Makeup and Beauty Blog | Makeup Reviews, Swatches and How-To Makeup

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. What lipstick do you wear the most?

Lately, MAC Velvet Teddy (that is, when it’s not falling in the toilet, OY!), because it goes with everything.

2. What’s your upper monetary limit for a lipstick?

Hmm… $55 seems rational (ha ha ha) to me!

3. Purple or brown lipstick? (Don’t overthink it.)

I’d almost say purple, because purple is tons of fun, but I’ve been told I can pull off brown pretty well. So brown, I guess.

4. What lipstick color do you feel weird wearing?

Anything on the pastel side, especially if it’s opaque. I feel extremely self-conscious wearing light pastel pinks.

5. If you had to apply red lipstick ? while you were riding a roller coaster, how would you do?

My first reaction was, “I got this boo,” because I’m not afraid of heights or thrill rides, but let’s get real. I’d end up looking like a really sweaty version of The Joker!

It’s kinda funny to me…

…that lipstick should have its own national day of celebration, because isn’t every day Lipstick Day? LOL.

What lippie are you wearing today? Right now, I’m wearing matte rosy brown MAC Half ‘N Half, and note to self, I need to give it some Unsung Heroes love ASAP.

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

P.S. I hope you have a focused, productive week, friend. ?

P.P.S. Question time! Here they are to copy/paste with your answers in a comment. Talk to ya soon!

1. What lipstick do you wear the most?
2. What’s your upper monetary limit for a lipstick?
3. Purple or brown lipstick? (Don’t overthink it.)
4. What lipstick color do you feel weird wearing?
5. If you had to apply red lipstick while you were riding a roller coaster, how would you do?

Every once in a while, I get this crazy hankering to do things like wear every single blush in my collection.

Not all at once, mind you (although that would be kinda fun) — but one blush per day. Or, to try on every single lipstick I own.

OMG. Like, how long would this actually take me? I’ve been trying to do the math, and I estimate it would take roughly FOR-EV-ER.

Yeah, I’m still cleaning out my makeup drawers, but I’m seriously considering doing the blush thing, even if it’s just to make my way through my MAC blushes…and maybe NARS…and I’m realizing right now that homegirl’s got a thing for warm peachy coral blush. It’s PRETTY obvious when I see them all together, HA HA HA!

Have you ever tried something like this? — using every lip product or blush in your makeup collection? I think it could be quite fun and weirdly satisfying in an OCD way.

In today’s news, I’ll be chipping away at Marie Kondo-ing my makeup today, among doing other things, including prepping the condo for the work that starts next week.

About that, none of it is terribly exciting work at this point. I *wish* it was the fun stuff, but it’s just repairs to the house guts. A new water heater, new furnace, and a new air conditioner, because NONE of them work correctly. The work needs to happen (especially the furnace replacement before it cools down in fall), but they aren’t aesthetically sexy home projects.

Lord knows how I’m going to be able to write with people clanging all up in our pipes and sh*t, but I’ll try!

I may post a lotta lists next week…

As for this weekend’s actual Caturday surfing, here are some tidbits and factoids that caught my eye. I hope you find them interesting, too. ?

• Did you know that for the ancient Greeks and Romans, a unibrow was *THE* ultimate of all #browgoals, and was associated with the most desirable and intelligent women? This post plucks out (ha ha) the most interesting fun facts about the history of eyebrows.
• So, El Hub and I took Connor to watch The Lion King last weekend, and one of the movie previews was for the new Cats movie. After it played, we just sat there looking at each other wondering, “WTF just happened?” I’ve never seen the musical… All I know about Cats is the Memory song, which I remember being major in the ’80s, and that the characters are a bunch of ? felines, but the trailer was weird as hell, and I don’t know if it’s meant to be intentionally campy, or if you’re supposed to take it seriously. I was…and still am… very confused. As a bonafide CCL, I feel like I should be down with a Cats movie, but I dunno, man. (I put the trailer down below.)
• HOORAY! New York is the first state in the nation to ban declawing cats. Let’s hope the other 49 follow suit.
• Here’s how to pet a cat, according to science. ?‍?❤️?
• According to some experts, the K-beauty 10-step skin care routine is a myth perpetuated by marketing, and Korean beauty enthusiasts don’t use nearly as many skin care products as we’re led to believe.
• Looking for a way to start a four-alarm blaze in your wallet? Well, Tom Ford’s launching skin care soon…with a $350 serum and a $450 cream, and that’s just for starters.
• Woo-hoo! — I see my fave Bliss blue wax on this list of the best waxing products for at-home hair removal.
• Entrepreneurial scientists are currently engaged in a global arms race to generate sustainable hair follicles that will hold their shape, and whoever finds it first could render hair loss obsolete (for the very wealthy, at least).
• A friendly reminder to unplug your heated hair devices, especially flat irons

Have a great weekend, friend!

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

The other day I was watching this interview that beauty journalist Sali Hughes did with my makeup spirit animal, Sir John, a.k.a Beyonce’s makeup artist, a.k.a a living makeup legend, and Sali asked Sir John what made him fall in love with beauty.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.

Sir John said that for him, beauty was watching his mom, a makeup minimalist, put on her makeup every morning… For me, that wasn’t the case because my mom really wasn’t a makeup person. (I know, we’re so different!) She didn’t really wear a lot of it, and I didn’t have any sisters or close aunts or other family members to watch put on their makeup, but I was still always interested in makeup.

I remember my mom had a couple pieces (an eyeshadow compact and a blush) that she kept in the bathroom, and I remember going in there and looking at them with curiosity and wonder… They seemed so magical and mysterious to me!

But the real obsession didn’t kick in until I was 12 and 13, and it was fueled by magazines. This is probably going to sound odd to someone growing up now, because magazines don’t have the pull they did back in the day, but we didn’t have the Internet in the ’80s and early ’90s. I mean, our Internet was the magazine aisle at Thrifty’s, and I would tear into my monthly issue of Seventeen every month for the beauty stories, especially the makeup and hair stories. I did that from about 13 to 20… I don’t remember nails getting a lot of attention back then, though.

Oh, and here’s another sign of the times: I don’t remember seeing a lot of diversity in the how-to articles. Like, hooded lids? What’s that?! I would try eyeshadow tutorials and wonder what I was doing wrong because when I put shadow in my crease, it didn’t look anything like what Cameron Diaz was doing, LOL! Oh, and the hair how-tos were all made for girls with stick straight hair, so again I would wonder why they wouldn’t work on my wavy, unruly hair.

One thing I would do is tear out pages with pictures of makeup I liked and tuck them away for future reference, and I still do it today! I find old torn out pages in the most random places…
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