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

Give Your Summer Bronzer a Fall/Winter Job as a Crease Color

November 22nd, 2016 by Karen 13 Comments

Last week was our first big storm of the season, so I reluctantly gave my winter gear top billing — my winter boots, sweaters, my winter coats and, yes, my winter bronzers.

Yup, I have winter bronzers, because even though I have my natural tan, my skin color still changes with the seasons. When I don’t get as much sun in fall and winter, I get a little lighter, and it gets to where my summer bronzers look jarring and too dark — like I contoured but didn’t bother to blend.

So I usually put them aside for the season when something like a big storm happens, and it reminds me that summer is long gone, but this year I’m keeping them out because I’m gonna use them as eyeshadows.

You’ve probably seen someone do this before — use a bronzer as eyeshadow. I’ve definitely seen it on YouTube a few times, but it might be a different way to look at it if you use different bronzers in different seasons.

A summer bronzer can be a terrific transition color because…you already know that it’s a brown that works well for your skin. Sure, it might be a little too dark for your cheeks in the middle of winter, but that makes it an even better crease color to wear with darker winter and fall eyeshadows. Because it’s not covering a large area, it won’t look jarring. 😉

The final countdown…

Man, I read so many countdown articles last month about how to prepare for Thanksgiving and all of the things you should do in week four, week three, week two and week one, but none of it actually happened. I’m still scrambling at the last minute.

I know this is all unimportant stuff in the greater scheme of things, but my dining room table has a computer on it, and the room is like a forest of photography light stands. There’s hardly any food in the house (I’m drinking coffee with just a little sugar in it because I ran out of milk), and my guests arrive tomorrow.

*big sigh*

At some point today, I’m gonna need to get at least a few groceries, and I also want to go to Marshall’s to get a serving platter…

I don’t even know how I made it this far without a serving platter. This is the exact same feeling I had when I realized that I didn’t have a potato peeler.

Oh, yeah, and I also need to clean the bathroom.

YAY! FUN!

Chances are you’re more organized than I am and have all of your stuff together, right? Like your meals prepped and your house clean? If you have any wisdom to share in terms of getting a lot of cleaning done in very little time, please let me know. I need help.

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

4 More Sleeps Till Gilmore Girls!!!

November 21st, 2016 by Karen 18 Comments

Because sometimes you’re so excited about a show that you NEED to make a video about it.

I’m so excited about heading back to Stars Hollow! I mean, I already go back once a day. I either watch old episodes of Gilmore girls in the morning while I’m eating breakfast, or I watch an episode before I go to sleep at night.

Correction: I only do that in the fall.

In my mind, I’m a Stars Hollow resident, and I live on Peach Street. And every morning we go to Luke’s for breakfast, except when we need a break and we go to Westin’s or Al’s Pancake World instead. 🙂

(I filmed this last week, which is why I say “next week” in the video.)

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

Getting Personal With The Body Shop

November 21st, 2016 by Karen 7 Comments

body shop personalized body butter vanilla chai — When your Body Shop Body Butter has your name on it and you think that’s kind of awesome…

I wish I could take a spin back to 1999 in Doc Brown’s DeLorean because my late-1990s self would have lost her/my sh*t over this personalized Body Shop Body Butter.

OMG! It’s a Christmas panda!!!

I remember back in the late ‘90s/early aughts, The Body Shop was HUGE, right? All of my friends and I were totally into them. I wore their Shimmer Cube eyeshadow constantly for a while, and I had this, like — I talk about it all the time — Mary J. Blidge-inspired lip combo with a Body Shop dark purple lip liner that I wore with a frosty silver lipstick.

Grapefruit Body was was my jam for two solid years, and do you remember their Avocado Body Butter? I used that one for a long time.

And then there was the Olive one, which was also lovely. It had a light, fresh, grassy scent that was totally unusual at the time.

Do you happen to remember White Musk?? At one point in time, I swear, every early 20-something woman on Muni in SF was wearing that perfume. Some mornings I’d step onto the train into a fog of Body Shop White Musk…

If you live in or near New York City, lucky you, because that’s where you can get your own personalized Body Butter. Some of the stores in the New York area are offering it as a service (here’s a list of them) when you buy one of the regular $21 jars or the $36 super-sized ones, and it doesn’t cost anything extra. They make the label in the store, and you can pick it up the same day.

I wish they did this at the rest of their stores (hint-hint!). I asked a Body Shop rep if the stores in New York could ship them out, but no luck there either. This year at least, it’s a local thing.

Do you have any Body Shop faves (now or back in the day)? Let me know in the comments. I’m curious.

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

Makeup and Beauty Blog Monday Poll, Vol. 450

November 21st, 2016 by Karen 24 Comments

“The producer of the Harry Potter film series and its latest spinoff is moving from Fantastic Beasts to feline ones. David Heyman announced that he’s teaming up with China’s Alibaba Pictures Group to adapt fantasy series Warriors for the big screen. And yes, it’s about fighting cats.”

— io9

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 NINE (!) 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. How long are your nails right now?

Not long at all. They don’t even go to the tips of my fingertips! — and you know what, though? I like ’em that way.

I had long nails for years and years and years, but short nails are so much easier for me. They’re easier to type with, and I don’t have to worry so much about them breaking or, like, worry about accidentally scratching the baby or me poking my eye out while I’m doing my liner.

2. How old were you when you started cooking?

Oh, my goodness… I’m a little ashamed to admit this, but I didn’t start cooking until I left for college at 18 (!). And, when I started, I could not do sh*t. I couldn’t even warm up food in a pot!

No, seriously. I remember going to the dorm kitchen and trying to warm up some leftovers one day that my mom had given me. I threw them in a pot, but then I forgot about them and almost set the dorm on fire.

Yup… But I’ve gotten better since then. I can usually follow a recipe now and have it not turn out terribly.

3. Describe your hair in three words.

Long, unruly, chocolaty

4. What would/could you do if you only had 60 seconds to do your eye makeup?

See, this is where being chronically late really comes in handy. I could get quite a bit done in 60 seconds. Like, I could fill in my brows with a black pencil, curl my lashes, whack some mascara on my upper lashes (I wouldn’t even bother with my lower lashes; they’re a different beast entirely) and tightline my upper lash line with a black pencil.

And I know I can do these things in 60 seconds because I just timed it.

5. If you live in the U.S., what are you doing for Thanksgiving?

Yay! We’re having it at our house this year, so both sets of Connor’s grandparents and my brother are coming over.

I had all of these elaborate, grand plans in my head to make every single dish from scratch…but I just couldn’t deal with the turkey, so I ended up ordering a few things from a local market that makes the best turkey and sides. So we’re gonna have that, hang out, play with the baby, and that’s it. I’m really looking forward to it.

A new week…

While doing some cleaning around the house last weekend, I found a bunch of random things I thought I’d lost, like a pan of MAC Sunbasque Blush (yay!) and a crazy cat lady action figure that my brother had given me for Christmas a few years ago.

It’s going on my shelf of cat lady things. 🙂

Don’t you love finding buried treasure around the house?

I hope you get some drama-free time off this week to relax and eat some of your favorite things. What are you up to today?

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

P.S. Here are the questions to copy and paste…

1. How long are your nails right now?
2. How old were you when you started cooking?
3. Describe your hair in three words.
4. What would/could you do if you only had 60 seconds to do your eye makeup?
5. What are you doing for Thanksgiving?

Sundays With Tabs the Cat, Makeup and Beauty Blog Mascot, Vol. 424

November 20th, 2016 by Karen 5 Comments

10 MORE things you may or may not know about Tabs

Whenever a new person visits the house, Tabs just automatically assumes that this hooman is his new BFF. He’ll walk straight up to them, flash his tum and meow for pets.
For all his diva tendencies (see #5 below), Tabs is shockingly well behaved. I almost never have to yell at him to get down off the kitchen counters or to stop clawing at the drapes or to stop pouncing at my ankles from under the stairs. He never tears into his food bags, and he doesn’t claw the furniture.
The stairs, though? Completely different story…
One morning when El Hub and I still lived at our old apartment in Mill Valley, Tabs tried to join us for brunch. The restaurant was right across a busy street from our apartment, so we set out walking.
This was when Tabs was still a 24/7 outside cat.

We’d already crossed the street when we looked back toward the apartment and saw a familiar husky tabby scooting in our direction.

“No!” I shouted, seeing cars approaching. “No, Tabs! Stop!”

Thankfully, he did. He stopped when he heard our voices and just sat there watching as if to say, “Why can’t I come?”
He loves having his fur brushed, but he’s very picky about the technique. If you brush him incorrectly for even a split second, he peaces out.
He has a knack for hanging out in forbidden places. Like, what was once the forbidden chair (a chair that El Hub got me for my birthday a few years ago) is no longer forbidden (he claimed it), and he’s been doing it again with the guest bed in baby’s bedroom.
Sometimes I sit on the bed in there while I feed Connor or just hang out, and Tabs knows that he’s not supposed hang out on that bed, but I caught him on there multiple times. I’ll walk in to find him sleeping on it all luxuriously or cleaning.

He has zero respect for personal property.
He is so not graceful. Poor buddy’s actually fallen from his cat tower a few times, and he didn’t even land on his feet. I think he fell on his side.
He loves watching television, especially nature shows. Whenever he hears an avian actor, he perks up, and his tail poofs up when he hears a dog barking.
I’ve given up on trying to find him a perfect cat bed because all he really wants to do is sleep on clean laundry.
Even as a mature tabby, he still likes climbing trees. Whenever we go out for a walk on the hill, he hops up onto at least one of the oak trees and climbs up as far as he can on his 10-foot leash.
Having watched him fall from his cat tower a few times…I’m glad he can only go up 10 feet.
His favorite foods at the moment are Nutrisca Grain-Free Chicken (his vet recommended that he stick to a low glycemic diet to maintain his energy for kitty supermodeling) dry cat food and Sheba Chicken Entrée Canned Paté.
And he gets imported New Zealand ZiwiPeak Venison & Fish Cat Cuisine on special occasions…which he loves almost as much as kitty modeling.

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MAC Mariah Carey Collection! – Holiday 2016 – First Look & Swatches

November 19th, 2016 by Karen 23 Comments

I think I may have told you this before, so if I have, please bear with me…but if I haven’t, well, welcome to the crazy! 🙂

I like to change the lyrics to songs and sing them to Tabs, and one of those songs is Mariah Carey’s Touch My Body.

Love me some Mimi!

Anyway, I can’t sing it anymore without picturing Tabs rolling around on his back showing off his tummy in slow-mo (I know you can see it too), because Touch My Body is his theme song. When I sing it to him, it goes, “Touch Tabs’ body, give him some food… Give him food and love!”

Honestly, I don’t even know what the real lyrics are at this point…

These are the things that cray-cray cat ladies do.

It wouldn’t be a Mimi makeup collection without glamour, glitter and sparkle, and there’s plenty of it in the MAC Mariah Carey collection.

This one’s a beauty, babe. Easily one of my holiday faves this year. I guess MAC saved the best for last!

Here’s a first look with thoughts and swatches. I’m wearing the collection on my eyes, cheeks and lips in this video, too (the items I’m wearing are listed below), so if you have any Qs, let me know in the comments.

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5 Things I’ve Been Loving Lately | November Edition

November 18th, 2016 by Karen 24 Comments

I’ve never in my life had a Band-Aid actually match my skin tone, which goes to why I like things like My Little Pony Band-Aids. 🙂

Whew! I just finished recording a bunch of videos, and that’s the good news. The not-so-good news is that I had some technical difficulties. It’s been a while since I’ve done a lot of video, and it’s like I had to relearn everything.

Such is life!

How’s your day been?

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

P.S. Belated TGIF!

Swatches of the Clarins Fall 2016 4-Colour Eyeshadow Palettes for Brown Eyes, Green Eyes and Blue Eyes

November 17th, 2016 by Karen 15 Comments

clarins palette 4 colors fall 2016 — Clarins 4-Colour Eyeshadow Palettes for brown eyes, green eyes and blue eyes

It used to surprise me when someone would say that I look like their sister or their aunt or their cousin… I guess I have a doppelganger, or several doppelgangers, wandering the earth, and whether they like brown eyeshadow as much as I do, who knows?

If they don’t, though, and you show up on the blog one day, and I’m like, “Bluh! I hate brown eyeshadow!” then you’ll know that one of those doppelgangers has carried out her nefarious plan, and I’m tied up somewhere in a closet.

clarins palette 4 colors fall 2016 cards — They also come with how-to cards.

clarins palette 4 couleurs 03 brown brown eyes — The 03 Brown Palette for brown eyes

Each of these new Clarins 4-Colour Eyeshadow Palettes ($43 each), which are new for fall/winter 2016 and available now, is made to complement a different eye color. There’s one for brown eyes, one for green eyes and one for blue eyes.

clarins palette 4 couleurs 02 rosewood green eyes — The 02 Rosewood Palette for green eyes

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