10ish Summer Beauty Item Watch

Above: A not-so-frightening cedar bag.

1. Ask anyone who has ever been to a summer music festival without sunscreen. You sit for long hours sifting between stages and baking under the sun. Since not everyone has or wants to tan indoors before attending, nor do they have the foresight to apply gooey sunblock juice. Products for treating sun-kissed skin include aloe, cocoa butter, Brazil Nut Body Butter (The Body Shop ®]).

2. A solid notebook. Pantone ®, Moleskinnes ®.

3. A budget. Grab the aforementioned nice notebook and pencil out the figures. Draw lines through 7s. After a summer of restraint, you'll thank yourself in the cold of winter.

4. Cedar bags. These dissuade errant moths from fluttering into your closets. The bags protect delicate wools from being eating by the spindly creatures. Avoid a latent-health-scare-sized moth panic altogether with the bags.

5. A beer that's a little weird. A friend and I recently debated about one particular Michigan brand, Short's Brew. He said that all the lines were a little weird. Though this blog doesn't normally highlight it, weird is good. To say something is only weird is easy enough when one is not familiar with their conversational partner and struggles to find a common language.

Weird is the kind of word that people attribute to items they can't unilaterally classify. It suggests a block in the mind, a lack of openness to literary definition or refinement. Weird and the refinement of the weird, the quirky, gives you edge. Edge, here, applied to liquidation. My beer of summer has peppercorn in it: a spicy, orange-y blend. 

6. Lady-like clothing. Something white, something nautical, and something straw for the summer fashion season. BCBG stripes, loose Free People shorts or dresses.

7. Vintage paperbacks about bawdy people in New England. If you can't route up any of those, then read The Awakening for a quick beach trip. Or, tread through some Proust if you have a long journey. One of the sectionals of in Remembrance of Times Past. Both of these novels feature passages about people vacationing in harbor towns. Candice Bushnell covers it topically in Four Blondes.

8. Shell necklaces, sunglasses, items that remind one of the Earth manifested.

9. Tonic water and toner. An icepack.

10. Shoes. Mint green shoes or Fly London wedges. Something with a little heel without looking like the former Spice Girls.