Each year some friends of mine hold a brilliant party, a post-Christmas pre-New Year white elephant where you can rid yourself of any bad gifts you received. It makes getting bad gifts almost desirable, and it serves as a happy way to prep for the New Year. This year we received this, um, decoration? It's a five-headed dog made from a glove and glued onto a plastic base of some sort. We heard that it was chosen by a six year old. Notice one of the dog heads is backwards? Awesome.

Here is to hoping your upcoming year is free of backwards headed dog things, and full of yummy things to eat and good hair days.

Last month I came across a rumor online (ok, all over Ebay in sellers' descriptions) that Prada had discontinued it's colorless lip balm. It's my absolute favorite of all time and my heart broke a little bit. I did some more digging and I found out that whole boxes of the ridiculously expensive stuff were selling at TJ Maxx for $8, and my heart broke a whole lot because I didn't know about it at the time. I suspect the TJ Maxx special was because of some online store shutting down and dumping their inventory, but I honestly have no idea what was actually behind it. (Something similar happened the first year I moved to San Francisco - a well-stocked dot com shop closed and shortly thereafter a discount store on Polk Street was filled with supercheap aromatherapy candles, yoga cds and fancy facial cleaners, it was great.) I still cannot tell if it has been discontinued but I hope not, it's one of the things I'm willing to pay way too much for.

In other lip balm news I've been unable to find my favorite drug store lip balm anywhere - Blistex Herbal Answer seems to be gone. Upon this discovery I went into full-on lip balm panic mode and bought a pile of sticks in the hopes of finding a new favorite. You should know that I prefer a waxy balm, I find it oddly comforting, and in this germ-tastic season I've been sticking to tubes to cut down on the chance of catching a cold. So far:

- Chicken Poop, smells of orange oil and lavender which isn't always what I want but certainly isn't unpleasant, has lots of jojoba oil beads in it, I like it

- Chapstick All Natural, smells a little of fake vanilla, it's just eh

- Chapstick Lip Moisturizer, SPF 15, smells exactly like Chapstick All Natural but has a more waxy, Chapstick-y feel

- Aveeno Essential Moisture, SPF 15, smells a little of fake vanilla and unless you try them on one right after the next you'd swear it was the same as the Chapstick All Natural, but it's not quite

- Blistex Gentle Sense, Hypo-allergenic, very nearly has no scent at all (which is sort of refreshing), the mixture is a little beaded (jojoba?)

Some older trials:

- Kiss My Face for Old Navy, mint, SPF 15, good stuff, don't know if they carry it anymore

- Burt's Bees Beeswax Lip Balm, very minty and I generally like it but I don't seem to buy it, I think it doesn't stay on long enough for me

- Chapstick Peppermint (aka Candy Cane) is pretty good but not something I went back for

Here are two lip balm related sites I felt the need to include in this post but couldn't find a way to put in gracefully so here you are: Kiss Fix (formerly Lip Medic, what's the story there?) has tons and tons of lip balms for sale. And a new discovery: Chaptasitc tests and candidly reviews lip balms. They have a page on the top rated lip balms by Real Simple magazine.

So, now that my two favorites have been yanked cruelly out of my consumer hands I ask you - What is your favorite lip balm?

Daiso stores are popping up - Anh-Minh reports from a new one in Daly City, California, and just this morning L from Sharpening My Stick(s) sent me photographic evidence of one opening in Westlake Center in downtown Seattle. The Seattle area, well region, has three stores already - Lynnwood at Alderwood Mall, Federal Way in the Commons, and Puyallup in the South Hill Mall.