Makeup and Beauty Blog | Makeup Reviews, Swatches and How-To Makeup
A beauty blog blooming with fresh makeup reviews, swatches and beauty tips from your friendly neighborhood beauty addict
Are you excited about tomorrow’s solar eclipse? Boy, I know someone who would have been. Tabs would have been fired up! He went all out for the one in 2017, made himself a sunflower cat collar, got a bunch of eclipse sunglasses and meowed about it with anyone who’d listen.
He thought it was the coolest thing ever.
I saw this Zendaya meme on Instagram the other day, and dagnabbit, it spoke to my soul because I’m 99% sure that my work lewks are equivalent to the photo on the right.
The funny thing is, everything seems okay when I leave my bathroom mirror in the morning before I leave the house. I’ll go about my day, and then sometime later on I’ll get a glimpse of myself in the harsh overhead lighting at work and will be like, “WHOA. What happened?” LOL!
Anywho, the weather here has been crazy all week long. I forgot what a true spring feels like, apparently. It’s been years since we’ve had one here in Northern California. For a while there, we’d just jump from winter to warm weather in the blink of an eye without anything happening in between. Side note, hello global warming!
The past few days, though, have been a reminder of what I remember spring feeling like when I was a kid. The swing between balmy 70-something temps and cold, wet rainy days has been a shock to my system and my wardrobe. One day I’m wearing a parka and fleece sweater, and the next I’m in a t-shirt.
Ya know, I like spring a lot more now that I’m in my 40s. I love seeing everything come back to life. It reminds me there is always another time to bloom again; there’s something about the idea of renewal and reinvention that speaks to me now more than ever.
Regarding reinvention, I’ve been listening to the new Beyonce album, “Cowboy Carter,” nonstop. I love how Beyonce mashes together different musical genres; I especially love the harmonies and layered vocals. My favorite songs so far are “Blackbird,” “II Most Wanted” and “Protector.”
Have you listened to any of her new music? Give it a go if you have a chance. I think you might like it.
Have a wonderful Saturday and a peaceful weekend.
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
OK, most everything I’ve tried from Rare Beauty has been the real deal. I’m currently using and loving the mascara, liquid liner, pencil liner (it’s a twist up, yay!) and the brow pencil. But dang, the pale pink packaging is a challenge because it gets so gnarly so easily.
Well, at least it does for me.
Maybe you’re much neater than I am, but after a few days of using the products, the pristine pink packaging gets covered in foundation, concealer and miscellaneous bits and bobs of makeup.
The part of me that loves to look at pretty things wants to make more of an effort to keep the pieces looking cute, but my practical side says, “Eh, it’s just gonna get dirty again, so just lean into it and accept that makeup is like life; it’s gonna get messy, and that’s OK.” 😀
Anyway, I’ve been using these products with regularity and they are easily everyday rotation items! No joke, every morning before work I get about five minutes to put makeup on, and the Rare Beauty liners (both the liquid and pencil), the brow pencil and the mascara do a lot of heavy lifting in a short amount of time. The textures and pigment are spot on with just enough oomph but not so much that I have to be careful about my application.
The stuff lasts, too! When I take off my makeup at night, my brows, liner and mascara are still intact with little to no smudging.
I’m usually skeptical about celebrity makeup lines because sometimes it feels like a cash grab, but I really like Rare Beauty because it delivers the goods.
Ya did good, Selena!
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
There are some things one could always rely on like the sun rising and setting, internet cats doing silly things, chin hairs spontaneously sprouting in the middle of a meeting and MAC matte lipsticks gripping onto one’s lips for dear life.
That feeling of the distinct MAC matte formula cemented to my pout—there was nothing like it!
MAC’s newly reformulated take on matte lippie via the MAC Maximal lipsticks removes that “grippy” feeling that made MAC lipsticks so long lasting. I’m wearing the shade Sweet Deal here, by the way. It’s a neutral pink.
In some ways, this new version is refreshing. It’s so lightweight that I often forget that I’m wearing it. It’s comfortable, and the matte finish is so smooth and beautiful—a modern take on matte, even. But it just doesn’t last as long. I drink a cup of coffee and it’s gone.
I used to apply an OG MAC Matte lippie in the morning and it would still be around after lunch. I think when they decided to swap the old formula in lieu of this new version, they decided that ladies and gents and everyone in between wouldn’t mind the limited wear time.
I miss the ability to put my lipstick on and just forget about it for a few hours, but I guess some things never change, including the desire to reformulate a perfectly good lipstick.
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
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 more or less random questions I’ve been posting on this blog every Monday morning for the past quadrillion years (since 2007).
Eh, leave it. I find it a little tedious, and I’m not a fan of comics who are mean.
Nah, but if we did, it would be epic.
Years ago Demeter had a perfume that smelled like tomato vines, and I thought it was a joke for the longest time until I actually ran into the perfume in person and gave it a sniff — and it smelled really good!
El Hub and Connor both crack me up!
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
P.S. Here are the questions to copy/paste with your answers in a comment. Talk to ya soon.
1. Stand up comedy – love it or leave it?
2. Do you and your family or friends play April Fool’s pranks on each other?
3. Something beauty related that you thought was a prank but actually wasn’t?
4. Have you ever successfully pulled off an April Fool’s prank?
5. Someone in your life who can make you laugh so hard that you get tears in your eyes?
Hello, friend. How’s it hopping? Hope you’re having a hoppy Easter. 🐰
Today I couldn’t help but think back to all the fun Easters we had with Tabs. That cat made everything feel like an event. Part of it was his personality. He was a boy cat, had that confident swagger. He could be calm, even around a bunch of kids, cars and other loud noises. He’d just casually lick his paw, slow blink, roll over and flash his tum. Little things didn’t phase him.
He also loved attention, which he got a lot of also because of this blog and where I was in life. We worked on the blog together. He was both my employer (hehe!) and my creative muse. For many, many years I worked hours and hours every day blogging, and Tabs was right there for it all. He loved every photo shoot, or at least he seemed to, even when I was bossing him around. “Come here, Tabs! OK, picture time. There you go. Look at me, look at the camera! Good boy!” And I’d be snapping away with my camera. He’d just meow, saunter over and flash his gorgeous tum again.
On holidays like Easter, I’d dress him up in, yes, a custom-made felt cat collar or other flashy outfit, and he’d go along with it for a photo shoot. It always took lots of pictures to get a good one, as is generally always the case for blogging or social media. The pics look good most of the time, but you know how it is. It probably took 12 shots to get one perfect one. That’s how it is.
But, I kid you not, every time I’d take down his costume box / wardrobe from the closet, Tabs would come running from wherever he was in the house. I’d hear a thud from somewhere upstairs (him jumping down from a counter or the bed to the floor), and then doomp, doomp, doomp from his paws on the floor and down the stairs. He knew it meant we were 1) going outside for a walk and 2) going to be spending time together. Two things he loved.
The personality we conveyed on the blog was his and mine. Sure, I added something to the mix. I mean, cats normally don’t maintain a Spring to-do list. 🙂 But I don’t think it was far from the truth either.
To me and our family, Tabs was larger than life. He was a celebrity to us, and he gave as good as he got. He loved the attention. He may not have been “posing for the camera,” per se, but he was posing for me.
Connor still remembers him and talks about him when she sees his pics. She knows he was her first animal friend, and I like that they have so many pictures together because of the blog. Hundreds if not thousands of pictures from the four years they had together before Tabs passed.
Rosie is our cat now and she’s our special feline family member, but I do miss the theatricality of life with Tabs. He was the perfect cat at the perfect time in my life, and I’ll always cherish it.
Thank you, buddy. Happy Easter, Tabs. Love and miss you always.
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
Hi, friend! I keep telling myself that sometime in the near future, I won’t be so tired. I’m hoping it’ll happen sooner than later, though! March has been a mother trucker of a month.
I love this so much
Um, want
Who’s doing this with me?
Someone please make me this
I hope you treat yourself with kindness and compassion today, and if you need the rest, please take it!
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
I never thought I’d say this, ever, but I’m not sure if I belong at Sephora anymore.
I went in last Saturday for a few staples (mascara, eyeliner and brow pencil) because I didn’t want to walk in the rain to Ulta, which is where I’ve been doing most of my beauty shopping in the last couple years.
Anywho, I walked in, found a few things at Rare Beauty, and then did a few laps around the store looking for something, anything, to move me. And that’s when I realized a lot of the things that I was used to seeing weren’t there.
The Clinique makeup display, for example, which was always a comforting sight, was gone. I mean, I know that Clinique isn’t cutting edge or anything, but I like that you can always find something there to satisfy a makeup urge, no matter what age you are. All their color products are pretty wearable and won’t leave you feeling heavily made up. They did have a handful of skin care products, though, but they were tucked away.
Then, in the skin care section, I realized the most prominently displayed items looked like they were geared toward teens and tweens. Brands that seem very popular on social media with kids, like Drunk Elephant, Glow Recipe, Sol de Janeiro and the Ordinary, were front and center.
That’s when I realized that I kinda sorta felt out of place.
It’s very different now compared to what it used to feel like stepping in the store in the late ’90s and early 2000s.
When Sephora was relatively new to the U.S. shopping there was an experience. There was nothing quite like it. I remember walking through and finding interesting things all over the store, and falling in love with lines that no longer live there, like Stila, Vincent Long, Paul & Joe, Du-Wop and Neil’s Yard.
Oh, and the makeup displays! They were all so neat and clean.
I used to go into the store feeling like it was a magical, special and chic place to find all my beauty treasures, but now between the countless neutral palettes across the influencer brands, the bottles of perfumed shackled to the shelves, the security officers flanking the front doors, and the chaotic state of the samples – which I don’t even want to put on the back of my hand now because they seem so gross and mismanaged – it doesn’t feel like a fun place to shop.
Anyway, maybe I’ll change my mind again in the future, and I’ll probably pop in there every once in a while out of sheer curiosity, but for now, I think I may have outgrown it.
Have you been shopped at Sephora lately? How was your experience?
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen