You've Got Mail: Kathleen Kelly in The Shop Around the Corner

                                                             

                                                               

You've Got Mail is on my fall movie list, and it's one of the only successful remakes in movie history. Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks were magical together in the 90's, and You've Got Mail was their second best movie after Sleepless in Seattle.  Besides a beautiful NYC in autumn, I'm kind of obsessed with Kathleen and Christina's wardrobe of tights, chunky heels, cardigans, and turtleneck sweaters throughout the movie. It's much easier to recreate the makeup than raid your closet for 90's throwback clothing, so here is how to do just that.


First, I've lit an oud and moss candle, so my home is smelling moss-y.

                                                                     

Start with your beautiful skin that's clean and soft. This time of year you want moisturized skin before applying makeup.

1. Kathleen and Christina both have natural foundation. My three favorites to achieve that are Bourjois Healthy Mix, Guerlain Lingerie de Peau, or Rimmel Wake Me Up. Just use your hands, or any way that you like best. The goal is that it looks like good skin. Conceal with Maybelline Fit Me. Then add some powder where you need it. I think people often go overboard on powder thinking it will stop shine during the day. That's what blotting papers are for, or a handkerchief.

2. Do what you will with your brows, but does anyone want 90's brows back? I personally do not. Use a soft brow powder to fill in any gaps, or a pencil to fix the shape. On to the eyes... I had to use my trusty Viseart 01 matte for this look, but Sonia Kashuk's Eye on Neutral Matte Palette works too. You need a skin tone shade to sweep all over your lid, a very natural crease shade, and a dark espresso one for the liner. In that order. Then curl your lashes and sweep on some mascara.

3. Apply a tawny blush (we loved tawny in the 90's, and still do), like Clinique Soft Pressed in Totally Tawny.

4. There are so many lip options. Clinique Almost Lipstick in Black Honey, Revlon Super Lustrous in Rum Raisin, Revlon Toast of New York, MAC Spice It Up, MAC Capricious, or Bobbi Brown Art Stick in Cassis.  Kathleen's lipsticks ranged from pinky nudes to spice, and Christina's were bolder berries and reds.

Now go buy some pencils and sharpen them! That's the smell of fall in NY.

Fall recipe: Apple Crisp

                                                                 

I wanted to share a recipe I recently found that's perfect for this time of year. Some days you just want a warm apple crisp with some vanilla ice cream, and to eat it without leaving home. The original recipe can be found here, but I made some changes for my tastes and preferences.


Ingredients for the topping:

1/2 cup self rising flour (if you use all purpose, add 1/2 teaspoon baking powder)

1/2 cup old fashioned oats

1/2 cup light brown sugar

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

dash of salt

1/3 cup unsalted butter, diced into small chunks.


Ingredients for the filling:

One can of Lucky Leaf Premium Apple Pie Filling

1 splash of lemon juice (a splash is less than a teaspoon)

2 tablespoons of melted butter

3 tablespoons milk

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract (organic)



Directions:  I don't like whole oats in anything, so I took all of the dry topping ingredients and blended them in my Cuisinart food processor until they were more finely milled. I then cut the butter separately and just dropped it into the mix. Put it in the fridge until you're done with the filling.

I then poured the apple filling into my dish (either an 8x8 or 9x9 size will work).

I put my lemon juice in the Cuisinart, and then the butter. If you add your milk to lemon juice it will curdle, so always add the butter second! Then add the vanilla and mix until well blended. I pour this over the filling, and then sprinkle on the topping and put it in the oven.



Bake your apple crisp at 375 degrees for 30 minutes. I like my apple crisp hot when it's a cool day, so as soon as it comes out of the oven I top it with ice cream and dig in. 

                                                                       

My homemade pumpkin spice syrup

                                                                               

                                                                 




It's the time of year for pumpkin spice everything, but myself and many friends of mine don't care for the extreme flavor in most brands. The coffees are too sweet, spiced, or just taste artificial. I created this recipe so we can all enjoy pumpkin spice again.



Ingredients:

1 & 1/2 cups water

1 cup of sugar (or 1/2 cup if you prefer less)

1 cinnamon stick

2 TB of pumpkin puree (I use canned pumpkin)

1/4 TS ginger

1/4 TS cloves (optional)

1/4 TS cinnamon

1/4 TS nutmeg

You will need:

Measuring cups

A blender, or a Cuisinart machine that can liquify ingredients.

Measuring spoons

A pan to simmer the syrup.


Start by putting your water and sugar in your pan and letting the sugar melt. Allow it to simmer until you can no longer see sugar granules. Add a cinnamon stick and let it sit for a few minutes.


Put your remaining ingredients in your machine and puree them. Once the water mixture is very warm (but not boiling) take out the cinnamon stick and pour some of it into the machine to liquify everything. It should start to look like a syrup after about 15-20 seconds. If you need more sugar water you can add it to make this smooth. There shouldn't be a single lump in the syrup. Pour everything back into the pan and let it simmer on your stove with the cinnamon stick for 8 minutes. Allow your syrup to cool and place it in a container. This will last in your fridge for up to four weeks. I use a glass salad dressing jar with a lid so it is easier to pour into coffee.

You can add this to any type of coffee, but I like it with a shot or two of espresso, steamed milk, and some froth. Let me know if this version of pumpkin spice tastes better to you!

Autumn reading list for 2016

                                                                   



 It's that time of the year again to get some cocoa, a blanket, and curl up by a fire. Here are twelve books I recommend for the fall season.



The Women in the Walls by Amy Lukavics

"Lucy Acosta's mother died when she was three. Growing up in a Victorian mansion in the middle of the woods with her cold, distant father, she explored the dark hallways of the estate with her cousin, Margaret. They're inseparable—a family.  

When her aunt Penelope, the only mother she's ever known, tragically disappears while walking in the woods surrounding their estate, Lucy finds herself devastated and alone. Margaret has been spending a lot of time in the attic. She claims she can hear her dead mother's voice whispering from the walls. Emotionally shut out by her father, Lucy watches helplessly as her cousin's sanity slowly unravels. But when she begins hearing voices herself, Lucy finds herself confronting an ancient and deadly legacy that has marked the women in her family for generations. "

The Hound of Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle

"Holmes and Watson are faced with their most terrifying case yet. The legend of the devil-beast that haunts the moors around the Baskerville family's home warns the descendants of that ancient clan never to venture out in those dark hours when the power of evil is exalted. Now, the most recent Baskerville, Sir Charles, is dead and the footprints of a giant hound have been found near his body. Will the new heir meet the same fate?"

The Complete Stories and Poems by Edgar Allan Poe


"This single volume brings together all of Poe's stories and poems, and illuminates the diverse and multifaceted genius of one of the greatest and most influential figures in American literary history."

The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury

"A fast-moving, eerie...tale set on Halloween night. Eight costumed boys running to meet their friend Pipkin at the haunted house outside town encounter instead the huge and cadaverous Mr. Moundshroud. As Pipkin scrambles to join them, he is swept away by a dark Something, and Moundshroud leads the boys on the tail of a kite through time and space to search the past for their friend and the meaning of Halloween. After witnessing a funeral procession in ancient Egypt, cavemen discovering fire, Druid rites, the persecution of witches in the Dark Ages, and the gargoyles of Notre Dame, they catch up with the elusive Pipkin in the catacombs of Mexico, where each boy gives one year from the end of his life to save Pipkin's. Enhanced by appropriately haunting black-and-white drawings."

The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde

"This is Oscar Wilde's tale of the American family moved into a British mansion, Canterville Chase, much to the annoyance its tired ghost. The family -- which refuses to believe in him -- is in Wilde's way a commentary on the British nobility of the day -- and on the Americans, too. The tale, like many of Wilde's, is rich with allusion, but ends as sentimental romance. "

Bird Box by Josh Malerman

"Something is out there, something terrifying that must not be seen. One glimpse of it, and a person is driven to deadly violence. No one knows what it is or where it came from.

Five years after it began, a handful of scattered survivors remains, including Malorie and her two young children. Living in an abandoned house near the river, she has dreamed of fleeing to a place where they might be safe. Now that the boy and girl are four, it's time to go, but the journey ahead will be terrifying: twenty miles downriver in a rowboat--blindfolded--with nothing to rely on but her wits and the children’s trained ears. One wrong choice and they will die. Something is following them all the while, but is it man, animal, or monster?

Interweaving past and present, Bird Box is a snapshot of a world unraveled that will have you racing to the final page."

Hallowe'en Party by Agatha Christie

"A teenage murder witness is drowned in a tub of apples... At a Hallowe'en party, Joyce—a hostile thirteen-year-old—boasts that she once witnessed a murder. When no-one believes her, she storms off home. But within hours her body is found, still in the house, drowned in an apple-bobbing tub. That night, Hercule Poirot is called in to find the 'evil presence'. But first he must establish whether he is looking for a murderer or a double-murderer... "

Dark Harvest by Norman Partridge

"Halloween, 1963. They call him the October Boy, or Ol' Hacksaw Face, or Sawtooth Jack. Whatever the name, everybody in this small Midwestern town knows who he is. How he rises from the cornfields every Halloween, a butcher knife in his hand, and makes his way toward town, where gangs of teenage boys eagerly await their chance to confront the legendary nightmare. Both the hunter and the hunted, the October Boy is the prize in an annual rite of life and death.

Pete McCormick knows that killing the October Boy is his one chance to escape a dead-end future in this one-horse town. He's willing to risk everything, including his life, to be a winner for once. But before the night is over, Pete will look into the saw-toothed face of horror--and discover the terrifying true secret of the October Boy . . ."

The Witching Hour by Anne Rice

"On the veranda of a great New Orleans house, now faded, a mute and fragile woman sits rocking. And the witching hour begins...

Demonstrating once again her gift for spellbinding storytelling and the creation of legend, Anne Rice makes real for us a great dynasty of witches - a family given to poetry and incest, to murder and philosophy, a family that over the ages is itself haunted by a powerful, dangerous, and seductive being.

A hypnotic novel of witchcraft and the occult across four centuries, by the spellbinding, bestselling author of The Vampire Chronicles. "

The Voices by F.R. Tallis

"In the scorching summer of 1976—the hottest on record—Christopher Norton, his wife Laura and their young daughter Faye settle into their new home in north London.


The faded glory of the Victorian house is the perfect place for Norton, a composer of film soundtracks, to build a recording studio of his own. But soon in the long, oppressively hot nights, Laura begins to hear something through the crackle of the baby monitor. First, a knocking sound. Then come the voices.


For Norton, the voices mark an exciting opportunity. Putting his work aside, he begins the project of a lifetime—a grand symphony incorporating the voices—and becomes increasingly obsessed with one voice in particular. Someone who is determined to make themselves heard . . . "

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson has a new cover from Penguin books. Haunted houses will always be my favorite of the horror genre. 

"First published in 1959, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House has been hailed as a perfect work of unnerving terror. It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a "haunting"; Theodora, his lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering its powers—and soon it will choose one of them to make its own."

The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe

"The Fall of the House of Usher" recounts the terrible events that befall the last remaining members of the once-illustrious Usher clan before it is -- quite literally -- rent asunder. With amazing economy, Poe plunges the reader into a state of deliciously agonizing suspense. It's a must-read for fans of the golden era of horror writing. "

Autumn reading list

I meant to post this weeks ago, but better late than never.



1. Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ray Bradbury

2. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Washington Irving

3. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier

4. The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson

5. The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde

6. Practical Magic, Alice Hoffman

7. Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte

8. The Secret History, Donna Tartt

9. The Witches of Eastwick, John Updike

10. Silence for the Dead, Simone St. James

Time in a bottle: October 2015 favorites

                                                        Fashion and style inspirations:

I'm drawn to three colors this fall. Moss, cognac, and black. 

                                                                                  

Candice Swanepoel wearing the Avalon bodysuit. 

Reformation Avalon bodysuit in Black Velvet, Jewel Velvet, and Mossy Velvet. 

                                                       

Boots:

                                        

                                           Sam Edelman Petty boots in suede moss 

                                           

                                           Matisse Brooke Chelsea boots in tan

                                                                      

                           
                                         

                                                                         Perfume:

                                                              Guerlain Shalimar

                                                              Commodity Book and Wool 

                                                             

                                                 

                                                             

                                                                            Hair care:

                                           Suave Almond & Shea Butter shampoo and conditioner 

                                                           

                                                 Elizabeth & James Nirvana Black- dry shampoo

                                                        

                

Skin care:

Sunday Riley Blue Moon Tranquility Cleansing Balm

Sunday Riley Good Genes 

Peter Thomas Roth Pumpkin Enzyme Mask

Raw coconut oil

Skyn Iceland Artic facial oil

Body care:

Yes to Coconut oil body wash

           Pacifica Kona Coffee and Sugar Detox Scrub                    

          

                                                              

Foundation: 

                  Illuminaire Mattifying Mineral Foundation     

         

                                                            

                                                                     

  Concealer:
NARS Radiant Creamy Concealer

 Blusher:

Chantecaille Protect the Wolves blush in Ella

MAC Burnt Pepper

Tom Ford Savage

RMS Lip2Cheek in Diabolique 

                                        

           

 Highlighter:
H & M Halo Illuminiser in Champagne Gold and Delicate Pearl

  Eyeshadow:
Urban Decay Lounge
Make Up For Ever M644
Milani Bella Khaki
NARS Steven Klein shadow in Stud
& Other Stories Gante Sage, Shetland Brown, and Lockram Cactus

Chantecaille Protect the Wolves trio palette

  

 Eyeliner:
Bobbi Brown shadow in Smoke 
Urban Decay Stash
L'Oreal Voluminous Smoldering in black

     Mascara:
Guerlain Cils d'Enfer So Volume Maxi Lash

                                      

Lipstick: 
Bite Frozen Berries collection in Plum and Black Cherry

L'Oreal Cinnamon Toast and Raisin Rapture 

Too Faced Melted in Chocolate Cherries

Maybelline Crazy for Coffee (a match for Liv Tyler in Empire Records)



Lip balm:
Lipstick Queen Belle Epoque in Wine

       Nail Colour:

Zoya Ember

Essie Leggy Legend

Automne makeup: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

                                                                       

                                                                     


This post was inspired by the Getting Cheeky  'Inspired by Literature' posts. I found them so interesting and wanted to match my own autumn colored cosmetics with a classic tale. I am a big fan of Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and have chosen it for my first post. A ghost story set in the fall of 1790 and loved by generations. I hope this inspires others to play with fall colors, try some new products, or even read the book.


The story begins with the setting of Sleepy Hollow NY. The autumn leaves, golden hay, the Hudson River flowing close by, and smoke from chimneys. Cool and sweet autumn just before the first snow comes. The countryside is beautiful and rich in color. From twilight till dawn a misty fog covers the ground. It's the perfect time for a restless ghost to roam the land.

The beautiful Hudson River Valley. 

                                                                             

           The fairest of fair, Katrina. A coquette and rosy lip and cheek with glowing skin. 

                                               Bite Beauty High Pigment Pencil in Tannin
                                               Stila Convertible Color in Poppy
                                               Bobbi Brown Art Stick in Cassis
                                               Becca Shimmering Skin Perfector in Moonstone
                                               Bite Agave Lip Mask in Smashed

The autumn leaves and amber fire. 

Clockwise

Make Up For Ever palette 1: m644 Fawn, me840 Pink Chrome, and m844 Burgundy

Make Up For Ever palette 2: me554 Gunmetal, d320 Golden Khaki, and m738 Auburn

MAC Sumptuous Olive

MAC Antiqued

ELF  Burnt Plum

Warm and toasted neutrals.

Becca Mineral Blush in Songbird

Revlon Toast of New York

   Nars Audacious Lipstick in Audrey

MAC Lipstick in Chili

Shea Moisture Blush in Varkala Spice

Burberry Eyeshadow in Midnight Brown

Colourpop Blush in Bardot

The headless horseman rides again!

Nars Eyeshadow in Mekong

Sephora Rouge Cream lipstick in Cancan

Make Up For Ever Ink Eyeliner

Colourpop Eyeshadow in Game Face

Essie Devil's Advocate 

If none of these appeal to you, use the ShadeScout app to get inspired by the colors of fall. 

       ***Post updated on 2/16/17 with new products.