Soup is good food (plus a makeup lesson)

I had the best soup for lunch: cream of tomato from Luna Diner, which has outposts at Dupont Circle and Shirlington. I ordered a grilled cheese sandwich, and it comes with fries, which I didn't really want. So TJ, my server, said "Would you like some soup with that? We have cream of tomato."

I thought that sounded perfect. Indeed, it would have been perfect even if it had been the gloppy stuff from a can. What I got was nothing short of miraculous: tomato soup that tasted like a tomato--I even noticed a couple of seeds as I was eating. I was so happy; I wanted to hug TJ for recommending it. Apparently they have the tomato soup every day at the Luna Diner, and apparently it usually comes in a bread bowl.

Highly recommended if you're in the DC area. Actually, what I highly recommend is that Luna open a place here on Capitol Hill. I'd eat that soup every day of the week. There's a space that used to be a Japanese place--the restaurant that I never saw a customer enter or exit--that I'm sure would be just dandy. They'd do a bang-up lunch business.

You know you want to...

Makeup wise, I think I've mastered the makeup that doesn't look like makeup.

I've been trying to perfect this look for years, literally since I started putting on makeup when I was about 14. You may ask yourself why, why would a woman want to put on makeup and look like she's not wearing any.

I like how I look, I especially like my face; but like everybody, my skin tone is not perfectly even, I have perpetually dark circles around my eyes, and I wish my eyelashes were a little thicker. There are products to help me gloss over these problems, since there are no permanent solutions.

The key to this look is an eyeshadow that pretty much exactly matches the color of my eyelids.

I started by dabbing my custom creme-to-powder foundation from reflect.com over my skin and blended well, also used this as under-eye concealer with the Stila #11 brush. (Note, this brush was fairly spendy, and the handle is too long to be practical. If you're buying Stila brushes, go for the travel models, much easier to handle IMO)

The eyes start with white liner. Now, this sounds wrong. It's not. If you're pale, but the skin around your eyes is dark, that makes you look tired (well, it makes me look tired.)So, using a tight, slanted badger brush from Nars (I think they call it a #5 now, I usually use it for my eyebrows, but it also works for liner) I lined my upper and lower lids with Too Faced Purrr (flat sheer white) and blended slightly with my little finger. Just this step brightened my whole face.

I continued the eyes with something I bought today, L'Oreal Soft Effects in Sand (matte). That's the color that matches. Its only purpose is to smooth out the appearance of my eyes. I dotted the Bloom pencil in Wink (bronze shimmer) along the brow bone and blended well and followed with Shu Uemura Luminizer in Pink Pearl above that pencil, blended that with a sponge.

Finish the eyes with BeneFit BrowZing in Light. (It's pigmented wax, and I *heart* it. Best stuff I've ever used on my brows. Don't believe them when they say you need a darker shade; my brows are fairly dark and the light works great on me. You're just filling in, not drawing your brows on your face.)

Lashes, lightly curl, then finish with one coat of L'Oreal Featherlight in Brown-Black.

The Luminizer also goes on the cheekbone, lightly (This shimmer product is very dense and can be safely dotted from the tube. If you're using Stila All-over Shimmer, Nars Multilples, or the L'Oreal product from last summer, use your fingers) then blend with a sponge. Below the shimmer, use your lipstick, lightly, then blend well. You want to blend up, not down. This is a trick I learned from Kevin Aucoyn. (No, not directly; from one of his books.)

Tonight's lipstick was Prestige Sheer Honey, which has a definite orange tint to it. It would look great on anybody with red highlights in her hair, or on a blond; brunettes would be better to stick to a sheer mauve in the same look and would probably use a plum or taupe shimmer pencil where I used the bronze.

For drugstore lipstick, I really love the Prestige Sheers at $3.50 a pop. They're great except that the packaging sucks: the caps tend to crack and not fit the tubes very well. Solve this problem in one of two ways: load up your retractable brush with product before you go out, or use a lip palette. I *heart* lip palettes, but if you carry a small bag, the brush trick can be a lifesaver.

before - after