"The girls are back . . . and they've brought friends!"

Sister Liz and her gorgeous daughter were up for a visit last Friday. Leah and I met them for lunch on a too-cold day at Utica Square, wedging ourselves and all our Christmas packages into a narrow little place called Queenlet (Queenlet's?) that has wonderful panini. It's a tradition of ours to exchange gifts sometime after late January (last year it was April, a bit late even for us!). It's a great excuse to get together, eat, laugh too much -- as if we need an excuse.

After trading gifts back and forth while eating (and amusing the people around us), we drove over to Saks. Yep, drove, even though it's less than a block away. It was COLD, did I mention? And we hit the Bobbi Brown counter.

Leah introduced me to Bobbi a few years back -- the makeup, not the artist -- and it's become my biggest splurge. We do makeovers three or four times a year, stocking up on the new colors and products for each season -- visiting so often and spending so much that the Bobbi people are always thrilled to see us coming.

Liz, however, has missed out on all the Bobbi fun, so she and Gorgeous got their first makeovers (but not last, I'm sure) while Leah and I browsed for our own purchases. When the makeup artistes were finished, Liz and Gorgeous looked fabulous. Of course, considering that they're already beautiful, even stripped down to bare skin, that was no surprise.

We walked out of Sak's an hour or so after getting there, our Bobbi urge satisfied . . . at least for a while. They're doing Beauty Week in March, with artists coming in from all over, and Leah and I already have our appointments. We'll make an afternoon of it, like we always do, and go in ready to spend and get beautiful.

You know, you'd think for the amount of money we spend on Bobbi, the least she could do is handle our makeover personally. Wonder just how much we'd have to spend to get that? Rachel6:22 PM