July Favorites
These past two months have been spent doing a lot of learning, processing, reflecting and slow growth. AND! I am vaguely getting ready to move out of Boston at the end of August- life update post to come! So basically I have been trying to take advantage of as much of the New England summer as I can.
Some of the things I have been loving these past two months have been…
Sometime in the winter I bought a green silk slip dress from my favorite lingerie store, Forty Winks in Harvard Square. I actually bought it to wear out with tights and boots or tucked in as a top with jeans, but it is really meant to be a sleeping dress. I kind of forgot about it until I was rummaging through my closet and found it again and decided to actually sleep in it. Oh my goodness, it is the most perfect thing to sleep in on hot nights. We don’t have AC in our house, so I usually just wear T-shirts to bed, but the slip dress is way better to sleep in because the silk is much more cooling than a cotton shirt. It also feels weirdly good to look so dressed up when you go to bed, so that’s an added bonus.
A few months ago my friend Mikaela sent me this link to get a year long subscription to the Headspace Plus app for free if you’re unemployed. Feeling more anxious than usual due to the pandemic, I decided it was time to give meditation a try. I’ve been wanting to try meditating for a while now (it was actually on my 2020 resolutions), but had no idea how to get started on my own, nor did I want to pay for an app. Since downloading the Headspace app, I have been doing 5-15 minutes a day of meditating for the past month and have already noticed progress in my practice. I wanted get into meditation with the end goal of being able to calm myself down more easily in stressful situations, and I am already seeing how it is getting easier to calm down by focusing on my breath.
I think when my free subscription ends, I will definitely pay for Headspace. They have so many basic guided meditations as well as really specific ones (dealing with cancer, grief, change, acceptance, etc.). I have completed their first level basic course as well as a kindness course. I like their little happy graphics and how they encourage you to make meditation a habit by allowing you to put it in your calendar app or set notification reminders.They also offer a free subscription to essential workers and teachers, so I hope you take advantage of that if you can.
Free People Happiness Runs Crop
Can we all agree that tanks tops during the summer are essential? I have a ton of go to “little tank tops” as I like to call them, that I wear all summer round on repeat, and this Free People top is now in the mix. Gretchen talks about it in a few of her vlogs and then I saw it on a yogi I follow on Instagram (@chelseasyoga). They both rave about this shirt, so I was sold. I bought the white Happiness Runs tank in XS/S and it fits perfectly. It’s so soft and stretchy and comfortable that I have been wearing it as a regular tank top more than as a workout top. I also love the higher neckline because I think it's more flattering. I bought the olive green color as well and foresee many other colors making their way into my closet!
I saw that Trader Joe’s came out with a line of watermelon beauty products and they had an overnight face mask (BTW would totally recommend reading the Trader Joe’s print newsletter or checking their website to see new products coming out). My friend Emily raves about her watermelon overnight mask by Glow Recipe, so thinking the Trader Joe’s one would be similar, I decided to give it a try. To my dismay, they are two pretty different products, but I still really liked the Trader Joe’s one! The packaging says it can be used either as a daily moisturizer or as an overnight mask. I have been enjoying it most as an overnight mask (I like to leave it in the fridge a few hours before applying, and then it’s a refreshing cool-down before bed when I put it on). It leaves your skin feeling very hydrated- and it even helped soothe my skin when I had a sunburn. Would definitely recommend!
I picked up a travel size of the Vanilla Coconut scent when I was in Target a few months ago because Ashley and Rayna from Girls Gotta Eat love it. I am trying to transition to completely clean beauty products, so I figured I should try a natural deodorant, and oh my goodness I think I fell in love. I usually alternate between a few different deodorants because I feel like my body gets used to them quickly and as a result they are not as effective. But even after hours of being in my backyard tanning, the Native deodorant still kept my underarms smelling good, so it quickly became my go-to.
The first thing I noticed about Native deodorant was that it was more moist/sticky than a regular deodorant. I’m assuming this is probably because it’s natural? The coconut vanilla scent smells so good, it literally smells like Caroll baby dolls (if anyone had those growing up, I bet you know what I’m talking about) and is so nostalgic and soft and sweet, not overpowering at all. I bought a big version more recently, but noticed it wasn’t as sticky as the little version, and I have found that it doesn’t last quite as long as the travel size did. Unclear why that is, but I still love it and use it almost every day (I am still phasing out my other deodorants).