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. 🌻

The Nail Polish Edition!

1. Matte or glitter finish?

Glitter finish…but I DO NOT look forward to taking it off, since glitter is such a pain to remove, ugh! I have no patience for it.

2. Cream or shimmer?

Cream, please.

3. Would you rather…skip your base coat or skip your top coat?

Skip the base coat. Top coat, at least for me, makes more of a difference in wear time.

4. Nail polish color(s) you wear the most?

Jade and pastel greens, baby blues, teals, purples (all shades!), and nude shades of peach, rosy taupe, pink and beige.

5. Nail polish color(s) you wear the least?

Black, red and orange.

6. When was the last time you had a manicure or a pedicure?

Honestly, I can’t remember. I think it might’ve been the Gel Manicure Incident from 2018?

Geez, that was a while ago!

7. Which fingernails do you usually paint first — the ones on your left, or right hand?

I always use my left hand to paint my right hand nails first, because when I was a teenager I read an article in a magazine (remember those?!) that said you should always start by painting the nails on your non-dominant hand first.

I don’t remember the logic behind it, but I think it had something to do about lessening your chances for smudging.

8. Accent nails — yea or nay?

I used to be a “yea,” but now I’m a “nay.”

9. Have you ever worn press-on/stick-on fake nails?

Actually, I have! They come in handy if you have an event or something to go to and you run out of time to paint your nails.

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. Matte or glitter finish?
2. Cream or shimmer?
3. Would you rather…skip your base coat or skip your top coat?
4. Nail polish color(s) you wear the most?
5. Nail polish color(s) you wear the least?
6. When was the last time you had a manicure or a pedicure?
7. Which fingernails do you usually paint first — the ones on your left or right hand?
8. Accent nails — yea or nay?
9. Have you ever worn press-on/stick-on fake nails?

P.P.S. Hope you’re having a nice day so far. 🤗 How was your Fourth? Camping at Clear Lake was fun. I watched a family of deer foraging wild blackberries by our campsite yesterday morning, and it very nearly brought me to tears.

Hello, friend! Good morning and happy Independence Day to you! Sending major good vibes for a safe, wonderful weekend. The fam and I are about to head off grid for a brief camping trip, and by “off the grid,” I mean that we’re going car camping to Clear Lake about two hours north, and just south of Mendocino Forest. It’ll be just the few of us, masks coming along too, of course. Fun fact: at 2.5 million years old, Clear Lake is the oldest lake in North America.

Whatever you’re doing this weekend, please stay safe, especially if you’re going to be on the road. A nurse friend once told me that her patients awaiting organ transplants, and their loved ones and caregivers, couldn’t help but think about the possibilities around the Fourth of July weekend due to the number of fatal car accidents… That’s life. So please be careful.

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• Get schooled by Bobbi Brown.
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• Meghan Markle’s wedding day makeup artist joins the Tatcha team.
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• Who wants a perfume that smells like 🚀 space? (My answer: ME!)
• This long lost perfume bottle was recently unearthed during a shipwreck excavation.

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

Honestly, so many things…and that makes me wonder what I’m doing now that will make me cringe in the future, ha ha ha!

A couple have been relatively recent, like not washing my hair every day. This was during the phase when my hair was long and caramel brown with blonde streaks, and so to help retain the color and keep it from getting too dry, I would try to see how long I could make it through the week without washing my hair. Some weeks I’d go four or five days without washing it.

On the one hand, this saved me SO MUCH TIME in the morning because I could just do my hair on day one, and then not really have to do it until after I washed it again, so my hair styling time was like one minute in the mornings, which was FANTASTIC.

Also, not having to spend the time in the shower washing and conditioning was great too, but ya know…eventually I just got tired of dealing with an itchy scalp and greasy-feeling roots, and I slowly got back into the habit of washing it every day. This really kicked in when I started working out consistently. Now the thought of having even one-day roots grosses me out.

I also went through a spell where I was wearing full-coverage base every day — primer, foundation, color corrector, concealer, powder, the whole nine yards. It looked great in pics! — but dang, girl…it was WORK. I think at that point I was blocking out at least 45 minutes just to put on makeup.

Now I rarely wear full-coverage base because I can’t tolerating feeling like I’m wearing a ton of stuff on my skin, and the thought of wearing full-coverage all day, every day makes me go YEEOUCH!

And, of course, there were the many questionable beauty decisions I made in the ’90s. The one that haunts me the most is plucking all my eyebrows away!

How about you? What’s something beauty related you used to do that makes you cringe now?

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen