fade.
completely wiping out the svelte and stylish factor in one fell swoop and relegatating that particular piece of dark clothing to either sleepwear or grubby, cleaning-out-the-garage wear.

oh, the betrayal.

rejoice dark colors! your time has come. while we're not sure why this particular laundry breakthough has taken this long to materialize, it is finally here: laundry detergent specifically for dark clothes.

stateside, both woolite and cheer have created special formulations for dark colored fabrics. you can try cheer dark colorguard laundry detergent, whose job it is specifically hold on to those dark dyes and prevent them from migrating to other, nearby pieces of clothing. woolite's entry into this new laundry detergent category is dark laundry fabric wash which promises to "maintain the look of your dark and black clothes" by preventing fading. both brands are available nationwide. across the pond, the UK has persil, with their formula that touts less fading on darker clothes. in france, look for MIR black to handle washing your deepest and darkest.

for those of you on fiscal lockdown, another effective and more DIY way to help "save" your darks from fading:

a. separate dark from light colors prior to washing

b. use cold water each and every time you wash darks

c. add 1 cup of table salt or vinegar to dark colored garments when washing dark items for the very first time (like a virgin!)

so fight the power, fight that powers that fade.

and on that note, we patiently await for the other great laundry innovation of the century: laundry that does itself.

konichiwa mochi!

a recent trip to cultural food phenom, yogurtland - which can kind of be likened to the fiscally challenged girl's version of pinkberry - brought me to try mochi rice cake pieces.

what in the world are mochi?

mochi are little pieces of rice cake, dusted with a very light sprinkling of fine powdered sugar. the particular ones i am referring to are like little short and stout opaque white cylinders. i had seen a little cup piled high at pinkberry but had absolutely no idea what those little cylinders could be. styrofoam? a gummy bearlike substance or a hard candy? sweet or sour? a japanese version of cap'n crunch? too afraid to look like some topping newbie to my pinkberry swirler, i just ask for the usual double raspberries.

enter yogurtland. yougurtland has at least 12 flavors on tap daily (a taste of today's offerings: dutch chocolate, madagascar vanilla, red velvet cake batter, green tea, creamy strawberry, pistachio, tart, cookies and cream, pomegranate and dulce de leche - there are a few more but memory is cloudy at the time of this writing), not to mention an insane topping bar that covers all the taste groups, chocolate, fruit, cookies, candy bars, chocolate, sprinkles, cheesecake, brownies, chocolate, chocolate sauce, cookie dough bites, mochi, coconut, gummies (worms AND bears), and nerds. not the bespeckled kind, the candy.

and amongst all the mouthwatering toppings, there sat the mochi - giving me a knowing wink from its little lucite bowl and saying slyly, "hey long weekend style. try me. i'm delicious. go ahead. just a spoonful. there you go. the first one is free. you'll be back for more. i know it."

so i tenatively placed a small heaping tablespoon of mochi topped my mini kilamanjaro of pomegranate yogurt and set off to the register to pay.

yogurtland is a pay-by-the-ounce establishment and 30 cents an ounce at that. my little cup of creamy cold goodness gets onto the scale and out pops the price for today's yogurty excursion: $2.10. $2.10 for what appears to be a large pomegranate yogurt topped with mochi rice cake pieces, oreo cookies, chocolate chips and smashed kit kat bar.

my children, bellies full of hunger from an afternoon photo shoot with a friend, eyeball my specially designed yogurt creation, despite having their own gargantuan cups of yogurt goodness of their own choosing sitting right in front of them. my daughter coyly asks to try a mochi. upon seeing his twin sister score one, brother decides he must also partake.

the verdict? now everyone's on board. mochi - a delicious, chewy jelly/gummy goodness that is really more about substance than flavor. the mochi rice cake bits seem to melt in your mouth, probably accounting for some of the novel, fun factor involved in eating them. being more of a neutral flavor, mochi rice cake pieces will probably be a perfect topping compliment to whatever flavor yogurt makes your socks roll up and down.

and long weekend stylers, be warned, mochi rice cake pieces are absolutely addictive.

i am already planning how i can get my hands on that entire lucite bowl of mochi at yogurtland without drawing astonished stares from customers and cashier alike.

eraser

ok, so i am notorious for having dark undereye circles. and i mean, deep dark looks like i went 12 rounds every day of my life dark circles. i have tried passing them off as allergy shiners but alas, when allergy season has passed, the dark circles remain. i think it may be hereditary but i more blame my kids who have stolen my youth with their up-all-night unsanctioned antics.

i have tried literally everything short of surgery to lighten these babies as i feel they make me look sooooooooooooooooo tired. and old. and sad.

enter erase paste by benefit. the clouds parted. the heavens sang. and my deep dark undereye circles soon became a thing of the past.

available in 3 tones, i opt for the middle one which is actually lighter than anything named "medium" should be. the smallest dab conceals/obliterates/makes history of these heinous dark circles. using a ring finger (this being the weakest digit and the one least likely to cause much damage to the delicate eye area), push in the erase paste, rolling finger from one side to the other, kinda like getting fingerprinted. this gentle pushing warms the erase paste and blends it into the skin like butter. i usually top with a darker (read: closer to my skin tone) concealer from rimmel, that sadly is only available in the UK and voila! hasta la bye-bye dark circles. a brand-new me.

and when a co-worker truthfully determines your age to be "no older than 28" - you know you've got a keeper on your hands. not the co-worker. the erase paste.

erase paste by benefit, $26 available in 3 shades online @ www.sephora.com or at benefit counters and stores nationwide.

the nose knows

hey hey hey ladies! as a shoutout to the 70's, just wondering which "scent" category defined you:

a). charlie
b). jean nate
c). love's baby soft
d). enjoli - you brought home the bacon AND fried it up in a pan

and for you dashing gentlemen out there:

a). old spice
b). canoe, canoe (remember the ad? "C" - c'mon over, "A" anytime", "N" - now? wink-wink, nudge-nudge)
c). nothing baby - as of this morning, i'm irish spring fresh

candyfreak

a long weekend staffer read this one awhile ago but it recently appeared on our radar (again) as we are doing a future feature on candy bars from the late, great 70's.

"candyfreak" by aptly named author steve almond is a chocolately, gummy, gooey, delicious adventure through all the halls of candy. steve also goes across country to discover the sugary underbelly of some of america's smaller candy makers, who, sadly, are a dying breed up against today's big candy players (hershey's, cadbury's, et al) vying for shelf space in a real life game of candyland.

"candy freak" casts fond remembrances upon some of childhood favorites such as the marathon bar (who can forget chocolate and carmel goodness braided together complete with a ruler printed on the wrapper), bottle caps, razzles (a candy or a gum?), abba zabba and the chunky bar (disappointingly raisin and nut filled square hunk of milk chocolate. nuts and raisins are so NOT treats LWS readers) as well as pondering the coconut flake's participation in the candy market, the texture of which steve likens to dry skin.

as aforementioned, steve road trips it across the continental united states, discovering local candy bars made by small, mostly family run candy companies. the twin bing by palmer - they of the easter candy variety - which looks like king kong's ahem, balls, a cherry swathed in a coating of chocolate and filled with crushed nuts. the old faithful by owyhee, boyer's mallo cup - a marshmallow version of a reese's, peanut chews, the goo-goo cluster - a mash-up of chocolate, marshmallows and peanuts and the interesting nougatty-something filled idaho spud.

steve writes passionately about candy, almost like a longtime obsessed lover. or junkie. he apparently thinks about candy at least once an hour, he routinely has pounds of candy of all varieties at his finertips scattered throughout his home and an undisclosed warehouse plus steve writes funny. and we swear that is his real name, not a nom de plume.

just a word of caution: "candy freak" will make you hungry. hungry for candy. you'll be like a zombie but instead of brains, you'll want candy candy and more candy. almond's descriptions are so absoutely spot on, detailed and just plain good that you can almost taste what he's writing about. "candy freak" also makes for a great gift but do take care to include a very healthy supply of chocolate/gummy/carmel/nougat/peanut/coconut bars of goodness for the intended recipient.

check out steve's website for more of his wacky candy fueled humor: www.stevealmond.com/candyfreak.html

and mama says don't forget to brush.