You know those sour strap lollies – they come in apple, grape, blue (is blue a flavour?) and strawberry. They’re really artificial tasting and covered in sugar. Yeah, those. They’re gooood. I love them.

Anyway, I was in Duane Reade (drug store) picking up some band-aids when I spotted the Chapsticks out of the corner of my eye. Excellent, I love cherry Chapstick and it isn’t as easy to find as strawberry back home. And then I spotted the EOS lip balms. EOS is Evolution Of Smooth and the lip balms are little egg shapes. I had read about them but never seen them in person so I made a beeline and examined all the options – lemon drop, honeysuckle honeydew, medicated tangerine, sweet mint, strawberry sorbet. I figured you can’t go wrong with strawberry, and the pink egg is all kinds of cute, so I threw it in the basket. It tastes and smells EXACTLY like the aforementioned strawberry sour strap lollies. Also, it’s made with shea butter and jojoba oil so my dry lips are loving it. I’m going back for all the flavours.

EOS Evolution of Smooth lip balm – $4.39 from the drug store

This is a big call, I know, but I think the Anti-Friction Stick I bought from Duane Reade might be the best thing I have purchased this trip (don’t worry, you come a close second Marc by Marc Jacobs handbag. You too, J Brand jeans).

What is an Anti-Friction Stick? Glad you asked (don’t worry, I heard you all the way from here). When one is on holidays, one does a lot of walking. And even when one is wearing their battered and old pink tartan Converse All Stars, one is prone to getting blisters. The Anti-Friction stick is like a giant lip balm that you smear all over the areas that get rubby (heels, toes etc) and it stops you getting blisters. Genius!

It smells faintly of tropical (pineapple, coconut and the like), is a tiny purse size, and can also be used on other body parts if you so desire. Although, really, after you have had it all over your stinky hooves, do you really want to rub it anywhere else?

It’s posing above with the little Yankees gnome they were giving out at Yankee Stadium on Wednesday night. Cute, right?

Duane Reade Anti-Friction Stick – Duane Reade – $6.99

Taken at the Museum of Natural History

This blog post is coming to you live from New York City. Well…not live. The time difference is kind of whacked out and whatnot. There’s jetlag and then there’s *jetlag*, and we have been dealing with some serious JL over here my friends! Maybe that’s why this city never sleeps – everyone is perpetually jetlagged.

Sidenote: Whenever I hear or say ‘live from New York’, I get the opening bars of the Letterman theme stuck in my head. And there we go again.

So far, New York is amazing. We have been eating ourselves into food comas pretty much every day and I’m probably going to come back about 10kg heavier. We started our food journey at Shake Shack in Madison Square Park where they do the most amazing burgers and shakes you will ever eat. They also do Frozen Custard, which is kind of a soft serve and ice cream hybrid (Australian Good Food mag, take note – I want a quick and easy recipe for this please).

We have also been to Serendipity 3 for Frrrozen Hot Chocolate (basically an iced chocolate, save yourself the trip), hit up The Plaza Food Hall for lunch, enjoyed an Italian feast at Asellina, waited patiently in the (very long) queue for Stumptown at the Ace Hotel so husband can have proper coffee, and have gorged on bagels every morning (Ess-A-Bagel was a highlight for the ambience and traditional-ness; hubby got lox, eggs and onions on his…he definitely needed a breath mint after that). Essentially, if it has been recommended by friends or appeared on a food magazines ‘must do’ list, it’s on ours. We’re here for long enough that we need plenty of options!

Apart from eating, we have been doing touristy stuff like strolling through Central Park and getting lost in the Museum of Natural History (I nerded out at the dinosaur exhibit). We saw The Shins play at Terminal 5 (wicked venue) and…highlight…we went to a live taping of The Daily Show. I love Jon Stewart so much! His guest for the episode (Monday April 30) was Zach Wahls, who you may remember as the handsome young man who spoke before the Iowa Legislature last year about being raised by his two gay moms. This kid is so smart and articulate, and seems like such a great guy. Anyway, he just wrote a book called My Two Moms: Lessons of Love, Strength, and What Makes a Family. So I’m sure whatever you got your mum for Mother’s Day is great and all, but this dude is putting the rest of us to shame. If you work really hard for the next few days you can probably write her a short story or something, but a whole book might be a bit of a stretch for Mother’s Day 2012. Sorry Mum, I promise I’ll write you a book next year!

This post is sponsored by Magshop Mother’s Day competition.

It took me a week, but I broke my Sephora dry spell with an epic haul. Plus a few extra awesome little beauty goodies from Victoria’s Secret. Add this to my trademark rambling and you have todays video. What a recipe.

Just a quick vlog to show you around our epic room at the Gansevoort Park. Hi Mum!

In my quest for mega-hydration prior to 18+ hours air time tomorrow, I went digging through my stash looking for a hydrating mask. Everything was deep cleaning, brightening, refining or whatever else, but then…tucked up the back…Comvita’s Intensive Hydrating Mask. With Huni Xa Manuka Honey, it was exactly what I needed. It doesn’t smell great, but it does have a pump top, which makes application about five billion times less messy, and is something every face mask should have.

My skin is feeling pretty hydrated, but I’m going to do another mask mid-flight. Trust me, that’s not weird. What is weird is my styrofoam cups over the ears to ease my sinus pain. I’m a delight to travel with.

Comvita Intensive Hydrating Mask – $50 for 50ml – www.comvita.com.au

This product was offered to me for editorial consideration in accordance with my disclosure policy

As a hardcore Clarisonic fan, I felt somewhat qualified to record this video. Watch it if you have a Clarisonic. Watch it if you are planning to buy a Clarisonic. Watch it to count how many times I say umm and turn it into a drinking game (surprise ending: you get drunk). For the love of monkeys, watch it!

We’re all winners (that what Mum always said) but some people are bigger winners than others (Mum also said that). Today I’m happy to announce there are five bigger winners who have just walked away with $100 styletread.com.au vouchers (walked away…shoes…geddit? nevermind)

Congrats to:

• Julie
• Corinne
• Megan
• Stef
• Ling

You guys rocked it! Good luck picking shoes. On a totally related note, I bought my Alias Mae Rogue slipper-shoes today, paid $7.95 for 3 hour shipping and had them on my feet less than 3 hours later. Bloody impressive, styletread!

Bonus bit: For anyone who didn’t win a voucher, you don’t go away empty handed. If you spend $69.95 on styletread.com.au, you can get $15 off by using the code: STYLE262925. This $15 voucher is valid until 31st May 2012 midnight and it just subtracts from your total at the checkout – simply pop it in and click “Apply Coupon”. See?! We’re all winners again…I just wish I had remembered about this discount code before I ordered my shoes 8 hours ago…

Another Monday, another Manicure Monday. Sorry, #manicuremonday *get it right Elise*

I was digging through my nail polish collection looking for something with a bit of shimmer when I came across two really beautiful molten metallic polishes. Both of them are old favourites and I thought they would look beautiful together but I didn’t want to do tips because I felt that with their liquid finish, the harsh line of a tip would look quite jarring. So I free-hand painted each nail 3/4 with the bronze and the top 1/4 with the gold and then used the tip of a bobby pin to mix and blend the two. This made it look like the colours melted into each other and reminded me a little bit of flames.

What do you think?

Face of Australia Molten Metallics – Bronze – $4.95
ORLY – Luxe – $18.95
Note: I think both of these colours are discontinued, but this look would work with any similar metallics

I love my Mother dearly, but Mother’s Day is usually a bit of a non-issue round our joint. Pretty much every Mother’s Day for the last 5 years my Mum has been on vacation somewhere exotic: Paris, Hawaii, St Petersburg, Hawaii, Italy, Hawaii. You get the gist. The extent of our Mother’s Day celebration is me giving Dad a card to tuck into his luggage, and some sort of broken up phone call where Mum and Dad share the phone and excitedly tell me what they have been up to while I strain my ears trying to make out every second word through dodgy reception. It’s a real Hallmark moment.

This year the tables have turned and for once I’m the one who is going to be away on MD. Actually, Mum and Dad will be away too (my poor sister) but what’s important is that I’m away. For three glorious weeks my life will be straight out of the pages of Shop Til You Drop, Gourmet Traveller and Belle Magazine. Have I mentioned this already? I have? Oh right, carry on then.

Anyway, I figure I should retain my crown as number one daughter and leave a gift, or at least a card, in my wake. I’m already leaving a birthday present behind for my sister (I could probably tell you what it is since she never reads here anyway, but I won’t just in case) so an extra gift won’t hurt. It’s all bonus points on the Favourite Child Ranking Table. Thinking a mag subscription – I gifted her a Harper’s BAZAAR sub for Christmas (used to be Madison, but she didn’t want that renewed – wanted HB instead) and now I’m thinking one of the house magazines like Real Living, since I refuse to share my own Real Living with her (it’s definitely a keep-on-the-shelf magazine). At least ordering a sub online means I don’t have to step foot in a shopping centre because I’m on a self-imposed pre-trip shopping ban. OR I might just leave a card. And call from New York to tell them what I’m doing. So mean.

This post is sponsored by MagShop Mother’s Day gift promotion

PS – the picture above is my Mum opening a gift I got her. She looks happy. I give good presents.