Our first trip to the beach this season happened yesterday, where we enjoyed a gorgeous summer day along the shores of Lake Tahoe (in the shade!) and spent hours catching up on our magazine reading.

While we love a lazy day at the beach as much as the next girl, getting our beach bag ready is always a chore. Gone are the days of heading off to the beach with nothing but a towel and a girlfriend or two. (Gone are also the days of perfectly flat abs–but no sense getting nostalgic here.)

Nowadays, beaching-it takes a little planning and a lot of packing.

Aside from the essential beach umbrella, wide-brimmed hat and iPod, here’s what else you can find in our beach bag:

1. Boots Quick Thinking 4 in 1 Wipes: Great for wiping around our irritated eyes when sand, salt and sunscreen start taking their toll. (Even greater for the car ride home when 45 minutes seems like an eternity with beach grime in our pores.) These Quick Thinking wipes cleanse, tone, remove makeup and moisturize all in one swipe. Brilliant!

2. Neutrogena Ultra-Sheer Dry Touch Sunblock SPF 55: Complete UVA/UVB protection with Helioplex. Along with a big hat, this sunscreen leaves the skin on our face wondering if it’s even at the beach.

3. Laura Mercier Lip Kisses SPF 15 : Sun protection for our lips with a sheer, high-gloss finish. We like it in Nude Beach.

4. Shiseido Refreshing Sun Protection Spray: This light, waterproof formula makes protecting our hair simple and easy. The bottle even sprays upside down making it easy to reach the back of our head without having to play Twister.

5. Bobbi Brown Lip Balm SPF 15: This colorless lip balm feels silky smooth on our lips. Bonus: we also use it on our cuticles!

6. Dior Diorshow Waterproof Mascara: Thick, lush lashes in a waterproof formula. Just because we’re at the beach, doesn’t mean we can’t look fab.

7. Neutrogena Cool Mist SPF 30: Again, Helioplex gives us ultra protection while the cool mist spray bottle keeps us feeling fresh and cool in the hot summer sun.

Now that our bag is packed, beach-going will be a breeze. We can’t wait until next weekend.

Last month we told you about the NEW Shiseido The Skincare, an eight product addition to Shiseido’s current The Skincare line.

Now that we’ve had the chance to use this collection for the last several weeks, we thought we’d give you a quick update.

Our favorite product from this line, hands down, is Night Moisture Recharge Enriched. The consistency is not too thick, yet our skin feels soft and supple in the morning.

We are also liking the Extra Gentle Cleansing Foam. Like the Gentle Cleansing Foam, Extra Gentle Cleansing Foam is creamy and soft and lathers like no other cleanser, yet rinses away squeaky clean. We don’t like how the Extra Gentle version isn’t fragrance-free. Instead it has the same familiar scent as the other products in the line, which might be irritating if you have sensitive skin (lucky for us, we don’t).

The NEW Shiseido The Skincare Line can be found at macys.com.

Are these not THE MOST gorgeous brown eyes you have ever seen?

When we die, we’d like to come back to earth with Patricia Schmid’s face. In the meantime, we’ll settle for this incredible shade of lip gloss.

Shiseido Summer Color Collection 2007 uses color and contrasting textures to express innocence and imagination this summer. The new limited edition products in this collection are:

• Shiseido The Makeup Silky Eyeshadow Quad in Ocean Shimmer (Caribbean blue, midnight black, tropical green, vibrant purple)
• Shiseido The Makeup Multi-Shade Enhancer in Sunset Glow
• Shiseido The Makeup Lip Gloss in Tangelo Glow, Iced Rubies, and Night Berry

Shiseido Summer Color Collection 2007 will be available for a limited time beginning May 2007 at select Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, Saks and Nordstrom locations nationwide.

PS- A few weeks ago we told you about the New Shiseido The Skincare, an 8 product skincare collection to enhance their popular The Skincare line, and we can’t rave enough about Night Moisture Recharge. It comes in three different formulas (light, regular and enriched) and gives our skin the perfect amount of nourishment while we sleep. Check your local Macy’s this month for this awesome collection.

The thing is… we just can’t stop buying exfoliators.

We could exfoliate day and night for the next three years and still have enough product to last us through retirement. But just in case, we thought we would stock up on these Shiseido Bio-Performance Super Exfoliating Discs that gently exfoliate, refine and polish skin to visibly minimize fine lines and pores.

These dual-sided discs are to be used once weekly after cleansing (you’ll be tempted to use them more often, but please don’t. Your skin needs time to rejuvenate and repair itself after this treatment.)

Shiseido suggests that you combine these discs with Bio-Performance Super Refining Essence but so far we haven’t. This unique exfoliant has been working just fine for us on its own.

Now, no more exfoliators for us. This time we mean it.

Shiseido Bio-Performance Super Exfoliating Disc, $64