Beauty PSA: Clinique Happy Heart

I was one of those young 'uns that had a bottle of Clinique Happy (fine, stealthily spritzed on my sister's) and wore it like it was the only perfume worth wearing on my sleeve... because that was where I thought I was supposed to put perfume.

So, it's quite clear I've never been a big perfume person – that one-quarter-empty bottle of Happy was about the most used fragrance I've ever owned. As such, perfume reviews are obviously not my strong suit. I can't wax lyrical about notes because I can never remember what anything actually smelled like, I can only tell you what kind of memory a scent evokes. When I received this, I sprayed it on (my wrist, this time) and it smelled like high school, which was personally one of the happiest times in my life.

To be formal about it though, the press release describes it as "bright and floral with hints of sweetness from mandarin orange and cassis mingled with soft floral notes of water lily, rose, and geranium." Dry notes of sandalwood, musk, and blondewood are somewhere in there as well. I'm sorry, all I smell is perfume flowers, guys.

So, why is this a PSA? The regular Happy Heart fragrance bottle is actually not as decked out with love as this one. Clinique has been partnering with the Happy Hearts Fund (since November 2012) to build and rebuild schools in areas affected by natural disasters, and a portion of the sale of this limited edition Happy Heart perfume, as well as the coral-red Happy ♥ nail polish will go to the fund. In fact, there's so much love to go around that they also created a limited edition t-shirt, pictured above.

Make someone happy. :)

The limited edition Clinique Happy Heart Perfume Spray retails for $37, A Different Nail Enamel in Happy ♥ is $12.50, and the t-shirt is $16.

Full disclosure: This entry contains sample products sent by PR or the manufacturer for editorial consideration.

Headphones and lipstick, who knew?

I was pleasantly surprised to receive this in the mail. Unexpected packages, after all, is no longer the norm. That said, since beauty products remain on short supply (actually, I still have an unmanageable amount, but I'm pretty sure you've seen everything), I thought I'd switch things up a little.

This is the Monster Ncredible Ntunes On-Ear Headphones. It comes in five different colors, and I chuckled to see that I was sent "Candy Apple Red." The people responsible obviously intuited my love for red lips.

Knowing that Monster was the company responsible for Beats by Dr. Dre, I went in with certain expectations (the sound will be bass-heavy, only good for rap, classical music will sound terrible etc.). Instead, here are my findings:

• The sound is indeed bass-heavy, but not as much as I thought it would be. Basically, if you're listening to a song, the bass comes through a little more prominently and can sometimes dampen the vocals a little. 
• To my surprise, it performed well with classical music. Crisp sound even on the higher registers. 
• In fact, I would say for headphones that I would expect the bass to be the prominent feature, the bass sounds aren't as crisp as it could be. The image that came to my mind is if you struck a glass with a fork and it just didn't ring as crystal clear as you expected it to.
• Though it doesn't claim to be totally noise-cancelling, the sponge-y thing (never knew what this was called) does help significantly reduce noise. I tried it on the subway and it drowned out the sound of human movement, which made me bump into a few people since I couldn't feel them. You can still hear louder sounds, like car honks and shouty conversations, so wearing it on the street shouldn't be too dangerous.

The sponge-y thing makes the headphones quite comfortable. I managed to wear it for two hours (with intermittent removal when I had to talk to people) without my ears protesting. Since receiving it, I've also twisted it, tossed it into my cavernous bag o' stuff that I lug around on a daily basis, slung it around my neck, bumped it around, and it proves to be quite durable.

And the most relevant bit of information: the headphones match perfectly with my Le Metier de Beaute In The Know Bordeaux Lip Creme! If I had a favorite niece, I would gift it to her with the matching lip product (so start currying your favors, nieces!).

To win your very own pair of N-Tune headphones (valued at $150), read all about the Monster headphones here and let me know in the comments of this post which color you prefer. The comments on this post will be aggregated with the comments on the posts from the other bloggers participating in this review, and 25 pairs will be given away. This giveaway will close on Nov 1.

Sweepstakes Rules:

No duplicate comments.

You may receive (2) total entries by selecting from the following entry methods:

• Leave a comment in response to the sweepstakes prompt on this post
  Tweet (public message) about this promotion; including exactly the following unique term in your tweet message: “#SweepstakesEntry”; and leave the URL to that tweet in a comment on this post.
• Blog about this promotion, including a disclosure that you are receiving a sweepstakes entry in exchange for writing the blog post, and leave the URL to that post in a comment on this post.
• For those with no Twitter or blog, read the official rules to learn about an alternate form of entry.
• This giveaway is open to US Residents age 18 or older. Winner will be selected via random draw, and will be notified by e-mail. You have 72 hours to get back to me, otherwise a new winner will be selected.

BlogHer will pool entries from participating blogs and select a sweepstakes winner at random and will contact the winner with details about fulfilling the prize.

The Official Rules are available here. This sweepstakes runs from 10/2/13 – 11/1/13.