Seriously Good Smelling Stuff

LUSH! Why have I never heard of them before? I've been missing out. When we were strolling around Roppongi in Tokyo we happened upon this handmade cosmetics store. The other girls knew about this, but I was a Lush neophyte. This Lush in Japan was pretty incredible, but everything was in Japanese so I only had my nose to guide me. There was a store lady there who spoke a bit of English, but for the most part we had to figure it out for ourselves.


They had a huge table covered with giant hunks of soap. These smelled incredible, but I fell in love with one in particular. I loved the smell. It turns out it was the Figs and Leaves soap. The website explains that figs are wonderfully nutritious and good for your body, and their little brown seeds exfoliate the skin and aloe vera extract has soothing properties. The scent is the best part: floral, orange blossom and ylang ylang "with an undertone of eastern exoticism." Lush claims this "soap is one of our sexiest." No wonder I loved the smell of it! I also love that this soap is vegan.

I also bought this Vanilla and Jasmine bath bomb. I haven't used it yet, but it smells incredible.

I bought a Gorilla Perfume stick that is like a push pop that you can rub on your skin. I love the smell, but I have no idea which sent I bought. Mine is a bit sweet like honey or vanilla. My girlfriend is a huge fan of Karma, with a fabulous spicy sent.

My friend also bought this amazing charcoal face stuff. It is supposed to brighten the skin and it leaves it silky smooth! I don't see this on the American Lush website. It may just be a Japanese thing. The Japanese ladies are really big on the skin lighteners and I know that they use charcoal soaps for that.

Reasons I love Lush: They make products from fresh, organic fruit and vegetables, the finest essential oils and safe synthetics. They make them fresh by hand using little or no preservatives or packaging, using only vegetarian ingredients, and they do not test on animals.

Outstanding Organics

Introducing my new favorite restaurant on Okinawa: Ukishima Garden!

Ukishima is 100% organic and vegetarian. All the veggies are locally grown and most dishes are macrobiotic. No meat, fish, eggs, or dairy are used in most of the dishes. And to top it off they have a great selection of organic wines!

Hope found a brochure for this restaurant while we were having bagels at Cactus Eatrip. We immediately called for a dinner reservation that night. We were so excited and weren't disappointed. We both knew we wanted to indulge in the organic wine, so we took a cab ride from Kinser and the poor cab driver had to all the restaurant twice to figure out where they were located (even though the location did not seem hard to find so close to Kokousai Street).

At the restaurant we completely indulged. We ordered a fresh, crisp salad that was picked from their very own garden out back. We also ordered an appetizer of Orion beer battered veggie fritters that were also so incredibly flavorful and yummy. We both got the amazing veggie pasta with a tomato cream sauce for our main dishes. We had pieces of sugar and dairy free hazelnut and chocolate cake for dessert. How they got that cake to be so incredibly good without butter and sugar is beyond me! To top it off we first ordered a bottle of sweet sparkling wine and lingered so long over our delish meal that we ended up splurging with a second bottle of Riesling. (Good thing we had already decided to take a cab!) It was an incredible meal and I will be going back for sure!!

Ukishima Garden is located in Naha near Kokousai Street. 1400 - 1800 cafe time. 1800 - 2400 dinner time. The address is 1-12-3 Matsuo Naha Okinawa 900-0014. Phone for directions or reservations: 098-943-2100.

Thank goodness for good friends

This weekend my friends and I had a really fun day celebrating a good friend's birthday.

We started out the day getting pedicures at Cocok's.



Had a delish lunch at a cute sandwich shop near the seawall called Big Midows Sub Stand. I will be going back here. This sandwich was so good! We all got the herb chicken sandwich which came with coconut chicken soup and fries.



A bigger group got together for dinner at Me Kara Uroko next door to Transit on the seawall. They had a large menu with lots of yummy options. It was really fun to have dinner with so many friends, but it did make me miss Brad pretty bad.



We finished the day off going to see Hangover 2 and laughed our butts off. Thank goodness for good friends! What a fabulous Friday. I love birthdays. Happy Birthday Jess, so glad I could celebrate with you!

GHO Review

So, I'm pretty much in love. On Thursday 3 mamma-sans ushered me out of my apartment and preformed cleaning magic all over my apartment. That's right, I broke down and finally hired a professional cleaning service. I've wanted to do this for months (if you remember my spring cleaning post), but my feeling that I was just being super lazy kept me from doing it for a while. I mean, it's just me and Brad... and now it's just me in the apartment. But, we've been living in this apartment for over a year and that's the longest I've ever lived in an apartment since college. And, I could really tell. It really bothered me, and I'm not super in love with this apartment anyway, so it was incredible how uncomfortable I was becoming in my own space. So, cue the angels of cleaning.

I have a lot of friends on the island that have used Good Housekeeping and they rave about them, but I've never used a cleaning service before. After looking at their website and the service list I was sold. I booked a deep cleaning and it ended up being worth every penny. They completely surpassed my expectations.

GHO upgraded me for free from 2 housekeepers to 3 (totally awesome) and they were in my apartment for 4 hours so that's an equivalent of 12 hours of cleaning. In addition to the basic cleaning you would expect from a cleaning service let me tell you a few things these ladies did that just blew me away: organized the massive heap of shoes in my closet, organized the massive amount of crap magneted to my refrigerator, organized the books on the bookshelf, cleaned under the couches and beds, made the beds hotel style with the sheets and blankets perfect, took my massive amount of recycling down, cleaned the inside (and outside) of my trash can, and basically made my apartment totally sparkle. There is no dust anywhere. How to they do this?! Amazing. Part of the deep cleaning was that they would clean my stove/oven and refrigerator. They threw the microwave in there too. I don't want to use my kitchen because I don't want to mess up the perfection that's going on in there.

Plus, while they were cleaning I got to go out and do some shopping and had a totally nice morning. Then I got to come home to a perfect apartment! Bliss. GHO housekeepers were super nice, professional and I will totally be using this service again, shame free, because what these ladies can do is pretty amazing. I mean, they cleaned in that tiny crack between the counter and the refrigerator!

Exploring Mihama

Saturday was just a really, really good day for no particular reason. I set out to run some errands and spent a nice hour or two roaming around Mihama American Village. On the island the American Village Ferris wheel is a common sight and landmark.



I headed over there initially to get Gojou some stuff at the pet store, but after that since it was so chilly, I stopped into Starbucks for something hot and treated myself to one of their new lil cake pops. I found a nice seat in the window and watched humanity pass by as I browsed the pictures in a Japanese Marie Claire. I haven't done this in a very long time and it felt great to just relax in the familiar Starbucks setting.



I then decided to walk around and check out some of the cool shops. I somehow hadn't done this before and I had been told about the neat stores in this area. While I've been to American Village a few times before mostly it has been to visit Yogurt Land. I didn't buy anything, but was seriously tempted by some of the crazy Japanese shoes they had for sale. But, I didn't even want to attempt trying to fit my behemoth feet into any of the little sizes.



I love the garden center at the Makeman - DIY store and I found a great one right there in American Village. Flowers always brighten up my day and on Saturday I walked away with a big, puffy pink hydrangea and a pretty mini tree with yellow flowers.



I went to Foster to do my usual Exchange and Commissary errands, but I did treat myself to these fab sunnies:

I love making even the mundane errands fun!

Classic Date Night

This has been a fabulous weekend. Fabulous since it was the first one Brad and I have spent together in a while. And also fabulous because we did some really fun stuff! I have lots to tell you about.

First, I'll tell you about our dinner and movie date on Friday. I've gone to eat at Sushi Zen like 10 times, but I don't think I've ever really told you guys about it. It is an amazing sushi place where the Japanese chef and owner who previously lived in NYC makes up the most delish rolls ever. Sushi Zen is also in a really cool neighborhood on the Sunabe Seawall and has some really fun bars nearby. I have been wanting to check out these places for a while now, so before dinner we stopped into a couple of places. I loved these bars and I can't wait to go back there for a fun night out with friends.

At Sushi Zen there is only one sushi chef and this is an extremely popular restaurant, so you have to be ready to kick back and relax while you wait for the sushi to come out as it's ready. We started out with a plum wine for me and edamame, and ordered 4 sushi rolls: the Odyssey, Bull Dog, Caterpillar and Red Dragon. I've only recently gotten into spicy sushi and we kind of went overboard ordering 3 out of the 4 rolls with the spicy orange sauce topping. The Odyssey roll was my favorite!


After dinner we headed over to Foster to see a movie and then we went home to drink wine, read China guide books and got really excited about our upcoming trip... well I got excited, Brad fell asleep on the couch! It doesn't matter that we've been married for years and have gone on hundreds of dates. Each time I'm reminded of why I love this man... we have SO much fun together!

Spoiled

So, update to my last post... Brad read that I loved that dress and immediately bought it for me. He told me today that he ordered it! Now I just need some place to wear it.

Today another big purchase was made which involves another stamp on my passport. Brad's leave hasn't been approved yet, so I'll wait to tell you about it. I will be extremely upset and disappointed if we don't get to go, so fingers crossed!

My husband is really really good to me. Lucky girl!

LBD

LBD... Little Black Dress. Everyone needs one right? I think I may be treating myself to this pretty little number. It's on sale too! Ahhh BCBG, you sure know how to make a dress. Classy, flattering and so detailed. Love.

As I briefly mentioned before, I have a total love for BCBG dresses. This was started by my husband when he bought me my first BCBG dress for our rehearsal dinner. If I had the love of these dresses then that I do now I would have gotten married in a BCBG for sure.

Here is my first love, my rehearsal dinner dress. This still is my fav BCBG ever... probably my favorite dress ever. I got a beautiful BCBG for Brad's winging. It's so classy, versatile and I always feel like a million bucks in it, it's so flattering. Weird I don't have a better picture of it!

BCBG dress I wore to the Cherry Point USMC ball in 2009. I loved every second I got to wear this dress. I have yet to wear it again, but I look forward to it.


And the BCBG Brad gave me for my birthday last year. And the BCBG shoes he got me to go with it. I'm so glad I'm a girl and get to wear pretty dresses and shoes! Thank goodness for BCBG dresses.

Guilty Pleasure

This guilty pleasure goes along the same stream as my love for Jersey Shore and Britney Spears. I just can't help myself. I love Holly Madison. I loved her on the Girls Next Door, she is ooooh so pretty, smart, talented, loves animals and I just can't help but smile when I watch her on her show Holly's World. Brad makes fun of my mega girl crush, but whatev. She totally rocks. And no one can rock the tube socks better than Holly.

Bubbly for a Happy Heart

Yesterday while I was getting a pedicure, looking at the sea and sipping sweet, iced green tea I came across this article in an old, summer issue of Good Housekeeping. Being as it's Valentines weekend, and we hardly need a holiday or reason anyway, I thought I would share this little gem of info with you. Cheers! Happy weekend, people!

It's just water. Or is it?

Something my husband always gets on me about is my taste for expensive water. In my first job I dealt with polluted/contaminated aquifers and ground water, and was totally put off from drinking from the tap. Lots of people claim that bottled water is the same thing as what's in the tap... really I have no idea if it is or isn't. But, it tastes better. And I like drinking it more. So, to me it's better. And when I'm not splurging on "fancy" water we have a pitcher to filter the tap water.

Here are my current big time favorite water indulgences:

Smartwater - Doesn't this picture just make you want to work out? I lovelovelove this water. It has electrolytes in it too.

My other (non workout water) favorite is Lime Perrier. I love bubbles, I love that it's calorie free and I love this lime flavor. And I like drinking it out of a big wine glass.

It may be silly, but I don't drink soda and I hardly ever splurge on a store bought latte, so why shouldn't I have this? Everyone is always saying how good it is to drink lots of water, so I'm helping my health, staying hydrated and enjoying every sip.

Flowers on a Shoestring

I love having fresh flowers in the house. Something I must have picked up from my mom who likes having fresh flowers from the garden in every room. I love flowers, as you all probably know by now. My favorite are sunflowers and now they also remind me of my wedding day. There is a fabulous little flower shop off of 81 that is packed full of fresh flower wonderfulness and has the nicest Japanese lady who works there named Miko. At this shop men always get a 30% discount and if you bring your receipt from last time you get 10% off. Even without the discount these flowers were a bargain. This shop is well hidden on 81, but if you can find it you'll be happy you did.

I got a large bouquet of sunflowers and purple mums(?). So very fall (I got these before Thanksgiving). The whole thing only cost be about $13. A picture of the store front is below, the sign is in Japanese. Just look for the red awning!

These beauties lasted well over a week. So pretty!