Product Review: Aroma M Camellia Cleansing Oil

cassatt toilette

The independent perfume line Aroma M has quietly expanded its catalogue to include a line of camellia oil-based skincare products, adding new items one by one. I’m already a devoted fan of the collection’s facial oil and hair oil, but the Camellia Cleaning Oil took me a while longer to try. That’s only because I’ve never cleansed with oils before, as much as I love them for post-washing treatment. I don’t know why; the time just had to be me right for me to experiment.

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Product Review: Anna Sui Nail Polish Relaunch (2015): Cremes [UPDATED information and photos]

anna sui cremes

I recently promised more information on the new Anna Sui polishes that I’ve been sampling, so here is the first of two posts reviewing them!

I’ve been trying three cremes from the new range of 45 colors, and I’m really having fun with them. Arranged left to right in the photo above, they are Mint Green, Vanilla White, and Caramel Beige. All three have contrasting flecks of color for a “speckled” effect.

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My Back Pages: Bluebells in “Rebecca” (and at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden)

bluebell wood

This week I made a visit to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s Bluebell Wood, just in time to catch the bluebells before they start to fade away. This corner of the garden always reminds me of Manderley in Daphne DuMaurier’s Rebecca.

“Too early yet for blue bells, their heads were still hidden beneath last-year’s leaves, but when they came, dwarfing the more humble violet, they choked the very bracken in the woods, and with their colour made a challenge to the sky.

He never would have them in the house, he said. Thrust into vases they became dank and listless, and to see them at their best you must walk in the woods in the morning, about twelve o’clock, when the sun is overhead. They had a smoky, rather bitter smell, as though a wild sap ran in their stalks, pungent and juicy. People who plucked bluebells from the woods were vandals, he had forbidden it at Manderley…”

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