Just For Fun

Good mornin’ and happy Caturday ? to ya.

Quick question: Have you ever wished that you could crochet for the sole purpose of being able to make a handmade sweater for your cat?

If yes, then you will totally get why I want this book I saw at Barnes and Noble!

I wonder how long the cats on the cover actually had those sweaters on…because Tabs would have slipped out quicker than a cheetah chasing dinner.

Anywho…if you’re looking for a gift for your favorite crazy cat lady, I think this would be purr-fect.

I’m taking it easy today because, once again, I caught a bug. ? Yup, I made it cold-free for three weeks, so I guess it was time, LOL! Everyone tells me that the first year of preschool is the hardest because kids bring home everything, so everyone is sick all the time, and they weren’t kidding.

Oh, well. I’ve heard it tapers off around April, so fingers and toes crossed I make it till then, ha ha!

Now I’m off to go eat the hearty breakfast El Hub made for me and Connor. Pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon and clementine orange slices. And suck on another Cold-EEZE.

While I do that, here’s some easy reading (like easy listening) to help you get your weekend off to a good start.

• There’s a new drugstore beauty brand in town backed by Covergirl called Full Spectrum, and it’s marketed specifically for “women of color” — a term that has always made me pause a few beats…seeing as how there are A LOT of different skin tones, undertones and color temps out there, but that’s another rambling for another day.

  The line does have a wide shade range — 20 shades of matte liquid foundation, 12 shades of powder foundation and six shades of concealer. And they have a good mix of eye, lip and cheek products, too. You can find it at Ulta.

• MBB reader Jane asked me the other day how I felt about buying beauty products from stores like Marshalls.

  Well, as you know, I love a good discount, but I don’t regularly buy beauty products from discount stores on the off chance that they may have been diverted products. Yes, there’s a moderate chance that that shampoo or conditioner you’re eyeing could be counterfeit, diluted, expired or could have a discontinued formula that’s been deemed unsafe to use.

  Here’s how you can spot whether a product has been diverted.

• “It’s holiday,” says makeup artist Nick Barose. “You’re not supposed to be looking natural.” Nick paints celeb faces (including Lupita Nyong’o and Gugu Mbatha-Raw), and here’s his step-by-step guide to adding glitters and metallics to your makeup this holiday season.
• Some people might think this is kind of an odd thing to want to smell like…but I’ve actually always wanted a perfume that’ll make me smell like an old church.
• This French fragrance brand is betting that wealthy customers will drop between $1.5 million and $20 million for a customized bottle of perfume, and I’m like SRRSLY!? Y’all can’t just buy a bottle of Byredo Gypsy Water at SpaceNK?
• True or false: Your genes matter more than your skin care routine.
• David Lee Roth (yes, that guy who wore spandex and colorful footwear and had big, teased hair out to here in the ’80s) has a new skin care line. Fun fact: Did you know he’s a licensed EMT in New York City? And that his voice spans five octaves?
• Why does your cat lick her fur where you just petted her?
• 7 ways to tell if your cat is mad at you

They look like they’re having so much fun!

Just move on up!

An old fave

Someone make this for me, please!

Stop by and say hi. 🙂 I’ll be chillin’ on the couch today.

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

It’s a Dolly kinda mornin’.

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 five more or less random questions I’ve been posting on this blog every Monday morning for the past quadrillion years (since 2007). I love reading your answers, and it helps me get my week off to a good start. ?

1. Winged liner or glitter shadow?

Glitter shadow. I love me a wing, but I feel like you get more bang for your buck with a glitter shadow. Plus, it’s less stressful.

2. Cheese or chocolate?

EHRMAHGAWD. Well this is hard…but I’m going with chocolate, since the chocolate cravings I get are more intense than the cheese cravings.

3. Over-the-knee boots or ankle booties?

Over-the-knee boots. But only if they’re flats.

4. Would you rather 1) run into your ex while buying granny panties at Costco, OR 2) have your mom or dad see you making out with someone on the street? And I’m not talking a cute little church kiss. I’m talking full-on, grabby-hand making out, HA HA HA!

Granny panties at Costco, for sure, because chances are I’ll never see the dude again.

5. Would you rather have your dream job or your dream house?

GIRL, don’t make me choose! OK…dream house, please. Ideally, one that also comes completely organized and with cat-friendly furniture. ?

Something to stream ASAP

On your list of things to do this week — watch Dumplin’ on Netflix, because any movie 1) with a soundtrack comprised solely of Dolly Parton songs, and 2) in which drag queens save the day, is A-OK with me.

It’s about a Texas teenager dealing with the loss of her beloved aunt, and her rocky relationship with her beauty pageant mom (played by Jennifer Aniston). It’s very sweet and fun.

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. Winged liner or glitter shadow?
2. Cheese or chocolate?
3. Over-the-knee boots or ankle booties?
4. Would you rather 1) run into your ex while buying granny panties at Costco, OR 2) have your mom or dad see you making out with someone on the street? And I’m not talking a cute little church kiss. I’m talking full-on, grabby-hand making out, HA HA HA!
5. Would you rather have your dream job or a your dream house?

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Fresh paint with @smithandcult Vegas Post Apocalyptic ? #glitternails? #smithandcultnailpolish

A post shared by Karen | Makeup and Beauty Blog (@karenmbb) on Dec 7, 2018 at 8:37am PST

G’morning! Got glitter on my mind today because I painted my nails for the first time in weeks yesterday (FINALLY), and I used Smith & Cult Vegas Post Apocalyptic. It’s a clear glitter base with mostly lavender glitter flecks in it, but also some holographic blue, pink, yellow and green flecks as well.

Yup, this is my idea of holiday nails. ?

I don’t really do traditional Christmas color combos like red and gold anymore because one year everyone I ran into (SERIOUSLY, EVERYONE) assumed that whenever I wore a red/gold mani, it was a shout-out to the San Francisco 49ers, which was fine…but that wasn’t what I was going for. I must’ve said, “Christmas nails, not 49ers nails” three thousand times, ha ha! So, yeah.

This particular glittery polish isn’t on the Smith & Cult website anymore (boo!), but there’s a super similar color called Take Fountain, which I think might actually be the same polish with a different name.

Also, I think A Little Lovely looks very cool, too…

ALL TEH GLITTER! AAAAAH!

On that note, today’s reading…

• What it’s like to spend 48 hours in New York with Chanel’s global creative director for makeup and color, Lucia Pica.
• Shout-out to my alma mater UC Davis for their cutting-edge burn treatments for cats and dogs injured in the Camp Fire last month. The vets apply sterilized tilapia skin to wounds because the fish skin contains collagen, a protein that can help prevent infection and encourage the skin to repair.
• Fun facts about Ulta! Did you know that the store used be called Ulta3??
• Cat ladies, you’ll want to grab these adorable holiday-themed cat scratchers and kitty gear on your next Target run.
• Feel free to forward this post on the five beauty products to get when you start wearing makeup to all the dudes you know.
• Here’s how many makeup artists like to apply makeup on people with freckles.
• The NY Times and I agree — you should walk your ? cat.

• Here are the two artists who did the special effects makeup for the Swedish movie Boarder, a dark fantasy about two trolls, and the winner of Cannes’ Un Certain Regard prize.

  The post describes the technical aspects of the makeup, including the use of old-school gelatin, rather than silicone, for the actors’ prosthetics.

• The reason why Queen Elizabeth I caked her face in a mask of white makeup.
• There’s a movement happening in South Korea called “Escape the Corset.”
• Just in case you would like a nail polish to match the Mercedes-Benz you’re getting for Christmas, LOL!

That Lil’ Kim sample, tho!!!

Old school! I love the styling in this video. (I used to dress like this back in the day!)

Note to self: Watch this.

Somebody please 1) kidnap this cat for me, and 2) make me this omelette.

OK, now we’re off to get our Christmas tree ? and to decorate the house.

So…how long do you think it’ll take before Tabs ? attacks the tree…? One day? A week?

What are you up to?

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 five more or less random questions I’ve been posting on this blog every Monday morning for the past quadrillion years (since 2007). I love reading your answers, and it helps me get my week off to a good start. ?

1. Have you ever ridden a moped?

Nope, but I seriously thought about doing it many times when I lived in SF. I just never got around to actually doing it.

There’s something very appealing to me about tooling around town in a mint green Vespa for some reason (it’s gotta be mint green though… No other color will do). I’ll probably never do it at this point because I know myself way too well, and I absolutely do not belong on anything motorized with two wheels.

2. An instance when you were genuinely shocked?

A few years ago when El Hub got home from work and told me that our long-time family friends were getting a divorce.

It blew my mind. It was the proverbial “They seemed so happy!” thing. It just goes to show you that you can’t always tell from the outside what people are really going through.

I’m also a bonafide softie, and I always want to believe that love lasts forever, so I was shocked — like jaw dropped to the floor — when I found out.

3. List all of the skin care you’re wearing on your face right meow.

Ooh! OK, here we go! These are in the order in which they’re applied…

• Drunk Elephant C-Tango Multivitamin Eye Cream
• Tarte Knockout Tingling Treatment
• Kate Somerville Dermal Quench Wrinkle Warrior
• Kate Somerville Anti Bac Acne Clearing Lotion
• Clinique Dramatically Different Moisturizing Cream mixed with a few drops of Fresh Seaberry Moisturizing Face Oil
• Clinique Superdefense Broad Spectrum SPF 20 for Very Dry to Dry Combination Skin

4. How often do strangers mess up your name?

Not too often. “Karen” is pretty basic, but I’ve still gotten my share of creative monikers written on my to-go cups when I’ve ordered a toasty beverage from Starbucks, Cairn, Carrot, Care and Karun (pronounced Ka-roon).

Sometimes I think maybe the baristas do it on purpose to amuse themselves, which is TOTALLY what I would do if I were writing names on cups all day long, ha ha ha!

5. On a scale from “Fabulously festive” to “bah humbug,” how do you feel about the holidays today?

Full-tilt fabulously festive ??. I’m feeling the spirit!

Life Lesson No. 3,546

Girl…if you’re gonna take a selfie with a goat, be prepared for that goat to 1) lick your hair and 2) outshine your bad self.

I guess I should be glad the goat didn’t try to eat my hair? After all, my hair did smell a little like bacon and Cheetos, so I wouldn’t have blamed her had she tried, ha ha! She (the goat) lives on a Christmas tree farm in town. We visited it yesterday, not to get our tree yet, because we’re doing that next weekend, but because I wanted to take a family selfie for the holidays, and it was the closet Christmassy-looking place nearby. #keepingitreal

So, yeah, if you live in Novato and saw a lady shamelessly walking around Cousins’ Christmas Trees yesterday with a selfie stick, looking for good lighting, that was yours truly!

Have you put up your tree yet?

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. Have you ever ridden a moped?
2. An instance when you were genuinely shocked?
3. List all of the skin care you’re wearing on your face right meow.
4. How often do strangers mess up your name?
5. On a scale from “Fabulously festive” to “bah humbug,” how do you feel about the holidays today?

Hello, friend! Happy December Caturday ❄️?? to ya.

You know, just when I think I’ve seen it all among the pantheon of makeup tips and now it’s just the same bevy of basic tips recycled and repackaged for the quadrillionth time and I stop expecting to ever see anybody ever add anything new to the beauty news cycle, ever, I stumble upon something I’ve never tried before, and sometimes it rocks my world.

Two words: reverse foundation.

It’s a new (I think) base technique, and I gave it a try for the first time the other day. It’s where you start by applying cream products to your skin first while it’s bare (contour, if you wear it, blush and then highlighter), let them set, and then do a sheer foundation on top.

Girl, it is game-changing.

Blowing my mind right now

The idea is that by layering the foundation on top of the contour/blush/highlighter products, everything blends together so seamlessly and naturally that it looks like you’re wearing the perfect amount of makeup. I tried it and took pics the other day, and I think the subtlety of the effect gets a little lost in photographs, but it looks really, really good in real life, especially outdoors in full sun.

Try it sometime!

I’ve been even more into “real life” makeup than usual lately because of a late-night vortex I got sucked into on Facebook called Celebrity Close-Up. It’s a page that posts zoomed-in pics of celebs wearing makeup, and OH, MY GOSH, it’s a revelation. I mean, I take a lot of closeup pics of myself for the blog, and I’m know that many things can influence the way a particular look will look in real life, like the direction of the light source, the color temperature of the lighting, the finishes you’re wearing, the makeup brands themselves, how much water you’ve been drinking, and the techniques and tools you’re using, and the same looks can look cake-y one minute and natural the next, but to see celebs without any filtering or airbrushing is pretty eye-opening.

I have to say that whoever is handling Kiera Knightly’s, Lupita Nyong’o’s and Kristen Stewart’s makeup is a freaking genius (hmm, I wonder if it’s Lisa Eldgridge’s work?), because up close all of them are wearing breathtaking full-coverage makeup, but it doesn’t look heavy at all.

On that note, this weekend’s reading…

• This post talks about some of the different approaches to natural-looking, or “no-makeup,” makeup, including this year’s new-ish “boy beat” trend.

  First, what’s the trend and who defines it? And if you can’t see a “no-makeup” makeup product on your skin, does that mean the product is doing what it’s supposed to do?? I’m so confused…

• One of the biggest beauty trends right now is vegan makeup, and it’s poised to blow up into a $20.8 billion business by 2025.

• Toddlers: the newest market for makeup. Stila’s former chief product development officer just launched a new makeup line called Petite ‘N Pretty for girls as young as four years old.

  About this, part of me thinks, “It’s all in good fun, Karen. TAKE A CHILL PILL,” because my mom let me have Lip Smackers when I was a kid, but another part of me is also super uncomfortable with the idea of kids being shown that they need to do things to their faces.

• Cats in literature? It’s a long tail… (Badum-tss!)
• This writer decided to find out what would happen if all of the makeup she had to work with was food, and yes, in case you were wondering, there *was* a dry spaghetti noodle involved.
• A breakdown of how moisturizers work
• Fave read of the week: The Joy of having a bare face
• I’m sorry I had to subject you to this, but I can’t be the only person haunted by this MAC brush manicure.
• This 39-year-old cat lover became a millionaire by inventing a contraption that potty trains cats.

This dude makes udon noodles from scratch while he hangs out with his cats!

Modern day cat ladies tend to the kitties that live in the ruins of Rome.

Ooh, I wanna try this.

And I want to try this too (I’m a little obsessed with Pixiwoo at the moment).

OK, now I’m off to go wash my brushes because I haven’t done a deep clean in weeks. I’ve just been wiping the same ones off on a paper towel and hoping for the best. #keepingitreal!

Man, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do to make it through the day, you know? LOL! ?

You have a good weekend, OK?

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 five more or less random questions I’ve been posting on this blog every Monday morning for the past quadrillion years (since 2007). I love reading your answers, and it helps me get my week off to a good start. ?

1. Topknot or blowout?

Blowout…but only if someone else does it for me!

2. Have you ever tried doing soap brows?

No, but I really, really want to! I keep meaning to get a bar of glycerine soap whenever I go to Target, but I keep forgetting. I love the brushed-up brow look.

3. Coldest place you’ve ever visited?

Um…Lake Tahoe? In general, I try to stay away from the cold because I’m a weather wimp.

4. Have you ever grown out your armpit hair?

Nope! I don’t think I’ve ever seen my ‘pits in their natural state. I started shaving them right when I started growing body hair.

5. Do you have anything (charms, necklaces, etc.) hanging from your rear-view mirror?

I vaguely recall hanging my college graduation tassel from the rear-view mirror of my old red Honda Civic (nicknamed “Claude”) way back when, but I can’t remember where it went!

My parents adopted that car after I got a new one about a decade ago. In the intervening years, it was broken into a couple times, got stolen, then was lost for a year, then was found by the police (I KNOW!) and returned to my parents.

Now they keep it around as a backup car.

Somewhere along the way, that graduation tassel disappeared somewhere.

So I ended up not getting any Spanx leggings on Black Friday…

But they’re still on my Christmas list. After being brutally honest with myself about my closet — and the huge stack of black leggings I currently own — I decided it would be wiser to use my clothing budget on some affordable dresses at LOFT (50% off sale!), which I’ll be able to dress up or down. Plus, THEY’RE NOT PANTS. Ha ha ha!

Did you end up getting anything on Black Friday? Or do you plan to get something on Cyber Monday today?

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. Topknot or blowout?
2. Have you ever tried doing soap brows?
3. Coldest place you’ve ever visited?
4. Have you ever grown out your armpit hair?
5. Do you have anything (charms, necklaces, etc.) hanging from your rear-view mirror?