Rise and shine (or at least pretend)

Confession: I just joined a fitness bootcamp. With 20 lbs to lose after having my second baby, and the holidays looming ahead, it seemed necessary. The exercise is hard enough, but since my darling, sweet baby still is not sleeping through the night after 8 months, getting up at 5 is torture. Frankly, my beauty routine is less about looking fabulous and more about not looking like an extra in Dawn of the Dead.

I rely on Face Stockholm's Magic Wand to banish my under-eye circles. But check out what could be my new secret weapon: Laura Mercier's Eye Basics. They're sheer primers with a little color to brighten up your eyes. You can use as is or intensify the color with shadow. I'm all excited about Eyebright (shown), a pale blue shade that melts into your skin and makes your eyes brighter by comparison. 

I may be doing pushups, but I'll be pretty doin' it!

Scarier than the economy

Pulling your hair out wondering what's next for your 401k?
Stop and step away from the stock ticker now. Your stocks may be going down faster than your high school best friend, but given enough time it'll all bounce back up again.

To distract ourselves during all of the madness we choose not to focus on the frighteningly awful guitar playing of our inconsiderate new neighbor, but instead to jump in fright at 31 of Moviefone's Scariest Movie Moments ever (and no, the collective facial surgery of the cast of The Women does not count in this fright fest). We're also incredibly relieved not to be the only people who've seen Jacob's Ladder starring a young and dishy Tim Robbins.

So scream a little and laugh a lot, because for now- that's all we've got!

Kiss this xxx
(visit www.airkisses.com for contests, updates and announcements)

Give Us Strength

We're resisting another post about the state of our stocks (and stockings) and will instead focus on the bold, the beautiful, the muy coolio new product from B Kamins. The new Bio Maple Eyelash Fortifier is best used overnight and made for fragile thinning lashes, but can be used on overplucked brows as well.

This powerful (and pricy at $90 bucks a pop) eyelash conditioner makes it easy to flatter your flutter and contains a revitalizing complex said to combat lash loss caused by follicle aging. Loaded with peptide (the hot new buzzword in beauty) growth substances, natural plant extracts and multi-vitamins to help boost micro-circulation at the hair follicles, it's said to increase lash growth in 5-8 weeks. So much better than an eyelash perm.

Kiss this xxx
(visit www.airkisses.com for contests, updates and announcements)

Beauty and the economic beast

Scared of losing your job? Evidently not enough to back away from that department-store makeup and pricey skin treatments. According to this article in Brandweek, women are economizing elsewhere:

Sales of prestige skincare brands at high-end department stores rose 2% to $1 billion in the first half, according to NPD Group. Products costing more than $70 were up 8%; those above $150 gained 21%. Similar increases were seen in fragrances and makeup.

The article goes on to mention that the product development lifecycle of most makeup and skincare lines is about 2 years, so there's always a disconnect between the manufacturer's launch calendar and current economic conditions. (In other words, don't kill the messenger.)

The Lipstick Effect has been around since there was lipstick to buy -- something pretty for your mouth is relatively cheap compared to, say, a massage or spa treatment. But what I found interesting in this article was that people are still buying stuff that I'd put in the very expensive category (over $200), with an almost 20% increase in spending over just last year. And that a $600 Botox injection is seen as an economizing move compared to getting plastic surgery!

I'm sure there's a moral here somewhere -- but I'm guilty as charged (at least on lipstick purchases), so I'll just sit quiet here in my glass house....

Wear and Wash

Now, you know that somewhere Martha Stewart has a little black notebook (bound in the finest leather, with hand-stitched pages tinted a lovely pale eggshell using onion skins harvested from her garden) titled "Signs of the Coming Apocalypse."

So when I ran across this article on a suit you can wear in the shower, I knew I needed to write about it, just so the facts of the matter can be enumerated (suggested heading: "These Degenerate Times"). Here are the down-and-dirty deets: The suit is made to be hosed down in your shower and allowed to drip dry. This takes a few hours, but presto! No ironing needed if you hang it properly. (This will cut severely into the profits of Martha's mangle business, I'm thinking.)

A spokesman called the suit "the ideal solution for busy career men and women who want the convenience of easy-care clothes without the cost and hassle of regular dry cleaning." Evidently the suit is a salaryman's dream: there are almost a quarter-million of the suits in Japan!

Kiss this xxx
(visit www.airkisses.com for contests, updates and announcements)

Someday, Subway

The New York City Subway system is famous for getting you where you need to go, but as far as looking great while doing it, not so much. The stations are looking a bit peaked these days with scary moldy looking things and scary rusty looking things and multitudes of scary advertising looking things, but wait- what about the gorgeous subway art? No silly, not the illegal and awful looking graftiti tags of years gone by, but the spectacular posters and public art in the subway cars and stations.

We're jonesing for one of Tim Zeltner's Coney Island prints.

Fancy yourself one of the artsy underground? Then heed this call and apply to become one of the artists displaying their work for the bridging the tunnels crowd. View a current list of subway art here.

Kiss this xxx
(visit www.airkisses.com for contests, updates and announcements)

Sui Degeneres -- Ellen's the newest Cover Girl

Read all about it! Ellen Degeneres is the new face of Cover Girl. Three reasons why this rocks:

1. Ellen is beautiful. She's also gay, really funny, and a newlywed, but check out that pic. She's gorgeous.
2. Ellen is... FIFTY years old. (That's L in Roman numerals. She actually embodies the L-word! Awesome.)
3. Her contract (a million or more, we hope) means that we'll be buying makeup from a woman we will always be laughing with, not at. (Paris, Linds and company? Take the hint.)

Here's hoping more cosmetics companies line up behind real women with real faces -- and let's toast to more campaigns celebrating an "ordinary" beauty that's so much more captivating than the manufactured, preternaturally-smooth headshots of spreads past.

Kiss this xxx
(visit www.airkisses.com for contests, updates and announcements)