Follow Up to "Where's my Pottery Barn Kids order?"

Yay!  Pottery Barn Kids got back to me within a day of my online order inquiry and even their rep didn't know why the order wasn't shipped out.  Two days after I received that message (Feb 18th), I finally received the baby quilt today.  Very happy it didn't take another week to receive.

So overall, a happy ending to my bittersweet experience.

Word of advice: if you do ever order from Pottery Barn Kids, give yourself extra time to receive the items in case there are random delays for no reason.

Where's my Pottery Barn Kids order?

This review is about a bad experience with Pottery Barn Kids.  I ordered a baby quilt from Pottery Barn Kids' Jungle Friends Nursery Bedding collection close to 10 days ago, and still have not received it. This nursery quilt was intended for a baby shower, however it does not look I will be receiving it in time.  It is honestly very frustrating and sad to buy a gift and not be able to give it to my BFF for her first baby's special occasion.  This is the first time I am ordering from Pottery Barn Kids, and the experience has been less than impressive.  I'm afraid it might be my last time too.  I can find nursery quilts elsewhere.

The Jungle Friends collection is very cute though and features giraffes, elephants, monkeys and hippos.  I paid $99 for the quilt and an extra $7 to also have it personalized. 

It seems Pottery Barn Kids can't get their act together because I placed the order close to 10 days ago, and still haven't received the quilt.  I received a call 5 days after the order was placed because they needed to verify the order was valid since the shipping and billing address were different.  Hasn't Pottery Barn Kids every heard of ordering a gift for others?  I appreciate the due diligence but calling me 5 days after the order was placed is unacceptable.  They should have either emailed or called me within 24-48 hours.  What's the point in providing all that contact information if it isn't used when it really matters?  This just goes to show orders don't get processed until a week after it is placed   , which their website states: "Please allow 5-7 business days for delivery.", so that means I have to give them a week's time to process the order, then ship it?

Even after the address has been confirmed, I was told the order would be shipped out immediately.  It's now been 4 days since my phone conversation with the Pottery Barn Kids rep, and my order status still shows "Shipping Soon" on their Order Status tracking.

Pottery Barn Kids, please ship my order soon...

Sephora Fragrance Deluxe Sampler for Her

Epicurean Confession of the Week. I recently bought Sephora's deluxe fragrance sampler for women. I got this for myself, but wouldn't hesitate to get this as a gift for my girl friends. The packaging is very nice and presentable even though it only contains 11 tiny fragrance samples and a silver beauty bag. With Valentine's Day right around the corner, this could be a good gift option.

Retail $50 ($104 value)

This sampler set also includes a voucher for one full-size bottle, making this the ultimate gift or purchase for the girl who likes her perfumes. The voucher is really where the value of this purchase comes in because the full-size bottle for any of these 11 fragrances cost more than $50. I've tried all 11 samples, so now I'm deciding which is my favorite fragrance to redeem for full-size. Thus far, I'm really liking Chloé Chloé, Marc Jacobs Eau So Fresh, and Gucci Flora.

This Set Contains Samples Of:
- BVLGARI Omnia Crystalline redeems to a 1.37 oz Eau de Toilette Spray
- Chloé Chloé redeems to a 1 oz Eau de Parfum Spray
- CLEAN Skin redeems to a 2.14 oz Eau de Parfum Spray
- ESCADA Especially Escada reedeems to a 1 oz Eau de Parfum Spray
- Giorgio Armani Acqua di Gioia redeems to a 1 oz Eau de Parfum Spray
- Gucci Flora by Gucci redeems to a 1 oz Eau de Parfum Spray
- Marc Jacobs Daisy Eau So Fresh redeems to a 2.5 oz Eau de Toilette Spray
- Paco Rabanne Lady Million redeems to a 1 oz Eau de Parfum Spray
- Philosophy Love Sweet Love redeems to a 2 oz Fragrance Spray
- Stella McCartney L.I.L.Y redeems to a 1 oz Eau de Parfum Spray
- Tocca Cleopatra redeems to a 1.7 oz Eau de Parfum Spray

How it works:
1. Purchase the Fragrance Sampler as a gift or for yourself.
2. Sample the fragrances and choose a favorite.
3. Fill in the enclosed voucher.
4. Bring the voucher into a Sephora store and redeem it for a fragrance.
Please note: The voucher is redeemable at Sephora stores only (the voucher cannot be redeemed online). The voucher is not redeemable at Sephora inside JCPenney retail locations.

Agloves ® Original Touchscreen Gloves

I recently bought these amazing touch screen gloves called Agloves® from Amazon for $14.99 (suggested retail price is $24.99) and couldn't wait to share this great find.

Winters in New York can be pretty harsh, and this winter has been no exception with below freezing temps on most days. Ever tried taking out your hands to use the phone in freezing temperatures with 20mph winds? Ugh!

I have tried a few touch screen gloves and the conductivity is typically limited to just the tip of the index finger and thumb. Given my small hands, the finger tips of the gloves also usually extend beyond my finger and folds over. After a few frustrating attempts, I found I would just take the darn glove off and use the cell phone with my bare hands. Which of course defeats the whole purpose of having conductivity gloves.

Here is Amazon's Product Description:

"You can text with these gloves on! Agloves are lightweight, soft, warm, stretchy and slightly fuzzy knitted gloves. Made in the USA, these seamless, knitted gloves have high quality workmanship. Agloves are compatible with any and all of your touch screen phones, cameras, multimedia devices, game systems, and eReaders. Three unisex sizes fits all S/M, M/L and XL. quality workmanship. Agloves are compatible with any and all of your touch screen phones, cameras, multimedia devices, game systems, and eReaders. Three unisex sizes fits all S/M, M/L and XL. Color is black with silver flecks to produce a charcoal grey coloring."

Agloves are not by any means very warm, but they're decent. The conductivity thread is also more on the gold/light brown side, not silver. But from a distance the flecks does give the glove a charcoal grey illusion.  I bought the Agloves in S/M.

The original gloves has a small Aglove tag sewn into the wrist, but I removed it.  

Also following the instructions, I hand washed the gloves and laid them flat to dry.  After wearing these for about 2 weeks, there is a little bit of fuzz but nothing out of the ordinary.

Overall, I really recommend these gloves if you're looking for winter conductivity gloves that allow you to use your touch screen devices.  Now if only they came in other colors too...

Chanel Nail Polish

This post comes rather late, but I have an epicurean confession to make.  I totally splurged on nail polish last summer and have zero regrets - Chanel Le Vernis Nail Colour in Island for $26.  This is the most expensive nail polish I have ever bought, and it was worth every penny.

Island is part of Chanel's limited edition summer collection for 2012.  What makes Island so special is that under different lighting the color may appear a pearly pink or beige.  It's a chameleon of effects playing with light and color, and it's absolutely beautiful!

In all honesty, I have never spent more than $9 on a bottle of nail polish so splurging on Chanel is a big deal for me.  I say the money was well spent because Chanel's nail polish is very long lasting, doesn't chip easily, and does not leave yellow stains on the nails.  I have noticed when using other brands of nail polish like Essie, my nails would turn yellowish if I kept the nail polish on for over a week.  This then continues the vicious cycle of continuing to apply nail polish to cover up the yellowness.  Gross!

I was curious why my nails didn't turn yellowy and this lead me to a very interesting piece of information.  Chanel's nail polish does not contain the big 3 toxic chemicals commonly found in nail polish - Dibutyl Phthalate (DBP), Formaldehyde, and Toluene.

Babbo

Babbo
110 Waverly Place
New York, NY 10011

Had dinner at Babbo with a small group of friends yesterday evening. The hype for this restaurant may have died down a bit, but making reservations certainly didn't seem to be the case. To get reservations, you have to call one month in advance to the day at exactly 10am. Call any later and the phone line will be busy and you will get stuck with a very early or late time slot.

We arrived at 5:45pm for our Sunday evening reservation and the place was already filling up quickly. Babbo is a fairly fancy restaurant and their dress code is smart dressy. For the ladies, nice jeans are ok. Definitely better to dress up than look and feel underdressed. For gentlemen, a jacket and tie are not required though it's not unusual. Coats can not be hung on the backs of chairs so coat check may sometimes be required. Lucky for me, I sat on a bench against the wall so I just sat with my coat tucked behind me.

My friends and I had great expectations for the food. After all this is Mario Batali's place.

We were given a free starter - chickpeas with olives on toasted bread.

Then we had the grilled octopus and appetizer size goose liver ravioli.

The grilled octopus was just ok. The goose liver ravioli was excellent and more than made up for the mediocre octo.

For our main course, we had the following:

Lobster spaghettini - one pound lobster does not mean one pound of lobster meat. The tomato sauce on the pasta was done perfectly! Though nothing spectacular either.

Duck - super dry! Don't recommend this dish.

Rabbit - this was an interesting dish, but nothing to write home about either.

Beef cheek ravioli - this was delicious! The pasta was very well made and filled with flavor. Highly recommend! This dish is popular for a reason.

We were too full for dessert and nothing really stood out on the menu. Luckily we didn't order dessert because we were served cookies. A bit of sugar was just perfect to end the meal.

Overall, it was a delicious meal but it still fell a bit short of my expectations from a top-chef owned restaurant. Service was excellent and staff was very courteous and professional. I still recommend coming to Babbo, but stick with the pasta and go elsewhere for dessert.

Envirosax Obsession

My latest obsession are Envirosax's eco-friendly, reusable bags. They are light, super durable, and there is a wide variety of really fun and cute graphic designs. I bought the Marina series, which contains 5 nautical themed bags.

These bags are perfect to take on a beach vacation or just to use in regular day-to-day life. The Marina designs come in a variety of maritime hues and offer ornate seafaring patterns, some of them even reminiscent of Moroccan tiles. 

Bag Dimensions (unrolled): 50cm x 42cm 
Bag Dimensions (in pouch): 10cm x 4.5cm Bag 
Weight: 40g 

In addition to graphic series, Envirosax also has slingsax and minisax, organic series, and kids series. Some of my favorite kids designs include Cars, Circus, Babuschka, and To the Moon.

Envirosax boasts that these bags can hold up to 44lbs, are water resistant, and fully washable. I don't know if these bags can really hold 44lbs and I hope I never have to carry 44lbs worth of weight in these bags. Even if the bags survive, I don't think my arms will. I will say however, that the quality of the material for these bags is much more durable than other re-usable bags I have used. Envirosax bags are water resistant, but I would say only to a certain degree. I have also washed them by hand and there was no color bleeding or fading. 

Overall, I am extremely happy with my Envirosax bags and encourage everyone to use these convenient, easy alternatives to plastic bags. For only $8.95 per bag, it's very tempting to collect them all.  These bags also make great gifts! I would suggest checking Ebay, Amazon, and brightandbold.com for lower prices.