Making Faces and Face Forward

These are some of my favorites from Kevyn Aucoin's books that are not easily found online. Still gorgeous and wearable to this day.

Chandra North

Cheri Oteri 

Jewel

Julia Roberts

Alexandra von Furstenberg

Julianne Moore (and below)

Trish Goff

Jewel

Chandra North

Inspired by literature: Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman

"For more than two hundred years, the Owens women have been blamed for everything that has gone wrong in town."

Practical Magic tells the story of two sisters in New England who happen to be witches. It's a family trait, and staying that way--despite Sally's wish to be "normal" and not cursed. They live in a big Victorian house with two eccentric aunts, eat chocolate cake for breakfast, and rules don't exist. The townspeople are classic "torch and pitchfork" people who bully them and throw rocks, so naturally they grow up feeling ostracized and different from everyone they meet. 

Clockwise: Revlon Spicy Cinnamon Super Lustrous Lipstick, L'Oreal Voluminous Smoldering Eyeliner in Black (also comes in brown), Bobbi Brown Art Stick in Rich Nude, Cover Girl Gloss Balm in Jam Twist, Face Stockholm Cranberry Veil, L'Oreal True Match Blush in Spiced Plum, MAC Tenderling Blush, and Bobbi Brown Shimmerwash Eyeshadow in Stone. 

Sally's makeup is incredibly simple. Pamela Westmore gave Sandra Bullock a range of pink, nude, and peach tones. It's not dated at all considering this movie was made in 1998. Her skin is natural and demi matte. I chose MAC Tenderling Blush because it's very natural on most skin tones. This is a dusty nude pink. Bobbi Brown Stone Eyeshadow gives the perfect taupe wash of color, and L'Oreal Voluminous Smoldering Eyeliner in Brown gives the lash line definition. I'm sure she's wearing at least one coat of mascara, so use your favorite.  Revlon Spicy Cinnamon or Bobbi Brown Rich Nude  match her lip colors throughout the movie and the promotional shots. 

Wild Gillian was played by Nicole Kidman, and the artist gave her a lot more variety with her makeup. I wouldn't call it grunge, but it fit her character's restless ways . One minute it was soft red lipstick, and the next her eyeliner was pitch black, smudged, and paired with a glossy jam lip color. Her look focuses on liner, cheeks, and lips. Since most of the movie takes place in the fall, I chose L'Oreal Spiced Plum Blush for a flushed cheek. L'Oreal Voluminous Smoldering liner in Black gives that "black as pitch" eye kohl. Face Stockholm Cranberry Veil is a soft red that won't overwhelm, and Cover Girl Jam Twist is one of the most comfortable lip products I've come across. 

What products would you use for a Sally or Gillian look? Is Practical Magic on your list of movies to watch this fall? 

—  Kristi Marie from Modern Grace

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