Just For Fun

Don’t Stop Believing

February 8th, 2008 by Karen 48 Comments

Why is your friendly neighborhood beauty addict so happy in this picture?

A. Because she got her roots highlighted (they had been completely unacceptable and just totally wrong for the past month).

B. Because she’s wearing her new favorite lip gloss, Coach 01 Gardenia, which also happens to fit into her favorite Coach wristlet.

C. Because she heard three of her favorite Journey songs today! — one in the privacy of her own home (Lights), and two IN FRICKIN’ PUBLIC (Oh Sherry in a restaurant and Don’t Stop Believing in a coffee shop).

You can’t deny your love for Journey!

D. All of the above.

What made you smile today?

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

You Must Choose: The Hump Day Edition

February 6th, 2008 by Karen 37 Comments

“My hump, my hump, my lovely lady lumps.”
— From the lyrical masterpiece, “My Humps,” by the Black Eyed Peas

Hmmm, am I the only person on this planet confused by what Fergie’s singing about in this song? She’s talking about her bum, right? Or do these words have a deeper symbolic meaning that only forward-thinking philosophers can truly understand?

The only thing I can say with certainty is Fergie ain’t crooning about 1.) Wednesdays (aka Hump Days) or 2.) dromedaries.

Anyway, in honor of Wednesdays, humps and lumps, here’s today’s edition of YOU MUST CHOOSE!

Would you rather…

1. Have a really great looking bum (it’s so great planets could revolve around it and poets would write odes to it) but have a missing front tooth (which you can’t replace — you’re a straight up jack o’ lantern, yo).

2. Have a really great looking bum (and both your front teeth) but be cursed with a lifetime full of ill-fitting, terribly uncomfortable bras?

YOU MUST CHOOSE!

You know what to do.

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

You Must Choose: The Mini Monday Edition

February 4th, 2008 by Karen 27 Comments

Hallelujah, it’s a makeup miracle! For the next three years you are given every limited edition color collection from (insert your favorite makeup line here) for FREE. MAC Fafi? Free. Heatherette? Gratis. Every single dreamy piece of limited edition goodness for the next three years, free!

However… you can’t get your hot little hands on any of it unless you commit to EITHER

1. Forgoing all forms of hair removal for the next three years. No plucking, shaving, waxing, tweezing, threading, nada. You might as well legally change your name to Yeti, already, because you’re gonna be one hairy mo’ fo’.

2. Wearing Renaissance fair gear ALL THE TIME for the next three years. Say goodbye to your Seven Jeans and hello to stylin’ Elizabethan costumes. Going to the gym? Gotta rock the corset. Headed out to the club with your girls? Don’t forget your snood.

What say ye, fair maiden? Will you rock the Ren fair look or go all jungle-style like Chewbaca? YOU MUST CHOOSE! (Please leave your answers in les comments.)

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

The Makeup and Beauty Blog Freak-out

January 28th, 2008 by Karen 104 Comments

I keep seeing these Burger King commercials on TV where they show footage of real people freaking out at the counter after being told the Whopper is no longer for sale. It’s all a prank with hidden cameras done for the commercial, but most of the unwitting victims stare ahead in utter disbelief; others totally flip out, launching into verbal assaults on the poor cashiers who delivered the bad news. It’s as if a major paradigm shift has occurred. I love passionate people, but jeebus, guys, it’s a fast food burger!

Still, it got me thinking…. Is there anything I love so much that losing it would make me freak out like that at a sales counter? I always strive to be nice to customer service folks because I worked in retail for many years (girl, don’t make me bust out my pocket-T folding moves on ya), and I know how it is to be on the other side of a full-fledged customer freak-out. It takes a lot to get me to launch into a Whopper-esque meltdown in front of a sales person. It would have to be the loss of something really frickin’ great to push me over the edge. Perhaps integral to my existence, even.

Such things do exist, however, and without further ado (drumroll, please), here are nine things I would FREAK THE EFF OUT over if a sales person told me, “Sorry, we don’t sell _____ anymore. And neither does anyone else.”

In no particular order whatsoever:

Saucony Grid running shoes
The T3 hair dryer
Strawberry Frosted Pop Tarts
DKNY bras (Side note: this would be a freak-out of epic proportions. It’s so hard to find a bra that really fits!)
Dental floss
Toilet paper
Bumble & Bumble hair products
iPods
The holy grail minimal makeup trifecta: MAC 266 Brush, MAC Concrete Eyeshadow, MAC Select Moisturecover Concealer

So what’s on your freak-out list?

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

Beautiful Saturday Obsessions: Terminators and French Skin Care Lines

January 26th, 2008 by Karen 41 Comments

Any day of the week is a great day to obsess over beauty, but for some reason I think it’s just more fun to do on Saturday.

Hard to find French skin care lines…

I really dig French skin care products. Maybe it’s because they’re French; maybe it’s because I can’t understand anything on the labels — who knows? And the harder they are to find, the better!

Nuxe, one of my fave French brands, can be particularly hard to find here in the US. If you read beauty magazines, you’ve probably seen ads for Nuxe’s Huile Prodigieuse Multi Usage Dry Oil before. It hit the beauty scene a few years ago.

Nuxe specializes in using plant-based ingredients and aromatherapy in their products. They avoid compounds derived from animals, mineral oils and synthetic coloring agents. Oh, and their stuff generally smells really, really great, which is what drew me to the line in the first place.

There are only three stores in the San Francisco Bay Area that carry the line, and I’m lucky one of those stores, Beauty Expo in San Rafael, is just a hop, skip and a jump away. If you’d like to try the brand but haven’t been able to find it locally, Nuxe products are also available online from Beautyhabit.com.

Your girl has tried several Nuxe products, and two of my favorites have been Reve de Miel Ultra Comfortable Body Cream ($31) and Eau Demaquillante Cleansing Water ($22).

Reve de Miel is an all-over body moisturizer for dry, sensitive skin, chock-full of soothing and repairing botanicals like fir honey and macadamia nut oil. It moisturizes like a pro (on par with one of my holy grail moisturizers, Elizabeth Arden 8-Hour cream) and has a light honey scent. I cannot stand moisturizers that leave a greasy film, and Reve de Miel doesn’t. If you like Elizabeth Arden 8-Hour cream but don’t care for the herbal smell, consider Reve de Miel a potential alternative.

My bathroom here at home has a tiled floor that gets freezing cold in winter. The cold radiates up through the bath mat and fills the room. It can even get cold enough to discourage me from undressing to wash my neck before bed, so discovering micellar cleansing water a few months ago really helped remedy the neck washing situation. Unfortunately, I finally finished my bottle of Darphin Micellar Cleansing Water and just haven’t brought myself to pay the $50 again.

Nuxe’s own version of micellar cleansing water, Eau Demaquillante, works just as well as Darphin’s and costs less than half as much ($22 vs. $50). With it, I soak a cotton pad in the morning and night and quickly wash my neck and decollete. It lets me keep warm and toasty in my bathrobe at the same time, yay!

Eau Demaquillante is alcohol free and doesn’t leave my skin feeling dry or tight. It’s supposed to be fragrance free, but I detect a faint floral scent, which makes sense since it contains floral waters (rose, cornflower and lime blossom) and green tea. If my eyes look tired and puffy, I’ll lightly press a cotton pad drenched in Eau Demaquillante against them. It’s a refreshing and soothing treat.

Kitty wigs…

Just like former Poison frontman Bret Michaels (I swear that man wears a weave), your cat can have long flowing locks. Behold: Kitty Wigs, a Web site dedicated to coifing your cat in stylish wigs.

Why am I compelled to place a pink wig on a cat? I don’t know. First off, I don’t own a cat. Second, I usually can’t stand over-accessorized animals (but a tastefully bejeweled collar is fine). I’m sure there exists some deep seeded psychological explanation for this, but for now it eludes me.

Current lemming list…

Lemming \LEM-ing\. verb:
A slang term frequently used on beauty Web site and beauty blogs.
1. To desire.
2. To want to purchase.

Example: “I am lemming a tube of Viva Glam V lipstick.”

What I’m lemming right now:

Everything from the NARS spring Shanghi Lily color collection, especially…
Dolce Vita Lipgloss ($23)
Alhambra Duo Eyeshadow ($31)
Belle de Jour Velvet Matte Pencil ($23)

Terminators + eyeliner = awesomeness!

I am a not-so-closeted sci-fi geek, and one of my favorite sci-fi movie franchises of all time is Terminator. On Monday nights there’s a new show on TV, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and it’s frickin’ fantastic (of course, I also like cats with pink wigs). Cameron, one of the “good” Terminators, is played by actress Summer Glau.

Sure, the show has the usual save-the-world-from-destructive-evil-robots-who-want-to-enslave-humanity schtick, but last Monday’s episode also showed Cameron trying to perfect the art of pencil eyeliner (it’s hard for robots too, yo). She carries around a compact that I swear looks like Stila Convertible Color.

Looks like there’s a break in the rain, so I’m off to the gym and to run some errands. Later I’ll hit the mall to “just look at” the Nars spring color collection. I have a feeling, though, I’ll be adopting a tube of Dolce Vita lipgloss very soon. 🙂

Hope you are having a superb weekend so far!

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen