New Website Alert!

I just launched a new website called a blissful interlude.  In addition to some personal musings on finding those blissful moments in life, the site features stories and profiles on folks who are making a difference in the world, however big or small.

The first story is a feature of Andrew Taylor, co-chef and co-owner of the renowned Portland, Maine restaurant, Eventide Oyster Co.

Stay up to date on new posts by subscribing to the website here, like on Facebook, and follow on Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.  New features will be posted at least once a week!

Happy reading and stay blissful!

Sarah Woehler

I am my hair.

As women, our hair is as much of our identity as our mind, our voice, our soul.  More than just a crown to cover what contains the most defining part of our personality (our brain), our hair serves as a vehicle of expression.  Whether that changes by whim or mood, hair is far more than just an accessory – it is a representation of who we are.

My hair has always been my thing, but it wasn’t until about five years ago that I experimented with it in ways I never did before.  Before then, I never realized how changeable hair could be, and upon that discovery, how fun and exhilarating it was to change it on a whim.  After all, I would often say, “Hair grows,” just like you. 

Five years ago I chopped off my hair into a super-short pixie.  Most men hated it; women loved it.  I kept the pixie for about six months until I decided I missed my long locks and realized that my thick tresses were more manageable in long form, so I began the painful process of growing it out, entering several phases of worse-than-teen-angst awkwardness. 

After that, I decided I wanted to highlight it to return to that pale, cool-toned blonde I had when I was five.  So I did.  And then I experimented with going lighter, then darker, and then back again.  Now I am closer to my natural hair color with swaths of buttery blonde highlights blended throughout.  

Fast forward to a year ago I had a far too belated discovery that my hair, which I always thought was naturally unyieldingly frizzy, was actually naturally curly when not blown out and then straightened into oblivion. I was surprised that I liked my hair in its organic state.

Congruous with undergoing a phase of embracing and discovering who I was as a single girl I found myself letting nature do its thing more often than not.  To my surprise, people responded positively to it.  Men told me it was sexy; women told me I looked like Shakira.  These were not primary reasons for rocking the curly locks, of course, especially since previously I felt that straightening my hair made me prettier (which brings to mind Beyonce's song, "Pretty Hurts"), so I won’t deny that they were comforting things to hear.  But the biggest compliment was when someone said to me, “Your curly hair is just so you,” to which I thought for a second, and said, “Yeah, you’re right – it is.”   

As I’ve grown up and undergone life changes and challenges, my curly hair has become a means for my own personal evolution, for stepping out of my shell, for revealing my vulnerability, and saying, “Here I am.  Take it or leave it.”

Five Things

• I came home late last night to a mailbox full of  thick, glossy "September issues" and it was as if someone had given me a thick wad of 20s and said, "Here.  Go have fun."  Needless to say, September is a great month if you're a magazine whore like me.  (By the by, did you see Oprah's hair on the cover of O?)

• Beyond staying in my PJs as long as I feel like today, I'm planning on catching up on some music videos.  And while I know both the songs quite well, I've been informed that the videos to Justin Timberlake's "Mirrors" and Katy Perry's "Wide Awake" are current essentials.
• It's been a couple weeks since I've been using the Clarisonic Plus, and I have to say: it really is all they say it is.  After having the system on my wish list for a couple years, I finally went for it after reading repeated interviews in one week about how the Clarisonic was the one face product they couldn't live without.  I've been using the sensitive brush head so far and it provides the perfect amount of exfoliation for daily or every other day use.  My skin has never felt so smooth.
• I am one of the few females in the world who dislikes weddings and all the hoopla associated with them.  (And I realize this makes me a curmudgeon of sorts.)  A bachelorette party, on the other hand, when suited to the bride's personality rather than the generic mainstream standard of our time, is a festive and important prelude to the bride's big day.  But why must they be only a one-time event? 
• Though I consider myself a reflective person, when it comes to making decisions I typically let instinct and intuition be my guide and just do it.  In some cases, I wind up making decisions very quickly, in other cases, sometimes rashly.  On the whole, though, my decision-making hasn't failed me, yet anyway.  This wonderful post on how decision-making should be viewed as an experiment, rather than something that needs to be overthought (when there is never a predetermined outcome to a decision anyway), was illuminating and insightful, and well, made me feel a little more justified in my approach to decisions.

The Power of Scent

The fact is that as with all things beautiful and sensorial, I have a love affair with perfume.   Like music, fragrances transport us to the time period when we initially smelled them.  As a child, I remember my first perfumes in perfect chronological order: Tinkerbell, Love’s Baby Soft, Charlie White, and CK1.  In high school, I wore (and still wear) body spray, predominantly from The Body Shop (White Musk is still a constant standby), and then later in high school I gravitated toward deeper, sexier scents, like Calvin Klein’s Obsession and Gucci Rush.  Of all these, Gucci Rush is still one of my most favorite scents of all time. 

While I love to wear perfume and to smell good for myself – and hopefully for others – what’s most powerful is the smell of the opposite sex.  I remember going on a first date when I was 13 with an older high school boy, which was way too young to be going on a first date, let alone with an older boy, but I digress.  He drove a Jeep, smoked pot, and had curly gelled hair, and wasn’t much for words, but his smell, oh his smell.  The fact that he wasn’t my type didn’t matter, because he smelled amazing.  His signature scent was Drakkar Noir, a scent that, according to advertisers Ron Beasley and Marcel Danesi “obviously appeals to the dark, macabre, sinister side of masculine sexual fantasies.”  A few years ago, I took a whiff of the fragrance at a department store, and was surprised that it didn’t smell anything the way I remembered my date had smelled.

 

 

Since then, I’ve learned about the anatomy of a fragrance:  the top, middle, and base notes; the dry down; and sillage.  Most likely, what was so memorable to me about this my date's cologne was the dry down – the revealing of the base note – rather than the initial top note that I had smelled straight from the bottle a few years ago.  Perfumes have depth the way that people do, the top note being the initial impression; the middle note (also known as the heart) being one’s personality; and the base note being the final, long-lasting impression, the component that brings depth to the perfume or person.  My date may not have had the greatest depth of personality, but he certainly smelled like he did. 

Aside from how fragrances make us feel about ourselves or about the opposite sex, scents create mood, atmosphere, a feeling.  Growing up, Estee Lauder was my mom’s go-to cosmetic line, and she often wore Beautiful.  While I still consider it to be a lovely scent, I myself could never wear it because it is her scent, even if she no longer wears it.  Whenever she got free samples she would shell out the ones she didn’t want to me, usually peacock blue eye shadow or candy apple red lipstick, and sometimes fragrance samples, that I could only play with at home. 

White Linen was one fragrance sample that she passed along to me, and since it was too adult for me to wear at the time, I used it to create a maternal atmosphere in my playhouse (which was really just a shed with a tiny, single-paned window) by spraying clouds of it everywhere.  Every spring when I opened my miniature house, it smelled as motherly as a shed-cum-playhouse should smell: like cedar, honey, and amber, or, in my mind, like a real woman’s house.  Now that I have a big-girl house to call my own, I love to burn candles, the melted wax emitting the scent of fresh balsam or cinnamon.  I also enjoy creating an atmosphere of natural scents at home, like the savory scent of a pot roast cooking in the oven or the smell of clean clothes pulled straight from the dryer.

I think what makes life most pleasurable is exploring and experiencing our senses to the fullest – the art of smelling and listening are such beautiful gifts, especially when taken to a deeper level.  Do you enjoy fragrance?  If so, what are your favorites? 

Hello, Spray Tan.

I shun laying out in the sun and UV tanning beds, because, let’s be honest – I’m too effing vain for that.  Premature wrinkles and skin cancer?  That’s for the birds.  As a result, I’m forced to embrace my alabaster pallor, even if I do think a little color is a necessary accessory for bikinis and sundresses.  With summer upon us, I decided it wouldn't hurt to go Hollywood for a day and see what this spray-tan business is all about.

So I did as I always do before embarking on a new situation by doing my research.  Specifically, I Googled, “What to do before getting a spray tan.”  All signs pointed to exfoliating and not applying deodorant and greasy lotions, to which I heeded. 

At the salon, Terry the Technician walked me through the process, which included getting undressed to the point that I was comfortable and standing on the white towel on the floor.  She said people wear whatever they’re comfortable with, which is either going completely nude to wearing a bathing suit. 

See?  Tan lines are hot.  Bar thinks so too.

Terry started spraying me using an airbrush, having me turn and lift my arms in varying degrees.  Once she was finished spraying, which took about five minutes (I made sure to tell her to go light on my face so I didn’t look like “tanning mom”), she instructed me to stand for about 10 minutes while the tanner dried.  Afterward, she checked in on me, touched my skin to make sure it wasn’t still tacky, and told me to wait to shower until the next morning.  She said that when I did shower to dry myself lightly with a towel – helpful advice considering I hadn’t yet researched “What to do after getting a spray tan.”  I dressed back into my post-spray-tan uniform -- sweats and a loose t-shirt that I didn’t care about getting stained, and black flip flops. 

When I got home I admired my head-to-toe glow, which I haven’t had in years since the tanning-booth tan I got when I was a silly 17-year-old prepping for prom.  Remarkably, there was no orange hue or icky self-tan smell and it actually looked really natural and passable for a "real tan."

I understand the temptation to tan, because everyone looks better with a little glow.  The beauty of a spray tan is that it imposes the same kind of glow that a suntan does, but without the potential for accelerated wrinkles and skin cancer.  But at $30 (plus tip) a pop, though, to have it done right, it’s not something that every person’s budget can accommodate, especially on a weekly basis when the tan fades.  But who needs to be bronzed all the time? 

I think a spray tan is a perfect once-in-a-while treat, especially when you want to wear a cute sundress or bikini, and are like me who pretty regularly dons the SPF 30 every time you step outside.   Long story short: you'll definitely find me getting my spray tan on again. 

Humble Review: The Perfect Lipstick

I admit it. I'm a girlie girl (albeit a pretty opinionated one) in all the cliched senses of the word. I like clothes; I like perfume; I like handbags; I like magazines. And, for the record I don't really care if there are pink Legos marketed to girls, because honestly, I like the color pink. (But, I also like the colors red, blue, and yellow, too, and in this day and age, aren't we raising our girls and boys to know that they are free to play with whatever colored Legos they want to play with, be they pink or primary-colored? Despite my girlie-girl bent, I played with the traditional primary-colored ones as a child -- although I probably would've chosen pink ones had they been available at the time.) But, I am digressing here, and dating myself, because what I really want to write about is lipstick.

Natural lipstick.

I found The One this past weekend shopping in Boston. From the Pure Color line of lipsticks by Estee Lauder, The One is a creamy, moisture-packed stick in a neutral color called Rose Tea (how perfect is that?) that complements my pale skin perfectly. As soon as I applied it at Saks, the sales lady said, "Wow, that really brings out your eyes." That's what they're supposed to say, but my husband agreed. What really sold me was the way the lipstick made me feel: sexy, sassy, and confident, without looking like I was trying too hard, the way that wearing bright red lipstick, false eyelashes, or stiletto heels can seem.

At $25, the lipstick was probably a bit of a splurge, but for something that I will wear on an almost daily basis, I say it's worth it, because what the hell -- it makes me feel like a million bucks! With a subtle apricot scent, the lipstick is moisturizing while imparting a nice long-wearing pigment on the lips. It's the perfect marriage of special and practical. 

Estee Lauder Pure Color Lipstick.

Growing up, my mom always used Estee Lauder, and now that I'm an adult I find myself drawn to the brand for certain products (namely the foundation and serums, and well, now the lipsticks too). While I can sometimes be a product rebel (not wanting to use something that people I know already use) I'm now compelled to Estee Lauder because the line offers what I've discovered the lipstick to be -- that appeal of both the special and the practical.

Now what would really knock the lipstick out of the park is if it had a little flip-out mirror for on-the-go application, but that would probably be asking for too much, now wouldn't it? Oh, well. A girl can dream.