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Connor Claire carries her soccer ball ⚽ everywhere. When we play outside, she kicks it around and chases after it, laughing the entire time and smiling with her eyes. It’s the cutest thing!
I’m wondering if this means that I’m a soccer mom now and can legit rock this gloss by Lune + Aster called Soccer Mom?! I’m going to go with a “yes.”
Hmm… Looks like a few palettes are missing from the new MAC Girls collection. (Coming soon! August 3rd!)
I see a Rockin’ Rebel, a Fashion Fanatic and a Mischief Minx…but where’s Feline Friend? Or Pooped Parent? Or Nutella Nut? Methinks MAC missed an opportunity. Those would have spoken to many real life MAC Girls.
MAC’s limited edition MAC Girls collection contains six $39.50 palettes, each with eight eyeshadows and a big pan of highlighter. Every palette has a different personality. There’s Rockin’ Rebel, which is the one I’m wearing today, with blues, greens and golds. Mischief Minx, a.k.a. “the warm palette,” keeps cozy with toasty tones of orange, gold and brown. Fashion Fanatic flirts with bright berries, purples and pinks. Basic Bitch — the smokey palette — is a bad-@ss bevy of cool grays, purples and silvers. In Prissy Princess, pinks, grays, browns and taupes reign supreme. And Power Hungry is the only palette in the release that doesn’t have an alliterative name…and it’s bugging me because I can’t think of a catchy pun that starts with “P.” It’s the palette with neutral beiges, browns and bronze.
A couple things are jumping out at me. Like, I can’t remember the last time MAC released a collection that was exclusively comprised of palettes. Can you? Because their palettes are usually just one component of a larger launch, like they usually do for holiday. So that’s cool (and weird!).
I think it’s so weird that some powder face products, like blush, bronzer and highlighter, seem to look better to me when I wear them with very minimal base products, like maybe just a sheer BB or CC cream, or even just bare skin.
Because the long-term makeup-addicted part of my brain expects them to look better layered on top of a full-coverage foundation or a medium-coverage tinted moisturizer.
First time I wore these Lune + Aster face duos (one is the Moonrise Glow + Contour Bronzing Palette, and the other is the Sunrise Bronze & Blush Duo), I wore them on top of a full face of makeup — primer, medium-coverage foundation, concealer and powder, and I thought the powder grains looked a little heavy. In the case of the highlighter, it looked frosty and obvious.
Not flattering.
Then I tried the same products on top of the Lune + Aster CC Cream, and it was a bold nude squirrel! The highlighter looked dainty and delicate, and the blush gave me a natural-looking flush. Even the bronzer, which I was a little iffy about at first. It thought it would be a little too cool-toned and sparkly for me, but it looked downright good on a that light base.
What’s up with that?
Lune + Aster makeup is made for looks that can be done in mere minutes, and apparently the powders are formulated to flatter skin wearing minimal base makeup.
Two more days ’til National Lipstick Day! 
I must confess… Sometimes when I drink too much coffee, which I did today, I get so hyper that 1) I annoy myself, and 2) my hands get really sweaty, and when my hands get sweaty, I have a hard time opening the Hourglass Confession Lipsticks.
They look so cool, but man! — they’re slick.
Shout-out to the person (or peeps) who decided to put these in bullet-shaped packaging, though. Very clever. 🙂 A bullet-shaped case with a lipstick bullet inside? Oh, the symbolism. The layers within layers. That kind of thing gets me every time (it’s the former English major in me).
Did someone say “sale?”
I’m there!
It’s moments like this when I realize that I am truly my mother’s daughter. 🙂
It’s that time of year again. The Nordstrom Anniversary Sale (I LOVE THE DANCING ON THEIR WEBSITE) is happening right now. You can score fab fall clothing, shoes, accessories and beauty products, including some exclusive sets, at steep discounts.
This one, which is kind of weird in that it contains six Space NK bestsellers, but it’s exclusively available at Nordstrom (kind of like how some JCPenney stores have a Sephora inside them), is on sale for $159 (a $237 value). And it comes with a chic bag!
After August 6th, all of the sale prices at Nordy’s go back up again, so it’s a good time to stock up on things you know you’ll use (I bought a sh*t-ton of these Caslon tees and a couple of Zella High Waisted Leggings!). It’s also a good chance to grab a beauty set or two, because some brands will bundle items together and slash the price, like the Best of Space NK Set. It’s exclusive to the Anniversary Sale and comes with six items (seven including the bag), five which are full-size.
The only thing that isn’t full-size is the bottle of Sunday Riley Good Genes All-in-One Lactic Acid Treatment, which is more of a deluxe sample-size. It’s about half the size of the regular bottle (which costs $105 all by itself), so it’s not that small.
Huh! I almost just called this shade “Dragon Roll,” and I do that every single time I wear it…
Why!?
Contrary to what my brain thinks, this is not a delicious sushi roll. It’s a lipstick from NARS called Dragon Girl.
I guess I just really love sushi?! (I do.)
Dragon Girl is in the NARS permanent line of Velvet Matte Lip Pencils — ya know, the ones that look like a crayon that you sharpen.
They have a matte finish, but it’s not just any old basic, flat matte finish. It has a kick to it — a light stain that gives it a softness that you don’t get from truly flat mattes. I think it makes it more approachable.
But that’s not even the main reason I’ve been all about this shade for years. Seriously, it’s my favorite NARS red, and NARS is well-known for their reds.
I’m just sayin’. There’s so many good ones!
Dragon Girl is a chameleon color because, depending on what I’m wearing on my eyes, cheeks, and even my clothes, it can look very different. Sometimes it’s a blue-red. Sometimes it’s a pink-red, or an orange-red, or sometimes it’s got a berry tone. It’s a red that works with everything, and for a desert island challenge, if I had to pick just one NARS red to wear ’til forever arrived, it would be Dragon Roll —
Girl! Dragon Girl. I did it again… 🙂
Every day after Connor and I have lunch, we go outside to play on the grassy knoll in the front yard common area here in our little condo complex, and almost every day we go out there, I’ve got some degree of craziness on my face — mismatched eyeshadow, false lashes with the wingspan of a bird of prey, bright green Hulk gloss, etc. — so I usually look a little nuts and get some sidelong glances.
Do I really care? Nope!
It is nice, though, when I’m not testing some new makeup and actually, ya know, look kinda normal and someone gives me a compliment, which happened last week while I was wearing the Chanel Les Beiges Healthy Glow Sheer Colour stick No. 24.
Actually, come to think about it, whenever I wear one of these cream blushes, somebody asks about it. I’d probably do the same if I saw a gal wearing one, because they’re bomb!
They’re twist-up cream blush sticks sort of like the NARS Multiples, and there are five of them, all available on Chanel counters now in the new Les Beiges collection. Also, yay! — I’ve been told that they’re permanent.
They feel similar to the Multiples but aren’t quite as dry. They’re wetter and creamier, so they’re also 1) easier to blend and 2) don’t push around whatever you have on your cheeks, like foundation, tinted moisturizer, concealer, etc.
Time: the great equalizer. More precious than tiny tabbies, Tom Ford, platinum and diamonds. I went to high tea a few weeks ago with my college crew, and we got to talking about time and how it seems like there’s less and less of it every year. Life, love, school, work, hobbies, kids and cats (of course!) happen, and then all of a sudden you realize how little time you have left for yourself at the end of the day.
Time is precious and valuable, and saving more of it is the name of the game for this cool little brand called Lune + Aster. It’s a vegan, paraben-free makeup line exclusively available at Bluemercury stores, and it was started by CEO Marla Beck in 2016. Everything in the line is focused on getting you made up and out the door in five minutes or less.
It’s not a huge line, but they do have a range of products, including a CC cream, an eyeshadow palette, a few cheek palettes, bronzers, brushes and lip glosses in prices from $18 (for a gloss) to $56 for the eyeshadow palette I’m wearing here called Midnight Sun.
