I was contacted by the jeans company “Not your daughter’s jeans” to receive a free pair of jeans and to review them on the site.

Note: I have to get it off my chest: I really hate the name. But then again, I am not really their specific target market — Moms who want to look stylish and not wear mom jeans.

I picked the Premium Lightweight — #1031 – in a Size 4 in a Straight Leg, after agonizing for an hour over what I wanted.

I just decided to go with something classic.

I normally wear a Size 6, and they said to pick a size larger than you’d normally wear (which would be a Size 8), but I went with my instincts and chose the Size 4, because I don’t have much in the way of hips or a butt, so pants in particular are tricky.

It’s only in my belly area that is a bit larger, but these jeans were a stretch mid-rise, so I figured a 4 would be ideal, and I was right.

The belly area fit perfectly. Not too tight, not too loose.

And surprisingly so did the butt!

I know this isn’t the best picture, but normally jeans make me look like I have the flattest butt known to woman.

This one, actually gave me some curves…

I am just standing awkwardly because BF is taking the picture while I am flattened against the wall trying to keep my balance.

Verdict?

FINALLY.

A company that I can now visit the website of, browse through the HUGE selection of styles, trends, washes and details, and find a pair that won’t be a hip-hugging low rise.

It takes me at least 8 months before I can track down a pair of jeans that are:

• in dark, evenly spread rinses (no weird feathering or striping)
• in straight-leg (or skinny! I couldn’t decide, but went with a classic)
• in different washes (I picked a dark rinse but they had plenty more)
• with different details on the butt

That’s it. It seems so simple that it’s laughable how hard it can be sometimes to find a pair.

The only thing I am not sure about, is that this is an American company, and as such, the jeans seem to differ from the States vs Canada.

So if you want to buy a pair, I suggest you get them in the States rather than Canada. They go under a different name here: “TUMMY TUCK JEANS”

Note: I hate this name even more than “Not your Daughter’s Jeans”.

Now for the downsides:

As for prices, I don’t know how much mine cost, but I did some research and I’m guessing around $130 – $150 USD for a pair of jeans.

The Tummy Tuck ones I scoped out at Simons here in Montreal, were $170 CAD.

So these are really what they’d call a premium denim market.

Their site is also very confusing.

I didn’t know if I was looking at the same pair of jeans 15 times, or if they were REALLY different pairs of jeans.

Site and content consistency is a problem. Not all of the jeans you click on, have a good description.

For example: These are all named “Premium Black”.

Therefore, they’re all the same pairs of jeans to me.

No?

The upside of all of this:

….is that you find the perfect pair of jeans, and I don’t wear them often enough to warrant owning more than 2 pairs (still waiting for my first pair of jeans to finally kick the bucket after years of being patched).

You know where to go to find a great pair of jeans now. It’s just a matter of figuring out which one you want!

I went (window) shopping.

Okay before you say anything about my shopping ban, I feel the need to remind you that I am allowed to buy 3 things on my exception list for 2010, to be purchased at each milestone (3 months):

• Knee-high grey boots (no luck here because I am not quite sure what I want yet)
• Trench coat (bad luck here, because I’m only lusting after the Burberry ones!! Ack!)
• Leather jacket (so far, found a perfect one for $575, fainted & moved on)

Still looking for these options above, the only must, is the leather jacket.

And a real leather jacket, not a faux one, because they make me sweat like a pig in heat and they tend to feel … squeaky.. for lack of a better description.

So anyway, I went window shopping just to see what I’m missing (I know, bad idea, right?) and THERE WAS NOTHING I WANTED TO BUY.

Other than that $575 leather jacket from Aritzia that didn’t even come in the colour I wanted (dark brown), the stores are just lacking in tempting clothing.

Everything is:

• neutral — sands, beiges, greys, blacks; I love me a neutral, but I want colour & pattern!
• colours I’d never wear — neons were huge for some reason & really funky 70s prints
• patterns — none to really speak of; I saw a great red print pattern but hated the style
• style/shape I can’t pull off — super skin tight? strange fabrics? assymetrical what!?

…all just unwearable for me.

I can’t wear neon green, grass green, beige, sandy colours or anything that makes me look sickly.

The only decent colour was the vibrant purples I saw. The really neon magenta pinks? Not so much.

Glad I’m on a shopping ban. The stores have just made it so much easier to resist — there’s nothing I want.

Spoon

Original Use:

An eating utensil, best used for liquids such as soups.Was made famous by running away with the dish in a children’s nursery rhyme “Hey Diddle Diddle”, and can be re-purposed as a verb to describe cuddling (“spooning”)…

Double Agent Uses:
A parlour game (make it balance on your nose), or an eyelash curler.

For real! Take any spoon (plastic or metal), close your eyes, and cover your eye with the bowl of the spoon (the curved-in part), while getting your eyelashes to stick out from the upper rim of the spoon.

With your other hand, use your fingers to bend your lashes up against the outside of the spoon and hold it for a few seconds. Warm fingers work best. And you can curl in sections.

Aspirin

Original Use:
To stop headaches caused by a number of factors, including annoying people on the train.

Double Agent Uses:
An salicylic acid treatment (for acne). Crush it up into a fine powder and mix with water. Spread it on your face and let it dry. Go to bed. Wake up pimple-free. The reason why it works is because aspirin has properties of salicylic in it.

Conditioner

Original Use:
Great for conditioning your hair to make it feel soft and silky by covering it in a thin film of conditioning agents

Double Agent Uses:
Moisturizing Body Wash or Shaving Cream (I actually prefer it over actual shaving cream).

Dental Floss

Original Use:
Getting gunky bits of food out from being wedged in between your teeth; Keeps your gums healthy

Double Agent Uses:
As a shoelace fix or a piece of string to tie something up in a pinch. It is surprisingly strong as it is made out of many little fibers, like spidersilk.

Have you ever tried ripping a piece of that stuff in half with your bare hands!? (Rhetorical. I of course, have tried.)

Toothpaste

Original Use:
Used as a gritty paste to help scrub plaque away from your teeth. (I’ve switched to baking soda, same diff)

Double Agent Uses:
To clean sterling silver. It is surprisingly effective and cheap. Dab some on a Q-Tip & start scrubbing.

Avoid using whitening toothpaste on silver, and don’t leave the toothpaste on the silver or it will start to grow mold.

Honey

Original Use:

Made by bees, coveted by bears, stolen appropriated by humans.

Double Agent Uses:

A moisturizing, sticky lip gloss in a pinch. It works, but it isn’t very liquidy, I must admit. And then there’s the problem of eating it off your lips without knowing it…

Hey, these are short-term quick fixes!

Olive Oil

Original Use:

To eat and to dip soft pieces of French baguette into, with a splash of balsamic vinegar. Mmmmm…

Double Agent Uses:

A lip balm in a pinch, or my perennial favourite, an all over body moisturizer!

Be forewarned, it doesn’t absorb into your skin completely, as it is a pure oil. It WILL leave a film all over you, so I tend to do this mostly on my legs, and when I’m wearing skirts..

Oh and apparently butter and other oils work as well. I prefer olive oil, however…

Hand Sanitizer

Original Use:
Made to kill 99.9999% of all germs (bad AND GOOD bacteria). Used A LOT by paranoid, frantic mothers in playgrounds when little Timmy touches the miniature walking neighbourhood petri dish Tommy. (I am more of a warm water and soap kind of girl…)

Double Agent Uses:
A quick way to refresh your roots when your hair is too oily.

Instead of using baby powder (recommended for light-coloured beauties), use a small dab of hand sanitizer which is made out of alcohol, on your roots.

An alternative is to use witch hazel to rub into your roots. That’ll also refresh your hair.

Baby Powder

Original Use:
Used to pat on the bottoms of babies, around the world, to keep them feeling dry and smelling like a baby instead of a walking pooping machine.

Double Agent Uses:
As a deodorant or as a in-a-pinch dry shampoo.

As a deodorant, you can rub a little bit of it under your armpits and wear a long-sleeved shirt. In the summer, I almost like to spread it all over my body (on the parts that will be hidden to avoid looking like I played in a big tub of white flour) to keep dry and smell-free.

As a dry shampoo, this should only be used for light-haired beauties. You can also use corn starch instead of baby powder if you don’t have any around.

Yoghurt

Original Use:
To eat, to receive those awesome belly-friendly bacteria to keep your tummy happy and regulated.

Double Agent Uses:
Plain yoghurt is great as a masque. I spread a table spoon or three, all over my face, leave it for half an hour (no fear of licking it off, it is gross without any sugar in it).. and my face feels refreshed, soft and more even-toned.

Rubbing Alcohol

Original Use:
Disinfectant for when you fall and scrape yourself. I think I also saw a hobo try to drink it as a cheap form of alcohol.. something I DO NOT recommend doing.

Double Agent Uses:
Use it to wash your feet and your armpits with. It will kill the bacteria responsible for causing that stink in your feet that you get from sweating a lot.

We have a lot of overlooked fashion niches don’t we?

Plus-sized fashion is a big one.

The average weight and size of a woman is 5′4″ and 163 pounds, up from 157 pounds the year before. (Source: Wonderquest)

I’m 5′4″, and I’m 130 – 135 pounds but I look like I’m around 115 – 120 pounds sometimes.

(Don’t ask me how that is because either I’m secretly muscle-y and my muscles are just hiding from me when they need to be worked, or the weight spreads really evenly across my body. I’m leaning towards the latter.)

And even I, at that weight, have a hard time finding clothes to fit correctly.

My top 5 gripes

• Waist is too tight but it fits everywhere else
• Shoulders are too narrow (who are we using as fit models? birds?)
• Bust coverage is too low (bra always ends up showing)
• Pants don’t fit because they’re too long (Fit models are 5′7″, but I assume they want us to hem)
• Armholes are too tight

But I can imagine another overlooked fashion niche are women shorter than 5′4″ (I thought I had problems!).

Because things just look too long and big on them, or the petite sizes meant for shorter than 5′4″, are petite in overall size, not allowing for different body types or shapes in shorter women.

Until the retail industry catches up with the rest of our varying body shapes, we need to basically suck it up and figure out how to dress for what we’ve got.

With all that being said, it’s the reason why I stick to the following shapes/styles..

What I stick to:

• Wrap dresses and tops — you can adjust the waist in these most of the time
• Jersey, or fabrics with a bit of stretch
• Mid-rise pants and jeans
• V-neck clothing that stops a couple of inches below the middle of my collarbone
• Nothing strapless

I do think that retailers are leaving a big chunk of cash on the table. What I would like to see, is a store that can design real, cute clothing for ALL sizes. From 00 to 6 to 24.

And it shouldn’t be that difficult if retailers looked at it from a different perspective.

The trick is that we do NOT want to look TOO different to really stand out for the wrong reasons, like being called a fashion victim behind or backs.

Let’s face it, most of us are pretty average in our choices of clothing (or is that just me?)

I for one, am in the category of 90% of women who wouldn’t dare wear a pair of harem MC hammer pants with a saggy diaper-like bottom.

I am also a woman who would never consider wearing crochet or other see-through or sheer tops as actual clothing with nothing else on.

Or thong bikinis. You get the idea.

We’re pretty vanilla in our fashion choices

Most women en masse, are pretty vanilla.

Not all of us, but most of us.

I like stuff from Anthropologie, Jacob, J. Crew, Banana Republic, Target, Independent Designers… and so on. I consider myself to enjoy fashion quite a bit, but REAL fashion. Real individual style. All the clothes I wear are literally a canvas for the rest of my accessories, which is where (for me), true individuality emerges.

Instead of just wearing a charcoal grey suit with a pinstriped top, wearing a bold chunky necklace with it, and cute heels with an interesting piece of metal jewelery on your finger, can say a lot more about you than a boring pair of stud earrings.

If we’re all wearing the same stuff, the only thing that differentiates us, is our accessories and our attitudes.

Retailers don’t understand that they can make the same suit, but in a wide range of fabrics with little details here and there, and make a killing.

They do not need to go overboard!

Retailers use unflattering fabrics as well

One major problem is that retailers don’t pay attention to the fabrics being used (stretchy, breathable, not shiny).

Things that are too shiny, can only look decent on a couple of sizes. They aren’t wearable at any size.

Things that are too tight in terms of fabric, means you have to use MORE fabric instead of less, because there isn’t any give.

And it has a higher chance of NOT fitting someone by the nature of the fabric.

They shouldn’t stop making the classics!

There are always classic things that look good on everyone at any size and if a retailer would just focus on those same shapes and styles, and just change MINOR details like a collar, the buttons, the pleating, the pockets, and the colours or patterns… they could probably make a killing.

Tailored jackets for one, and doing them in a softer, more forgiving fabric would allow more stretch without compromising quality. And adding a cute wrap detail, or something different in the buttons or collars is enough for most women.

Another style of dress that seems to work on ALL shapes are wrap dresses because I’m a slender person but this looks good on me, AND my curvier friends. You can adjust the waist band, you feel like a woman, and it fits even when you go up or down a size.

Vests are another good bet. And so are A-line skirts.

What I’m trying to point out, is that retailers have an option.

They can sit back and try and predict what the next hot pair of harem pants are, or they can just stick to the basics in a modern woman’s fashion and make it wearable at any size, for a decent price, and with little changes here and there.

Like an added frill. Or ruffle. Or a set of buttons up the sleeve. Or a zippered skirt.

This is why I enjoy Target so much — they have all the sizes, and the fabrics are pretty much the same across all sizes, as well as the styles. They really understand the everyday woman, and it’s why it’s one of my favourite places to shop.

LOGITECH ALTO LAPTOP STAND = ~$55

Instead of the $149.99 they’re asking for on the Future Shop website.

I spaved $100!

(Snagged at Canada Computers on College if you are interested in buying one too)

I’ve wanted one for a while now, and BF paid $80 for his at Staples, and I felt like I couldn’t fork over more than $50 for a laptop stand.

I wanted one because..damn it, I hate hunching over my laptop.

Now that I have it, I am sitting up straighter, and looking right into my laptop screen rather than hunching over it on a table.

I guess everyone is saying: So WTH don’t you just buy a desktop?

As much as I like the idea, I can’t travel with a desktop as easily as I can with a laptop, its own stand and keyboard.

LOGITECH ILLUMINATED KEYBOARD $84.99

Again, snagged at Canada Computers for 5% off (woo hoo open box!) and for $15 cheaper than through Future Shop, who is selling it for $99.99. Online only.

I would have used the keyboard that came with the laptop stand, but the damn thing was WIRELESS.

I hate wireless keyboards or mice. They take up a USB port anyway, and the response time is slow, no matter what they claim. It just takes time to feed a signal, that’s it.

Wired is where it’s at.

Review on the duo coming up soon, I promise.

SEPHORA HAUL (heh heh)

New night cream for the super dry winter that has been causing havoc on my skin:

Skyn Iceland (don’t look at the price tag, you will cry the way I did!)

…but this stuff is incredible. Review later.

New face moisturizer with SOME SPF in it for day time:

I would have stuck with my Neutrogena Dry Touch SPF 45 or the SkinMD SPF 15 creams, except they make BF nauseous.

Every. Time.

Even putting on a little light layer, makes him throw a mini fit about how badly I stink.

But this one passed his approval, when I layered on the sample I got from Sephora.

BF: “It doesn’t stink as bad as the others.”

New Facial Cleanser because I wanted something without my list of unapproved chemicals:

This stuff is SO awesome and you don’t need a lot, because it doesn’t lather but cleans beautifully.

New face primer:

Finally ran out of Smashbox’s Photofinish Primer and hemmed and hawed over buying another bottle but I wasn’t thrilled with the parabens in it.

I mean, it is a primer sitting on my skin, but who’s to say it doesn’t absorb into it a little?

So I went with this one that feels the same as Smashbox because it has silicones in it (I am not as squeamish about silicones).

And it’s cheaper!

I was thinking of ALSO buying a new blush and eye shadow set, but thought the better of it — I want to use up what I have first.

Hmm what else?

Oh yes! Here’s what I/BF cooked & ate:

Braised honey garlic ribs with rice and scallions.

I made the green beans for a vegetable side dish.

Too much meat!!!

(Gosh I never thought I’d ever say that)

I spent time cutting them on an angle like so, and it gave them a different texture and taste than just a straight chop.

Then we schooled my mom on making pizza from scratch.

I made the dough by hand, and BF chopped the toppings & cooked the pizzas on his pizza stone.

Here is the version with large fresh tomatoes and bacon with cheese & green onions for crunch:

This one is sans tomatoes

And this one is a white pie, with cream and onions instead of tomatoes.

A French recipe for pizza, apparently.

BF also made a great dish out of stewing hen, and the duck turned out almost like it but I forgot to snap a pic.

Stewing Hen with rice

P.S. If you want a GREAT butcher with decent prices, check out SANAGAN’S MEAT LOCKER @ 206 Baldwin Street, Toronto, ON (416) 593-9747

• Tues-Sat: 8 a.m. – 7 p.m.
• Sun: 12 noon – 5 p.m.
• Mon: Closed

Read the BlogTO review here.

We stumbled upon them by accident (they’re replacing Max & Sons), and the meat looks real, as in the chicken doesn’t look dry and powdery like Cost-co chicken, and the meat is flavourful as well.

The prices are VERY reasonable, and if we stayed longer in Toronto, we’d have done all our meat purchases there.

I also experimented with some Crispy Kale, on the advice of many foodies.

I coated it in oil, salted them good, and threw them in the oven.

Results? Mixed. I liked them, but not enough to go through the trouble of preparing them like that again.

They were a bit too oily for my taste, and I am not really a chip person.. so maybe if you are really into salty, crispy chips, this is a good substitute for you.

For me, not so much.

It was really crispy and crunchy, but not what I wanted .. if I were to crave potato chips that is.

CRISPY KALE

Then we ate out!

Pho from Pho Linh

We took it as takeout, because BF HATES soups.

So technically, I ate out. He ate in.

I love love LOVE this Pho.

It beats Pho Lien in Montreal, in my opinion.

The soup base is light, flavourful and AWESOME. I practically licked my bowl.

Pho Linh

1156 College Street
Toronto, ON M6H 1B6
(416) 516-3891

And we tried out the new chain Chipotle’s from the States.

$8.19 for ONE burrito.

“What a rip off”, we griped, as we ate out delicious burritos, with sauce dripping down our faces.

I hated the salty cheddar cheese in mine (big mistake ordering that), and I wanted guacamole, but she wanted to charge me something like $2.00 for it!

“Eff no!”, my inner PF’er screamed.

So I ate it as is.

The tortilla was AWESOME, just like what we ate in Dallas, TX… but there wasn’t enough meat for us, and frankly, it wasn’t worth $8.19.

I’d have paid $6.50 – $7 max for a single burrito, considering that a drink is extra.

But if you are missing a taste of true, pretty authentic, healthy Mexican burritos.. check ‘em out.

Chipotle

(Across from Forever 21 and the Pickle Barrel, beside Future Shop, closest TTC station is Dundas, near the Eaton’s Centre)

323 Yonge Street
Toronto, ON M5B 1R7
(416) 596-8600

As you can see, we had a stellar week shopping & eating in/out in Toronto

———————————————————————————–

A great article to be read: Asiaphilia — Why date or marry Asian women?

(Thanks Jaka!)

I really hate the stereotype that Asian women are docile, super effeminate and servile, as well as saying that non-Asian women are big, broad-shouldered, and undesirable as a female.

It’s such a load of bull. We’re WOMEN, and we’re all different no matter our race or culture.

That’s it.