NARS Beauty Haul

A few weeks ago I attended the Spring Beauty Trend event at Nordstrom. I decided to make an appointment at the NARS counter because I haven’t been made up there in a long time. Recently, I’ve been going to Estee Lauder, whose skin care I love. I went with the hope of finding a new eyeshadow crayon as that has been my go-to makeup look in the morning.

As you will know if you have been reading my blog for a while, I suffer from psoriasis. It had been acting up a bit recently when I went to get my makeup done. Because of that, the makeup artist who I worked with introduced me to a skin treatment. I don’t know exactly how new it is, but I have not heard of it before.

The product that they introduced me to, that I’m the most excited about from my haul, is the Restorative Night Treatment ($85). This product is really interesting because it starts in almost a Vaseline form, but when you rub it on your skin it’s more of an oil. This product is made with natural oils and ingredients meant to moisturize and decrease redness of your skin.

Oh my goodness you guys. This product is great. I will do a more in depth review of this product at a later date, but it is wonderful.

Moving onto makeup, I did end up purchasing an eyeshadow crayon as well as a powder shadow.
 

Top: Shadow stick in Goddess Bottom: Powder shadow in Odine Taken in the shade

Top: Shadow stick in Goddess Bottom: Powder shadow in Odine Taken in the shade

The eyeshadow stick that I purchased is in the shade Goddess ($28). It is a neutral champagne color that has a bit of a pink sheen to it. I like this color because it is a great color to just throw on for everyday or to layer on top of. I am looking forward to seeing how this stands up against my Laura Mercier sticks.

The powder shadow ($25) that the artist used on me that I fell in love with is in the shade Odine. It is a brown shadow that has some purple undertones and I really like it. I have realized recently that I don’t have any darker brown shadows so this was a perfect addition to my collection.

Finally, I purchased two of the Larger Than Life eyeliners ($25) in Rue De Rivoli (the olive green) and Khao San (the sky blue). As a brown eyed girl, I love olive green near my eyes, and haven’t found an olive green eye liner that I like that works well. I’m hoping that this will change that. I was also so excited about the blue because I wanted a color like this a summer or two ago, and ended up with more of a teal that I wasn’t as excited about. The artist used both of them on me by putting the blue on and then layering the green on top of it to make a peacock color! I demonstrated the effect on the bottom swatch.

Top: Larger Than Life eyeliner in Khao San Middle: Larger Than Life eyeliner in Rue De Rivoli Bottom: Layering of the two eyeliners

Top: Larger Than Life eyeliner in Khao San Middle: Larger Than Life eyeliner in Rue De Rivoli Bottom: Layering of the two eyeliners

Whew! That was quite the haul! In all honesty I have not purchased new makeup (not including repurchases of concealer) in a long time. I am also slowly going through my makeup collection and getting rid of old makeup to make room for the new ones.

Have you tried any new products lately that you love?

Birchbox April 2016

In case you are unaware, Birchbox is a monthly beauty subscription box. It costs $10 a month and you receive multiple sample size item. These boxes allow you to try tons of new products that you may have never even heard of before. The other fun thing about Birchbox is that every time you purchase an item from their site, or review a product from your box, you receive rewards points! Once you collect 100 points, you get $10 off of your next purchase. These points definitely add up quickly between buying your box, and reviewing the products.

Each month, Birchbox allows subscribers to pick one of their samples. If you prefer surprises, you don’t have to pick one. You can choose to be surprised instead. They also offer curated guest boxes where you can see what the samples are going to be. The sample choices this month were the Au Naturale Cosmetics Trio Set in Lively, rms beauty ultimate makeup remover wipe, and Briogeo Don't Despair, Repair! Deep Conditioning Mask.

The products I received this month are as follows:

Beaver Repair Rescue Shampoo and Conditioner (Full-Size $15.90 & $16.90)- I am so annoyed that I received these products in my box. Not only was I not excited about this brand the first time I received them but I just received a shampoo and conditioner sample last month. Additionally, since neither is a foil packet they each counted toward my sample count which is very annoying. It says that te shampoo and conditioner are meant to repair your hair. It doesn’t smell very good, but I might give it a try. Most likely this will be donated to someone.

IPKN Moist & Firm Beauty Balm SPF 45 (Full-size $35)- This is a BB cream with SPF 45. It also includes vitamin E and collagen. I haven’t foully swatched the color as I find that the BB cream samples tend to be very sparse, but it looks like it should work. I’m excited to ry this soon.

Rms beauty ultimate makeup remover wipes (Full-size $16)- This was my sample choice this month. I’m always on the lookout for a good makeup remover wipe as they’re great for traveling. These wipes have coconut oil which they claim is antibacterial. I am curious to try these but am a little disappointed with how expensive they are, especially when you consider that only includes 20 wipes. I have an expensive wipe that I know I like that includes more than that for a bout the same price.

The Beauty Crop PBJ Smoothie Stick- Guava Nice Day (Full-size $14.95)- This is a lip crayon hat is matte and said to be hydrating. The color I received is a really pretty berry pink color. It’s nice because i love wearing berry/wine shades in the fall and this is a nice lighter shade along those lines for spring. It is surprisingly opaque and also has a nice sweet scent. I haven’t had a chance to wear it for a long period of time yet, but it will be interesting to see the wear and whether or not it ends up feeling drying.  
 

Honestly, I am extremely disappointed with this box. I'm excited about 1 1/2 of these products which is a bummer. I have seen some of the curated boxes and I'm definitely regretting not going with that instead of this one. 

Book Club April 2016

This month’s book club pick was My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry. I picked this book because I had heard a lot about it last year, as well as saw it on the end of the year Goodreads list. 
 

By: Fredrik Backman
Published Year: 2015
Publisher: Atria Books
Pages: 372

Amazon Barnes and Noble

Summary (Provided by Goodreads): From the author of the internationally bestselling 'A Man Called Ove', a novel about a young girl whose grandmother dies and leaves behind a series of letters, sending her on a journey that brings to life the world of her grandmother's fairy tales.

Elsa is seven years old and different. Her grandmother is seventy-seven years old and crazy, standing-on-the-balcony-firing-paintball-guns-at-men-who-want-to-talk-about-Jesus-crazy. She is also Elsa's best, and only, friend. At night Elsa takes refuge in her grandmother's stories, in the Land of Almost-Awake and the Kingdom of Miamas where everybody is different and nobody needs to be normal.

When Elsa's grandmother dies and leaves behind a series of letters apologizing to people she has wronged, Elsa's greatest adventure begins. Her grandmother's letters lead her to an apartment building full of drunks, monsters, attack dogs, and totally ordinary old crones, but also to the truth about fairytales and kingdoms and a grandmother like no other.

                                                             What I thought

This book was not at all what I expected it to be but it was so good! Definitely one of the strongest written books I’ve read in a while.

Elsa is seven, almost eight, and has recently lost her Granny who is also her friend. Her Granny introduced her to the Land-of-Almost-Awake which is a fairy tale land made up of multiple kingdoms. Each kingdom has its own stories and characters which Elsa visits when she is about to drift off to sleep (hence the almost awake part). When her Granny dies, Elsa finds a letter from her to pass on to one of the residents of her house. This letter tells the reader that her Granny is sorry which then leads Elsa on a treasure hunt to deliver the other letters. Little does Elsa know at the time the treasure hunt begins, but the stories her Granny told her about the Land-of-Almost-Awake will be the greatest asset on this grand adventure.

Elsa is such a great character. I don’t know if she’s entirely realistic, but she is so much fun to have as a narrator. She is seven years old, and is super smart which makes her different from her peers. This causes a lot of other differences and is the reason her Granny tells her all these stories. Elsa is also a huge Harry Potter fan which I personally loved. Backman, overall, just has some fabulous character development. I loved each and every character in this book and would gladly read their own stories. They each had their own quirks and the surprises about each of their story lines were great. It reminded me that no everything is what it seems and that you can’t always judge a person on your first impression or on what someone tells you about them.

When I said that this book wasn’t what I expected, it’s because it had a sort of Love Actually element to it. There were some connections between characters in the books that were completely unexpected, even though they all lived in the same house. I found myself unable to put the book down because I wanted to know how the strings were going to end up being knotted together. Granny’s morals of her fairy tales were also so thought provoking. It’s not often that as an adult you read a story that has morals that can touch you, but I think since this story is told by an almost eight year old, it really works.

                                                   What Book Club Thought

The general consensus was that while the book was hard to get into at first, once he story got going it was really great. The hardest thing that we discussed was the fact that this book was translated.  Someone had brought up that they felt like the writing style at first was a bit off and once I explained that the book was originally written in Swedish, we decided that was probably the reason. We also discussed that some of the conversation or phrases also seemed a little odd, but could have bene contributed to the fact that this was not originally written in English. Everyone also loved Elsa and the fact that the story was told from her perspective. We again agreed that this might have been part of what made getting into the book a little difficult, but ended up being a part of what made this story enjoyable. Another interesting point that came up during our discussion was whether or not some of the twists and connections were obvious to the reader and not to Elsa because she was seven years old. I thought this was interesting because I hadn’t thought about it that way, but considering she’s the narrator, it makes sense that someone of her age wouldn’t make a lot of connections that adults would.

The final thing that we discussed was our favorite Elsa quotes. As our book club is comprised of not only book lovers (obviously), but Harry Potter fans, we had a lot of favorite quotes. We also discussed Elsa’s personality and her differences, as this is a trait that is brought up constantly through the book. I would definitely recommend this book for a book club as we had a lot to discuss without having to reach for much.

Poignant Questions

Which connection surprised you the most?

What did you think of Britt-Marie throughout the story?

What do you think of the parenting skills of the adults around Elsa?

Next Book Club Book

The Improbability of Love By: Hannah Mary Rothschild
Amazon

Book Club Date: May 7th 2016