New Holiday Dress

I haven't been to a dress-up holiday party since before Y2K, when we were waiting for the world to end. Or, my water to break.

Neither happened that night. But, impending parenthood (for us and many of our friends) dealt a crushing blow to our fancy-schmancy social engagements.

In a throwback to the old days, when I used to always buy a new dress for New Year's, I bought this. On a whim, I tossed in a bid on eBay. No one else wanted this Patterson J. Kincaid bubble dress, so I scored it for $48. It retails for $148.

Still can't figure out what color that skirt is. The brand calls it "crown." Is it bronze? Pewter? Honestly, I can't tell, even in person.

Perhaps I will get to wear it to work one day.

If It's Friday....

It's time for a Shoe Haiku!

Can shoes be hoochy
Yet still sweet? I do not know.
Let us ponder that.

Diego di Lucca "Patty" Mary Janes. The last time I wore them, a lady stopped me in the restroom and asked me where I got 'em.

When Baking Goes Bad

That coffee cake was not dropped on the floor.

Wasn't stepped on.

It wasn't harmed or molested in any way by my two, obnoxious, counter-surfing puppy mongrels that will very soon be looking for new homes. Anyone want two black Lab-Chupacabra* mixes?

Nope, this cake flopped onto the plate just like that. Could not tell you what I did wrong. Well, actually I suspect it was all smooshy — but still wonderfully tasty — because the stewed fruit probably didn't thicken as much as it should have. It was as runny as juice and I think that prevented the Argroves Manor Coffee Cake from Melissa Gray's new "All Cakes Considered" cookbook from looking anything like the lovely photo in her book.

Gray's cookbook (Chronicle, $24.95) came out of her love of baking. The producer for NPR's "All Things Considered," she started baking, from scratch, and bringing in cakes every Monday to take the edge off the work week. From that grew an entertaining book that is easy to follow with lots of good pictures and entertaining anecdotes.

Now, I am a complete and total NPR nerd. I've been known to troll the Web site like a stalker because I need to see what these people look like. At one time, I was going to name my next pets Snigda Prakash and Kojo Nnamdi. Whatever happened to those guys anyway?

But, back to the cake.

I wanted to make something out of Gray's book and the Argroves cake, with its butter and vanilla yogurt batter, sounded promising. I nearly lost my mind when it flooped out of the tube pan and started to ooze. By this morning, it had set up much better and the crunchy, sugary walnut streusel married beautifully with the moist, heavy cake dotted with apple and blackberries.

I love cookbooks, and this one is such a pleasure. It's a double-winner because it also has all these fun stories about the people I listen to on the radio every day on my endless drive to work. My favorite story, though, involved a behind-the-scenes guy, who took over cake duty one Monday when Gray was out. The bottom fell out on his cake carrier, sending his coffee cake to the floor. He served it anyway, saying it had extra "fiber," as in carpet fiber. Now that's a story I can relate to. If this guy writes a cookbook, I'm gettin' it.

*According to Mexican urban legend, a chupacabra is a sort of mythical beast. The literal translation is "goat sucker." Every once in a while, someone will claim to have found a mummified chupacabra and it always turns out to be a hairless coyote.

10-Minute Hair Color

The holidays are enough to make anyone go gray.

Of course, I can't blame seasonal stress alone for the silvery strands atop my head.

They were already there.

I stopped having my hair colored in a salon after a disastrous incident. Nothing weird happened to my hair. It didn't turn green or fall out, but I consider paying $50 for slapped-on color and near complete abandonment to be a big, fat waste of money. So, I started handling it myself after What's-Her-Face flaked out on me. For the most part, things have gone well, but finding a good 20-30 minute block of time to do my own hair is hard to come by. Plus, I'm brutally impatient. Enter Perfect 10 from Clairol.

This hair color might be more expensive than most (I've seen it anywhere from $10-$13), but it covers the gray in 10 minutes. Ten minutes. Even I can spare that.

You just squirt goop into a tube with more goop and slather it on. This stuff doesn't even have a noxious smell. And truly, in 10 minutes, the gray was covered. The dark golden brown gave my hair a cool, Kristen Stewart-after-she-dyed-her-hair-to-play-Joan-Jett look.

And did I mention it only took 10 minutes?

Yet Another Friday Shoe Haiku

These may look like shoes, but they're actually a story about patience. And my lack of it.

You see, I'd loved these Simple peep-toe flats for MONTHS. They went on sale, and there was free shipping. A few weeks later, a friend was admiring them and I gave her all the details. She got them — for even less than what I paid.


••••• Shoe Haiku •••••

Another pair of dots?
How many pairs does one need?
Hmmmm. Well, at least three.

Worthwhile Hand Cream

If you've ever flipped over a bottle of lotion and read the ingredients, then you've probably noticed something peculiar: The first ingredient (or, at least one of the ingredients) is always water.

Huh.

Seems kinda counterintuitive, doesn't it? Your hands get dry and cracked and abused from over-washing. Yet right there in the lotion you're slathering on, is water.

Well, that bugged this dry, wrinkly-handed girl enough that I shelled out $35 for a lotion I heard about that not only doesn't have water, it has only seven ingredients. Seven. Rice bran, rice oil, glycyrrhiza (apparently a plant related to licorice, if Wikipedia is to be believed), jojoba oil, aloe, sweet basil, silk extract.

The brand name is Komenuka Bijin, a Japanese line. The name means "rice bran beautiful person" in Japanese. Beauty lore has it that someone realized the women who worked in a sake factory had these amazingly soft hands from working with the rice all day.

Due to its indulgent price tag, I restrict its use to my hands, although it is billed as an all-over body cream. The lotion barely has a smell, a good thing in my book. It rubs in silky smooth and sinks in, leaving no overly greasy residue. It just feels....pure. And, it's a must this time of year.

$12 Well Spent

I don't believe in spending a lot of money on trends. In today, destined for the Goodwill bin tomorrow, ya know.

But, it's still fun to give 'em a spin. Pyramid studs — and in particular on jewelry — are way in right now. I just picked up this Free People leather, snap bracelet.

Because the raised studs blend into the leather, it's subtle — from a distance, it looks just like a cuff. It was only $12 (free ship!).

Of course, when I snapped it up there was only black, which is edgy and versatile. Now there's a chocolate brown on the site, which gives the studded a look an earthy vibe. I might need that, too.