Welcome!
We're glad you're here.

Letters and Lipstick is for the woman who wants to smell the roses, eat the slice(s) of cake, and learn a thing or two along the way.

The one who reads, the one who discovers, and the one who celebrates all good things big and small.

We're Isabel and Marilyn

"The beginning is always today."

-Mary Shelley

We originally started Letters and Lipstick years ago, but family and work obligations took over. With heavy hearts and reluctant minds, we paused this blog not knowing when or if we’d ever restart it. Over the years, we both felt the occasional tap on our shoulders and heard the ever so subtle whispering reminding us that Letters and Lipstick was waiting.

So here we are.

Here, you’ll find everyday inspiration, including healthy recipes, beauty products, home and personal style and anything related to mindful living. You’ll also find travel information, with a focus on Portugal, since we spend so much time there. Of course, we’ll be posting about the literary life, including books and culture.

Every post is written by us the old-fashioned way, and every recommendation we make is something that we support and love.

About the Blog

What you'll find on

Letters and Lipstick

A celebration of daily life, with posts highlighting inspiring ideas, beautiful things and moments, including some recipes, style, and beauty with a focus on clean beauty products.

Valuable resources of things we believe can make life easier, better and simply more enjoyable, and perhaps, even meaningful. We are always interested in exploring what makes life meaningful and beautiful, and love to share this with the Letters and Lipstick community.

Portugal recommendations from us. We grew up speaking Portuguese and interacting with those who live there since our connection with Portugal runs deep. Our parents immigrated to Canada, landing in Toronto’s Portuguese Community (Kensington Market, aka Rua Augusta, anyone?). Recently, we have returned to Portugal more regularly, as we continue to renovate our family home, on a property that dates back to 1773, on paper but much longer in practice.

Literary recommendations from us, with insight as published writers (Marilyn also has an MFA in creative writing and Isabel has taught High School English for many years). We read all the time and love to share book recommendations, and we love the literary life, so we share aspects of that as well.

Authenticity since we write everything ourselves the old-fashioned way (we don’t use AI at all). In future, if we ever have someone write a post, it will be clearly indicated. We only make recommendations when we absolutely love something and have tried it ourselves and believe would be beneficial to the Letters and Lipstick community.

We divide our time unequally between Toronto, Canada and Lisbon, Portugal.

We are so appreciative of the variety of wonderful things we find in our hometown of Toronto: yoga classes, amazing restaurants, endless options for watching a play, meeting up with friends. The list goes on. The pace of life is quick, people are generally polite, but getting around is challenging because of the traffic and that’s when people are a little less polite!

We're still learning how to balance enjoying and discovering Portugal, while navigating the overwhelming bureaucracy as we work on making our family home habitable. Our family home is in the countryside, along the Silver Coast, with Lisbon being an hour away where life is very different from the countryside.

In Lisbon, we love to roam the weaving cobblestone streets, listen to Fado, and meet up with friends.

In the countryside, we spend time with family, family friends, and we love to pick fruit from our young trees, or figs from a tree that is over 100 years old. We also love to go for walks along vineyards or discover nearby towns, venture into traditional or newer restaurants, or simply enjoy a good book in our courtyard.