A Round Up Of Really Good Things, November Edition + GIVEAWAY WINNERS!
My top picks for Black Friday 2022.
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Announcing the two LaDuora Duo Hair Device winners!
🚨 Julia C. and Rosselyn F! Check your emails, you have 48 hours to reply or else I have to pick a new winner!
So, you didn’t win and still want a Laduora Duo device, which massages your head, applies serum and blasts your follicles with LED light all-in-one? Don’t pay full price, use my link and code:
BUY ✅ Laduora Duo Scalp Massage/Microcurrent/LED Haircare Device
Code HELEN15 for 15% off
https://laduora.com/Shrimpymcgee
In case you missed it, here’s the October Round Up of Really Good Things.
Shopping tip: Start noting prices on any expensive items today so that you know if a sale price is any good or not. That’s why I’m sending out this list so early in November.
Also, in this edition I’m experimenting with some links from my Shop My site, let me know in the comments if they are janky on your end?
Ok, ready, steady, go…
Now, onto the Really Good Things, November Edition
💆🏻♀️ Pureology Hydrate shampoo. Purple bottle. This is the best shampoo I’ve tested that actually delivers hydration, and the Pureology line very much caters to color treated/bleached hair. It smells like Thrills gum (Please leave me a note in the comments if this is available in the US) with a soapy, almost rosemary-spice medicine scent. It lathers up a storm and is quite gentle. Great for those dry, dry strands.
🍷 Les Dauphins Côtes du Rhône Réserve red wine. This is the table wine of choice in my home and you can’t go wrong with it. We first tasted it in a Paris bistro and have enjoyed it ever since. Of course, real oenophiles will turn up their nose, but we’ve been buying and enjoying it for years. It’s an affordable, easy reach for richer meals like steak or roasts, and its pretty red-and-aqua belle epoque label and slightly niche French credentials ensure it’s a nice hostess gift, too.
🖨 HP Laser Jet Pro M15w printer. Could I be suggesting anything less glamorous? And yet, here we are. Listen, this is the smallest laser desktop printer for home-use you can buy, and it took me a while to research all of them before settling on this one a couple years ago.
I’m nearly positive it will go on a steep sale, so either check out this link or check where you buy your electronics. It only prints black-and-white, though. I’m recommending this because mine has been working steadily for over two years and I’ve only bought one toner cartridge refill as they are good for 1,000 pages.
https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/pdp/hp-laserjet-pro-m15w-printer
I used to work for Brother Fax machines in technical support circa 1999, my first job out of university, and let me tell you, the best bang for your buck was the laser printers, and they had the fewest problems too.
Here’s another thing I learned from years of being an Office Lady™. Getting a“Low toner” message or streaky prints? Take out the cartridge and gently (and I mean gently, like you’re holding a leaking sack of flour) and slowly flip it up and down, and you’ll get some more use out of it. Like a sack of flour, it can blast out a puff of dry toner, so be warned and hold it away from you.
👵🏻 A real robe. I don’t mean a fluffy terry bathrobe, I mean a robe robe. Silk or cotton. That way you can be a classy lady like me, and swan around the house like Blanche Devereaux on Golden Girls. Speaking of Golden Girls, there’s a Tumblr dedicated to Blanche and the gang’s 80s outfits called House of Devereaux.
If you’re in Canada, I highly recommend Indigo’s Love and Lore organic cotton gauze robe, regular price $65. If you’re in the US, check Nordstrom for something similar…it’s become my go-to store for incipient middle age.
🎙 Yeti Microphone. Do you do a lot of Zoom calls, are you interested in starting a podcast, do you make vidoes? One of the best and most affordable mics out there is the Blue Yeti. (This list is heavy on electronics because they tend to be steeply discounted for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.)
It can even record two people in conversation, which is how my husband and I used it back when we hosted a podcast together. It has a bit of an old-school Larry King Live look, but I love that. More importantly, it delivers amazing audio for the price, as good as mics that are much more expensive. The price hovers around $100USD or $120CAD, just so you know.
📧 The Johnny Jet newsletter. Are you traveling for Thanksgiving and want flight deals and news? Do you love travel industry analysis and do you need hacks for air travel without losing your mind? If yes, sign up for Johnny Jet’s free newsletter. John and his wife Natalie and gorgeous kiddos are my friends but regardless, the newsletter is a must if you love to travel and aspire to do more of it. Here’s the direct link to sign up.
John crafts not only highly clickable newsletter subject lines that always get me to open them, he delivers with so much analysis, depth, links to travel must-haves, and humanity that you’ll be shocked you’re getting all that for free.
🍛 Damn Delicious’ Korean Beef Bowl recipe. Umami-rich ground beef, punchy ground ginger, and a bit of soy sauce and brown sugar combine in this 15 minute recipe to make something very special indeed. The aforementioned Natalie put me on to this wonderful food creator and indeed she cooked me this very recipe when I visited her in LA, years ago on the cusp of Covid lockdowns. So good, so warming, so fast and easy, it’s become a staple in my home. Full recipe here: Korean Beef Bowl.
🎧 Bose headphones. One of the best investments I made in my mental health at the tail end of the pandemic lockdowns was investing in a pair of Bose Quiet Comfort Noise Canceling Headphones. They are expensive but worth it, if you fly, if you belong to a gym where they blast loud music you want to tune out, or you just live in a loud house where your other family members PROJECT THEIR VOICES every time they speak to each other. Just me? Once upon a time a South African woman told me that the Sony version were half the price and just as good. I bought them, but I didn’t find that to be the case. The Bose are indeed the superior product. USA regular price is $329. In Canada, over $400.
👜 Mulberry handbags. Ok, you want to treat yourself to a gorgeous, high-end handbag but Louis Vuitton is too showboat-y and Micheal Kors reminds you of your 2006 low-rise jeans phase. And let’s not even talk about Chanel and Hermes with their exorbitant $10,000+ price tags. Enter: Mulberry.
Mulberry is an English brand that’s more on the “whisper luxury” side of the retail equation. Not everyone will recognize it, making you less a target for theft, which is an obvious bonus. That said, it also carries a certain grown-up, ladylike cachet. You can count on excellent quality, durability and timelessness. I have an oxblood-color handbag I bought on Poshmark for $300 (original price, $1,200) and I continue to love it. You can see Mulberry bags in person at Nordstrom. This particular luxury brand, however, is something you’d want to buy on sale. They are expensive and don’t have great resale value owing to its low-key status (versus a Celine, for example) so if you can get a few hundred dollars off, that’s the smart strategy.
🧥 Barbour jackets. So if Mulberry resale value is quite low, on the other hand, Barbour jackets, favored by the late Elizabeth II, and Catherine, Princess of Wales (I’m sure I got that wrong but you know who I mean: The Queen and Kate Middleton) offer excellent resale value on Poshmark and elsewhere if you choose to sell yours down the line. Not to be confused with another English jacket maker, Burberry, Barbour is orders of magnitude less expensive and the quality is just as high.
These are still costly (more than LL Bean, for example), costing hundreds of dollars each, but they are solid entries from the nonflashy, generational-wealth world of apparel. I bought a quilted coat with a corduroy collar for under $200 on sale at Nordstrom over the summer, and have been wearing it daily since it turned cold here in October. It’s a gorgeous still-high-end tailored dupe of the $1,200 Burberry I had been eyeing but ultimately rejected for its boxy fit (um, and crazy price).
🍰 The Best Apple Cinnamon cake recipe. Bless the talented heart of Jess Holmes a food creator from Melbourne, Australia, for writing this recipe using cups and weight for those of us on any side of the pond. This has been a recipe printout I revisit all the time, and it will be perfect if you’re responsible for bringing dessert to Thanksgiving, or you just want a cozy cake to scarf all on your own. Yogurt and oil are the base fats and make for a killer combo in contrast to the tart-sweetness of now-in-season apples. The cinnamon topping is divine, it’s worth noting. The Sweetest Menu’s Cinnamon Apple Cake.
📗 Gardening Your Front Yard by Tara Nolan. As we head into the frosty season in most of North America, why am I recommending this book? Here’s the thing. By the time you realize you should have been thinking about your front yard, it will be well into spring and you’ll realize you should have bought books and seeds to have at the ready. Get Gardening Your Front Yard by my friend, esteemed garden writer Tara Nolan, now and come spring, you’ll be happy you had the extra time to read and plan.
Tara tells me there is a strong trend of articles on how people can get rid of their lawn, and even rewild little bits of property. Her books offers ideas and wonderful photos on all of this. Plus, looking at the lush yards will inspire you once everything freezes over. You can also check out the website Tara is co-founder of, Savvy Gardening. Support books, they make you smarter.
Canada links for Gardening Your Front Yard: Indigo.ca Amazon.ca
US link: Amazon.com
🥛 Fresh Milk body lotion. This is a regular body lotion with a stupidly high price tag, however, I’m absolutely in love with the comforting milky, almost almond-like scent. The fragrance community calls this a “lactonic” scent, and I’m here for it. Try before you buy though, as with any scented product, especially one this bougie. It’s a nice alternative to wearing fragrance, but I’m hoping Fresh actually turns it into a fragrance so I can enjoy it in a more lasting form.
🛏 Sealy Posturpedic Mattress. Leaning deeply into niche territory here, I’d be remiss to not mention the biggest purchase I’ve made this season so that potentially you can benefit if these mattresses go on a steep sale for Black Friday. If you need a new mattress and love a good ole’ fashioned coil one, the bouncy, comfy kind you find in hotels (I hate foam mattresses), then perhaps Sealy’s Posturpedic is the way to go.
I’m the weirdo who inspects my accommodations for bugs and also checks the brand name of the mattress at hotels. Consistently I’ve found I enjoy Sealy Posturpedic the best. Plus, it’s midway between very cheap (IKEA) and mega-pricey (Kingsdown’s luxury offerings).
It’s very hard to comparison shop for Sealy (and most other brand-name) mattresses. “A longstanding tradition in the mattress industry is for retailers to sell the same mattress under different model names. The sole purpose of this confusing practice is to prevent you from comparison shopping,” says industry website Goodbed. Yikes.
“This practice misleads and confuses consumers who can't tell that the 'Austin Silver Plush' in one store for $1200 is the same as the 'Amarillo Gold Soft' at another store for $900,” it goes on to say. My advice? Identify the basic type you like (plush, firm, pillowtop firm), then figure out the average price among different retailers (they will not have the same name but “luxury pillowtop firm” is probably the same dang thing. Armed with this info and average price, you can judge sale prices accordingly.
📰 The Best and Worst Things to Buy on Black Friday. I’m including this article from RetailMeNot because I think we all want to know what to avoid buying on Black Friday.
Warmly,
Helen
P.S. I have two very affordable mini-books if you’re curious about the freelance writing life and want to support me. Check them out!
📕 Build Your Career as a Freelance Writer: How I Cultivate Editors (and Avoid Personal Essays Like the Plague)
https://helenracanelli.gumroad.com/l/freelance_writing_secrets_and_warnings
📙 The Starbucks Factor: 3 Page Guide to Earning More as a Gig Worker or Freelancer
https://helenracanelli.gumroad.com/l/starbucks-factor
P.P.S. In case you missed it, this is my most recent Helen Avery YouTube video: