🏆 Best of June

Plus, what you loved in June!

Hello and hope your holiday weekend was everything you wanted it to be! We had a good one in the Philly suburbs visiting my dad and attending both a family and a friend BBQ.

Read: Do you really need Decalt?

My dad is doing a bit better since I was there in June for his birthday and Father’s Day, but of course, we all miss my mom. My family dynamic feels different, as you’d imagine. We were Nirvana; now we’re The Foo Fighters. Things aren’t the same without our lead singer but we’re somewhat settling into the new normal.

The day-to-day still feels somewhat Black Mirror episode to me, but I look forward to the signs she sends me, which are usually in the form of giraffes, her favorite animal. Yesterday, she sent me the one above, which I saw in a neighbor’s tree on my walk, exactly at eye level. A giraffe in nature. It’s unmistakable. It came after a particularly hard day of an 18-page story I was on deadline for early this week on a day I thought I’d have full-day child care, but wound up having only a few hours. I finally filed the story at 10:45pm. If you know me, you know this is NOT my steez.

Anyway. I’m lucky that that’s the first experience I’ve had like that in Reid’s six months on earth. June was better than May, and I had a lot of great discoveries and rediscoveries. Read on for my favorites of the month, plus what you were buying in June.

Best of June

Ultra Violette Queen Screen I’ve been dying to get my hands on this Australian SPF that’s sold everywhere but the U.S. but it’s impossible to have it shipped. Why? It contains (better) sunscreen ingredients not approved here (eye roll) for no good reason. BUT! I just learned Harrods will ship it — and while it’s expensive ($30), it’s probably what I’d pay for my friends Dana or Marina to ship it from there, which I keep putting off asking them to do. Anyway, it arrived this week and what a phenomenal formula. It imparts a subtle luminescence, which I love.

Future Society Floating Forest Body Wash & Lotion I love this new brand with elevated scents and stunning packaging. I added pump tops to these and keep them in my bathroom for hand soap and lotion. I’m a fan of Floating Forest, but Solar Canopy is also sublime. Hot tip: I use old pump tops from my go-to oil cleanser from Curel for these. They fit perfectly.

Prequel Moisturizing Milk Do not sleep on this moisturizer. I can’t believe the cost for how much you get and how well it works. I can feel the moisture on my skin a full 16 hours later — this simply does not happen with other formulas, even the pricier ones I’ve tried, I’m sorry to say. It comes in a positively huge bottle you can use for face and body — but I tend to save it for my face. For $22, I should slather that stuff all over! (I don’t know what I’m going through).