Baby Perfume

Did you know that babies in other countries wear perfume? If this is common practice in the US, I had never heard of it except seeing that Bulgari and some other high end brands have a supposedly baby perfume. It was a few years ago that I learned from someone that in Spain mothers use this lavender scented perfume to splash on their children, even boys. Well as much as I love perfume a full on investigation was in order. Two years ago we did a whirlwind European vacation for three weeks and it was finally my opportunity to find this baby potion, among many other things on my list. While I was there I meticulously hunted down many European toiletries, one of which was Nenuco from Spain. In my husband's backpack I loaded four large bottles of this baby fragrance, two for gifts. The smell is so clean and fresh that I use it on myself but it is definitely supposed to be for babies. One smells of lavender and the other has a lemon scent. I use mine after a bath and my husband always tells me I smell so sweet.

When we went to Puerto Rico this past Thanksgiving I noticed my sister in law using another type on her baby. It's called Para mi bebe and it smelled of violets. Already I have a hard time resisting perfume, but with this precious little bottle and the very idea of this sweet baby smelling even better, I knew I had to find some. I managed to look in every pharmacy or shop that we were near, quickly and sneakily mind you, and finally I was successful. My husband saw me coming with six bottles of this stuff because we have lots of baby showers coming up. I don't know if these American mothers will fully grasp putting baby perfume on their little bundles, but I couldn't resist including this into my baby gift to them.

Wedding Guestbook with Photos

DIY Guestbooks are one of the searches most often coming to my blog. One of the details of our wedding that we now treasure is our DIY guestbook. Mine is the Polaroid type that is gaining popularity now. They are selling them also at a high price on the internet, but I decided to just do my own.

Here is a picture of the cover. I bought this wirebound book at Michaels, pasted an aqua sheet of paper on the cover, then put the scrapbooking stickers to decorate. I was tickled pink with the outcome.



We had two types of guestbooks, the traditional version and the photo version. I spent a lot of time deliberating over traditional type guestbook to buy. I'm calling the traditional guestbook the type that says "Guests" on the outside and a bunch of lines on the inside. They range from $9.99 at Michaels to $200.00 for a beautiful silk bound book. In the end, I realized that the traditional guestbook wasn't going to mean much to me so I opted for the Michael's version for $9.99. After all, it only has your guests names and addresses in it. It is not worth it to spend a lot of money on this type of sign-in guestbook because once you open the book to sign you lose the appeal of the outside. Most of the pages on the inside look the same. And honestly, are you going to be looking at it often, or ever? Like all things related to a wedding, this is another "essential" where they try to price gouge you. Usually there is a pen that accompanies it, which is usually a crappy ballpoint that doesn't write well. In my opinion, the pen is also not worth it.

To pull this off, you need a friend who is willing to take charge of this project at the wedding. Thank you Renee!! Of course you need a Polaroid (I borrowed one) and film, glue to paste the pictures in the book. I also bought a quality set of Staedtler felt tip markers so they could write a message in different colors. It would also behoove you to get the DJ involved so everyone visits the Guestbook Area.



Encourage your friends to be creative and write something fun. If you can see from one of these pictures, a couple of my friends blacked their teeth out so I would be sure to miss the gang from South Carolina. Hardy har har. Another wrote some sage advice to "remember to always laugh and dance".

So much of wedding is about "supposed to" and buying things out of some Pavlovian response. Think about what really matters to you. What do you want to be left with after the wedding? It was hard for me and I'm sure it's hard for anyone planning a wedding. Throw in a finite budget and it becomes even more important to discern what is the best option for your wedding day.

By the way, I think this a great memory book for anyone throwing a party, baby or bridal shower. You can even plan to do this for someone and present it to them as a gift. It is so fun to read what people write and see their smiling faces.

No Shame in Shoes

While I was out Christmas shopping a couple of weeks ago I spotted a woman (woman sounds so old-I wanted to write girl) wearing the cutest pair of shoes. First of all, know that this is Houston and we have summer-like weather in the winter so yes these are sandalesque type of shoes in a summereque color. Styles are a bit seasonless here, but I couldn't take my eyes off of her shoes, mesmerized as I was. I had to pull my focus back to the task at hand, ahem...driving and stop looking.

I decided it was now or never and I had to know whose shoes they were, well besides her shoes. Now you may not realize, but rolling down my window is always a risk since the time I rolled it down and it didn't go back up. I was kind of rolling so I couldn't just stop and open the door to yell at her. I made a snap decision and down the window shimmied slowly. "Hey! I LOVE those shoes!!!" She looked over and smiled at me with a genuine look that she was pleased to be noticed. After that I figured all appropriateness was out the window, so to speak, so I kept going. "What brand are they?" She takes off her shoe in the parking lot to see who made them. "Franco Sarto." Uh-huh. Well I needed to know where she bought them too. At this point, there were no horns blaring so I'm not sure if someone was behind me or not, but the final question was "Where did you get them?" Ah, Nordstrom, the beautiful shoe department at Nordstrom. Knowledge attained.

The window did go back up, thankfully and I believe I made two people's day, mine and hers. If I may note, I think she strutted away so confident that her shoes inspired such frenzy from me on a sunny, bustling pre-Christmas afternoon. When I returned home I promptly looked up Nordstrom, but they were not there. Never to be deterred from the search for a shoe with the impossible combination of style and comfort, I visited Zappos and was not disappointed. How lucky am I that they have my size and the same fire red-orange color she wore. Is it just me, or does Zappos always say "only three left in your size!" to make you feel even more grateful and extremely reluctant to walk away.


P.S. When I went to see if they were still on Zappos for you to see, it still said "only three left" in my size. Hmmmpphh.