We have no closets.

Well, OK, we have one…kind of two, if you count the fact that it has two doors, but what it really is is a four-foot long hole in our extremely narrow hallway that confounds every attempt at intelligent storage. 

Anyway, we’ve known for awhile now that a coatrack was going to be a necessary purchase, because otherwise winter coats flung haphazardly around our apartment were going to become an integral aspect of our decor. I’ve been looking around vintage stores for awhile, but honestly? The ones I’ve found have been predominantly ’70s/’80s style (and I don’t mean in a good way…I mean in a cheap-looking faux bronze way), and expensive, weirdly.

When I found this coatrack on urbanoutfitters.com, I was ecstatic. It’s $68, which given how stylish and sturdy it is isn’t bad (although shipping put it at about $84), was fairly easy to assemble (well, it looked like it was…I sort of read People while Kendrick dealt with the putting-together), and comes in a wide range of colors (we ended up choosing white because our other furniture is pretty colorful). 

Lately lots of you have written in with queries about my skin-care regimen, so I thought I’d take a moment to discuss. I use different products in the AM and PM - always always always a moisturizer with sunscreen in the morning (Oil of Olay UV Defense, usually), and generally something a little heavier at night.

Recently, however, my skincare obsession has been Votre Vu, which I discovered at the Girls Night Out event earlier this month when I took home some product samples. I’ve used lots of expensive face and body products in my day, and this line feels just as good as the pricey stuff, while being much, much easier on the bank account.

I use their Antioxidant Eye Gelee every single morning and night - it’s refreshing and non-sticky, and doesn’t leave any gross residue that makes it difficult to apply eye makeup, which is important to me, because eye makeup is important to me. I’m also trying to be better about caring for my neck and chest area (which age even more quickly than your face), and have been using Portrait Collar Restorative Neck Creme every night before bed.

For the rest of the body, I use something called Kona Natural Body Care, which smells a little  like coconut-y sunscreen (a good thing, in my book) and can be purchased in just about any drugstore. 

A little wedding money-saving tip to start your Thursday…

For our save-the-date cards, Kendrick and I picked up a ton of inexpensive postcards (like the one pictured above) from the town where we were getting married (Ogunquit, ME). You can also scour eBay for vintage postcards of your locale - they’re often sold in bulk.

We then went to a custom stamp-making store and for $25 created a stamp with our names, the date of the wedding, and the location of the wedding…all in my handwriting, which I thought was a nice, personal touch. We stamped each postcard with the info, and sent them out. Super-easy, and super-inexpensive.

Some custom-stamp websites are here, here, and here.

At the Home for the Holidays event, I was given a tour of the inspiration boards that the designers used to create the Spring 2010 home decor lines. The designers literally travel all over the world collecting items to use as inspiration; this board, a sort of romantic throwback to the ’30s and ’40s, was my favorite (it inspired the new Jaclyn Smith collection). 

One of the interiors from Alessandra Branca’s New Classic Interiors. Mint green is my favorite color, as you may know, and to me, this bathroom is just about perfect. This picture makes me pine for a bathtub big enough to actually sit in (ours most certainly isn’t).