Karen

5 Things I’ve Been Loving Lately

October 16th, 2018 by Karen 14 Comments

1. on sale at Pottery Barn

Lilly Pulitzer is an American apparel and textile brand that does BOLD, prints, and even though I can see how royal blue and hot pink decor can come across as tween/teenybopper…I don’t care. 🙂 Where does it say you have to give up teal just because you’re an adult?

But I digress…

Lilly Pulitzer collaborated with Pottery Barn last summer, and .

I snagged It was originally $250, but on sale now for $50!

2. Bliss Poetic Waxing Hair Removal Kit

I’ve talked about this product before (most recently after a minor nail polish debacle that involved looking into the mirror and seeing my brother with a blue mustache in my reflection).

Man, I gotta say this again: This wax is really, REALLY good. Doesn’t matter if you’ve got a downy layer of peach fuzz on your upper lip, or a mustache to rival a circus ringmaster’s, Bliss wax zips off everything, and it does so without drama.

I usually de-fuzz in the morning right after breakfast. I warm up the mug, which is filled with wax, in the microwave (it takes about 5 minutes because my microwave, like Taylor Swift, was born in 1989), smear on a thin layer, wait a minute or two for it to dry, then zip! Smooth as a Sphinx.

3. My morning citrus concoction

I’ve been drinking this every morning for a couple weeks. It’s comprised of a Super Orange Emergen-C in a huge cup with a splash of Trader Joe’s tangerine juice.

It’s sweet but not too sweet, and I get a good dose of vitamins.

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Let’s Talk Makeup Brushes: Which Ones Do You Always Use, and Which Ones Do You Never Touch?

October 16th, 2018 by Karen 8 Comments

Makeup brushes! — I HAZ THEM. And I’m assuming you do too. I’m gonna go out on a limb (not really) and guess that you have more than a few brushes in your collection, so tell me, friend, which makeup brushes do you always use, and which ones do you never (or very rarely) touch?

First of all, I’m much pickier about eye brushes than I am about face brushes, which I think is because my lids are sensitive, and I have absolutely no patience for scratchy stuff on my skin.

I think there are many great eye brushes out there, but I usually end up grabbing a brush from MAC (one of the O.G. ones from back before they revamped their makeup brush line with synthetic brushes, which IMO don’t perform well enough to justify their price), NARS or Chanel, because they’re the softest ones I have, and I love how they blend.

Here are the brushes I seem to always use the most…

MAC 221 Mini Tapered Blending Brush
MAC 224 Tapered Blending Brush
MAC 217 Domed Eyeshadow Brush
(Super great! I think it’s better than the MAC 224.)

And while it isn’t an eye brush, is one I use every single day for buffing down foundation.

As for the brushes I never use, hmm… I hardly ever reach for large, poofy powder brushes because I don’t wear a lot of powder, and I think they’re hard to control. I prefer powder and blush brushes with smaller brush heads.

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Desperately Seeking Persistent Polish: 7 Days With Sally Hansen Color Therapy Pink and Harmony

October 15th, 2018 by Karen 12 Comments

sally hansen pink and harmony — ($7.99) is music to my nails.

You know, there’s one thing that working for a top kitty supermodel over the past decade has prepared me for, and that’s the wrath of a toddler. If you don’t know, now you know. Demanding diva cats are just as, if not more than, temperamental than two-year-olds, and it’s a miracle this manicure even made it through seven days on my nails, because I had to open this Doc McStuffins mini doctors’ bag at least 50 times every day!

Allegedly, it’s a toy for children, but they had me fooled based on how hard it is to open…

(Side note: Connor uses it to store the free stickers she gets from the cashiers at Trader Joe’s. She uses them as Band-Aids for Tabs whenever she “treats him.” It’s cute but kinda gross at the same time because the backs of the stickers are covered in tabby hair when she takes them off.)

Pink and Harmony is pure awesomeness, BTW, and it lasted just as long as Falling Deep, the last Sally Hansen Color Therapy shade I wore. At the end of the seventh day, there were absolutely no major chips around the base of my nails. That’s something that’s happened, um…never with a different formula before?!

And considering how I spent most of my waking hours last week prying open that plastic Doc McStuffins toy with my nails, I’m shocked there were only a few tiny dents at the tips.

I also love the wide brush and the fairly quick-drying formula (takes about 5 minutes).

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Kamod-ua.xyz Monday Poll, Vol. 546

October 15th, 2018 by Karen 49 Comments

So…what is the Monday Poll?

Good question! It isn’t, contrary to its name, an actual poll. 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 gazillion years (more than 10!). I love reading your answers, and it helps me get my week off to a great start. 👍

1. A makeup brush you use every day?

I almost always use some kind of domed eyeshadow brush like the MAC 217, usually to apply or blend eyeshadow (yup, both powder and cream shadows!), but sometimes I’ll get it up in the mix to mellow out whatever’s underneath my eyes. Yesterday it was Benefit Boing Hydrating Concealer, which, by the way, if you don’t know, NOW YOU KNOW (review coming soon).

2. If you could have any gallon-sized bottle of any bath/shower product for free (like a shampoo, conditioner, body wash, or whatever you can think of), what would choose?

Oh, definitely one of the Oribe conditioners (probably Gold Lust), because homegirl’s gonna get her $$$’s worth! First of all, a liter of Gold Lust Conditioner is (wait for it) $182, and a gallon has almost 4 liters. So do the math. Secondly, I go through conditioner faster than I do shampoo, so I always need more of it, and I know I could finish every last drop of Gold Lust happily. 🙂

3. Are you allergic to anything?

Does drama count?

4. Best/worst Halloween candy?

Best are Mini Snickers (obvi), worst is licorice, BLECH.

5. Something you miss from the good old days?

This is probably gonna sound funny coming from someone who spent the bulk of the last decade online, but I miss life before the Internet. Even though it was so much harder to get information, life seemed more innocent to me and people felt less isolated.

I’m also deeply grateful that I was able to make my mistakes back then without them all being documented on some form of social media forever.

Oh, and totally unrelated, but I also miss the old Oreo cookies. I had one recently, and it just didn’t taste the same.

In case you were wondering how it feels to pick pumpkins straight off the vine…

FYI, it hurts! I found this out yesterday at a pumpkin patch in Petaluma called McClelland’s, where you can pick your pumpkin off the vine. I don’t know why, but it’s so cool to me to be able to have a freshly picked pumpkin, but sheesh! It’s not easy. The stems are covered in spiky bits, and they poke you when you’re removing the pumpkin from the vine.

McClelland’s also had a bunch of other things for kids and families to do, like a petting zoo, a hay ride, a huge pit of corn kernels that was like a sandbox, but with corn! (It felt a little like getting a foot massage when you put your bare feet into it… WEIRD). There was also a hay maze, which for the record was just as terrible as I imagined it to be… Did I mention that I’m slightly claustrophobic? Never you mind that the maze walls were about elbow height, LOL! I almost jumped out of there, for real!

Some pics…

Have you ever been to a pumpkin patch before?

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

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

1. A makeup brush you use every day?
2. If you could have any gallon-sized bottle of any bath/shower product for free (like a shampoo, conditioner, body wash, or whatever you can think of), what would choose?
3. Are you allergic to anything?
4. Best/worst Halloween candy?
5. Something you miss from “the good old days”?