Hi Folks,

We’re changing the look of StyleChicks this weekend, so things might look a little off here and there. We’ll be back up in full force ASAP!

It’s been awhile. Our father died unexpectedly just a few months after our grandmother died.

I can’t say I currently have the inclination to describe what we went through, and I certainly can’t find the words to describe how wonderful of a man and father he was. But I will say this: what he wanted out of life was to make me, Lyn, and our mother happy, and that he did. He taught us that laughter and happiness are a gift. We miss him everyday.

Well, that not terribly profound blog entry took me months to bring myself to write. Can we talk about beauty products again?

Lyn and I have been missing for awhile now. Our grandmother received a cancer diagnosis early last year, and after a hard, painful fight, died at home over the summer. We were physically exhausted , and were deeply grieved by the loss of the woman who was like a third parent to us growing up. For several months after that, writing about makeup, skincare, and how to get the glossiest hair on the planet seemed, well, silly.

But at some point in struck us – our grandmother was the most elegant and dignified woman we have ever known. For her, makeup or having her hair just so wasn’t silly, it was a way of showing the world that she had the confidence to display her quiet elegance. It wasn’t vanity, it was an expression of herself – an inner fortitude. Nothing about that is silly.

So we’re back. In the past couple of months a lot of things have been happening for us workwise, so we won’t be posting several times a day until things calm down a bit. But we’ll be around, for certain.

And we want to express a big thank you for all of you who have been e-mailing to ask if we’re okay. Thank you for your concern, and thank you for your loyalty to Style Chicks!

Lyn and I have been taking a short break from StyleChicks to figure out where we want the site to go in the future. We’re pretty excited about what we’ve come up with.

We’ve always thought of ourselves as a product recommendation blog, not a review blog. True, part of the recommendation is a review of a product. But we’re now thinking that what we’d like to do with the site now is more good product curation. Basically, we will be discussing products that definitely belong in your beauty routine, the ones we see ourselves purchasing time and again.

What does this mean for you, the reader? Not much. The site will continue to look basically the same, and you get our honest and usually extremely excited opinions of the products we feature. But recommendations will be more of the products we can’t live without, rather than, “yeah, this is a good product.” We will also be developing pages devoted to individual brands we love, especially if we have used several products within the same line.

So stay tuned for good things…