To those of us who are a tiny bit cosmetically-challenged, gorgeous makeovers seem more than a bit like sorcery. The Trafford Centre is taking the opportunity to recognize that wizardry with next week’s Beauty Magic event.

With Valentine’s Day just a few short weeks away, it’s the perfect time for shoppers to indulge in a pre-spring update to their personal styles. Each event that makes up Beauty Magic weaves a little spell craft into that goal. Like, for example, Spellbound: Selfridges fragrance experts demonstrate their most hypnotic lotions and potions, and shoppers can take on a bit of alchemy of their own with special mixology sessions that helps them discover their perfect fragrances.

The Body Shop and Lush are teaching shoppers to cast a few beauty spells of their own, with fairytale facials, miraculous makeovers and a big reveal of this year’s magical cosmetic secrets. Debenhams shows off supernatural (or super natural) looks. And John Lewis will teach shoppers to create illusions and glamours – or glamour.

This is also a great time to show off the center’s Magic Mirror. Shoppers can step in front and paw through different virtual outfits. Chanting “Mirror, mirror on the wall, which is the best outfit of them all” isn’t necessary, but it ought to be.

Finally, what bewitching event would be complete without a secret treasure? This time, shoppers can enter to win an Eve Lom prize package worth over £500. That will certainly add some magic to one shopper’s experience.

This weekend, Brentwood Town Centre opens its arms to recent immigrants in its neighborhood with the two-day MOSAIC Fair.

MOSAIC is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing orientation services for immigrant communities (its name stands for Multilingual Orientation Service Association for Immigrant Communities, specifically). With Brentwood generously hosting, the group has put together a thoroughly multicultural event that mingles great entertainment with vital information.

The event gives MOSAIC an opportunity to provide community members with information about free services and employment opportunities available to immigrants, and refugees. Those info sessions are scattered throughout the weekend, but the rest of the time is given over to pure joy. Capoeira, belly dancing, West African, Kurdish and Taiwanese dance groups, and Bollywood classes fill out just some of the entertainment. There’s also a group art project, story time for the little ones and a couple prize draws to round things out.

Sounds like a warm welcome for folks who are often left isolated in their own communities.

Seaway Mall’s food court and Chorus Niagara put each other on the global map in 2010 with a fantastic flash mob video that you may still remember. We covered it briefly right here, where you can also check out the video and add to its 36 million plus views.

So it’s great to see that the two are continuing their mutually beneficial relationship with the chorus’s 6th annual Singathon Fundraiser. For five hours on Saturday, February 11th, the chorus will return to the center’s food court for an encore performance.

The Singathon is a free concert, performed in front of a live shopping audience. For those five hours, they’ll perform works from their popular and classical repertoire, including – wait for it – the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah, the very work that brought them their great fame. Other local celebrities will stop by to act as guest conductors.

The Singathon is a huge boon to the chorus’s operations, bringing in as much as $54,000 with last year’s record-breaking performance. The funds that are donated over the course of the day are used to produce and promote the ensembles’ season, including four choral concerts. The popular annual event is also sure to bring plenty of fans to Seaway Mall to enjoy the show.

Oh, and while it doesn’t have quite the same viral cachet, here’s another downright adorable video of Chorus Niagara’s time at Seaway Mall, from last year’s fundraiser:

The media might be all “Super Bowl this” and “Super Bowl that,” but there’s another big football game in town: The Pro Bowl. This year, this best-of-the-NFL event takes place in Honolulu, at Aloha Stadium. To celebrate the big game, the nearby Royal Hawaiian Center is holding a big bash, a Pro Bowl Block Party.

“Block Party” is no exaggeration in this case, as the center is taking over a good portion of the street for the gathering. Shoppers can drop by to mingle with visiting Pro Bowl players, cheerleaders, and team mascots to the strains of local music. Renowned Hawaiian artists Teresa Bright, Sean Na‘auao and Kāpala are performing at the center’s Mele ‘Ailana – Music of the Islands stage. Marketing Trendz noted the center’s dedication to Hawaiian heritage last year, and this is just another great example of the way it weaves local culture into all its events.

To keep the party going all evening, the Center will also be hosting its Royal Hawaiian Center Beer & Wine Garden fin its Royal Grove. It will be serving the Official Pro Bowl Beer, Bud Light Lime, along with other drinks, and collecting partial proceeds for the Visitor Aloha Society of Hawaii.

Royal Hawaiian has another treat for Pro Bowl fans – in the lead up to the game, it’s holding on to the Pro Bowl Trophy. Shoppers can drop in to get up close and personal with the trophy, and maybe think good thoughts for their team and players of choice.

Yesterday, CRE Radio dedicated its talk show to the retail pop-up phenomenon.

Tactics Magazine’s editor-in-chief Myriam Beaugé joined host Howard Kline to discuss the trend, alongside guests Harold N. Tolchinsky, Esp., a veteran legal expert familiar with the negotiation of pop-up store leases; and Christina Norsig, founder & CEO of PopUpInsider.com, the first national online exchange for temporary or pop-up retail.

The panel delved into these issues:

• Advantages and disadvantages of pop-ups for both the landlord and tenant
• Differing pop-up uses and concepts, including marketing and test markets
•  New ideas and applications of the pop-up concept, including a pop-up mall and revolving seasonal pop-up stores
•  How to make this temporary concept more permanent

You can listen to a recording of the show by visiting CREradio.com.

For more information on CRE, the commercial real estate radio station, or to discuss a retail real estate issue you’d like to take to the air, contact host Howard Kline or producer Mike Durnerin.