Just For Fun

Yes, it snows in the Bay Area!

Well…thanks to technology. But it has/does actually snow real snow on occasion (the last time I remember real flakes floating down from the sky was in the ’90s), but you can usually find snow machines and man-made snow playgrounds all over the place.

This one is at the outdoor Marin County Mart mall in the town of Larkspur about 20 minutes north of the Golden Gate Bridge. It’s the same mall that has my favorite SpaceNK store.

Kids and adults can go from sunny, not a cloud in the sky and mid-60s, to running around and falling on their butts in the snow (and throwing snowballs at unsuspecting nearby adults, ahem).

It could have been spring if not for the red velvet bows and the run-in with Santa.

I think Connor got a kick out of the snow… Actually, I’m not sure. She awkwardly walked around on it for a bit, but then she found a random lime sitting on a wooden bench and was more interested in smothering it with hugs and kisses than playing in the snow.

Babies are so weird, man!

While she played in the snow with her dad and clutched her lime, I checked out a nearby spa called International Orange.

They have two locations — the one in Larkspur and one in SF. It’s a full spa, minimalist style, with massages, facials and body treatments, and they carry lots of skin and body care lines I’ve never heard of, like In Fiore, Mommentto, Luzern Labs and Orgaid.

The only thing I recognized was Vitner’s Daughter, which is cool because NEW BRANDS.

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Have you ever purposefully picked up off-brand/fake/faux/knockoff makeup that you knew was nowhere near legit, but you got it anyway?

Different versions of this story have been making the rounds over the past few months. I saw one recently in Allure. It was a story about people who hunt down people who sell counterfeit makeup in the United States, and how companies like Estée Lauder have teams of private investigators who work on sting operations to shut down the fake makeup black market.

Counterfeit makeup is big business. In Los Angeles, there’s a well-known place called Santee Alley, where people will go and visit the small shops to buy knockoff Too Faced, Urban Decay, MAC — you name it — palettes from almost every popular line you can imagine.

I’ve never purposefully purchased counterfeit beauty products, but I did accidentally get some fake makeup years ago. It was BECCA, back before they were a mega brand, and back when they were only carried in hard-to-find corners of the world, like the small counter at Neiman Marcus in SF or the Pure Beauty store (do those even still exist?).

They used to do limited edition seasonal makeup collection launches, and they had a dual-ended eye liner called Cabrera, from the 2012 Balearic Love collection, which was so, so good!

One side had purplish bronze, and the other had a beautiful warm golden bronze, and they were painfully pretty.

After I finished mine, I looked for another one online, and the only place I could find it was Amazon, so I bought four (!) pencils from an Amazon seller at a too-good-to-be-true price, thinking I’d be set for life.

Nope.

Right away, I noticed something was off. The pencils had very little pigment, refused to stay on my water lines, and they made my eyes water, even when I only wore them on my lash lines — things that never happened before with the original Cabrera I fell in love with.

I should’ve thrown them out right then and there, but I didn’t want to feel like I’d wasted my money (the third-party Amazon seller didn’t take returns), so I used them a few more times before accepting that I’d been taken and tossed them out.

I’m not interested in knockoffs now, but I think I might have been as a kid, when I was a naive, trusting teen with very little spending money. I could see myself having been REALLY tempted by a deeply discounted counterfeit UD Naked Palette. Like, if I were walking home one day and came across a card table on a corner covered with identical “Urrrban Decay Palettes” for $10 each? Hell, yeah, here’s my lunch money!

But now? Nuh uh. There’s too much risk.

How about you? You can say “picked up” instead of “purchased,” and go anon on this if you want. Have you ever purposefully “picked up” counterfeit makeup? Inquiring minds want to know.

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

So…what is the Monday Poll?

Well, it isn’t exactly a poll. It’s more of a constantly evolving (devolving?), somewhat random list of questions I’ve been putting out to readers every Monday morning for the past 10 (!) years. (It’s like a kickstart for your brain.) I’ve always enjoyed reading your answers in the comments, and I hope you enjoy reading mine.

1. Do you prefer matte or shiny liquid liners?

With liquid liners, I like a little bit of shine. I leave the mattes to the gels.

2. Do you swear in front of your parents?

Only when I’m surprised or really angry. And it’s always a little embarrassing, but they don’t even acknowledge it.

3. What’s a movie you quote from?

Oh, The Godfather. “Leave the gun, take the cannoli.”

4. Have you ever felt like the odd person out?

All the time, and lately it seems to be happening a lot. It happens whenever I go to mom group events, but I keep going in the hope that I’ll make it into one of the cliques.

5. What would you shout from the rooftops today?

I’M NOT DONE CHRISTMAS SHOPPING, BUT I’D REALLY LIKE TO BE DONE VERY SOON!!!

Happy Monday

It’s well documented that I’m a grumpy grump in the morning, but I’ve been doing this thing lately where I force myself to smile, even if I’m not feeling 100% and it seems forced and fake, because you know that old saying, “Fake it till you make it”? In some ways that’s very true.

So, I’ll see somebody walking toward me or a stranger or Tabs, because Tabs smiles too, and I’ll flash this big, classic smile, and most of the time I’ll get a great big genuine smile in return.

It’s weird, but I swear it actually works. 🙂

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

P.S. Here are the questions to copy and paste:

1. Do you prefer matte or shiny liquid liners?
2. Do you swear in front of your parents?
3. What’s a movie you quote from?
4. Have you ever felt like the odd person out?
5. What would you shout from the rooftops today?

When Pantone declares that Ultra Violet is the new color of the year for 2018, the only thing to do is rush out and buy a Prince shirt from Target.

RIGHT?!

Between the Pantone announcement and Raspberry Beret, I took this as a sign from the universe that it was time for me to own a Purple Rain tee.

The shirts run small, so I got a large, assuming it would shrink a little. I wanted a slightly baggy fit. (They’re also available online!)

So the Target here in Novato is usually empty early on Friday afternoon, but with the holidays coming, everyone and their poodle was there…

On my official list was boring stuff I needed for the house (sponges, rubber gloves, laundry detergent), but ya know, it’s easy to get sidetracked in the beauty section, ‘specially when there’s a sale.

Ruchita, one of the gals who visits the blog (Say hi to her in the comments sometime! She’s super nice and assists many, many cute kittehs.), mentioned that I really need to try Espresso cream shadow by Revlon, which just so happens to be on sale…

I tried a few of the Revlon shimmer cream shadows a while back. They’re a lot like the MAC Paint Pots, but I haven’t tried any of the mattes, so I grabbed Espresso and Swiss Chocolate.

Also, not that I need another mascara (she said for the one zillionth time), but my makeup artist friend Vanessa Haro raves about $9 L’Oréal Voluminous Lash Paradise, so I grabbed a tube…

FYI, one can easily spend an obnoxious amount of time debating with herself whether to get Black Noir or Blackest Black mascara.

In the end, Blackest Black won the debate.

Fun fact: did you know that losing hair ties to the Black Hole of Things Never to Be Found Again is not just a grown lady thing?! Toddlers are afflicted by this condition as well.

I got Connor a pack of colorful Goody Hair ties for her ponytails not too long ago, and they’ve all disappeared.

Sometimes I find one in the car, on the bathroom floor or under a cushion on the couch, but there were A LOT in that package when it started… I picked up a replacement pack.

Connor also picked out some new bows and tried on some cat ears for fun.

Before we left the beauty aisles, we got a wonderful surprise. We bumped into an MBB reader named Sharaz! She was doing a bit of beauty shopping for herself and was nice enough to say hi. 🙂 Thank you, Sharaz. It was great meeting you!

I’m so excited about my beauty loot! I can’t wait to wear Revlon Espresso this weekend.

But before that, let’s do some Saturday surfing. 🙂

Here are the stories that caught my eye this week…

• I thought this piece in the New York Times by author Ashton Applewhite was very thought-provoking:
  

  “Appearance matters. Adornment pleases. But society’s obsession with the way women look is less about beauty than about obedience to a punishing external standard — and power. When women compete to ‘stay young,’ we collude in our own dis-empowerment. When we rank other women by age, we reinforce ageism, sexism, lookism and patriarchy. What else we can we all agree on? This is one bad bargain. It sets us up to fail.”

• How makeup is currently an integral part of the performance aspect of women’s wrestling.
• If you’re a woman working in science, the L’Oréal USA For Women in Science fellowship program annually awards $60,000 grants to five postdoctoral scientists for their contributions each year to science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), and for their commitment to serving as role models for younger generations.

  The application period is open now and runs through February 2nd, 2018.

• Tabs and I would love to attend this cat party and see you there, so bring your cat and something to share!
• Vantablack is the truest, darkest black in the world. Now, if someone could only figure out a way to replicate it in a Chanel Stylo Yeux liner…
• Soon you might be able to try on all of the lipsticks at your favorite beauty store by tapping the screen on your phone.
• Another big beauty brand just bought an independent line. Unilever purchased Sundial Brands (they make Nubian Heritage, Shea Moisture, and Madam C. J. Walker), the largest black-owned beauty business in the United States.
• Just in case you were looking for a $10,000 hair dryer…
• The best under-eye color correctors and how to use them

I can’t get enough of Alissa Ashley’s videos. She’s REALLY GOOD at describing the “why” behind her techniques, and it’s very helpful. I learned a few new tricks from this tutorial for brown smoky hooded eyes.

Cassey is one of my favorite fitness instructors. She thoroughly explains everything, and her upbeat personality really helps get me through those last reps.

This stretching video isn’t super intense, but I’ve been trying to work on my flexibility (I can’t stretch for sh*t, man!), and it’s been helpful. I do it once a day, usually early in the morning.

Take me back to 1992! I heard this on 102.1 (the Bay Area’s throwback hip-hop station!) yesterday, and I’m FEELING IT.

OK, friend, now that I’ve show you mine, you have to show me yours. 🙂 Tell me about your most recent beauty run. Did you find anything good this week?

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

So…what is the Monday Poll?

Well, it isn’t exactly a poll. It’s more of a constantly evolving (devolving?), somewhat random list of questions I’ve been putting out to readers every Monday morning for the past 10 (!) years. (It’s like a kickstart for your brain.) I’ve always enjoyed reading your answers in the comments, and I hope you enjoy reading mine.

1. Have you ever built a gingerbread house? (And do you like ginger flavor?)

I’ve never had the opportunity to make one on my own, but I think if I did, it would be obnoxiously colorful, with lots of colorful sprinkles and gumdrops. 🙂

I would also make flower designs on the roof and the door, and I’d probably do some fancy landscape design, too.

As for the taste of ginger, I like it when it’s sweet, like in gingerbread cookies, gingerbread lattes from Starbucks (OMG, so good) and candied ginger, but that’s about it.

If it’s, like, savory ginger in a dinner dish, I don’t like it.

2. When you want to get cozy, what do you wear?

The softest, warmest, most comfortable thing in my closet, which happens to be a black and red lumberjack Charter Club robe I got from Macy’s on Black Friday.

I ordered it online, and I’ve pretty much been wearing it 24/7 since it got here last Wednesday. I just opened the box, put it on, and now I can’t even be bothered to take it off, LOL!

I went out into the front yard at like 2 o’clock one afternoon to throw away some garbage, and my neighbor saw me wearing this robe. I was like, “Hey, how are ya? Don’t mind me… Just wearin’ my robe…”

3. What year would you visit in your hot tub time machine?

This is gonna sound crazy… It even sounds crazy as I’m contemplating it, but I would go back to March 2016 right after Connor was born.

I would not want to relive the whole not-getting-any-sleep thing, but I just want to hold her again as a tiny little infant, and hold her tiny little hands and tiny feet and see that tiny wrinkly face for a few minutes/few hours.

Then I’d go back to the spring of 1998, right before I finished college and what felt like five long years of school. That was such a happy time in my life… It was right before the real world kind of hit me.

It was an El Niño year, and it rained a lot. I remember not wanting it to rain on my birthday in June because we wanted to get dressed up and go out on the town in Sacramento, which we did!

4. What are your thoughts on beauty pageants?

I liked watching them when I was little. I liked seeing the beautiful women in their gowns, but I think the concept is becoming more and more outdated.

But, you know, if they help someone get a scholarship or help them get an education, and I can see how they help you develop poise and public speaking skills, so I can see the positive aspects.

Having a contest just based on your outward looks, though, makes me uncomfortable, because I don’t think that’s a message I would want to promote, but if it’s something that moms can do with their daughters, and sisters can do together, or friends can do together, and it’s a positive thing where it’s not mostly just men leering at women, then why not? I mean, I know I need help with my posture…

5. If you were a member of the royal family, do you think you could hang?

Man, I would be that one person on the balcony that they’d always put to the side and then crop out of the pictures because I’d be rolling my eyes and sticking my tongue out…

I just know that they have a lot of rules and, like, etiquette, and I would have a problem with that because I don’t like being told what to do.

I’d be the stain upon the family, but I’d have fun! 🙂

Happy Monday

I’ve been thinking about this thing I read about… I don’t remember where, sorry. It was probably while scrolling through my phone in the middle of the night. It was about how your environment doesn’t control you; you’re in control of your environment, which basically means, for example, that if your room is a mess and it’s driving you nuts, you have the power to exert your will over the room.

The room isn’t telling you what to do. It’s not saying, “Hey, you have to keep me messy.” You can clean it up, which I know sounds simple, but I think it’s a good reminder, and not just for housework, but for things in your life that you might not be happy about.

Even though you can’t change everything overnight, you can take little steps to get control of your environment.

I, for instance, am gonna exert my will on these dirty makeup brushes this afternoon. 🙂 Have a great week.

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

P.S. Here are the questions to copy and paste:

1. Have you ever built a gingerbread house? (And do you like ginger flavor?)
2. When you want to get cozy, what do you wear?
3. What year would you visit in your hot tub time machine?
4. What are your thoughts on beauty pageants?
5. If you were a member of the royal family, do you think you could hang?