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On Thursday, Megan, Stephen and I hit up the grand opening of the new TJ Maxx store on Columbus Avenue. Oh my, was it awesome. I mean awesome. I loved my earlier TJ Maxx experience (during which I bought this dress and this one), but the new store is something else entirely. Stephen went home with two Ralph Lauren pillows marked down from $120 each to $24.99 each, Megan picked up some gorgeous (and crazily inexpensive) bakeware, and I found a floral candle in stunning packaging that I would expect to be in the thirty-to-forty-dollar range for just $9.99 (hello, Xmas gift!). 

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We have no closets.

Well, OK, we have one…kind of two, if you count the fact that it has two doors, but what it really is is a four-foot long hole in our extremely narrow hallway that confounds every attempt at intelligent storage. 

Anyway, we’ve known for awhile now that a coatrack was going to be a necessary purchase, because otherwise winter coats flung haphazardly around our apartment were going to become an integral aspect of our decor. I’ve been looking around vintage stores for awhile, but honestly? The ones I’ve found have been predominantly ’70s/’80s style (and I don’t mean in a good way…I mean in a cheap-looking faux bronze way), and expensive, weirdly.

When I found this coatrack on urbanoutfitters.com, I was ecstatic. It’s $68, which given how stylish and sturdy it is isn’t bad (although shipping put it at about $84), was fairly easy to assemble (well, it looked like it was…I sort of read People while Kendrick dealt with the putting-together), and comes in a wide range of colors (we ended up choosing white because our other furniture is pretty colorful). 

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Lately lots of you have written in with queries about my skin-care regimen, so I thought I’d take a moment to discuss. I use different products in the AM and PM - always always always a moisturizer with sunscreen in the morning (Oil of Olay UV Defense, usually), and generally something a little heavier at night.

Recently, however, my skincare obsession has been Votre Vu, which I discovered at the Girls Night Out event earlier this month when I took home some product samples. I’ve used lots of expensive face and body products in my day, and this line feels just as good as the pricey stuff, while being much, much easier on the bank account.

I use their Antioxidant Eye Gelee every single morning and night - it’s refreshing and non-sticky, and doesn’t leave any gross residue that makes it difficult to apply eye makeup, which is important to me, because eye makeup is important to me. I’m also trying to be better about caring for my neck and chest area (which age even more quickly than your face), and have been using Portrait Collar Restorative Neck Creme every night before bed.

For the rest of the body, I use something called Kona Natural Body Care, which smells a little  like coconut-y sunscreen (a good thing, in my book) and can be purchased in just about any drugstore. 

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DIY Wedding Save-The-Date Postcards

A little wedding money-saving tip to start your Thursday…

For our save-the-date cards, Kendrick and I picked up a ton of inexpensive postcards (like the one pictured above) from the town where we were getting married (Ogunquit, ME). You can also scour eBay for vintage postcards of your locale - they’re often sold in bulk.

We then went to a custom stamp-making store and for $25 created a stamp with our names, the date of the wedding, and the location of the wedding…all in my handwriting, which I thought was a nice, personal touch. We stamped each postcard with the info, and sent them out. Super-easy, and super-inexpensive.

Some custom-stamp websites are here, here, and here.

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This afternoon, I headed over to RTL at the CBS studios to film a segment for Exclusiv in which I discussed Noah Cyrus’ (Miley’s little sister) “interesting” Halloween costume. (I forgot to take a picture, sorry. Next time.)

Afterwards, I stopped into the Times Square Sephora to check out the selection of false lashes. I fell in love with Makeup For Ever’s Erin lashes (above), but ultimately selected something similar to these Sephora-brand ones. I then walked up 9th Avenue to Ricky’s NYC, where I purchased some Mattese eye crystals (although it remains to be seen whether I’m dextrous enough to actually apply them). Ricky’s has an amazing selection of affordable false lashes, so if you’re still looking for the finishing touches for your costume, I’d recommend heading over to one of their many locations.


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