Hair

Have You Ever Had a Mullet?

June 5th, 2019 by Karen 16 Comments

everyday soft glam makekup tutorial k and c — Make the mullet great again!

For the record, I’m not anti-mullet. In fact, I have a deep abiding love and appreciation for Connor Claire’s baby mullet!

I’ve also had a mullet before, but it was unintentional. A stylist at a froufrou San Francisco salon I used to go to “razored” my hair a little too enthusiastically once, so rather than leaving with “J. Lo’s latest hair” (which was how the stylist sold me on the idea), I left with steep, shaggy, disconnected layers — or, in plain-speak, one hell of a mullet.

I’ve seen mullets that work on people, but…this one did not work on me.

My hair’s wavy on the top layers and straight underneath, so the top parts puffed up and radiated outward like a bowl cut that took a very, very wrong turn, and the straight parts underneath kept flat. The only way I could wear my hair down and have it look halfway decent was to straighten it out, and even then I still looked like a Filipino Carol Brady impersonator. For months I wore my hair up in a ponytail.

Was it the worst haircut I’ve ever had? Naw, but that unintentional mullet is definitely up there. Easily top 5 of all the bad ones.

How about you? Have you ever had a mullet?

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

Your Discontinued Faves?

May 30th, 2019 by Karen 24 Comments

Contrary to popular belief, the most powerful magic words are not “abracadabra” or “alakazam.”

No, the most powerful magic words are “fifty percent off.”

I found my favorite foaming co-wash slashed to half price at Ulta last weekend. Unfortunately, as I celebrated with a well-placed booty pop, I realized — OH, NO! — that they were on the same shelf where they keep the soon-to-be discontinued products.

As you know, I’ve been trying to embrace the Marie Kondo life, so I haven’t been hoarding beauty backups as of late, but girl…I’ve gone through three of these bottles in the last six months, so I know they’ll get used.

So…I got the last three bottles on the shelf. 🤭

What are your discontinued faves?

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

How Often Do You Use Heat to Style Your Hair?

May 29th, 2019 by Karen 33 Comments

Hmm… A few days a week? I use a wide-barrel curling iron or a flat iron for a few seconds on very few pieces of hair to create some waves on my outer layers.

And then once or twice a month I’ll bust out ye olde big guns (the T3) and use it on low heat with a diffuser to lock in some waves, or on my roots if it’s chilly outside and I can’t bear to have wet roots. But I generally try to use heat styling as infrequently as possible, because experience has taught me that it, or at least the way I do it if I have my druthers, damages my hair more than anything else.

How about you? How often do you use heat to style your hair?

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

Power Polish

May 24th, 2019 by Karen 20 Comments

orbeez spa — This is totally a thing. (Ooh! — the colorful little beads look like boba.)

Need some faux flowers for a crafts project? How about an oversized LED flamingo? If you need something craftsy or DIY, check out Michaels, the combination craft supply store/inter-dimensional portal to an alternate reality where times as we know it does not exist.

Be warned, though: 5 minutes in a Michaels is like 8 hours in the outside world. In fact, after 15 minutes in a Michaels store…you may never actually leave; however, this danger is offset by all the weird treasures, including this children’s foot spa…

What, exactly, is so taxing to the feet of little children that they need a Calgon moment? 😂

Heck, though, if I were 8, I’d probably want one too…

GO SCIENCE

After a little googling, it turns out that the “Orbeez” in the name, “Orbeez Foot Spa,” refers to the colorful beads, and they’re a thing kids play with these days (who knew?).

The actual chemistry behind them is pretty cool. The beads are made from a super absorbent polymer, and when you add water, they grow from 100-300 times their original size.

I bet they do help tired arches, but there’s absolutely no freakin’ way I’m allowing one of these things in my home, because any time tiny, round things get set free in this #toddlerlife, it’s like Pandora’s Box. There’s just no way to ever corral them back into one place again. My three-year-old will go on to finish high school, college, then astronaut training, and I will still be vacuuming Orbeez out of dusty corners. They will most certainly haunt me for my next five lifetimes, and when I come back as a silky, long-haired ragdoll kitty, I’ll be swatting the same damn beads off the couch!

Nail polish as a source of strength?

So, when Connor inevitably asks for a spa pedicure, I’m going to put her feet in a bucket of warm water, stick some flower petals and lemon wedges in it and call it day. And then I’m going to offer up my collection of nail polishes to choose from, which also now includes this gorgeous purple from Chanel.

chanel purple ray swatch day 1 — Two coats of Chanel Purple Ray just after I painted my nails. I’m also wearing Sally Hansen No More Stains Spray-On Base Coat and Essie Platinum Grade Finish Top Coat.

chanel purple ray swatch day 6 — And here it is after six days… Good wear time!

Purple Ray ($28) is equal parts tough, elegant and optimistic (which is basically what I strive for every day of my life, ha!). I mean, that’s not the official PR description, but I think it’s accurate.

For me, nail polish isn’t just nail polish. It’s the beauty equivalent of power posing (power polishing?). Listen, when my nails are done, I feel good, and everyone and everything in my path better watch out!

It’s all about the power pose…

Sure, nail polish is just frosting (what’s inside is the most important stuff), but if looking at pretty polish on your nails reminds you that you’re a bad-@ss, then do it! Say it all day, every day long.

Say it: “I am a bad-@ss.”

And yes, I really do get this worked up from two coats of Purple Ray nail polish!

Waxing philosophic

I’m going to do a fresh mani in just a few, but I gotta sort my hair situation out first. I’m down to the last few spritzes of my beloved Oribe spray wax, so please pause for a second while I shed a perfectly placed glittery tear.

*pause* 😪

oribe flash form finishing spray wax — Lurve this spray by Oribe

Have you jumped on the spray wax train yet? GIRL. Get yourself a ticket. Grab the next ride out! ’cause spray waxes are awesome. I’ve only used the Oribe one, but it’s sooooo good. It’s a flexible finishing product that you spray on your finished style to break up the uniformity of your hair and leave you with softly defined pieces. It also adds shine, smoothness, bounce and lift.
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Skinny Mini

May 23rd, 2019 by Karen 31 Comments

yellow flowers bouquet — For you, my dear.

A bouquet of fresh picked wildflowers for you, my friend, courtesy of the “floral artisans” at the local playground.

Translation: Connor and the other little girl she was playing with ran up and down every hill plucking every yellow flower in sight when we were at the playground the other day, and when I was handed the final bouquet, my first thought was, “Oh, this is so pretty. I wonder how many dogs have pee’d on these flowers.” 😂

Got a few things on my mind today that I wanted to chat with you about, including expanding my makeup knowledge with a couple of new books, and a snazzy styling tool that will forever change the way you see flat irons.

Also, there’s a healthy, yummy, easy chicken recipe at the end that I think everyone — even the pickiest eaters — will love. It’s so good that if Tabs were around, I’m sure he’d try to steal the food off my plate.

Y.U.M.

As I know you know, this last month I was reminded that life is blisteringly (and unfairly) short. To put it mildly, this has lit a fire 🔥 under my @ss, and now I want to learn as much as I can about anything and everything — all of my interests. One of those interests, of course, is makeup.

I mean, I do know a thing or two about it already, but there’s a whole wide world of techniques and history and beauty vocabulary that I’ve yet to discover.

Kevin James Bennett, MUA and outspoken dude

This month I’ve been reading a couple of books that were recommend by makeup artist Kevin James Bennett. He’s an Emmy award-winning MUA and a somewhat controversial presence on social media because he goes for the jugular when it comes to calling out what he sees is wrong about current beauty influencer culture.

makeup artist handbook — Reading is fundamental.

While I don’t have the mental bandwidth to deal with that aspect of his content (again, life is short), I love the technical information he provides on his Instagram and his blog.

He wrote a list of his most-used makeup reference books, and I picked up two of them from Amazon: Color: A Course in Mastering the Art of Mixing Color by Betty Edwards, and The Makeup Artist Handbook by Gretchen Davis and Mindy Hall.

I’ve only been able to skim a few chapters in Color so far, but they were fascinating! The book dives deeply into the art and science of color mixing and explores the vocabulary and theory behind it.

I want to be able to understand the “why” behind which colors “go” best with which colors in makeup, photography and life in general.

color betty edwards — A little obsessed with this cover

The other book, The Makeup Artist Handbook, is like a succinct manual on everything you’d ever need to know and own to do makeup on a production set. It’s written for professionals and working artists in the industry and covers a wide array of things I’ll probably never need to do (like creating a beard! FROM SCRATCH!), but they’re still fun to know.

I think from a casual makeup lover’s standpoint, the chapters on beauty makeup and natural makeup for photography and film are the most useful and helpful, so I can’t wait to dive into that.

Mini flat irons are a thing

Check out this funky little piece of equipment I picked up recently at Ulta. It’s a mini flat iron!

LOOK HOW THIN THE PLATES ARE! They’re so skinny.

beadhead pixie on point — Skinnier than your skinniest pair of skinny jeans (ya know, the ones that make you feel like a sausage in a casing)

I had no idea that mini flat irons were even a thing until I recently looked for different ways to smooth the crazy rogue baby hairs around my hairline (because I know that plucking them isn’t a long-term solution).

They’re typically used to tame very short hairstyles like pixie cuts because the ultra-thinness of the plates lets you get closer to the scalp than a traditional flat iron.

I used it for the first time yesterday, and yeah — you can indeed get close to your roots.

Like, uncomfortably close.

On the one hand, awesome. On the other, I’m deathly afraid I’m going to accidentally burn myself.

It helped to smooth down my baby hairs, though, so that’s a plus. I’ll have to do it a few more times to get into a flow… (If you see me rocking a Disney Princess Band-Aid across my forehead in the next few days, you’ll know what happened.)
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