Meg here! It's probably a no brainer to hear that woman get excited when I tell them about Megsmakeup.com. There are few topics that get us as animated as when we start talking products. I was at a party and I met Megsjester's friend Mikaela Hoover.

Mikaela is an actress here in Hollywood and spends a lot of time in the makeup chair. She just finished a stint on the show "How I Met Your Mother" and knows so much about beauty products I was in awe. Usually when I tell woman that I write beauty they ask me what I like. This was not the case with Mikaela. It was refreshing actually, sometimes I get all product talked out!

Mikaela: Oh my gosh! You know what product changed my life! I love it so much! You have to tell the Meg Heads about these Phyto Dietary supplements. I am obsessed with them!

Meg: I've never tried them.

Mikaela went on and on about how amazing they were that I have written it down for a Sephora stop. She wanted to spread her love for them. I have to tell you. The girls got great hair, skin and nails so I feel comfortable being a witness that she speaks the truth!

Meg: Why don't you write why you love them and send it to me and I'll let everyone know?

Mikaela Hoover here! I discovered these miracle supplements two years ago.  I have always longed for long luscious hair that would at least grow past my shoulders but my hair just didn't want to grow. I had tried everything.  Lots of different hair supplements, vitamins, I even altered my diet.  When nothing worked I resorted to hair extensions.  They looked nice but they were very expensive! It also took me twice as long to dry and style my hair in the morning.  Just when I thought I would be stuck with short, brittle dry hair for the rest of my life a lady at my salon suggested I try Phytophanere dietary supplements.

Stacy B here! Nobody wants to age. We may want to mature, grow, gain experience, or live life as fast at it comes at us...but we don't want to age. We want to do all those fun things gracefully, happily, and flawlessly. I have yet to meet a woman that peeks in the mirror in the morning and says, "Super! My fine lines are still there! And they are multiplying!". There's no "I Wish I Had More Grays" facebook page to like, and there aren't any 'straight from the rain forest' pills that promise to magically suck the elasticity right out of your skin.
 
We spend billions of dollars a year trying NOT to age. Or to allow our skin, hair and nails to show it. Some stuff works, some doesn't, but no matter how hard we try, or how much money we have, we can't stop time. We can slow the process down, but it's coming at you whether you like it or not.
 
I'm at a weird time in my life. At 32, I don't feel old. I don't look old. I coach a college cheerleading team and occassionaly I still get mistaken for a student...or at least a really young staff member. :)  I have no gray hairs, no fine lines around my eyes or lips, and for the most part, all body parts are where they are supposed to be. But...I know it's coming. My skin seems dryer than I have felt in the past this winter, my hair needs heating tool breaks on the weekends because I can feel it getting brittle at the ends and I can't just jump on an elliptical for a few days a week and lose 3 pounds anymore. One, maybe, but not three. I feel like I'm in prevention and stalling mode. I have started to pick up products that slow the aging process, or rewind what's started. I want things that make my skin look as bright as it did 4 years ago and smooths it out so I still get mistaken for a college girl.
 
This week, I turned to Maybelline's Instant Age Rewind Eraser Makeup Treatment in Buff Beige. This promises to instantly erase fine lines and wrinkles and lift skin. It's a quirky little product, it cranks up to dispense the makeup onto a sponge that you rub on your skin to spread around. It actually does look like a really fat pencil with an eraser on the top. I was skeptical at first, sponges freak me out. I think they are gross. I have to wash my dishes with a sponge with a handle because I won't touch a sponge. I feel like they are germ breeding grounds. So I was really hesitant about this. I thought the oil on my skin would rub off on it and cause germs to grow and fester. Yuck. Have no fear though, someone at Maybelline must have my phobia. Right on the stick, it says "Eraser Makeup Treatment is protected with an anti-microbial system." Whew. No science experiments on this baby! I felt much better using it.

Sweetassgal here thanking everyone for my time off these past few weeks.  It was much needed family time but now I'm home and ready to jump back in to Meg's!  And I can't think of a better way then to dive right in to a great review of an INCREDIBLE product.  Neil George's Indian Gooseberry Treatment Oil is a flat out killer product!  I have lots of experience with different types of hair oils, treatments and serums and I know what works for curly hair as well as straight.  I've oddly enough been on both sides of that coin so I can comfortably work with either hair type and can attest to the attributes and hurdles of both.  This is a product that has them both covered brilliantly!
 
Currently wearing my hair natural and curly I've found I need a hair "cocktail" to keep my curls bouncy, crunch free and under frizz control.  A dime sized amount of cream curl enhancer blended with an oil type of setting ointment gets run through my hair and scrunched onto my ends while still wet.  I've found many oils that weighed down my curls, oils that made me overproduce my own natural oils and those that simply felt cheap and greasy on my hair.  No thank you!  However, I've been settled on a product for a while now that has served its purpose and I thought met all of my needs.  That is until I was introduced to the lovely Neil and the lovely George of the Neil George Salon line of products.  Along with this bounty came the Indian Gooseberry Treatment Oil and right away I can tell you this product is heads above anything else I've used.  
 
The packaging on the pump is top notch.  It feels solid and well made in your hand.  No cheap pumps or flimsy containers to leak and spill.  As soon as it's pumped into the palm of my hand I can feel that it is a superior oil.  Cheap oils feel slimey and don't sink in to skin and hair.  Good oils feel smooth and natural and just disappear once added to your hair.  There is no better way to describe it then to say it simply "becomes" a part of your hair, nourishing each strand creating a silky and shiny looking mass of illuminated curls.  Once completely dried my hair is light, soft, touchable and managed.  All the while smelling luxurious and absolutely fantastic!  I found myself running around my house making people sniff my head and they loved it!

Meg hair!  The fact I have any hair in my head right now is nothing short of a miracle and my miracle is named Marco Pelusi. When my Ken Pave's hairdo arrived let's just say I should have paid more attention to the color chart.

Marco: I don't know Meg, we've just lightened it again! I don't know how much more your poor hair can take. If we lighten it again we might end up with just a clump of hair on the floor. 

At this point, I have been in the chair for hours and we still have not managed to bring my natural hair to the color of my new  Ken Pave's hairdo. My motto has always been "go big or go home." I guess I like living on the edge. I asked him to keep going.  Luck of the Irish, my natural hair had some breakage but for the most part stayed my hair safely on my scalp.

I wore my new hair out last night and everyone loved it. I loved how easy it is to get thick, flowing tresses in oh, about 1 minute.

I've had real extensions before years ago and I just don't have the patience for it anymore. These clips are the perfect answer for me. I keep getting asked "Is it hard to do? How do they work? Watch Ken show how easy in the quick video below

My i-phone took the shot above so it's a little bit dark but all in all these clips are amazing. If you're hair is thinning or you have an event (wedding, prom-hey, the holidays are coming up!) I can't say enough great things about Ken Paves hairdo. They look amazing!

Meg hair! I have been working my ass off, I write until, well let's see still writing at 12:00am on a Friday night. Party lifestyle! While I've been working I've been flipping through the cable channels and I realize why Megsmakeup.com is NOT HUGE! 

After tons of brain matter, hours of blogging, experimenting, filming and meeting taking I now know the secret of Hollywood success. It really is the flipping boob-length hair extensions that are wavy just past the shoulders.

I swear, I can't tell one damn reality star after another. I watched some eyesore called "Rockstars wives" and I could not for the life of me tell one Rockstar wife (is that one word) from another. It wasn't like "Oh, Duff's wife is the one with the short pixie." Apparently, women with hair shorter then their shoulders are not allowed airtime! 

It's not just some rockstar tarts that are taking the airwaves by storm. I watched E! I watched Guiliana and Cat Sandler with their long faux wavy extensions. I got sick of them so I tuned into Bravo where I got to watch The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Faux waist-lenght extensions galore. I can't win. If it's good enough for Kim, Taylor and Camille (hate Camille) then it's good enough for me. I'll make the short hair statement AFTER I get significant airtime. If I can't beat them then I have to join them right? Then I'll go all statement and Mia Farrow pixie it!  

I wish I could be all feminist with you and roar something but I can't roar a thing. I can barely growl a slight whisper. Boobie implants? Got em. Botox? Every three months. Do I wear uncomfortable heels so my legs look higher and my ass looks perkier? Does a bear shit in the woods? 

I have the wrong hair! This is the problem. I have very thin hair, always grey at the roots. I have tresses that tend to get dry after the ears and oily at the roots....MMmmm Sexy! I do the best I can but how can I compete with these TV personalities with perfect hairdays every darn day!?! 

I have given up. I have called in the experts. I am fighting fire with fire and if it takes 23 inch clip in hair in the shade of Golden Wheat then I will play this game.  I sent an email off to Ken Paves requesting amazing hair that will take 5 seconds to clip-in for my TV appearances. He took pity on me and I will be picking up my new hair tomorrow afternoon from the post office. That's something right? Picking my new hair up...

My roots? Will it match? Well, to play it safe I have an appointment tomorrow afternoon with the amazing colorist Marco Pelusi to match my new long hair. I don't have any idea why I've been spending all this time actually learning when I should have been just clipping in some human hair!

LockandMane.com? Now that I will be hugely successful I'm going to need some amazing hair accessories. I mean, get used to me people. Once I clip in my magic locks I may have a seat on The View. Yes, me and my flowing locks and my FiFi Head wrap will be all the rage!

Meg here! Well, we switched the clocks and I can tell you I was downright cold coming out of a meeting at 5:30pm here in Hollywood, CA. It was cold and it was dark and I think it's safe to say that fall is in full swing.

I decided to take my hair hue to a more fall appropriate hue! I dyed my hair? I know-SHOCKER! Making sure that your hair doesn't fall flat in the changing temperature could be quite a chore. I dialed up our #1 Hair Guru Mr. Marco Pelusi and asked him to give some tips so we may stay Meg Heads and not limp heads. Here is his valuable advice! This advice doesn't come cheap, it is what he doles out to Brook Burke, Carol Alt, Stacy Kiebler and more then a couple Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Meg Head price=FREE!

1. Temporarily switch to a moisturizing shampoo to compensate for the change in season. Generally, it’s a good idea to periodically alter shampooing products.

2. Use conditioner after every shampoo and leave the conditioner on hair a little longer in the shower, especially if it feels dry. Even just a few extra minutes can make a difference, especially throughout the fall/winter months.

3. For those with color, chemically treated, frizzy or dry hair, use a daily leave-in conditioner. Marco™ Color Anti Frizz Leave-In Conditioner with Collagen Color Guard™ is a groundbreaking, anti-frizz formula that repairs, restores and rebuilds, leaving the hair and scalp comforted and protected.

4. Finally, add deep conditioning treatments into a fall regimen, either at a salon or at home, at least once a week. At home, apply leave-in conditioner after exiting the shower, apply a plastic cap and leave it on for at least 30 minutes.

I hope Marco's tips help you! Now that I've scratched your back-will you scratch mine? I have a couple of really big TV spots coming up and I have to know What Are The BEST products in the Drugstore? I don't have time to try every one in there but if you tell me a winner then I'm running off to CVS. These are some important spots and I know there is nothing you know better then product so help a sistah out!!

Sweetassgal here coming off a wonderful Halloween weekend full of friends, food and yummy punch libations and steadfastly gearing up for my first ever formal dinner party in just two weeks!  As a child I cannot tell you how I longed to grow up and give a real dinner party.  Though I cherished my Holly Hobby tea set and TV tray (incidentally where most of my adolescent dinner parties were held solo...I was an only child) I knew one day I would grow up to have a dining room of my own, wedding china especially picked out by me and my betrothed and a beautiful long table to seat all of my guests.  And not a table that consisted of two small tables and the spare folding card table lined up and camouflaged under my Grandma's crochet linens but an ACTUAL dining room table...with chairs that even match.  
 
Well everyone, thanks to the recent acquisition of a dining table, chairs and complimentary china hutch I am now in the position to take the party from my childhood TV tray and into the adult world of entertaining.  I am so excited I find myself awake at night arranging the table decorations in my mind, planning place cards, staging recipes only to have the players pulled at the last minute and agonizing over choice of runner colors.  It's actually kind of consuming me and I can't help myself but yet I'm equally thrilled at the obsession.  I've watched Gosford Park, Julie and Julia and Tortilla Soup enough times I'm starting to gain weight from the visual food.  I'm studying the layout of each table they show at the three very different types of dinner parties and hungrily sucking up inspiration from the gloriously formal English table, the lively Parisian table and the passionate and warm hearted Spanish table.  I'm pretty much an American mutt by birth so why can't I have my own dinner party incorporating the best of all three?  No reason that I can see.
 
The only thing I HAVEN'T decided on yet is how to decorate ME!  I just realized tonight I've been so obsessed with the table I never even stopped to think what I might wear and how I should look.  I've given lots of parties at my house that usually culminate in me dashing to the shower at the last second because I've been cooking and cleaning all day and I barely have enough time yet to pull back my freshly showered hair, hide behind the ever forgiving sunglasses and toss on a pool cover up.  My food is the star...I am not.  This time it's going to be different and I am determined to look DAMN good...or at least damn good for me...when I open the door to my beautiful guests.

"Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art." - Eleanor Roosevelt
 
Age and beauty...two things that are constantly changing have my mind very much occupied since I turned 36.  It's not that I'm old by any means but reaching this age has me realizing for the first time that I'm closer to 40 than I am to 30.  These days where injectables are offered up at parties like the burping Tupperware of the 70's and actresses like Demi Moore still haven't hit puberty yet, I wonder how I'm going to age and I look back on how much I've changed.  And the answers are probably NOT WELL by Hollywood standards and the other is A LOT.
 
I remember the first time I truly understood the concept that I was aging and changing and was no longer the fresh faced, perky breasted, bubbly blonde of my earlier youth.  I had been married a few years and really started to pack on the "comfortable relationship" pounds.  It happens before you know it and is an unfortunate side effect of marrying a man who actually loves you just the way you are.  It really hit home when I was picking up some take out and, with my hands full of boxed food, forgot to close my coin purse.  Change went spilling all over the floor and scattered beneath the barstools and tables.  There was a group of attractive men in their early thirties sitting nearby who heard the loud clatter.  They looked up from their giant platter of potato skins and buffalo wings, took one look at me and the results of my own indulgence in said appetizers and went right back to tipping back their pony keg sized beers.  Just two years and 40 pounds earlier those men would have been sliding into home trying to pick my change up for me.  I think it's safe to say my ego was officially shattered.
 
These days I'm a little less worried about the shallow vanity "accident of nature" of my youth and a little more concerned about preserving the attributes I have left.  I'd like to think, as I go forward in life, that I'm working a little harder on the "work of art" part.  And kid you not it is work.  Volumes are written, billions of dollars are poured into it and an infinite number of hours are devoted to mastering the practice.  But in the end I find it's always the simplest tools that work the best and have the greatest long term effects.  One of the attributes I can still work on is my hair and one of the basic, most simple tools to use is shampoo.  

Meg here! Cindsoo asked me the other day if I had heard of the new keratin treatments. Yes, of course I had heard about the new amazing treatments anyone with frizzes or unruly curls were getting. Seeing as I have limp, stick-straight hair, I really never gave much thought to having a keratin treatment done on myself.

However, Cindsoo did not have stick-straight hair and she wanted to see what all the buzz was about. She asked me if she could go on the hunt for Los Angeles's best Keratin expert and report back. I said "Sure, just let us know what you find."

Later that week, Cindsoo came beaming home with shiny, silky (straight!) hair that made her look as though she had been filming a hair commercial all day. She found her new love, she was obsessed with her new hair and now let's all meet Massimo!

Massimo began his career at the age of 15 training as an apprentice in his home town of Rome, Italy. He has since worked in Boston, New York City, San Francisco and Santa Monica. Massimo has also trained at Vidal Sasson and Jingles. At Jingles, Massimo became an educator and did stage work at National Hair Shows. He also has experience working on photo shoots and commercials.

Massimo is co-owner of Salon 1311 and as a National Corporate Educator for Global Keratin does stage work at national hair shows. No need to worry about being eyed by strangers or passed around like cattle in this salon. From the moment you walk in Massimo welcomes you in, offers you a cappuccino and from that moment on you have his undivided attention.

Advice is something we have all been given all of our lives.  Sometimes we listen and sometimes we don't.  As a child Sweetassgal was told time and time again by my Sweetassmama to brush your face and wash your teeth (yes that was on purpose) and to never go to sleep with your makeup on every night.  My mother was insistent about these rules and gave me a great foundation for the basics of beauty.  She even went so far as to set up mirrored stations on our kitchen table when I'd have sleepovers to teach all of my friends how to do a proper at home facial.  She did her best to spread her advice to us pre-pubescent girls so that our young and luminous skin would stay that way.  Again, sometimes we listen, sometimes we don't.  I've done my best Mama!
 
So I had to laugh greatly at a recent Mary Kay party given by my beautiful friend Ruth when a party-goer of hers who happens to be an experienced hairdresser gave us some advice I had never heard of before.  She mentioned that in all of the ways we try to take care of skin, don't tug the skin around the eyes, don't neglect the décolletage area, always wear sunscreen...no one ever mentioned caring for the back of your neck!  She made mentioned that as a hairdresser you see what happens to the back of someone's neck and it can be one ugly sight if not properly maintained.  Without batting an eyelash my funny friend Adele quipped "Looks like I'm never cutting my hair short!".  She's a mother of two and a very busy woman...like she needs yet ANOTHER thing to worry about.