Mother's Day Gift Guide

The chicest thing ever is to buy a vessel, like this bold and cheering Casa Cubista stripe jug, ($50, Saudade Toronto) and take it to your favourite florist for filling. The recipient gets both the ephemeral gift of flowers and the enduring reminder to keep buying flowers for themselves.

This Mother’s Day, let’s honour the women we love who kept it all together this past year despite 24/7 childcare, Zoom meeting tyranny, virtual house arrest and unending meal prep. And let’s recognize those friends who mothered us when we needed it- the ones who dropped off baked goods or emergency booze. It’s time to spread the love.

The lockdown-inspired resurgence in creating home bars is also a reminder that gorgeous presents can come from the liquor store. Canada’s own Laneway Distillers No. 12 Vodka ($51.45, LCBO) with its pale green label and frosted bottle is too beautiful to hide in a cupboard and pairs beautifully with a gold Japanese jigger ($32, Cocktail Emporium.) And a Moscow Mule made with ginger kombucha is perfect for Spring.

This brass-clad home bar belongs to Ett Hem hotelier Jeanette Mix.

This polished swoop of rose quartz is a Gua Sha ($40, The Fix with MC) a tool used in traditional Chinese medicine to get a depuffing, drainage massage (follow the steps in this video from MC herself.) An application of facial oil prevents the Gua Sha from tugging on delicate skin and Biossance Squalane + Vitaminc C Rose Oil, ($95, Sephora), is a rose-scented and moisturizing skin brightener as well.

A Slip silk pillowcase ($119, Sephora) sounds like a a frivolity but silk stops hair frizzing up overnight and prevents pillowcase creases from marking one’s skin. Plus, the giddy sensation of sinking into a smooth, silk-covered pillow at the end of the day cannot be overstated.

With its overdose of raspy, sunlit bergamot, Malin & Goetz Bergamot eau de parfum (Sephora, $120) is the perfect mood-booster that effortlessly punches a hole in a cloudy sky to let the sun shine through. And because it’s an eau de parfum, it lasts longer than cologne (which frugal moms will appreciate.)

Bring Those Skimpy Brows Back to Life

Around age fifty, you’ll see a photo of yourself and realize that your brows and lashes have done a slow fade, like someone turned down the contrast on your face. Bringing brows back to life is actually pretty easy and enlivens your face the way smiling or a good dose of blusher can, and no one will figure out what you’ve done. You’ll just look better rested or like you had a vacation.

Brow rescue is a two-pronged affair. Part one is brow serum, which as a former tweezer enthusiast, I can affirm does actually work to repair what youth and cluelessness put asunder. RapidBrow Eyebrow Enhancing serum, ($43, Shoppers Drug Mart) contains peptides to stimulate growth and spur those snoozing, dormant hairs on to greatness, while biotin and panthenol strengthen the age-diminished hairs themselves.

It takes a couple of months of twice daily applications to see results, so diligence is key. And you have to keep at it once your brows have returned. Some people may squawk about having to continue using brow serum, but just remember that you also need to eat food every day. You can’t just eat for a month and then never eat again, so it’s like that.

If like me, you recklessly tweezed away the little ‘fan’ hairs at the inner corners of your brows in the misguided belief that wider-set brows make eyes look wider set, (they don’t) Rapidbrow serum can bring those back. (God, all those unhelpful, ancient beauty stories that instructed you to hold a pencil beside your nose to determine where your brows should start.) Not to mention the 90s skinny brow trend that too many of us succumbed to. Even Canada’s national treasure, Celine Dion, is a cautionary tale of inner brow over-tweezing and while you could argue that that’s her look, I don’t want that for you.

Maybelline New York Tattoo Studio Longer Brow pencil in Blonde,

In the meantime, while you wait for your brows to awaken like Sleeping Beauty, you can do an artful patching job with Maybelline New York’s new Tattoo Studio Longwear brow pencil in Blonde, ($12.49, Shoppers Drug Mart.) This shape-shifting, ashy taupe ‘blonde’ shade will invisibly fill any sparse areas even if your brows are dark. It’s also magically perfect if you have some silver hairs mixed in there as well. Just apply tiny, feathery strokes to the sparse areas. Go slowly, and always step away from the mirror to see your handiwork before adding another stroke.

And Maybelline New York Tattoo Studio brow pencil claims to last 36 hours, which is longer than you’ll need, as we are now past the age of dancing all night in illegal clubs and emerging at 4:00 a.m. with our make all smudged, in search of breakfast.

Best Smell of the Week: Deciem ‘Shop’ Room Spray

In my dreams, an invisible fairy places fresh flowers in every room of my house twice a week. That’s most likely not going to happen, so finding a great room spray seemed like the best alternative.

For the longest time, I would walk into Deciem stores and be struck by the smell: elegant, woody, leathery, yet light - like commingled, very expensive men’s colognes. But whenever I asked, the cheery salesperson would always say something like “Brandon created it exclusively for the stores. We might start selling it eventually…” This went on for years.

Sadly, Deciem founder Brandon Truaxe died suddenly in 2019 and after that I assumed the room fragrance would never see the light of day. But now Deciem’s new owner, the Estée Lauder companies, have released it under Deciem’s newish Abnomaly brand. It’s called Shop and it is brilliant.

Shop is fancy, like actual perfume and its list of notes reads like the afore-mentioned pricy men’s scents: sequoia and cedar wood, resinous labdanum, musk and patchouli. There’s even ‘Iso E super’ a perfumer favourite ingredient that brings a transparent woody and earthy aspect to a scent- like a forest shot through with light and air and sun.

Angela Tsementzis’ Concrete House in Toronto

The result is a scent that is woody, leathery and resinous to create the sensation that you’ve entered a deceptively simple and restrained, light-filled modernist house with an enormous picture window overlooking a thickly treed valley. And Shop is only $23 CAN which is a bargain for something of this quality. It could easily go head to head with Aesop or Diptyque’s interior fragrances.

I have been furiously spraying my disorganized office in the hopes that I will be inspired to finally wrestle the space under control. The room is untidy, but if you close your eyes, it smells like everything is perfectly arranged on uniform shelves or hidden away in custom walnut built-ins. Such is the power of Shop.

Charlotte Tilbury Multi-Miracle Glow Cleansing Balm: Necessity or Luxury?

Charlotte Tilbury Multi-Miracle Glow Cleansing Balm, Photo: Janine Falcon

My friend Sydney, who is juggling all the usual stuff (a life, a family, a house with all its expensive moving parts) recently asked if I knew of a cheaper substitute for her beloved Charlotte Tilbury Multi-Miracle Glow Cleansing Balm, $70. She thought she should be spending less on a cleanser, even though she is completely devoted to this one. “The fragrance is heavenly, so that’s a huge draw for me,” she says, “and the texture is so luxe that even smearing it on feels lovely.” She also uses it as mask, applying it thickly before “sitting in the bath for 15 minutes.”

After a few minutes of fruitlessly trying to think of an equally rich and scented dupe, I realized that because we all live under a cloud of uncertainty, now is not the time to jettison something that unfailingly makes you happy once a day. Are pleasures so thick on the ground that you can afford to lose even one? No, they are not and no, you shouldn’t.

Food writer Nigella Lawson likes to say “I am extravagant but never wasteful,” which I take to mean as ‘squeeze every last bit of enjoyment out of your pricey treats, but make sure they are incredibly high quality treats and carefully chosen.’

Even if you are in an ok place financially but especially if you’re not, it’s always a good exercise to audit your monthly expenses with a metaphoric red pencil and cut out anything excessive. (I need to seriously drill down on having so many streaming services.) It’s easier to keep a death-grip on your expenses — hello, buying household staples at No Frllls instead of Loblaws — if your reward is guilt-free enjoyment of a happy-making and very fancy skin cleanser.

And if you also use Charlotte Tilbury Multi-Miracle Cleansing Balm as a mask, then you’re getting two products for the price of one. That’s like getting it for half price. Right?

Gucci Bloom Profumo di Fiori Beats WFH Gloom

Gucci Bloom Profumo di Fiori is not for shy or retiring types.

Is it time to burn our Work From Home outfits yet? I am so ready for a Visible From Space™ bonfire of faded t-shirts and elastic-waisted sweatsuit bottoms. Until then, I keep trying to distract from my practical (yuck) ensembles by accessorizing with fuzzy new Birkenstocks and drowning myself in fragrance.

The perfect scent to counteract the endless parade of boring, machine-washable everything is Gucci Bloom Profumo di Fiori, (50 ml, $119) the most recent addition to the Gucci Bloom family. A longer-lasting take on original Gucci Bloom’s riot of white flowers, it brings even more tuberose to the party along with powdery iris and an undergirding of sandalwood and musk to keep it modern. Tuberose has an almost narcotic effect, so a good dousing of Profumo di Fiori can easily take you out of your day-to-day.

This floral overload head-fakes me into believing that my stretched out t-shirts are actually box-fresh $200 cotton and cashmere numbers and that I’m sipping an iced latte and covertly people-watching in an overseas airport lounge, instead of just shuffling from couch to kitchen to put the kettle on.

Gucci Bloom Profumo di Fiori is what we need right now as we count down the weeks (ok, maybe months) to vaccination and real zip-up trousers. I can hardly wait.

Your Lips But Better: Tinted Balms Bring Colour Back

As a general rule, while the central heat is still on, you should never be more than an arm’s length away from a tube or pot of lip balm. One in every coat pocket, one by your desk, and at least one on your nightstand. (I keep this beach stone-shaped lilah b. balm on the coffee table as well. Sneaky.)

If you’re already applying balm throughout the day, why not try a tinted version to imbue your lips with the rosy hue they had way back when? (The number of your blood vessels in our lips decreases with age, so yes, you’re not imagining it. Your lips are getting paler.) And unlike ‘faffing about’ (I love that expression) with lipstick, which requires both a mirror and a steady hand, balm can be applied absentmindedly in front of the television.

A trio of new favourites (clockwise from bottom): Burt’s Bees Squeezy Tinted Balm in Watermelon Rush ($10.99, Shoppers Drug Mart) tastes like a Bonne Bell Lip Smacker, brings soothing moisture, thanks to lanolin, beeswax and cocoa seed butter, and has the perfect amount of ‘your lips but better’ transparent red colour. Indeed Labs Hydraluron Plus Tinted Lip Treatment in Red ($14.95, Shoppers Drug Mart) provides sheer natural colour and contains a lip-plumping peptide and water-retaining spheres for the appearance of more generous lips.

Milk Makeup’s Electric Glossy Lip Plumper ($33, Sephora) is technically not balm, (Sichuan peppercorns provide a light, piney tingle that plumps lips) but It also contains protective jojoba seed oil and mimosa flower wax. A sheer swipe of the shade Lola subtly deepens lip colour for a ‘Who me? No, I’m not wearing makeup’ look.

The Best Balm for Your Poor Cuticles (Repost)

This originally ran last summer in response to all our frenzied hand-washing, but add seasonal dry air to the mix and your cuticles are once again in dire need of attention. Since that original post, Lano has repackaged their healing Gold Dry Skin Salve, so here it is in its new, shiny tube.

Twice now, during lockdown, I have squeezed some Lano Golden Dry Skin Salve into a mini pot and run it over to a friend whose cuticles were in dire need. Apparently our desire to treat friends during these tough times is called caremongering — a play on ‘scare-mongering’ that I just love.

Lanolin, the heavy, natural coating on sheep’s wool makes the best occlusive protectant for cuticles that, because of repeated washing or nervous picking, are raggedy and cracked. Lanolin on its own is rather sticky, which is fine for lips, but rather unpleasant on fingers. This salve blends lanolin with honey, beeswax and vitamin e, making it more lightweight but no less effective at reversing what anxiety, dry air and relentless hand-washing have done to our fingertips.

The salve is also an excellent lip balm and while the new tube isn’t as massive as the former 50 gram one, it costs less (always a nice surprise) and still contains enough to last a long time (it should be applied sparingly anyway.)

Spray Every Room Like a Lunatic With The Body Shop French Lavender Pillow Mist

The Body Shop Spa of the World Lavender Pillow Mist is sunlight in a bottle

Lavender suffers from such bad PR. Long associated with dusty sachets forgotten in lingerie drawers, some brands tart up their lavenders by adding notes of vanilla (shudder) and chamomile, making them even dustier. Thank god that The Body Shop's Spa of the World French Lavender Pillow Mist is pure, uncut Provençal lavender. Intensely herbal and brightly floral, it is literally sunlight in a handy spray format.

Lately, I’ve been going overboard and spraying not just pillows, but every room. ‘Cozy’ feels oppressive now and we’re all ready for winter to take a hike. But no matter how much I open windows and wash floors, I still need the actual smell of spring.

Sprayed throughout the house, The Body Shop's Spa of the World French Lavender Pillow Mist creates the sensation that someone (not me) vacuumed every piece of furniture, deep-cleaned the oven, scrubbed the baseboards and (be still my heart) did all the laundry and aired it outdoors in some parallel-universe lavender field.

Sadly, drenching the house in the Body Shop’s Lavender Pillow Mist is not a substitute for actually cleaning. That still needs doing. But if the thought of getting down on your hands and knees to scrub baseboards puts you in a funk, then read this wonderful story by Rani Sheen for the Kit: Let’s All Angry-Clean Our Houses, Shall we? and you will feel like a member of a heretofore unnamed sisterhood of raging women.

And, in the meantime, pillow spray.

Hey, Small Spender: Monday Haircare

Finding stylishly packaged beauty products at the grocery store (and at a low price) is such a double win. Especially when you are spending a mortgage payment to get everything else on your list.

I swear that some personal care brands take a perverse delight in punishing us with ugly packaging and cheap fragrance when we choose their less expensive items, so all hail Monday Haircare for setting that business model on fire. Monday’s shampoos and conditioners are loaded with coconut oil, Shea butter and panthenol (vitamin b) for $7.47 for 350 ml. at Walmart. (Coming soon to Shoppers Drug Mart as well.)

Monday was created by former PR exec, New Zealand-based Jaimee Lupton, who clearly understands what people want from beauty products: the contents, the photo-friendly, Insta-bait bottles and how much (or how little) they want to pay. She uses the expression “extortionate pricing” when discussing beauty products in general, and honestly, she’s not wrong.

Monday has four shampoo and conditioner duos (all SLS-, paraben- and cruelty-free): Gentle, Moisture, Smooth and Volume, each with the same creamy, clean-soap scent. And while it may not replace your fanciest luxe haircare (you will have to pry the Leonor Greyl from my cold, dead hands) Monday is definitely something you‘ll be happy to see in your shower (and will look at home in your guest bath instead of some joyless, ugly “value” brand.)

A February Box of Lockdown Treats (and the best cheese fondue recipe)

Outdoor dining in Switzerland: a sheepskin to sit on and a blanket on top will keep you warm while you devour your cheese fondue. Photo: Liza Herz

If I could, I would charter a flight to Zürich and we’d all go eat cheese fondue together outdoors. Sadly, a private plane is too expensive and too large to fit into my February box (and it would contravene lockdown rules).

A February Box is really just an amped up Valentine’s gift to yourself which acknowledges that warmer weather is still weeks, maybe even months away, so we need better treats than just heart-shaped boxes of chocolates.

Choose one or all of the following. Because now is not the time to deny yourself anything.

Nothing says love better than melted cheese which may be why fondue pots are harder to come by right now. This one is nice and please do scroll down to the end of the story for the best Swiss fondue recipe ever.

Caudalie’s newest scent range, Soleil des Vignes, launched last summer, but I knew I’d need it now, when the scented bath gel with tiare (gardenia steeped in coconut oil) could lift me from my seasonal torpor.

REN’s Moroccan Rose Otto Bath Oil is a room filling, mind-alteringly wonderful bath classic.

When you are frozen solid and only a long soak will defrost you, Ren’s Moroccan Rose Otto Bath Oil, $61, with geranium, palmarosa and Moroccan rose otto, is the happiest ‘stay in the bath until your fingers go all pruny’ solution.

Did you know that fancy Portuguese fragrance line Claus Porto has a lower priced range of soaps, Ach Brito, which is as good, and as beautiful, as the more expensive main line? This bar of Luxo Banho is three quarters of a pound of snowy white, crisply-scented heaven. Available online and for curbside pickup from Toronto’s exquisite Saudade design shop.

Earthy and sensual, Balmy Summer roll-on fragrance ($36) from super-chic and super-chill west coast surf and style boutique Merge, is truly genderless, with notes of amber, vanilla and woody spruce. Wear this skin scent yourself or (in a not-so-selfless act) share it with your romantic partner.

Conjure a venerable hotel’s marble-clad bathroom by lighting this woody and creamy smelling Alpine Cedar scented candle ($42, Nordstrom.ca) from Canadian brand Maple & Lather, before soaking in the tub.

This white Rina Menardi cachepot $240, from Toronto’s Hopson Grace elevates your grocery store hyacinth and perfectly hides the ugly, black plastic pot it came in (no having to transplant, just pop the whole thing in.) And its gently bulbous shape harmonizes with contemporary decor or lightens up a room full of heavy antiques.

Rationalization, because it is rather pricy: it’s a modern classic that costs less than, and will afford you more pleasure than say, yet another pair of designer sunglasses (besides, everyone is buying $20 shades on Amazon now anyway.)

A very chic, über-hostess friend of mine bought a pair of Sunbeam heated blankets for hosting socially distanced coffee dates on her back patio this winter. Sheepskins are nice to sit on, but can you imagine diving under a soft fleece blanket?

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Authentic Cheese Fondue for two

Please try this cheese fondue recipe instead of defaulting to those foil pre-mixed packets at the grocery store. This version is easy to assemble (the only challenge may be in finding the perfect cheeses, see note below) and only takes minutes to pull together. It’s so worth it.

400 grams total of grated Gruyère and Vacherin Fribourgeois cheese (see Note, below)

150 ml white wine, like a nice Riesling

2 tsp cornstarch

2 tsp kirsch

A round or loaf of sourdough or country bread with a deep crust, cut into bite-sized cubes

A plump clove of garlic

Instructions

Cut a garlic clove in half lengthwise and rub the cut side all over the interior of your fondue pot (caquelon) releasing the garlic juice. Leave the little garlic bits in the pot.

Whisk the cornstarch into the wine in a measuring cup. Pour this into your fondue pot with the bits of garlic still there.  

Place the pot on the stove and heat the liquid over low-to-medium heat until hot but not boiling and then add all the cheese. Whisk constantly allowing the cheese to melt, paying special attention to scraping up the bits on the bottom of the pot and not letting the heat go too high. 

Once the cheese has melted, add the kirsch. Remove the pot from the stove, light the heating element on your fondue stand (the ‘rechaud’) and place the pot on the stand. Adjust the heat so your cheese is hot enough but not furiously bubbling. Add a tiny bit more wine if it’s too thick. 

Skewer your bread cubes on your fondue forks, dip and twist to remove excess cheese and enjoy. Tradition has it that anyone who loses a bread cube has to pay for the next bottle of wine.

As you eat and the amount of cheese in the pot goes down, you will have to turn down the heat so as not to burn what’s left. If there is a caramelized circle of cheese at the bottom of the pot when you are finished, carefully pry it off with a wooden spoon (not metal because it will scratch the finish) and enjoy. 

This recipe increases easily. Add 200 grams of cheese and 75 ml of wine for each additional serving.

Note: a classic Swiss mix of cheeses for fondue can be as simple as the above half Gruyère and half Vacherin Fribourgeois version, but you can also add small (or larger) amounts of Emmentaler, Appenzeller and Challerhocker as well.