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Sundays With Tabs the Cat, Makeup and Beauty Blog Mascot, Vol. 623

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Today’s been the hottest day of the year, man! We’re pushing 109! It is crazy hot.

Tabs, of course, loved days like this. He thought the heat brought out the richness of his fur…

He would have been lounging by a body of water somewhere on a day like this, sipping champagne…

Traditional fashion photography rules advise against taking pics during the hottest, brightest time of day because of the harsh shadows, but Tabs didn’t go for that. He loved kitty modeling in full sun and was like JJ Abrams when it came to lens flares.

Rosie, on the other paw, would rather relax inside the house with a cool beverage than work her angles in the hot sun…

The coywolf and I appreciate the merits of both approaches. We’ll hit a couple poses in the sun before retreating to someplace with ice cream and AC inside. ?

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

Saturday Surfing, Sep. 5, 2020

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Happy Labor Day weekend, guys. ? If you need me, you’ll find me in the front yard, otherwise known as “The neverending project that has haunted me for months.” I’ll be knee-deep in dirt today because we’re laying down sod…which leads me to these beauties! El Hub came home with these Improved Meyer Lemon trees from Costco the other day. He knocked on the front door, and when I opened it said, “Look what I got for ya!” (I’m picky about my lemons and have been known to ramble on and on about the virtues of the Meyer lemon.)

I often see these big, bushy lemon trees around the neighborhood, so I’m hoping that will happen with these guys, and the day will come when I’ll be so overloaded with lemons that I won’t even know what to do with myself. I’ll be making pasta al limone and lemon bars left and right! ? Let’s manifest that food dream, shall we? LOL!

Now, while I go set this citrus vision in motion, here’s your beauty reading for the week… ?


One of my favorite movies, ever. Easily top ten!


Fun fact: I used to eat at a Thai restaurant in Marin County where Bonnie Raitt was known to hang out, but I never saw here there.


Awww


I just watched Salma Hayek in a movie with Alec Baldwin called “Drunk Parents,” and her comic timing is impeccable. Love her!

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

This or That: Lipstick Edition

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mac lipsticks national lipstick day
Smooch!

Anybody else out there really miss wearing lipstick when they’re out and about? I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, with fall — which usually means the return of dark, vampy lips — just around the corner. Sometimes I still wear lipstick ? around the house…and sometime I’ll rock a thin layer of liquid matte lipstick underneath my mask (which seems to transfer the least).

Anywho, it’s time for another round of This or That!

How to play

Pick one or the other for each of the questions below, and copy/paste your answers in the comments. Can’t wait to see your picks! Mine are listed below. ?

Copy and paste

  • Matte or cream finish?
  • Coral or rose?
  • Sheer or pigmented?
  • Blended or unblended lip liner?
  • Overdrawn or not?
  • Orangey reds or bluish reds?
  • Brown or pastel?
  • Lip brush or straight from the tube?

Matte or cream finish?

I love both, but I’ll go with matte because I like how it photographs.

Coral or rose?

Coral, 100%.

Sheer or pigmented?

Pigmented, please. I like the flexibility.

Blended or unblended lip liner?

Unblended. I know, I know…but I’ve been feeling ’90s makeup lately, and I think the unblended lip looks cool.

Overdrawn or not?

Not, although I have done the whole overdrawn lip liner thing before; it’s just one of those phases you need to work through, LOL!

Orangey reds or bluish reds?

YARGH. This is hard. I guess orangey reds!

Brown or pastel shades?

Brown.

Lip brush or straight from the tube?

Straight from the tube, baby.

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen ?

Makeup and Beauty Blog Monday Poll, Vol. 641

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you really are a gem
You really are a ?

So…what is the Monday Poll?

Excellent question! It isn’t, contrary to its name, an actual poll, like with little clicky buttons. It’s just a list of five more or less random questions I’ve been posting on this blog every Monday morning for the past quadrillion years (since 2007). I love reading your answers, and it helps me get my week off to a good start. ?

    1. Would you rather be a panda or a lion?

    Pandas ? are so round and cute and have built in smoky eyes…but I’m going to have to go with lion, because I’m team cat lady through and through. ??

    2. What’s neater — your cursive or your print handwriting?

    Definitely my print handwriting these days. My cursive used to be pretty neat, but that’s no longer the case, probably because I rarely write in cursive.

    3. Last big appliance you bought?

    If a water heater counts, then that. If not, I purchased a new washer a couple years ago when ours just up and died on us!

    4. Do you own a ring light?

    Yup, I have two for photography. One used to be my backup, but it’s currently broken… Wow, I just realized that I remember the blogging days before everyone had some type of ring light, LOL!

    5. How do you usually sign off on your correspondence?

    “Kind regards” or “Thank you” for business emails. And if it’s someone I’ve worked with for years and feel comfortable enough being casual, I’ll use “Talk soon.” For personal emails with my loved ones, I’ll use “Love you” or “Love.”

    6. Have you ever had a near-death experience?

    No, I have not.

    7. Rate how much you care about bronzer on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being “I don’t care about it” and 5 being “I’m full-blown obsessed.”

    I’ll go with a 3.25. I wear it every once in a while nowadays with blush (and sometimes in place of blush), so I care about it, but it’s not like I couldn’t function without it or anything.

    8. Did you ever have a crush on Leonardo DiCaprio?

    Nope. Totally missed that boat!

    9. Inner corner highlight or upper cheekbone highlight?

    I’ll take a tasteful upper cheekbone highlight with a cream product (MAC Hush please).

    Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

    Karen

    P.S. Here are the questions to copy/paste with your answers in a comment. Talk to ya soon.

    1. Would you rather be a panda or a lion?
    2. What’s neater — your cursive or your print handwriting?
    3. Last big appliance you bought?
    4. Do you own a ring light?
    5. How do you usually sign off on your correspondence?
    6. Have you ever had a near-death experience?
    7. Rate how much you care about bronzer on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being “I don’t care about it” and 5 being “I’m full-blown obsessed.”
    8. Did you ever have a crush on Leonardo DiCaprio?
    9. Inner corner highlight or upper cheekbone highlight?

    P.P.S. I hope you have a wonderful day. Do a little something to take care of yourself today, OK? Even if it’s just a swipe of mascara. ?

Sundays With Tabs the Cat, Makeup and Beauty Blog Mascot, Vol. 622

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I don’t know how this happened, because I thought I retired from assistant life, but somehow I was roped into preparing several Zoom classes for Rosie today. Apparently, she’s been teaching astrophysics on the side, in addition to being Connor’s #1 gal pal. A lot of it was totally over my head, but Rosie seemed to know what she was talking about. She was actually pretty nice to me and didn’t throw anything or swat at me when I couldn’t get the equations right.

All this is to say that Rosie is very excited about going back to school next month. She asked me to make her a celebratory collar, and the specs were down to the millimeter. It was a very different experience compared to collaborating with Tabs, which makes sense; she’s a different cat. With Tabs, fashion design was more of an organic couture process, whereas Rosie’s plans were detailed and precise.

Apparently, numbers are her forte. Who knew? I learn something new about her every day. I somehow convinced her to take these pictures, even though she told me, repeatedly, “I’m not a model. I’m an astrophysicist!” I’m trying to convince her that she can do both.

Tabs (a.k.a. “The Master”)

Of course, it couldn’t be Sundays With Tabs without a few pictures of the legend himself.

This purple collar is one of my favorites. It showed his softer side.

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

Saturday Surfing, Aug. 29, 2020

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Technically, yes, this is a makeup blog. It’s right there in the name. But I wantonly and routinely ignore that to post whatever I feel like. This, I have done since 2007. ?

That said, there is a valid beauty-related reason why you’re looking at my newly acquired pair of 20-pound dumbbells, a.k.a. “my precious,” right now.

I’d been online shopping for dumbbells for a couple months, but for completely understandable reasons they’ve been hard to find in stock, so when I spotted them on the Target website about a week ago, I pounced! Now they’re my favorite thing in the whole wide world, and since exercise makes you sweat, a.k.a. “glisten,” and that glow can also be characterized as a dewy sheen, there’s your beauty angle. ?

In a nutshell, lifting weights is tantamount to wearing highlighter.

HAHAHA!

Gosh, I really miss that HIIT class I was going to before the pandemic started… It was always so much fun! I miss the energy, my friends, and I miss all the good equipment they had at the gym. I miss being able to just grab a 35-pound dumbbell without a second thought.

But you know how it is now. We live by the pandemic code: “You do what you gotta do to make it work.”

Soooo, now I do at-home HIIT workouts on Youtube, and in the process I’ve been improvising with the small weights I already had at home, which were mismatched dumbbells and other weights cobbled together from different weight sets I inherited from El Hub and my neighbors.

The heaviest dumbbells were those large iron adjustable ones with sharp edges that kept scraping my wrists and ankles, but they’re what I had so I rolled with them while keeping my eyes peeled for something better.

Hence the aforementioned pouncing. ?

Target only had at-home shipping available, and the box they came in was a standard flimsy cardboard Target shipping box — totally inadequate to ship 40 pounds of iron. The UPS guy knocked on my door when he delivered them with a look like “um…something happened” and the weights were sitting on the ground next to him, outside of the box because it had totally ripped apart.

Just a heads up in case you buy heavy dumbbells online from Tar-ghay. They may or not make it to your house in the box!

I’m super excited about these weights, as you can tell, so I’m about to move my body girl, to quote Nina Sky. While I do that, here’s your reading for the weekend… ??


Love this look, especially the lip


In case you need some happy music today


This looks like so much fun.


Really enjoying these covers

What are you up to today? I hope you’re able to sneak in some time to rest and recharge. It’s important.

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

Checking In: Thank Yous and Thank You Cards From Trader Joe’s, Pizza Dough Life Hacks, and the *Best* Urban Decay Mascara

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thank you cards tjs
Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Good morning! And may I also say, “Thank you?”

That’s seemingly out of nowhere, I know, but I’ve doing this thing lately where I say “thank you” all day, every day, all throughout my day, and you know, I’ve been considerably happier. ? It helps a lot if you’re living through a pandemic during fire season as you’re waiting for your power to go out for days without any notice (there’s been a lot going on here, like everywhere else in the world).

I don’t necessarily direct the “thank you” to a particular person, either. I say it out loud or in my head for anything and everything. When I wake up in the morning, I’ll think to myself, “Thanks, bed! Thanks for giving me a good night’s sleep.” And when I get out of bed and start walking toward the bathroom, I’m like “Thanks, feet, for workin’ hard and getting me where I need to go today.”

Then, once I’m in the bathroom and I remember how the bathroom in the old apartment where I lived before this place was always freezing because it was built in the 1920s and had poor insulation and no central heating, I think, “Oh, thank you, bathroom, for being so warm and for having hot water” (because last year at this time, our water heater broke, and that was a hoot).

Anyway, you get the picture. Thank you, all day, every day.

So, thank you. ?

Thank you for being you, and thank you for swinging by today, which leads me to, ellipses-dot-dot-dot…Trader Joe’s! All paths lead to Trader Joe’s, don’t they?

trader joes thank you cards

I found these really cute thank you cards there…

thank you cards tjs dog
So sweet!
thank you cards tjs dog
And the inside is cute, too!
thank you cards tjs noodles
I would get down with a bowl of rainbow noodles, for sure.
thank you cards tjs noodles
Love the colors

They’re so cheerful and colorful, and I like that they’re a little bit corny, but not too corny. And they’re only 99 cents each, so they’re super cute and super affordable!

I’ve been going shopping at Trader Joe’s for years, but I only recently started buying their cards (I KNOW). The cards in my store are sort of tucked away next to the doors on a wall by the customer service desk, which is partially blocked off by the plants, which makes it a challenge to fit a cart back there, so I forget they’re there sometimes. But a couple weeks ago someone moved the card display into the middle of the store, and bam! LOVE.

Anyway, next time you’re there, look for the cards. They might be in a weird spot, but they’re worth tracking down.

Oh, and so while I was at TJ’s the last time, I was craving pizza, so I picked up a bag of their pre-made pizza dough and a few accoutrements…

I posted a picture of the pizza dough after rolling it out (and before adding toppings) on Instagram and got a surprising number of questions about how to get the dough flat.

(Please ignore the shape. I know it looks like naan. LOL! I never quite go for perfection with my pizza shape. I take what I can get.)

When I worked at the bakery for a hot second, I was repeatedly victimized by dough on a daily basis. Seriously, dough of any kind does not want to be your friend. Dough’s main goal in life is to do the opposite of whatever you want it to do, hahaha!

But there are still ways to get it to listen to you. For this pizza dough, which is really sticky, it helps to use a lot of flour when you’re working with it, and to use more than you think you need. Like, an almost obnoxious amount.

Cover the surface where you’ll be rolling out the dough with flour. I lined a baking sheet with parchment paper, sprinkled some flour on top, wiped it all over the parchment paper with my hands, and then rolled the dough directly on top of the paper with a rolling pin.

Before you use the rolling pin, rub flour all over it, too. Then roll the dough until you hit your desired thickness.

Cutting pizza with scissors = life changing

By the way, I used Trader Joe’s refrigerated pizza sauce, sliced fresh mozzarella (not the shredded kind in a bag, but the kind that’s shaped like a big ball) and sliced garden tomatoes. When the pizza was done, I put a ton of fresh basil on top, because like the Beyoncé song says, “If you like it, you should’ve put some basil on it.”

OK, so maybe not the exact lyrics…
[Continue reading…]

5 Things I’ve Been Loving Lately

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New favorite way to enjoy a refreshing drink

1. Drinkin’ fruit-flavored water from my Fressko Water bottle

I have about 1,354 water bottles in my cupboard. ?‍♀️

This one from Australian brand Fressko is probably the coolest. It can be used for hot or cold drinks, comes with a tea infuser, and is made from double-insulated glass. I use it to make my favorite beverage at the moment: green tea infused with sliced lemon and lime!

The bottles come in 10-, 13- and 16-oz. sizes. I have the 16-oz. bottle, which is $39.95. I think it’s a well-designed, useful something special to have around, and the possibilities for beverages to make with it are endless.

2. Pared down makeup using a brow pen/pencil combo, mascara and liquid liner (and sometimes a liquid lipstick)

Lately I’ve been getting back in the habit of wearing a little makeup a little more regularly than I had been earlier in the pandemic because it boosts my mood, like a daily workout (but without the sweat!). And sometimes when I don’t feel like working out, I’ll just do my makeup, so that way I’m still doing a little something to help my mood.

urban decay brow blade honest beauty liquidliner laura mercier caviar
Three loves of my makeup life right now…

I like to start with this three-piece pared down combo using a brow pencil, mascara and liquid liner: Urban Decay Brow Blade (seriously, SO GOOD), Urban Decay Cannon Ball or Laura Mercier Caviar Mascara (or a combo of both), and Honest Beauty Liquid Liner (easy to use and dries quickly).

If, when I’m done with those three, I still want to wear more, I’ll wear more. If I don’t, I’ll just stop there!

3. Victoria’s Secret Amber Sunset

It’s a little funny to me that I now consider this my “late summer scent” because I originally bought it as a mosquito repellant. ? LOL!

But you know what? It I think it actually smells REALLY good. Please give it a try.

victorias secret amber romance pool
Smells like late summer (and not like mosquito repellant)

Amber Romance has notes of warm vanilla, sandalwood and amber, with a pinch of tart cherry, and it’s not strong. It’s juuuust right. Added bonus: it does keep mosquitos away!

4. This giant, overstuffed anatomically-shaped heart stuffed toy

I don’t know who needs this giant stuffed heart in their life right now, but apparently I think I do.

I love how BIG it is, and I especially love that it has valves, LOL! ❤️

giant stuffed heart
LUB-DUB!

5. How people are creatively adapting to life in the pandemic

I admire how people have adapted to “the new normal.” It’s been a lot to handle, but people will do what they have to do. Many small businesses are also coming up with some amazing ideas to keep their places going, like Connor’s dance studio. They couldn’t hold their annual spring dance recital in a big theater like they used to, so a few weeks ago the instructors taped the routines outside in a parking lot in the back of the studio. They added a hand washing station, tents for shade, and then built individual mini “stages” spaced six feet apart for the dancers to perform their routines on while the performances were recorded on iPhones.

We’re witnessing a very unique time in history, aren’t we? It was definitely a dance recital I’ll never forget. ?

Tiny dancer!

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

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