what the F is birchbox?

anyone who has read the weekend pickthrough in the last few months knows that i have an undeniable crush on the hairpin.  what can i say, it’s a sassy online lady magazine that boasts such hardhitting articles as “how to make a doll into a wine glass in 23 quick steps“, and “9 things to name your oregon trail family“.  it’s true love.

well, a few weeks ago, i stumbled across this fine piece of journalism regarding a beauty sample subscription service called birchbox. you give them $10 a month, and they send you a very sexy (and i mean that packing is CRAZY FINE) box of hand picked samples designed to give you a big giant beauty boner.

in my package, i received the following:

juice beauty- green apple peel
archipelago- pomegranate soap
kerastase- reconstructive shampoo & a packet of something called “topseal” that i don’t entirely understand
ahava- mineral body lotion
jouer- tinted lip enhancer (i think it makes them puffy & glossy)

theoretically, you’re supposed to love the samples so much, that you go onto the birchbox website, and buy full sized versions of the products. and here is where i think we will part ways.

i’m not a fancy beauty product lady. there are 1,000,001 things that i feel like spending $50 dollars on, and fancy lip gloss and lotion are not included in that number. sure, $10 for samples of all the fancy stuff is perfect for me, so i can play without the financial impact.  but i’m never going to spend $25 on anything with the word “plumper” in the title, i’m just not.

selfishly however, i want their endeavor to succeed because i think it’s cool and i want more samples. therefore, if you are a beauty junkie, this is a really fun way to test drive all the newest smelly hair stuff technology before you buy. plus, the stunning little box you get in the mail makes it feel like motherfucking xmas.

weekend pickthrough- recalibrated edition.

i would like to thank you all for being patient with me this week. my spring fever has shown no real signs of waning, but i am becoming accustomed to it in a way that is making it possible for me to function again. the answer appears to be the swingset on the eastern promenade. if it’s been a while since you’ve had a good solid swing, i can not recommend it highly enough. don’t forget to look up. it still feels exactly like flying.

along with a series of small naps with my dog and and the consumption of an entire bag of pepperidge farm chessmen, i also managed to finally organize and update my coupon stash for the first time since february. it was really tragic to have to recycle so many great deals. i really do need to pay attention again- for a while. my preble street donation bucket is looking very bare these days.

maybe this week i’ll even crack open my walgreens cherry now that the new marginal way store is open… has anyone out there been yet?

chances are that all your easter candy is gone now… except for one of these. thank sweet jesus that the folks at the hairpin are problem solvers.

the sadistic truth about women’s clothing sizes. (i do love an infographic, even when it fills me with rage).

who is this mysterious asian woman?

how did i make it past 30 without ever reading this?

i’ve got 2 tickets to paradise. and by paradise, i mean the former yugoslavia.

ooh, free local music.

you had me at “cupcake stuffed“.

18 clues you’re anti-feminist piece of crap.

a hearty high five to the person who wrote this truly inspired review of paul’s food center on yelp.

drop off times for SWAPmaine have been released! (early drop off= FREE ADMISSION).

did you know that chicago dogs has a veggie dog?

thus solidifying her place in the pantheon of awesome moms, my mom sent me this link this morning.

weekend pickthrough- lazy beyond comprehension edition.

so today the boyfriend and i celebrated the opening weekend of the dunstan school buffet with a hearty breakfast of nachos and home made donuts (and a promise to our intestines never to do it again). i brought my sunday paper along to pass the time in between plates, and came across something quite curious midway through my CVS flier- a product so ludicrous, i was stopped in my tracks.

EASY FEET!?

with the catchy tag line: “no more bending to clean your feet!”, easy feet easily qualifies as the laziest product that i have ever seen.

every year, americans invent more and more useless contraptions that allow us to do less and less. at first it seemed harmless. so what if we wanted to “set it and forget it” every now and again… it was cool. at least we were still bending down to clean our own feet. right?

are we really so fat/lazy/immobile that we can’t even bend at the waist anymore?

it reminds me all too much of the chair/toilet/feeding stations from the idiocracy world (which is a MUST SEE if you haven’t seen it).  and i worry that instead of retraining ourselves to exercise and eat normal sized portions (we weren’t always one of the fattest nations in the world), we’re just going to keep inventing devices that make it possible for us to stay obese.

i don’t know. i’m speechless. am i overreacting? is easy feet a clever invention or the eventual downfall of our civilization?

well, if easy feet isn’t our downfall, celine dion might be.

this looks totally unappetizing, yet i still really want to eat it.

the most shocking news story to hit this state in years: SOMETIMES PEOPLE LIE ON THE INTERNET.

i signed up for this IMMEDIATELY after reading this article.

an eerie amount of l. ron hubbard descends upon the librarything early reviewers list.

if you didn’t realize that my burlesque name (candy sprinkles) was an homage to this chick, you’ve been missing out.

so, you’re boning sephen dorff. (yeah, i’m obsessed with the hairpin alright)

local girl elisa doucette gets takes down the candie’s foundation. (oh, and if you were following her on twitter– you could have seen the resulting verbal boxing match where she took down bristol palin).

dust off your paypal account…WARY MEYERS HAS THERE OWN SHOP!

weekend pickthrough- springing forward into delirium edition.

WHERE IS THAT THIRD ARM COMING FROM!?

losing an hour is the worst. here it is, 2 am, but it feels like 1 am- except for the fact that i’m not gonna get more than 4 hours of sleep, whether i like it or not. it was opening weekend for my show (not too disastrous!), and then i decided to make lentil soup (more details on that tomorrow), and write a blog post for coupon evolution that i should have written on thursday…

tomorrow is gonna be a sleep deprived mess anyway, so i figured i’d squash out at least one more post before i lapsed into a coma. we haven’t picked through the weekend in a while, so here it is (i didn’t say i’d be squashing out a good post):