Pink Julep Gets Ready as Inspired by How to Walk in High Heels by Camilla Morton

I'm currently reading How to Walk in High Heels by Camilla Morton and being only on page 10, I can already tell this is going to be a go to book for the self-improvement of Pink Julep behavior for the rest of my life! This book is fabulous so far, not only telling me things I already know because my mother tried to beat them into my brain, but reminding me to stop being lazy about certain things that simply MUST be done!

The book starts by addressing "getting ready" which is a problem for most women I know. There's never enough time, it never works out right and it's not always the happy experience we'd like it to be, leaving us stressed and let's face it, perhaps a little haggard on our way out the door, when we should be our freshest and most fabulously ready to face the day!

One of the first thing that struck me was how Morton talks about setting up your getting ready space. Now I'm always on the quest for the proper organization of closet, drawers and make-up bag to make things easier as I'm sure we all are, but Morton goes the extra mile recommending that you establish a "mood" in your getting ready space. She recommends Diptyque candles (pictured above) for scent. She also recommends that if you're a person who requires music, to go for classical, jazz or soothing music as tunes that are too raucous might distract you and delay your process, therefore making you late.

To translate this into my life, I'm using Mixture Soy Hand Poured Candles in Wild Currant. Let's face it, the shopping here in Cayman is limited so Diptyque isn't really an option, nor am I thrilled with the price tag of such luxuries, but Mixture candles are amazing, luxurious and smell amazing!

For music, I'm not really much of a classical in the morning gal. I used to always listen to music when I got ready growing up and somehow I've stopped. Classical, jazz or soothing would just prompt me to get right back in bed, but I do agree with Morton that something too loud or crazy might up the tension of an already stressful morning ritual. Here is the playlist I've come up with to try out (on shuffle of course) for the rest of the week:

1. Dreaming - Blondie
2. Leave the Bourbon on the Shelf - The Killers
3. Beautiful Ones - Suede
4. Dancin With Myself - Billy Idol
5. Smile - Lily Allen
6. I Gotta Feelin - The Black Eyed Peas
7. Bubbly - Colby Caillet
8. Clocks - Coldplay
9. Put Your Records On - Corrine Bailey Rae
10. Friday I'm In Love - The Cure
11. She - Elvis Costello
12. Love Story - Taylor Swift
13. Linda Goes to Mars - John Prine
14. High & Dry - Jamie Cullum
15. I'm Yours - Jason Mraz
16. Glamorous Indie Rock & Roll - The Killers
17. Papparazzi - Lady Gaga
18. Killing the Blues - John Prine
19. Bleeding Love - Leona Lewis
20. LDN - Lily Allen
21. Sunday Girl - Blondie
22. The Climb - Miley Cyrus
23. I Get a Kick Out of You - Jamie Cullum
24. In the Summertime - Mungo Jerry
25. Unwritten - Natasha Beddingfield
26. Wonderwall - Oasis
27. Hey There Delilah - Plain White T's
28. I Love You Till the End - The Pogues
29. Just Like Heaven - The Cure
30. Brass in Pocket - The Pretenders
31. Hello Mary Lou (Goodbye Heart) - Queen
32. Christmas in Prison - John Prine
33. Crazy Little Thing Called Love - Queen
34. Run - Snow Patrol
35. Party in the USA - Miley Cyrus
36. Downtown - Petula Clark
37. For Once in My Life - Stevie Wonder
38. Eh, Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say) - Lady Gaga
39. The Ballad of Michael Valentine - The Killers
40. You Belong With Me - Taylor Swift
41. Big Sur - The Thrills
42. Don't Look Back in Anger - Oasis
43. Sabu Visits the Twin Cities - John Prine
44. American Girl - Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
45. Someone Like You - Van Morrison

The playlist is just a rough draft... I can already tell it's going to need some tweaking, but we'll see.

Morton also focuses on having enough time, so I'm also going to try to get up earlier which will be the most difficult part I fear.

What do you do to personalize your getting ready space? If you have tips you'd care to share, I'd love to hear them!

xoxo,
Pink Julep!

Out With the Old, In With the New!

Our friends are hosting a little event in a few weeks. It's like a swap, buy and sell. Everyone is bringing a bunch of stuff they don't want anymore and all items will be priced at $1 each. We can all buy and sell each other's stuff and then the proceeds will be donated to the Cayman Islands Humane Society! This seems like a really great opportunity to unload some of the crap in our house we're never going to use! So I've been purging all day. We're off today in celebration of the Queen's Birthday, which is actually in April, but regardless, God bless her and her birthday cause it's a 3 day weekend here in Cayman every year!

I thought I'd also share some goodies I picked up last week, starting with this candle!


I love these Mixture soy candles in Wild Currant. They are a little expensive at about $25 each, but they are totally worth it! They last for ages and seriously, one candle burning for about 20 minutes will make an entire room fragrant!

And it's a beautiful, simple white candle in a classic glass holder. So these go with any room. I love them! I'm not sure where else they're available, but here on Grand Cayman, they are sold at Bedside Manor in Camana Bay.

I also got this adorable pillbox. I'm prone to occasional headaches, especially with island heat and low pressure weather, so I keep Advil in my purse at all times. How cute is this for putting a few tablets in?

I hope all your weeks started off great today!

xoxo,

Pink Julep!

Pink Julep in the Kitchen: Getting Organized

I have a few cookbooks and folders of recipes that I've printed out and stuffed in a drawer somewhere. I find that the books are a little too bulky to carry around the kitchen and they just end up getting dirty! So I decided to pull my favorite recipes out of the books and put them into organizers!

I picked up this recipe box by Galison of New York from Books and Books in Camana Bay. It is so adorable, comes with separators for different types of recipes (i.e. deserts, beverages, starters, etc.) and 50 blank recipe cards. Once those are finished, 4x6 index cards will fit in the box and it will hold loads, though there are free printable cards online!

I also have this adorable recipe binder by Cath Kidston which comes with pages for writing down recipes as well as perforated shopping list sheets! Also, anything I print out can be hole punched and just put straight into the book!

How do you organize your recipes?

xoxo,

Pink Julep!

This and That

Source

I have been a woman on a mission for the past week, hence the lack of blogging. There's a lot going on in that we decided to replace all our bedroom storage, since our previous temporary solutions were a lot more temporary than we thought and started falling apart. In doing that, I decided to purge and clean our flat so I've been very busy! I decided to try this Thai Orchid candle by Febreeze. It's amazing! It smells lovely and tropical, just perfect for summer and it really does make the whole flat smell nice! For only GBP 6.41, it's worth every penny and burns for 30 hours! It's also lovely to look at as it comes in a nice glass jar with no labels, so it doesn't look like your typical air freshening candle! It's a great alternative for every day, since I don't want to use my fancy expensive candles all the time for obvious reasons.

My husband gave me this Intelligence Deck for Christmas in my stocking a few years ago and I have never had the opportunity to read any of it. It's great! Filled with lovely cards, this deck tells all ladies who aim to be chic what they need to know including how to convert Farenheit to Celcius, how to say hello in several languages, how to pronounce often mispronounced words, the various art and music movements, and ballet terminology to name a few. This would make an excellent small gift for someone. I only found it on one website. Click here for more information.

As I said, we decided to replace the storage in our bedroom. The average flat in England doesn't have a built-in closet, which is something I'm very used to being an American. While most furnished flats would provide a certain amount of drawers and wardrobes, I chose to move into a more unfurnished flat so that I could decorate according to our tastes. In the beginning we couldn't figure out what pieces we could invest in to maximize the small space so we bought some temporary units to give us some time to figure out what we wanted. We had no idea the temporary units would start falling apart in less than 4 months. So last weekend we were faced with making some serious decisions about what we would buy and I'm very happy with our choice. This is our chest of drawers.

We decided on 2 matching wardrobes and they're perfect! I love that they have drawers at the bottom for even more storage.

I also finally got a full-length mirror, something I've now been living without for quite some time! These Cheval style mirrors seem to be very popular here in London and I can see why. They take up minimal space and you can adjust them quite easily.

Once we put all our clothes away, we discovered there was no room in the wardrobes for our shoes. Major emergency as far as I'm concerned! We opted for an expandable cheap shoe rack and to be honest, it's not Carrie Bradshaw's amazing shoe closet, but for now it does the job and it looks tidy. Once the shoe collections start increasing rapidly, we can buy another to stack on top of this one. I actually like it, because my pet peeve is not being able to see my shoes clearly.

All in all I'm in love now. Our room looks great, it's comfortable and it seems like 20 times bigger now. I'm glad that we waited to make a real decision! All we need now for our bedroom are a few things to hang on the wall. I am pretty particular about decorations, so I suppose that collection will grow with time.

Now that the flat is finally sorted, I am focusing on other important things. All the admin tasks of our move are pretty sorted at this stage, so I can take time to find things for us to do and get involved in. I'm going back to dance classes this week and starting to explore and think about what I'd like to do professionally in the future.

In other news, I've started writing on my second blog again. I will be posting all my OOTD's on that blog from now on so hop on over and visit Pink Julep's Dressing Room!