November 9, 2009

The Beauty Bag…

So this post was supposed to have ACTUAL pictures from my camera on it, but instead I had to get the pictures from the web because I wasn’t able to post pictures yesterday and I didn’t have time to try before leaving the house this morning.

Anyway, so I said that one of the things I wanted to work on in my “Spice up your Life” project was beauty.

I have a LOT of products. And have acquired a few more lately. My mom did a Sephora run for me in Edmonton a couple of weeks ago and she just ordered me a few items from MAC for Christmas (well, not for Christmas but as PART of my Christmas gift as she will give them to me when it all arrives).

So I thought I would share a few of the products I am loving, as well as a couple of new items and whatnot. I am trying to get in the habit of using items every day (eyeshadow and what not) instead of just a little concealer and foundation.

Okay, so here goes!!

diorskin

Diorskin Nude Mineral Foundation – This is the foundation that I have been using. I am a huge fan of Dior products because they sit really nice on my skin (and this one is hydrating AND mineral). I didn’t realize that they aren’t cruelty free as Cat told me…but I have been using it and I am absolutely loving it (oh, another downside is that I have to mix 2 colors together to get a match for my skin!)

camo cream concealer

Makeup Forever Camo Cream Concealer – I REALLY love this product! I am new to trying it and I find it is REALLY creamy and it really SINKS in under my eyes instead of sitting in lines or something. And I find the color I have matches my skin perfectly.

browfix

Anastasia Brow Fix Pencil – its a waxy pencil that helps tame your brows! I have a brow pencil that I keep in my purse for touchups if needed during the day, but I find that my brows get really unruly as well! So I got this to keep in there to help me out and I absolutely adore it!

HD powder

 

Makeup Forever HD Powder – I use this to brush over top of my liquid foundation for staying powder. I LOVE the airbrushed look this powder gives my face! And because it is so thin I can put it in this:

BCA Brush

Sephora Refillable Kabuki Brush – It isn’t the BEST brush in the world, but it’s a great way to carry powder and a brush all in one. And because it has a cap on it as well, I don’t have to worry about spillage in my purse!

From MAC, I am getting:

davil may dare

Devil May Dare Holiday Eyeshadow Palette

mystic cool

Mystic Cool Holiday Eyeshadow Palette

242 shader

242 Shader Brush

219 pencil

219 Pencil Brush

Those should be arriving next week, and I totally see me trying Cat’s Smokey Eye in my near future!! Perhaps I will have to make a video response to see how it turns out!!!

Oh, and I also decided to copy Cat (haha, copycat!) by purchasing a red lipstick!!!

I have this Dior Lipgloss in Red Stockings

lipgloss

and OF COURSE, her signature, MAC Lipstick in Russian Red

russian red

So that’s that!! I think I will need to update with a few looks or something that I pull out of my hat with all these fun products!!!

(I should thank my mom for all the wonderful products and my awesome friend C for picking up my Russian Red for me!!!)

 

November 6, 2009

Step One – Ban the Red Cup!

First of all, Jaime, avert your eyes!!!

So, I added a couple extra points to my “Spice up your life” plan…I had every intention of including these in my original post, but it was hard to remember them all at one time!!

SO anyway, my first step is to help control my finances. And Vanessa’s post last week reminded me of the fact that I have some ‘bucks worthy tools at home.

So, my first official part of Project Spice up your Life is to ban the red cup (*GASP*)

peppermint_mocha

I do love me a peppermint mocha and an egg nog latte. But I can make these items at home for a fraction of the cost (maybe, what, an extra carton of milk per week??? I already have all the other stuff!!)

Low and behold…

My Nespresso machine (it uses pods specifically made for the machine…YUP, it’s pretty yuppie!)

416

and my trusty milk frother! (I want to try the “Baileys trick” you know from the Baileys ads?? In it…and I am curious to try egg nog…but I think it has a lower boiling point than milk…so maybe it would scald?? I have a little hand whisky frother thing that could work for egg nog too)…

417

And then I have some syrups and (not pictured because I ran out but my WONDERFUL friend purchased some for me!) some caramel sauce for Caramel Macchiatos and my mocha powder that I was too lazy to get down for this!!

418

So this Red Cup ban is going to be ALL the way through November AND December…well, up until Christmas…I plan on making it until Boxing Day on this ban.

AND I even have some money left on a couple of my Starbucks cards, so I am doing this on principle alone!!

(I can’t believe how long it took me to write this post through WordPress on my laptop…I am going to give Windows Live Writer a try this weekend when I do a picture post from all my Halifax pictures!!! Maybe that will make me stray from my Mac…at least for blogging!)

November 5, 2009

Spice up your life!

Okay, so ONCE again, I have been MIA on my blog…I am certain it’s easy to see the correlation…or maybe it will in the end.

When things go wrong or downward in my life…I stop blogging. I don’t like negativity, and I don’t see the point in writing a post if all I am going to do is bitch…not to be compared with a vent. I love a good vent, even some good complaining, but I can’t bring myself to air some things on here…

Anyway, I can’t continue to be down…I need to be done with that.

I have seen a LOT of fresh starts lately, and a lot of people who are working on themselves all around. Which leads me to believe that I am not alone in this – not that I ever thought I was.

I am THOROUGHLY stealing inspired by Jaime’s Project Energize – and after a talk about all of it with one of my best friends today, I realized that I need a bit of a life makeover!! So, I am referring to this as “Operation Spice up your Life” (colors of the world! SPICE UP YOUR LIFE!)

Anyhoo. SO it has been a bit of a rough year…it started off on the wrong foot…I had a change of jobs that I thought would be a great move for me, but hasn’t really helped in the long run…I have had a few up and downs this year and sometimes the downs have just shadowed the ups. I need to remind myself of all the good things that have happened this year as well.

So, I have a few parts of my life that I would like to work on:

Health – this doesn’t just include eating, but healthy lifestyle as well, getting exercise on a regular basis and just being more active in general

Beauty – take a bit more pride in my appearance. I have all these beauty supplies and all these wonderful tips from Cat that I need to put into practice. I would like to work on putting a bit more effort into it.

Fashion – I have lots of cool clothes and shoes – wear them!!

Career – I would like to get a job in my field – I would like this within one year

Education – working on it, I should be done by September 2010. This should definitely help with the aforementioned career change

Craftiness – I am a crafty person…I need to put that to work!!!

Friendships – I hold my friends dear, but I think I need to be a bit more work into my friendships, I need to keep in better contact with them

Marriage – hmmmmm where do I start with this one?? My husband and I are close, we love each other and we spend a lot of time together…but I am thinking more QUALITY time…

CONFIDENCE!!!! – this one I think will come with a lot of the other things, but that doesn`t mean I am not going to work on it…I don`t feel very confident most of the time, and I need to show confidence when looking at new careers and what not…and….oh dear….confidence to feel more…um, sexy…

Finance – I need to work on budgeting and spending money wisely – and uses gifts as rewards for weight loss/school goals

FUN! – I am generally a pretty fun person, but I want to make sure that I have a little fun every day!!

Okay, that is a lot of parts…but there are a lot of pieces to a persons life!!!

I don’t feel like I need to change, I just think I need to put in a little more effort into my life. Actually experience it instead of just going along with it.

SO yeah, that’s it!! I am hoping I am going to be able to keep up to date at least every other day if not every day…maybe you guys can hold me to it???

October 16, 2009

Say it out loud!!

Okay, so I am a big fan of Operation Beautiful.

Even though I don’t blog about it, I have left many a sticky note around my city and I have seen the effects other people’s notes have had on people (right Angie???).

I get the idea of an anonymous note left to brighten someone’s day…but while it sends a beautiful message, it seems a little impersonal to me (sorry! Though I HAVE witnessed a few beautiful messages!).

Some people don’t take compliments. Plain and simple. They can look at a sign that says “YOU are beautiful” and think “well, maybe everyone but me”.

I definitely am not saying anything bad about Operation Beautiful…I am just, sort of, encouraging everyone to maybe step it up a notch.
Everybody loves a compliment. Even if they don’t know how to accept one (I am terrible, what do you say??).

But say you are having a bad hair day (which honestly, even if you aren’t a vain person, that can throw your day off!) and you go into the coffee shop and the barista says “Wow, I love your hair”, I wouldn’t believe you if you said you didn’t leave that coffee shop with a little more spring in your step!

I try to make a conscious effort to point out things I like about a person, even if it’s a random strangers, whether it’s their top, their shoes, their smile, their hair, WHATEVER, I like to pay a person a compliment. Not because it makes ME feel better or that I want a compliment in return (which is just awkward right?) but because I know how I feel if someone says something like that to me!

For instance, I was flying to Halifax last week – anyone who knows me in real life or has traveled with me knows how much I DESPISE flying!!! Anyway, I was a little nervous for the flight and we had just taken off. The stewardess came by for drinks and when she stopped at me she said – “I have something really weird to say and I don’t know if you are going to get creeped out by it or not, but I am going to say it” (wow, what a way to start a sentence!! I was a little scared!!!) she followed with “I absolutely love your skin”. It came out of nowhere (and frankly I was feeling a bit rough and dry in the facial area from being on a plane) but it made me get the warm fuzzies. I thanked her for the compliment and when she said “you probably get that all the time” I said “no but thank you” (I have gotten that compliment before, but I don’t think you should ever say that, or act like “I KNOW” about it).

In fact, while I was in Halifax, I went for breakfast with Amy and Lynn to Cora’s. Amy told the waitress that she had gorgeous eyes, and I was a little taken aback when she replied with someone along the lines of “oh yeah, I get that all the time”.

It’s kind of like holding the door for a person, sometimes they will say thank you, other times they will walk on through like it was owed to them…but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. I am not saying that you need to walk around singing about sunshine and rainbows and tell everyone that they are perfect just the way God made them…but maybe a little comment about their killer boots every once in a while might do the trick!!!

****Edit: I am just going to add at the end, that PLEASE know I am not saying ANYTHING bad against Operation Beautiful. I just would like to see some people take the extra step. I am a BIG fan of OB and a huge supporter of it!!!

October 13, 2009

Whirlwind…

WOW.

So, I will spare a bunch of Halifax recaps, since a lot of the other ladies have been posting as the festivities went along (especially Jaime and Lynn).

My husband and I returned home from our whirlwind trip on Sunday evening and we were SLIGHTLY exhausted (due to MANY late nights…I think our nightly average was like 3am????) but full of wonderful memories…I am going to TRY to point form my favorite parts and my least favorites!!!

The ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS:

- meeting the Hali girls I hadn’t had a chance to meet yet (most of them at the airport who shocked me by being there and caused me to break into tears in the first 5 minutes)
- breakfasts at Cora’s – YUM!
- getting lost because of Yoda
- “killing” a lobster (I use the term loosely…I may have screamed like a little girl, and I sure as hell didn’t touch it!!)
- EATING lobster (MMMM!!!!)
- trying a beavertail (and having a woman tell me that it wasn’t made from actual beavers…really????)
- the Keith’s tour
- THANKSGIVING!!!
- PEGGY’S COVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (I LOVED THIS PLACE!!!!!)
- Jello shooters
- Watching my husband run around 3 girls on a trampoline
- 3 am trip to McDonald’s
- Singing “I Gotta Feeling” at the top of my lungs with the ladies
- Grabbing each other innappropriately
- LUCY AND CHANDLER!!!! (Angie’s dog and cat!)
- Buttery Nipples
- Dave “the man with the magic hands” solving a rubik’s cube in 25 seconds, playing Rockband drums on expert and pretty much just being awesome all around
- my husband doing the dishes after our feast
- watching the husbands get along so well each other

and last but not least….
- my beautiful ladies

Things I did not love:
- almost getting car sick like 3 times

um, and -

LEAVING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This was one of the most amazing trips of my life…it’s wonderful to be with so many amazing friends at once!!!!

I am sure I left out highlights of the trips…but they must be tucked away in my memory at the moment!!!

I will return to regular blogging tomorrow (I returned to regular eating/routine yesterday…THAT feels nice!)