Just For Fun

Goooooood morning! Ya know…I can’t remember the last time I actually surfed — like, got on a board and paddled out into the ocean. It’s been years!

I would like to remedy that situation soon, ideally in a warm body of water.

I realized looking at my calendar this morning that June is a little over two months away. Can you believe it?? That means summer is getting close, and yay, warm weather! Yay, no more oppressive pants and socks!

Last year I didn’t shop ahead of time and ended up getting a last-minute new swimsuit that was pretty cute, but it wasn’t my favorite, so this year I’m starting early, and this isn’t just something I’m doing with swimsuits. I’m trying to be better about not saving tasks for the last minute.

So, I’ve been researching swimsuits, and my main criteria are that 1) they can withstand active toddler grabby hands, 2) are mom-body friendly, and 3) are modest but not matronly. Sometimes I see tankinis and one-pieces, and I feel like they cover a little too much. Like, I don’t mind a bit o’ booty cheek hanging out, ya know? Anyway, I’ve been looking around a lot and asking friends for suggestions, and these are the ones I’m currently deciding among…

The first is this blue and white tankini by Athleta. They do lots of sporty suits, and I’m feeling this blousy top. It has ties on the sides that you can loosen to make the top extend downward, and then the suit looks almost like a mini dress.

Super cute, right? I would pair it with the matching reversible bottoms.

I also like this cherry print one-piece halter by Esther Williams.

It’s so vintage retro surfer girl. (It also looks like it holds everything in.) And even though it covers up a lot, it doesn’t look stuffy.

I really love the colors in this one-piece by Maaji. I also love the mixed prints and the ties on the sides and the back, but I’m afraid everything would hang out, ya know? I kinda need help keeping everything in place, LOL!

We have a pool in our complex, and I really want to take advantage of it this summer. I also want Connor to enjoy it, so I’m going to enroll her in toddler swim classes in April.

No, Tabs will not be the instructor. 🙂

Anywho…while I go entertain more deep thoughts about swimsuits (do you have one you really like?), here are some articles that caught my eye this week.

• Best beauty-related article I read this week: this one in The Atlantic on skin care. It talks about how for many of us, our faces have become an at-home science experiment. We gather data both in person and online about products, and then endure trial-and-error experiments with cleansers, toners, moisturizers and serums, all in the pursuit of perfect skin.

  “Cosmetics are innocent until proven guilty,” the article states. “Their ingredients don’t have to be proven safe, or effective. Even if a particular ingredient has some evidence behind it, cosmetic manufacturers aren’t required to prove that the ingredient works in that product’s specific formulation, or at that particular concentration. Often, the only way to figure out if something works is to try it. The skin-care landscape is vast, overwhelming, and shimmering with mirages. But more and more people are trying to navigate it.”

  Yup.

• These new nail primers by OPI are supposed to pull double duty by extending the life of your polish up to 11 days, and by also strengthening your nails.

  An 11-day manicure sounds like a DREAM to me. I currently use a combo of Essie Grow Stronger Base Coat and Dior Gel Coat topcoat and get about a week’s worth of wear with them, which is fantastic for me, but 11 days sounds better!

  Anyone want to go to Ulta? Right now? LOL!

• Speaking of nails, the nail scene in New York is the place to go if you want some seriously bejeweled, bedazzled and bespoke talons. Clients travel from as far away as Australia to visit Jenny Bui, who’s known as the “Queen of Bling” and for her signature stiletto nails that are studded with elaborate designs and Swarovski crystals.

  I could never regularly wear nails like this because the instant my fingernails start to feel like they’re getting long I’m rendered non-functional. I like my nails short, short, SHORT, but I’d love to do the crystal talons in the top pic just once for fun.

• I guess it isn’t surprising that New York is a major hotbed for boundary-pushing nail art, since the first U.S. nail salon opened in Manhattan in 1878 (!).

  That’s just one thing I learned from this post about the history of well-manicured nails in America during the turn of the century.

  “Things were changing during the turn of the century, when the bourgeoisie was no longer an exclusive, card-carriers-only club. ‘Fake it ’til you make it’ was a real option now, and with the help of makeup, anyone could change their identity and rise above their station. Hands revealed where you fell in the social hierarchy, and not looking like you were a second-generation washer woman with cracked skin and chipped nails could allow you to climb the social ladder. It would help you apply for better apartments, answer notices for more middle-class jobs, and even date wealthier men — the kind who would introduce you to the right people over Champagne and send boxes of couture to your door.”

• I’m obsessing a little (OK, a lot) over the looks of this new clean beauty makeup line by Ever Skin. I’m digging the rose gold packaging and the everyday colors in the cheek and eye palettes (but why are they $68, though?!). The line’s whittled down to the essentials, which the brand defines as mascara, gloss, a brown pencil, a palette with blush and eyeshadow, and three brushes.

  This is exactly the kind of makeup I love to do and wear — easy, fast, elegant.

• In case you were wondering, Actor Daniel Kaluuya, who starred in Get Out and Black Panther, wore Fenty Beauty to the Oscars, and for some reason this just makes me really happy. 🙂 Ri-ri’s Pro Filt’r Foundation was giving his skin LIFE.

• Does he like cream or liquid concealer? What are his thoughts on Instagram brows? I really wanna know what Pharrell Williams (a.k.a. the dude who sings the Happy song) knows about makeup, since we might be seeing a new line of cosmetics from him soon.

  Signs also point to him releasing a line of women’s clothing, lingerie and jewelry, too.

• Trend watchers are predicting that lavender will be the new blush pink…

• A behind-the-scenes look at the intricate makeup worn by Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon and Mindy Kaling in the new movie, A Wrinkle in Time.

  I gotta say, Reese is rocking that green lip really hard. She looks legit!

Why is blue such a rare color in the plant and animal kingdoms?

Science says that your body language can help you become more successful, which is why I just started doing this thing called a “power pose.” It sounds silly…and it feels a little silly when I do it, but who knows? It just might help! 🙂 It only takes two minutes, and you are literally just standing there, so why not?

Nobody puts Baby in a corner! Yup, Dirty Dancing is on Hulu now, and it took me literally two days to re-watch it in 15-minute increments (#momlife) this week.

Talk to you soon, and enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

I’m purging right now! And by “purging,” I’m not talking about the movie where people don masks and become crazed killers for one night. I’m talking about my skin breaking out, a.k.a purging, because I started using a heavy-duty glycolic acid toner about a month ago (the Advanced 10% Exfoliating Pads by BeautyRx, $70).

Shortly before the new year rolled around, I decided I was going to get my skin care routine on track (finally). I was going to start wearing sunscreen every day again (I know!), drink lots of water, and incorporate an acid toner into my routine, among other things.

I started with these pads and have been using them every other night for a month, and now my skin is breaking out.

Normally, when I’m just going about my usual business, I will occasionally get a zit here or there, but it’s been a while since a whole crop of little pimples showed up to the party… I’m assuming it’s because of the glycolic acid ramping up skin cell turnover and clearing out the stuff stuck in my pores.

This has happened to me before when I’ve added a heavy-duty exfoliating product into the mix. There’s a period when I break out for a bit, but then my skin usually clears up after about six weeks (hopefully).

It usually takes a while… I’m looking at my forehead and wondering, “When will it be over!?” Granted, this isn’t one of the worst breakouts I’ve had (in college when I had really bad hormonal acne, I went through a round of Accutane, and the purging was intense), and I don’t think it’s noticeable from more than a few feet away, but I can definitely see the bumpy texture, especially when I’m looking at myself in pictures.

Until it passes, I’m not wearing extra dewy finishes on certain areas, and I’m going to be extra good about applying an acne cream in the mornings and at night (I swear by Kate Somerville Anti Bac Clearing Lotion with benzoyl peroxide).

Anyway, I was wondering if you’ve ever experienced a skin purge before, or if you happen to be purging now. Stay strong, friend! This too shall pass.

At least that’s what I keep telling myself…

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

P.S. Happy International Women’s Day! ?⭐?

Connor Claire was the star ⭐ of the show at her second ??? birthday party, and she enjoyed every cupcake-fueled minute of it. And every bite of her homemade birthday lasagna (I hope!).

I keep trying to turn birthday lasagna into “a thing.” This was only the second year, but hopefully Connor continues to like it. She seems to.

We had some family over for the party, and Connor spent the day playing, talking, throwing, bossing everyone around, and basically having a grand ol’ time being the center of attention.

Her cake…

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So…what is the Monday Poll?

Well, it isn’t exactly a poll. It’s more of a constantly evolving (devolving?), somewhat random list of questions I’ve been putting out to readers every Monday morning for the past 11 (!) years. (It’s like a kickstart for your brain.) I’ve always enjoyed reading your answers in the comments, and I hope you enjoy reading mine.

1. I believe in the healing power of…

Catnaps.

2. Would you rather have 20 pieces of incredibly cute costume jewelry or one valuable, classic piece of fine jewelry?

So, I’m torn because I know myself really well, and I know that I tend to lose jewelry, so the 20 pieces are really tempting because I would probably wear each piece until I lost it, and repeat the cycle until I went through all 20 pieces.

Of course, if I opted for the valuable jewelry, I could hawk it at a classy pawn shop and perhaps buy myself a new sink. 🙂

3. How well do you think you could drive a semi truck?

If push came to shove and, say, I were in a Sandra Bullock Speed situation, I could work it out.

I would need the pressure, though, in order to rise to the occasion.

4. How do you feel about graffiti?

I have mixed feelings about it. I remember commuting into the city from my parents’ house in Union City back in the day and seeing graffiti along the side of the freeway and the sides of buildings and thinking that there’s a beauty to the color and the angles and the energy of the art, but I’ll be driving through town now and see someone tag somebody’s fence and think to myself, Oh, hell no. If that were my fence I’d be so mad.

5. If I could look inside your middle school or high school Caboodle, what makeup (if any) would I find?

Let’s do high school because that’s when my collection was bigger and much more interesting. 🙂 In freshman year I had a bunch of Clinique goodies in my pink and mint green Caboodle. They were my prized possessions. I had a magenta blush, which I believe was called New Clover; two eyeshadows (One pink and one bright blue… It was very late ’80s.) and a magenta lipstick.

I’m also 99% sure I had a Clinique loose powder, too.

My collection was small by today’s standards, but I think a lot of girls today have more makeup because they have access to more information, like YouTube videos and the Internet (obvs), but it was enough for me back then.

The Oscars!

Did you watch last night? I don’t have cable tv anymore so I checked the results on my phone throughout the evening, and even though I haven’t watched most of the nominated films (life with a two year old!), I was happy to see Allison Janey and Sam Rockwell take home awards because I’ve always thought they were great.

If there was an award for Best Cat Lady in a Real Life Drama, I would hope that I would at least have a fighting chance at winning. 🙂

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

P.S. Here are the questions to copy and paste with your answers in a comment:

1. I believe in the healing power of…
2. Would you rather have 20 pieces of incredibly cute costume jewelry or one valuable, classic piece of fine jewelry
3. How well do you think you could drive a semi truck?
4. How do you feel about graffiti?
5. If I could look inside your middle school or high school Caboodle, what makeup (if any) would I find?

Good morning, gorgeous! The birthday lasagna is in the oven, and I’m about to pick up Connor’s cake for her birthday party. (I’ll post a picture. It’s a three-layer lemon cake with pink ombre rosettes going up the sides!) As usual, I’m running around at the last minute, so I’m going to keep my makeup simple. Maybe something with the MAC Padma Lakshmi collection.

Before I go do some quick tornado blending (you gotta do what you gotta do!), here are some stories that caught my bronzed eye this week.

• Wow, it looks like this is finally gonna happen. Cosmetics and personal-care products are about to come under federal regulatory scrutiny after 80 years. There’s a tentative agreement on a proposal that would require companies to register with the FDA (right now companies don’t even have to register at all) and require the FDA to evaluate a number of ingredients for safety.

  Currently, the FDA doesn’t require manufacturers of products like shampoo, deodorant, lipstick or eye makeup to report safety problems. That’s right! Any ol’ Joe Shmoe could add shoe polish or bird poop to your eyeshadow, and it would be totally “legal.”

• Lipstick in powder form is a thing, and all I have to say is, who thought this would be a good idea…? Between the cat, and the kid, and my inherent clumsiness, this is a disaster waiting to happen.

• Whelp, my drugstore beauty wish list just got longer because of this list by the Wirecutter.

  Do you ever visit this site, BTW? They’re owned by the New York Times. I usually check it for reviews on household appliances like plates and vacuums. They do extensive research and testing.

• Yup, more and more shoe brands are getting into makeup. (See: Christian Louboutin.)

  Do you think this is a weird leap?

  I think it’s kind of crazy…because what do ? shoes have to do with ? lipstick, really? But I’m a shoe enthusiast (to put it mildly), so I’m down.

• OK, so this article reads like a Charlotte Tilbury infomercial toward the end, but I got sucked in when Charlotte spilled the beans on what it’s like for her to do celebrity makeup for the Oscars.
• Favorite pics of the week: these images of the Dukha people of Mongolia. They’re a nomadic tribe that has lived in the same region for centuries, and they have a special relationship with the area’s wild animals, including reindeer.

  The pics of the children napping with reindeer melt my ? heart.

• There’s something very Hannibal Lecter about these portraits by photographer Evija Laivina of women wearing Amazon’s weirdest beauty devices, but oh, my goodness, I can’t look away…

  Do these contraptions actually do anything for anyone? They look like horror movie props!

Before I go to bed, I use hand cream and lip balm…but what starlings do before they go to sleep is much more interesting!

Aw, man, this makes me want to feed Michael B. Jordan brownies and ask him how his day went. ?

My favorite song from the Black Panther soundtrack

I am this man. This man is me.

Have a great day! Happy birthday ??? to all the pisces babies out there.

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

So…what is the Monday Poll?

Well, it isn’t exactly a poll. It’s more of a constantly evolving (devolving?), somewhat random list of questions I’ve been putting out to readers every Monday morning for the past 11 (!) years. (It’s like a kickstart for your brain.) I’ve always enjoyed reading your answers in the comments, and I hope you enjoy reading mine.

1. You get the chance to play either the hero or the villain in a major motion picture. Which role do you choose?

Ooh! Villains usually have better hair and makeup and costumes. And snappier one-liners. But I’d go with the hero because I’m going to go ahead and assume that the movie is gonna be a blockbuster hit, and I’d prefer to not have strangers who can’t distinguish between me and the character yell at me in public for no good reason.

Deep down in my heart, though, I’d always wonder what it would have been like to play the ? villain, because that would have been the role I REALLY wanted…

2. What’s the last beauty-related thing you did?

I just trimmed my fingernails with a nail clipper, and I don’t have the words to accurately describe the sheer magnitude of my relief right now. I cannot STAND it when my nails are even a micrometer too long. Short, short, short is the only way I can make it through life.

3. Would you rather eat nothing but raw celery for a week, or plain, cold tofu? (And you have to pick one. You can’t choose “neither.”) Note: Keep in mind that you can’t dress up your food, either. No accouterments like peanut butter, cream cheese, sauces, salt, pepper, spices, and no blending it into oblivion in a Vitamix. Nothing. Just plain old celery or cold-@ss tofu.

Eeegh. OK…I’d go with the tofu. I think I’d still be hungry all the time, but I’d probably be less hungry than I would be eating nothing but celery.

4. If you could choose to do anyone’s makeup in the world, whose makeup would you do?

Hmm… It’s still early, and I haven’t had enough coffee yet, so I don’t feel particularly profound or philosophical right now, but I’ll say…Pat McGrath? The one time I met her, she seemed pretty nice, so I’m thinking that she could tell me all the stuff I was doing wrong (or right), so it would be a good learning opportunity.

5. Would you rather walk around all day long wearing uncomfortable underwear (to clarify, this would apply to both your bra and your undies), OR with a really annoying pebble inside your shoe?

Blergh, the underwear I guess… I can deal with ill-fitting bras and underwear, but a pebble in my shoe? OH, HELL NO. I can’t do it!

Happy Monday

Well, looks like I’m busting out the waterproof mascara because it’s raining here in Nor Cal (this one by MAC is my fave, by the way).

You have a good day today, ‘k?

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

P.S. Here are the questions to copy and paste with your answers in a comment:

1. You get the chance to play either the hero or the villain in a major motion picture. Which role do you choose?
2. What’s the last beauty-related thing you did?
3. Would you rather eat nothing but raw celery for a week, or plain, cold tofu?
4. If you could choose to do anyone’s makeup in the world, whose makeup would you do?
5. Would you rather walk around all day long wearing uncomfortable underwear (to clarify, this would apply to both your bra and your undies), OR with a really annoying pebble inside your shoe?