one afternoon walk earlier in the week
It's been mostly cold and rainy. We haven't had much sunshine this week but when we did Winnie and I were out walking. We walked by these pastures that are becoming green under the blue, blue skies which were dotted with white, cotton ball clouds.
Frugal girl went shopping yesterday downtown in my tiny seaside village. I was in desperate need of cuticle cream. I'm afraid I'm a bit of a biter and a picker and a former nail biter. My cuticles very easily turn into a dry, flaky hangnail-ish mess. My favourite product for years and years was Revlon Cuticle Massage Cream (5.00 at most pharmacies) which I've recently discovered (after hunting in town all over to no avail and eventually googling it) has been discontinued. Someone is selling a jar on ebay for 24.00 - it is that great. But frugal girl is not paying 24.00. So ... I was out to find the next best thing.
I remembered that our pharmacy has a Burt's Bees product display and they have a Lemon Butter Cuticle Cream. A little more googling and a little more research - and I found good reviews of this product all around. I decided I was going to treat myself and try it.
An 18g tin of Cuticle Cream was 8.99 at my drugstore but I could also buy an entire little kit of both samples sizes (containing a half size 8.5g Cuticle Cream), full size products (tinted & shimmer lip balms) and a sweet little cosmetic bag covered with bees all for 19.99. The lip balms alone retail for 4.99 each. And who doesn't love little sample sizes. This way I could try the cuticle cream, you can never have too many lip balms, try the other products and have a sweet little bag to put stuff in. Sold. Well the cuticle cream is just OK - it doesn't hold a candle to the discontinued Revlon stuff - it was an incredible product ... two or three nights religiously putting it on my fingertips and that dry messy skin around my fingernails magically became as soft as a babies bum. Maybe I should pay the 24.00 on ebay.
I also stopped into the new ice cream parlour, two doors away from my house and across from the park that edges our harbour. Just to check it out, to say hello and introduce myself as I suspect I may be a fairly regular customer. 32 flavours of hard ice cream, the full menu of sundaes, slushies, flurries, banana splits, dipped soft ice cream and Jennifer can dip hard ice cream, apparently a rare and unusual talent. And if you get a double scoop she can dip each scoop in a different crackly hard coating. So ... technically you could have a double scoop, the bottom scoop say ... Peanut Butter Fudge Crunch ice cream dipped in caramel coating topped with another scoop say of .... Toasted Marshmallow ice cream dipped in chocolate fudge coating ... You know that hard coating on ice cream that when you bite into it cracks and big slabs of it come off and melt in your mouth ... I'm not even sure that I would ever order such a cone, but comforting to know that I could. Wow ! be still my heart. Smile.
Morning, Susan,
ReplyDeleteI may have to look on ebay for that cream. My cuticles are like yours. It is so dry here. I don't nibble them, but they are a disaster. I think I know that Revlon cream. As I read your entry, a memory of it crossed my mind. I think I used it a long, long, time ago and that I too thought it was really good stuff.
Your ice cream parlor would be the undoing of me. I have a weakness for ice cream. It's actually not so easy to bring ice cream from the store in town, 17 miles away, into my house in the summer, because it tends to melt. We have to bring it up on dry ice. But this protects me from ice cream binges. Of course anytime I hit a town, I head straight for the ice cream store. I had a flavor I haven't been able to get out of my mind recently at a Haggan Daz store. It was invented by a customer through a Bon Appetite magazine contest. Caramelized Pear and Toasted Pecan. I'm not kidding, that was the best flavor I have ever put into my mouth! I shut my eyes and swooned with every spoonful. I've tried to find it in containers in grocery stores, but haven't seen it again. I'll bet one could caramelize pears and make toasted pecans then serve that over excellent vanilla ice cream for a similar result. And, I'll bet that same concoction would be delicious over baby greens served with a slightly tangy dressing as a salad. I often put pears and toasted pecans in my salads in the fall, but have never caramelized the pears first.
Have a good day...
We have identical dry hangnail-ish cuticles. And I tend to pick at them, too, which doesn't help the situation. I have also tried the Burt's Bees cuticle cream, but it, like you said is just okay. Lately, in a desparate mode, I've been rubbing lip balm into them before bed, and it has made a huge difference.
ReplyDeletePerfect sky pic.
Okay, I am hungry for ice cream now.