Last week I had the pleasure of being in Southern California for vacation, and stopped in to this beautiful shop in Pasadena called LATHER. What a great find!!!

LATHER is a woman-owned company specializing in skin and body care products using essential oils and other quality natural ingredients. The store in Pasadena (they also have stores in Atlanta GA and Scottsdale AZ) is amazingly beautiful and inviting, and the store manager was just as friendly and helpful as can be.

The store had testers of everything, as well as two sinks available for trying anything that involved washing/rinsing. It was fun to walk around sniffing and trying various products. I never felt rushed or pressured to buy anything – the service was the perfect mix of helpful suggestions and the right hands-off approach to let us explore the store.

I seriously wanted to buy one of everything, it is all so fabulous!! I bought four soaps (sandalwood rose, vetivert & grapefruit, seven seed lemon & rosemary, and honey almond). LATHER also has some excellent travel and gift sets that are the perfect way to try out a variety of products at once. I bought the four-product pamper pack, which contains AHA hand creme with evening primrose, lavender & eucalyptus foot creme, bamboo lemongrass foaming body scrub, and manuka body butter with grapefruit & juniper.

Other products I really, really want to try include the almond, milk & honey body butter (smells AMAZING!!), the yuzu sugar cane body buff, aha facial therapy w/copper & borage extract, and the licorice root eye treatment.

My sister bought the ultra light face lotion, which she says is just awesome. It’s the perfect light-weight facial lotion that is super-soothing – I think I might need to order some now!!

If you find yourself in Old Town Pasadena (or Scottsdale or Atlanta) you absolutely MUST check out LATHER in person, the store is just beautiful. Otherwise, order online or by phone and you won’t be disappointed by the products, I promise! I will definitely be ordering more in the future.

I visited the Oregon Coast last week with my husband and sister, and stopped in at a cute little home decor shop called Sesame and Lilies in Cannon Beach. I loved this shop! If you happen to be visiting Cannon Beach, do stop in. The decor is very well chosen and you are sure to find something to please. They had a particularly lovely selection of bath-y stuff, including delectable soaps and lotions, and best of all, the entire Tokyo Milk line of perfumes!

I have admired Tokyo Milk’s perfumes for a while, ever since I found them in Anthropologie. Unfortunately, there is no About Us page on their website, so I can’t tell you much about the company, other than their products are great!

The product line includes eau de parfum sprays, solid perfumes, lip balms, candles, and more. Each product has awesome packaging, with funky retro designs. The perfumes are all interesting, with none of them being boring or run of the mill (although a few smell kind of similar to each other, to my nose.)

I picked out Cherry Bomb, which is described as having notes of Wild Rose, Osmanthus, Chocolate & Vetiver. Amusingly, Cherry isn’t mentioned, but it’s definitely there. It’s not nearly as sweet as the name might suggest. It’s flirty and fun, without being cloying or artificial. I think that’s what I like best about the Tokyo Milk perfumes – they do all smell quite fresh and REAL, not overly synthetic.

Cherry Bomb doesn’t have the greatest staying power on skin, but isn’t the worst. It stuck around for a few hours before fading away, the chocolate notes remaining the longest. At $28 each, they won’t break the bank and you can even afford to pick out a couple for the price of one department store perfume. Tokyo Milk gets two thumbs up!

I visited Fez Studio recently, after driving by it a whole bunch of times and wondering what it was all about. Now I know! Fez Studio is lovely boutique in Portland’s Pearl District, which offers makeup lessons, event makeup and bridal makeup, as well as skincare consultations, and the boutique is stocked with prestige skincare, makeup, and fragrance brands.

The atmosphere is very relaxing and welcoming as soon as you walk in. I was only browsing the day I visited (at first, anyway), but I never felt unwelcome. They offer a more hands-off approach, which I definitely appreciate. I was able to pick up products, sniff them, read labels, spray perfumes, etc. without feeling like I was being watched. But I also felt that if I had questions or needed help, it would be offered graciously.

The full list of brands is available on their website, and I am happy to see that they carry Kevyn Aucoin! Next time I visit (when I have more spending money) I want to really investigate the Sensual Skin Enhancer.

This visit, what really interested me were CB I Hate Perfume and Tauer Perfumes. Both of these niche brands are not found anywhere else in Portland (that I’m aware of) and until my visit, I’d only read about them online and in Perfumes: The Guide. The CB fragrances were nice, but I was really knocked out by the Tauer perfumes!

I ended up purchasing Lonestar Memories (review soon!) and the whole experience was really fun and gratifying.

If you live in Portland or are visiting, stop in at Fez Studio. The folks are nice and the products are pretty and fun to explore!