The Womanly Art of Summer Fragrance

What's the trick to smelling good this summer?  Light fragrances that mirror the season.  During the warm months, I tend to shy away from heavy scents, musky smells, and anything "rich" or "warm" like vanilla or food type scents.  When I think summer, I think flowers.  Nothing smells more refreshing that a lovely waft of blooms on the breeze, so that's the way you should smell, too! 

My (new) all-time favorite is Annick Goutal's Petite Cherie.  With scents of peach, pear, grass, and a  hint of vanilla, I don't know how you smell spring any other way.  The fragrance is light, refreshing, and pairs perfectly with the season.  I swear it just smells like a pear with a little something extra.  And I love that. 

My secret shame is I love Jessica Simpson and her perfumes.  I have a few of hers, but I'm really loving her newest installment, I Fancy You.  It is Fuji apple, sandalwood, and lily of the valley.  I think it is a really subdued fragrance with great staying power.  It pairs well with other smells, if you're into mixing fragrances.  It's a great base. I could see spraying this on over a favorite lotion or even spraying it on with a body spray for a little different accent. I feel like it's a really neutral scent, so if I was going to go somewhere (like church) where I didn't want to have a strong, distinctive smell, and I just wanted someone to think "can't put my finger on it, but she smells amazing!" this is my perfume. 

An oldy but a goody... Marc Jacobs Daisy.  This is a few years old, so if you haven't smelled Daisy, you're missing out on one of the world's best perfumes.  I don't care for much else fragrance wise from Marc Jacobs, but this perfume is intoxicating.  It's described as violet, strawberry, and ruby red grapefruit.  It is a must smell, but once you smell it, you will be smitten. 

My final suggestion is if you don't want to get too invested in a fragrance, try Bath and Body Works.  There are a lot of wonderful, light, fruity scents that also work great.  Stay away from anything too musky (like Japanese Cherry Blossom--just not right for warm weather!).  They've got a great honeysuckle scent and most of the time, they're going to have a selection of the "in" scents for the season.  Trying those often helps put you in the right direction toward finding your favorite new summer fragrance! 

Do you match your smell to the season?  What's your must-have for summer?

The Womanly Art of Purse Management

For my second installment of a "womanly art" I decided to take a page right out of my favorite blog's play book.  Kate @ The Small Things blog has been doing a series asking other bloggers what they keep in their purse and why.  In my fantasy world, Kate would ask me, but then I realized in horror--I could never let her know what a mess my purse is!

So unassuming... just a cute Coach purse, right?

After checking out the contents of several folks' purses, I got some great tips, so I decided to share the revolution that would be my purse makeover.  I remind you, what you are seeing here is graphic, so you may not want to zoom into these pictures ;)

Let's play "I Spy"... honorable mentions, Matt's watch and Claire's sock and a pair of broken ear buds

I sincerely do try to keep my purse clean.  I started using big gallon baggies to carry anything leak-able to save my expensive purses from lotion disasters or mysterious opening containers/lip gloss/whatevers.  Of course, it keeps my purse clean, but it looks like a hot mess.

And even MORE mysteries hide in the bag... I had no idea I carried around all this stuff!

I tend to pick up odds and ends from mostly Claire these days. However I notice I keep a lot of useless receipts, some mystery cold medicine (that was all used, by the way), GermX, and make up.

I organized my trash and treasures and came up with some surprising finds.  I have a ton of lip potions that I rarely use, but justify keeping them in my purse "just in case."  I usually just use the chap stick. 

Bareminerals something or other, my lip balm from Birchbox, Covergirl from the Taylor Swift campaign, Clique, Unknown but it has like a gold sheen to it, and the one that got thrown away... from bottom to top.

So I threw away the trash and put the items that don't belong in my purse where they actually go.  I couldn't justify getting rid of all my lipsticks and chapsticks, except for one because it was really old and practically empty.  I also realize now writing this that my usual lotion that I keep in my ziplock was NOT in there.  So now I have no idea where that went, but obviously keeping stuff in the baggy didn't do the trick to KEEP it in there. 

The minimalist.  I never thought I'd see the day!

What did I do?  I grabbed this cute little make-up bag (don't you love free gifts?)  I put my leakables in there to keep them safe (now I have to go find another lotion and stick it in, too.  This is bothering me!)

I carry a big wallet/checkbook for stuff I don't use often.  I keep my insurance card in there plus those stamp/punch cards from stores. I also put a capped pen in there--handy for storage but also nice because I always have a pen.  I have to have my sunglasses, gum, and germ X at hand.  I also keep my keys on a smaller wallet that contains my ID, credit card, and other cards that I use frequently.  I like to do this because if I'm in a hurry I can ditch the purse and just take the little wallet with keys and take off.  Not that I do a lot of taking off these days, but it's also nice to have when I have the baby's bag, too, because I can just throw that inside instead of carrying my purse plus her diaper bag. 

So easy to find stuff now!  And although my phone isn't in this shot, it looks so cute in there!  And I'm never shuffling to the bottom to find it under piles of junk!

I really like the new look of the inside of my purse!  I justified the bag before because it'd just be easier to swap out purses, but after seeing all that mess, there's no way that was an "easy" plan.  I waited to blog this for a few days after I cleaned, just to see if I could keep it up and if I realized by downsizing all the trash if I'd actually needed anything in that pile.  Turns out I didn't, and I love having a clean and organized purse!

My germ X and gum fit neatly in the side pockets, since my phone in it's giant otterbox does NOT fit in them!

So tell me, what do you carry in your purses?  What are other great organization tools?  I encourage everyone to go over to The Small Things and see if you can come up with some great ideas, too! 

A happy purse!

So what do you think?  Are you going to join in with the womanly art of managing your purse?