Month: January 2024

Real Housewives of Salt Lake City Season 4 Best Sellers + More

If you’d told me at the beginning of the fourth season of the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City that it was going to end with arguably the best Real Housewives finale ever, I likely wouldn’t have believed you. But the SLC ladies gave us just that, along with some memorable looks. So before we dig into the reunion drama, here’s a look back at the Top 10 best sellers and most read posts from this seriously stylish season of Salt Lake.

Click Here for the Season 4 Reunion Looks

The Realest Housewife,

Big Blonde Hair

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Click the Collage Images to Shop

10. Whitney Rose’s Fur Coat 9. Meredith Marks’ Tie Dye Sweatsuit 8. Lisa Barlow’s Black Panel Jacket and Jeans 7. Lisa Barlow’s White Jeans + Black Leather Jacket 6. Lisa Barlow’s Brown Suede Sweatshirt 5. Lisa Barlow’s Brown Leopard Graphic Pajamas 4. Lisa Barlow’s Purple Versace Outfit 3. Lisa Barlow’s Green Puffer Coat 2. Whitney Rose’s Green Pajama Set 1. Lisa Barlow’s White Star Sequin Jacket

Originally posted at: Real Housewives of Salt Lake City Season 4 Best Sellers, Most Read + More

Real Housewives of Salt Lake City Season 4 Reunion Looks

New year, new drama! I think it’s safe to say that we are all still recovering from the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City season 4 finale. And tonight’s reunion is sure to be a trip back to the drama-filled Bermuda Triangle, and these housewives are bringing the resort-inspired style as a nod to the trip.

My initial thought when the RHOSLC season 4 reunion dresses dropped a few weeks ago was that these ladies brought their Bermuda best. And thanks to the set designers and the drama we’re set fire and ice. So now it’s time for you to take a trip down below and dive into their resort-ready looks.

Best in Blonde,

Amanda

Lisa Barlow’s Real Housewives of Salt Lake City Season 4 Reunion Dress

Click Here for Additional Stock in Her Dress

Click Here for Additional Stock in her Sandals / Here for More Stock

Hair: @oliviahalpin / Makeup: @makeupbynikkilarose / Nails: Jada / Photo: Clifton Prescod / Photo Assist: Jocelyn Prescod

Photo + Info: Bravo TV

Meredith Mark’s Real Housewives of Salt Lake City Season 4 Reunion Dress

Click Here for Additional Stock

Shoes: Manolo Blahnik / Jewelry: Meredith Marks / Hair: @hairbyalisonfarfan / Makeup: @samanthajaymes / Fashion stylist: @annalavostylist / Photo: Clifton Prescod / Photo Assist: Jocelyn Prescod

Photo + Info: Bravo TV

Whitney Rose’s Real Housewives of Salt Lake City Season 4 Reunion Dress

Click Here to Shop Her Dress in White

Click Here for Additional Stock in Her Sandals / Here for More Stock / Here for More Stock

Jewelry: PRISM Beach Line (The Beach collection was inspired by our trip to Bermuda) & Nicole Rose Jewelry / Hair: @juliusmichael1 / Makeup: @carolinemakeuptime / Fashion Stylist: @katie_peare / Manicure: @therealglambyjenny / Photo: Clifton Prescod / Photo Assist: Jocelyn Prescod

Photo + Info: Bravo TV

Heather Gay’s Real Housewives of Salt Lake City Season 4 Reunion Dress

Click Here for Her Dress in Gold

Shoes: Rene Caovilla / Hair: Shedelle Holmes / Makeup: Megan Lanoux / Nails: Thao & Jack at VN Nails  / Photo: Clifton Prescod / Photo Assist: Jocelyn Prescod

Photo + Info: Bravo TV

Angie Katsanevas’ Real Housewives of Salt Lake City Season 4 Reunion Dress

Click Here for Additional Stock in Her Dress / Click Here to Shop it in Black / And Here to Shop it in Burgundy

Hair: Julius Michael / Makeup: Priscilla DiStasio / Stylist: Katie Peare / Nails: Jenny Linh

Photo: Clifton Prescod Photo Assist: Jocelyn Prescod

Photo + Info: Bravo TV

Mary Cosby’s Real Housewives of Salt Lake City Season 4 Reunion Dress

Click Here for Additional Stock / Here for More Stock / Here for More Stock / Here for Even More Stock

Photo + Info: Bravo TV

Monica Garcia’s Real Housewives of Salt Lake City Season 4 Reunion Dress

Shoes: Christian Louboutin / Jewelry: Swarovski / Hair: @lina_kidis / Makeup: @andy.truu / Sylist: @Koa Johnson / Nails: M. Vince / Photo: Clifton Prescod / Photo Assist: Jocelyn Prescod

Photo + Info: Bravo TV

Originally posted at: Real Housewives of Salt Lake City Season 4 Reunion Looks

Shop Real Housewives of Potomac Season 8 Episode 8 Fashion

Since there are SO many Bravo shows right now and we want to provide you with the most content possible, we’re covering Real Housewives of Potomac Season 8 as a Shop LTK exclusive. If you aren’t familiar with Shop LTK it’s an easy to download shopping app that we share all of the looks we cover on the blog on! But don’t worry, even if you don’t have the app yet shopping last night’s pretty Potomac looks is still just as easy as clicking HERE or on the images below.

The Realest Housewife,

Big Blonde Hair

Originally posted at: Shop Real Housewives of Potomac Season 8 Episode 8 Fashion

These days, branding is a word that is bandied about freely. Everyone, from celebrities to wanna-be influencers, is trying to brand themselves or their business. You may be thinking, That’s okay for famous people or big businesses but what about my small business – how does branding pertain to me?

What Is Branding?

Branding is everything you do consistently and across the board each time you appear online or in person, whether you are networking, creating a website, publishing posts, advertising, or working on your social media.

Branding consists of:

Visual Branding

• Fonts
• Color Palettes
• Relevant Images
• Iconography
• Videos
• Logo

Brand Voice

• Your voice
• Your story
• Your tag or theme line
• Your content

What Branding Is NOT

A couple of years ago, I got a call from two executives who were spinning off from their corporate employers. They actually asked me if they should invest their money in a logo or a website. My answer, as always, is that your website is your greatest online business asset. A logo is something that makes your business recognizable, but in itself is meaningless (think Starbucks).

The days of slapping a logo on your website, business cards, and marketing materials and calling it branding is long gone. Instead, you must think comprehensively to every aspect of your business.

What Can I Hope to Achieve by Branding My Business?

Your goal is to create a memorable experience for the consumer. Something that they will love, choose, or identify with. A product is never thought to be just a product. Instead, it should connote a lifestyle and confer that identification on the user. 

Likewise, services should never simply be listed on your website or marketing materials. The content you use to describe your various services should answer questions and solve problems for the user. 

How Does Branding Help Small Businesses?

• Branding makes your business recognizable
• Branding generates leads and customers
• Branding creates trust
• Branding makes your business scalable
• Branding supports your marketing efforts

Where Do I Begin the Branding Process?

Begin by creating a user profile of your targeted audience. Think about whom you are speaking to. Create an ideal buyer persona (or more than one) consisting of:

• Gender / Sex
• Age
• Location (urban, suburban, rural, national, international, regional etc.)
• Education
• Income
• Job / Career
• Marital / familial status
• Communication preferences
• Goals
• Problems / Challenges
• Why they would, or wouldn’t, buy your service or product

This step will define everything that comes afterward, such as your brand colors, brand images, and brand voice. The more you know about your targeted audiences, their habits and preferences, the fewer marketing mistakes you will make. Build it and they will come is magical realism in action. Appeal to them a priori and you will have a recipe for success.

What Are My Next Steps?

Presumably, you have already researched your market and competitors. After building your ideal consumer profile, you will define your brand position, your brand proposition and brand identity:

Your Value Proposition

What are all the things you plan to do better than your competitors? Will you offer better pricing, better service, or a better product?

Your Brand Position

This is a statement that defines your position in the market and your brand personality.

Brand Identity

Do a Google search for a list of adjectives to help you choose your identity. For example, green and eco; reliable and dependable; exclusive and luxurious.

Your Brand Voice

This is the voice you will use when speaking to your customers. Are you speaking to women or men, young or old, sophisticated or unpretentious, a utilitarian or a luxury market?

Why Is Choosing the Right Brand Colors So Important to My Success?

It is estimated that 60-90% of all judgements are made on color alone. Choosing the right color palette for your products, website, and marketing materials is going to be crucial to your success. The advertising industry has spent billions of dollars on researching colors and their psychological connotations.

Furthermore, each sex and generation has been found to have its own marked color preferences:

• Boomers – azure, greenish-blue, jade green, grey lavender, sophisticated purples, and silver
• Generation X – indigo, violet, shades of green, black, sandy colors and charcoal greys
• Generation Z – Cheerful pastels and yellow
• Millennials – soft tonal colors, like dusty pink, cantaloupe, blush, lavender and /or bright supersaturated colors

But color will further be honed by the industry you are in and by feelings that you want to evoke. In 2017, I did a website for a medical spa. Until then, most of the medical spa websites in Chicagoland featured images of super skinny white women in their early 20s and were primarily styled in shades of blue. I can only presume that was the case because spas are associated with water.

In any case, I implemented a palette of soft grey, white, camel, sand and gold that sets off all flesh tones and has a sophisticated urban feel. I also used images of women of all races and colors. Though the targeted demographics were Generation X and Boomer women, I used photos of all ages and shapes. Now every medical spa website in Chicago is more or less a variation of that design.

Fonts Are Also Crucial to Branding

Fonts will also evoke a mood and say much about your business or product. Generally, you should use three fonts or less on your website and even fewer in your collateral marketing pieces. You will want a clean look and not to end up with a product that looks like a ransom note. The three fonts you should use:

• Primary font – it’s associated with your brand identity, logo, and often used in your hero section and/or headings.
• Secondary – for the body of your copy. It should be clean and easy to read.
• Tertiary – or accent font – you decide where to use it. 

These two or three fonts need to work together. Additionally, you can change the weight, style, color, and spacing of a font to either make two to three fonts look more cohesive or style one font for more variety. You can also italicize a font or put it all into capitals. 

Brand Images

As a society, we are moving away from the printed word and towards images and video. You must be consistent about choosing or creating your brand images. They will define the way you are perceived across your website, products, and social media.

Quality and authenticity come first. If you can, do hire a local photographer to take images of you, your team, your business, and your product. Never use stock photos to represent you or your business. People will want to know who you are. Be authentic, transparent, and above all don’t use a photo from 20 years ago.

Branding Your Website

Your website is one of your most important business assets. Many business owners either don’t have a website or have one that is not working. The design and layout of your website should be created to achieve your goals whether they are sales, lead generation, boosting your reputation, describing your expertise or a combination of the above.

Using the proper images, colors, fonts and speaking to your potential client base using your brand voice will set the stage for your success. Think about what your images and colors evoke subconsciously in the end user.

A friend of mine in the computer industry is building an innovative app. He is also building his own website. On it, he is using newspaper cut outs from the 50s. I’m not sure what he is trying to achieve but it isn’t saying cutting edge technology.

Lastly, You Can Concentrate on Your Logo

Now that you know who your targeted audience is and which images, colors, and fonts will appeal to them, you can concentrate on the design of your logo. The style, typography, and colors should be consistent with the elements we discussed.

The image should look as good on your website as it does on your business card and marketing materials. It is much easier to start from the bigger items and work your way to the logo than to try to craft your branding around the logo.

Next time we will talk about your brand voice and telling your story so that it appeals to your audience.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

Do you have a passion or small business that you’ve been trying to brand? How has that worked for you so far? What difficulties have you faced or are you facing? What part of branding has been easy for you? Have you hired help and what was the result?

One of the great joys of having grandchildren is the opportunity to relive the pleasures of childhood. We love to get on the floor and play with their toy trains or construct houses from plastic blocks of one kind or another.

And we can take them to the park and put them on the swings. Sometimes, we even have a little swing ourselves.

But small children grow up amazingly fast and suddenly we are confronted with teenagers who certainly don’t want to play on the floor or to be seen near the playground with their grandparents.

What to do?

In my house, we introduced them to the wonderful and varied pleasures of movies. It’s fun for us and wonderful for them.

Children and Movies

It starts, of course, with taking them as young children to the movies – or showing them selected movies on TV. There are all the usual Disney favourites for very young children, plus others that have been made along the way.

It is a bit of a cliché, but I do find the old ones are the best.

We happened to find The Red Balloon, a short (half-hour) French film from the early 1950s, on TV and taped it. One of our grandchildren loved it so much, he more of less memorised it, like some children do with books.

It is incredibly charming and has almost no dialogue to worry about. You can find it on YouTube now.

This same grandchild also loved the movie made by David Attenborough about being locked into the Natural History Museum at night, with all the animals there coming to life (called David Attenborough’s Natural History Museum Alive). It is brilliantly done.

I subsequently took him to that Museum and found him studying a particular part of the cafeteria floor very carefully. In the film, it had been turned into a hole, a kind of burrow where some animals lived. Alas, he was a bit disappointed to find nothing but the floor.

But somewhere along the line, the usual children’s movies are no longer of interest. You have to find something else.

Teenagers and Movies

It probably depends on the sex of the grandchild (mine are both boys), but with a little trial and error, you can soon find what they like.

One grandson loved all the James Bond movies and other adventure or action stories. No problem there – always plenty to choose from.

And then it isn’t difficult to segue into the easier heist movies, like Charade. We didn’t see it coming, but the older grandson thought, quite rightly, that Audrey Hepburn was drop-dead gorgeous.

Or try the many 1950s movies intended as ‘family entertainment’. An example here is To Catch a Thief, with Cary Grant. And the same grandson fell in love with Grace Kelly.

Then, there are the classics, such as Casablanca, which you just feel they ought to know about. I wasn’t sure whether either grandson would take to this, as it isn’t an easy film and is in black and white, but they did – and the same one was seriously taken by Ingrid Bergmann.

Once you get started, it becomes very easy to carry on. Because the one grandson liked Grace Kelly, we tried Rear Window. He was soon into all the films by Alfred Hitchcock.

There are so many suitable movies. There are the numerous films of Alec Guinness, which often suit the tastes of adolescents. Or films about their very age and gender, such as Dead Poets Society.

The one piece of advice I would add is that it is important, especially when they are younger, to sit with the grandchild, stop the film where needed, and explain what is going on. They will tell you when they don’t understand. And the need for this diminishes hugely over time.

I would also argue that it is important to take into account what you will tolerate yourself. There are plenty of very adolescent films that neither of us could sit through with any pleasure whatsoever.

Let the kids find these by themselves.

The Result

Now, the two grandsons love watching all sorts of movies on TV when they come to our house. Indeed, it is an essential part of any visit.

It passes the time very pleasantly, allows us the joy of revisiting old favourites and teaches them a lot about all sorts of things.

One grandson enjoys movies and likes to watch them with his parents on occasion.

The other has become a true ‘movie buff’, taking his interest much further than anything we have taught him. He is (of course) much more capable than we are on the net and looks up all sorts of information about the films he is interested in.

And it is somehow delightful to think that in the 2020s, there is a soon to be 18-year-old young man who thinks a lot of dead actresses from the 1950s are gorgeous!

For more activity ideas with grandchildren, read 5 FUN ACTIVITIES TO ENJOY WITH YOUR GRANDKIDS.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

Do you watch films with your grandchildren? Which ones were particularly successful? Have they developed a long-term interest in film?