Just For Fun

1. Finding weird, random presents in my purse

Like this ? lemon ?, which mysteriously appeared in my Kate Spade this morning.

2. Weezer’s cover of Africa

I’ve been driving around town a little more than usual this week, and every time I’ve turned on the radio in the car, this song has been playing.

I freakin’ love it! I hear it more now than I heard the O.G. version in the ’80s, LOL.

3. This water bottle

Otherwise known as “My Terrific Temperature-Trusting Carafe.” It’s by a company called Swell, and it keeps drinks hot or cold for a reeeeeeeeeally long time. Easily all day.

I put some TJ’s pink lemonade in it last Saturday (side note: their pink lemonade is the best! Not too sweet, and it’s very lemony.), and it stayed ice cold for nine hours.

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With the whole Fenty effect and the general expansion of available foundations shades happening all over the place, you’d think that finding an exact foundation match would be more commonplace, right? But I’ve still yet to experience it. Right now the closest I can get is the Honey Bronze shade in the various Estée Lauder Double Wear Foundation formulas, but it’s still not an exact, dead-on match for my skin. It leans sliiiightly warm.

Really darn close, though.

I also get close with Fenty 310 (but it’s also a little warm).

I’m guessing that most people aren’t able to find a a perfect, exact foundation match, because people are complex. There’s only one you, after all, and finding an exact match with a product right off the shelf would be like finding a needle in a haystack, right?

But I don’t know…

One of these days, I’d like to try a custom matching service like Lancôme’s, but it’s $88! That’s so pricey, but it might be worth it just to try once.

How about you? Have you ever found a perfect foundation match from a product right off the shelf without having to mix it with anything at all? Inquiring minds want to know.

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

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. How old were you when you got your first cell phone?

OK, I’m dating myself, but I wanna say 24?

Maybe it was 25…

I can’t remember the model or the brand, but it was a husky silver flip phone…and I think it may have had an antenna?! The best thing about it was that I could drop it (and I did, every five minutes) without it breaking.

SERIOUSLY, I dropped that thing 20 times a day, and for years after that whenever I got a new phone, the first thing I’d ask the sales associate at the phone counter was always, “Can it handle being dropped a lot, all the time?” And the salesperson would always look back at me like I was out of my mind. ?

Ha ha ha!

2. Bath bombs, bath oils or bubble baths?

Gimme them bubbles! And light some candles, turn off the lights, and please leave me alone for 30 minutes. Oh, and close the door on your way out, thanks!

3. Is there such a thing as too much glitter?

All signs point to “yes,” although if you’d bumped into me at a rave in 1999 and saw the body glitter on my arms, the glitter in my hair and the glitter on my eyes and lips, my answer would’ve been totally different.

4. I don’t usually leave the house without [FILL IN THE BLANK].

Ugh, so many things. Have a kid, they said. You can be a streamlined mom, they said.

Lies, all of it.

Here goes…

If it’s just me, then my wallet, phone, keys and my personal miscellany, which almost always includes a small bottle of hand sanitizer, baby wipes, a tiny tube of hand cream, Urban Decay lip balm, any number of various lip products, sunglasses, black hair elastics (two at a minimum) and a pen.

If Connor’s with me, then I’ll also have…

• Snacks (to treat hangry-ness)
• Folding silicone travel potty (for emergencies)
• Disposable toilet covers
• One change of clothes for the Coywolf
• Travel packs of various wipes, like sanitizer wipes and baby wipes
• Disposable gloves (um…I’m really grossed out by public restrooms)
• Kleenex
• Travel sippy cup with water

5. Pay yourself a compliment — and no half-@ssed sh*t, either. I wanna see epic!

Karen. KAAAAARRENNNN! You are a much better writer than you give yourself credit for.

C’mon, don’t be like that. You are! You’re creative, write weirdly interesting lists, and you have a knack for making mildly amusing alliterative allegories. You’ve been lucky enough to write daily for more than 10 years, and that’s all kind of amazing, you know? Keep doing the damn thing, girl!

Paws up!

Bet there was a split second when you wondered if the mini emery boards in the pic up top were for your cat(s) or for yourself, huh?

I can see myself delicately holding a tabby paw and buffing away very gently while Tabs reclines on his fainting couch, ha ha ha! These emery boards are actually for, ya know, human nails (sorry to disappoint you), and the reason why I have them nearby is because I’m trying a new thing this week — adding a little fun to everyday, simple tasks. Like filing down my claws with the sweetest emery boards. For some reason seeing those paw prints makes the act a little less tedious, and something about the mini size is just so, so cute to me. Anyway, I figure if I can make the things on my to-do list different and fun in some little way this week, maybe, just maybe, when all those little bits add together, I’ll cumulatively accrue some extra joy. It doesn’t hurt to try, ya know? Plus, it gets me out of my comfort zone a little.

Here’s what’s on my list so far:

• Try a new cold coffee drink.
• Mail a friend a “thinking of you” card with an old picture of us and a poem about friendship.
• Try a new salad recipe with an ingredient I’ve never used before.
• Take a different route on my morning walk with Connor.
• Look for some new pop music and listen to it while I tidy up my desk at the beginning and end of my day.
• Stretch for 10 minutes in the morning.

See, small things.

Oh, I almost forgot the most important thing! I have to track each little thing I do, because seeing it on a list makes it real.

Anywho! Just something to try.

You have a good Monday and a great week, ‘k?

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

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

1. How old were you when you got your first cell phone?
2. Bath bombs, bath oils or bubble baths?
3. Is there such a thing as too much glitter?
4. I don’t usually leave the house without [FILL IN THE BLANK].
5. Pay yourself a compliment — and no half-@ssed sh*t, either. I wanna see epic!

YOU GUYS. The struggle is so real. The other night I opened my purse (a.k.a The Black Hole) to look for a pen so I could take notes in a meeting, but instead of finding a pen…I found five tubes of lipstick.

Five.

Believe it or not, that was actually low for me.

One time when I couldn’t find my car keys, I dumped out my Kate Spade and — I kid you not — half a MAC counter fell out. Funnily enough, all of the lippies were more or less the same nude shade. ?

Even though the rational part of my brain was like, “Dude, this is Rick-sanity. You’re two shakes away from biting off someone’s ear in hand-to-hand combat,” the non-rational part was high-fiving a million little angels.

You feel me.

(Now for a little light reading…)

• Um…can you clear out any space in your makeup drawer? If you’re a Shiseido fan, you might want to! The line is revamping their ENTIRE MAKEUP LINE THIS SEPTEMBER. Rumor has it they’re trying to draw more 20- and 30-somethings to the brand, and the revamp also means that more than 100 products will be retired, so if there’s something you can’t live without, better stock up now before it’s gone baby, gone.
• More proof that people from ye olden times loved makeup and perfume as much as we do — researchers recently found a sarcophagus of an ancient Roman woman from the 3rd century buried with a string of pearls, perfume bottles, a makeup palette and a small jar inscribed with a Latin phrase that means “good luck.”
• Rihanna: musician, makeup visionary, entrepreneur extraordinaire *and* patrol saint of lost luggage!
• Breadstick Bronzer and Spaghetti Sparkle Blush? — Olive Garden faked a makeup palette on social media, and people actually wanted it to be real!
• There are legions of beauty lovers who like to make a Sephora pit stop before hitting up clubs, brunch, power lunches, what have you, and this is what the makeup artists and staffers really think of doing your makeup in the store.
• For your botany moment of the day! — a tropical vine commonly known as the “lipstick plant,” Aeschynanthus radicans gets its name from the flower buds that peek out of dark-colored tubes that look like tubes of bright red lipstick.
• You may have heard about these collagen-building “growth factors”: They were first discovered by two scientists back in the ’50s, and the discovery earned the duo a Nobel Prize in 1986. Here’s what they are, what they do in skin care products, and where they come from.
• —–> Why one woman stopped painting her toenails.
• Hand art is the new nail art!
• —–> My favorite read of the week.
• If you were a teen or a tween in the ’90s, chances are you remember St. Ives Apricot Scrub. Now it’s a fragrance and the rollerball you never knew you needed.

• At Floris, a historic London perfumery that has been around since 1730, you can join the ranks of the royals and create your own scent. Floris created the official perfume for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding — a warm, citrus-y unisex fragrance with notes of bergamot, orange blossom, ginger and green tea.

• Speaking of fragrances, these bees make their own perfumes and carry them around with their legs (!).

  Dude, nature is so freakin’ cool.

• Natural beauty brand Captain Blankenship recently launched in Sephora and Target, and I’m intrigued. The founder, Jana Blankenship, started her line in her kitchen.

A dance from the season 2 finale of a show I’ve been watching lately called Better Things. This family does does this as a graduation surprise for one of the daughters… I would LOVE if someone ever did this for me!

Stuck in my head at the moment…

Goal for the month of August: untie the knots in my upper back. I just tried a few of these stretches, and now I feel like a whole new girl.

Ever since I got my hair chopped, I’ve been on a mission to try some new styles, like this half-up, half-down combo braid/messy bun. It looks easy and totally doable.

So, what lipsticks are you rollin’ with today? It’s Saturday, so I expect no less than three. ?

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen