Sweet Stuff

Remember the bag of candy you accumulated on Halloween...and then counted, sorted, and hoarded? This bowl of loot belongs to Julia's sweet daughter, and man, it was hard to not grab it from her and run out of their house screaming "Mine, it's mine now, muahahahah!". But I controlled myself.

I have a problem with sweets. Some people can eat one small piece of candy a day and feel satisfied. Some people can eat sweets every now and then and they are all good. I want something sweet after breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I want sweets after I have had sweets. No meal is really complete for me unless there is ice cream after it. Sigh. It isn't good.


Here is the cake we ate at Nina's wedding shower. I didn't make it, but I frosted it. Doesn't it look like it has about two inches of frosting on the side? Because, really, what good is cake without A LOT of frosting? And a side of ice cream?

This posting isn't about a lot...just how good candy and cake and cookies and brownies and chocolate mousse and cheesecake and fudge are...and how I want them.

I want them bad.

I had hair yesterday...it's gone today...

Something I REALLY, REALLY don't like...my haircut I got yesterday. My hair was about 2 inches below my ears. There were long ringlets and little ringlets. There was volume. I liked to make it big.

And now it is about as long as the middle of my ears. The long ringlets are all gone...and the short ringlets are all gone. I can't make it big, because there isn't enough of it. When I try to style it curly, it curls up and up so that I have weird wispy curls all around the crown of my head, like a thirties flapper with a really bad hair-do.

I DON'T WANT TO BE A THIRTIES STYLE FLAPPER WITH A REALLY BAD HAIR-DO!!!!!!!

So now I am back to drying it straight, and that will have to do while I grow it back for the next three months. But that curly hair was making me feel good, and now my confidence, happiness, and peace of mind have taken a bad blow.

Wow, hair is powerful. My power is gone...I blame Delilah at the hair salon (Not her real name, but I am not going to out her online. But I am going to call the salon and complain. Already got the manager's name.) Damn you Delilah!

It's been a long time! How are you?

So, the healing process...it's a killer. Times when you think you are all alone, times when you feel great and like you're all better, times when you couldn't be lower. And really, if you're lucky like me, you're not alone, because you have awesome friends that love you and care about you. And the great times and the crappy times both come and go, and slowly, hopefully, the crappy times get fewer and the great times get more frequent.

It's a cycle. I am in the crappy part again.

BUT, I am skinnier, and my hair is longer and curlier, and I have a new tattoo. I love my third graders and I am doing a lot of cleaning and purging in my flat. My cats are very happy, because that guy that didn't like them isn't around anymore, and I am available more often to give them warm places to sit. So there are some good parts.



I am posting pictures of my trip to the Alameda Antiques Fair. Nothing related to beauty products happened, except I should have worn more sunscreen and I had to obsessively keep my scarf on my neck because the tattoo was less than a day old. But it was fun and part of the healing process. Yea.

That's all for now...I hope you're doing well!

I Heart New York

I took my depressed, grumpy, crying, cranky, sensitive self to New York (actually, New York via New Jersey) for a few days. Thank you to Hannah, for setting up the futon in the basement for me...and driving me around...and listening to me moan about my crapped out love life! Also, thank you to Tracey, who walked around SoHo and shared train rides with me and, yes, listened to me moan about my crapped out love life. Thank goodness for friends!

I went to several fun places on the trip. Even though I was feeling pretty miserable, New York City got into me and was a good distraction. I love that place! My dream is to have a little one-bedroom on the West Side that I can go to whenever the urge strikes. A girl can wish....

I ate lunch at Little Owl Restaurant with Tracey. There was an unusual amount of people gathering across the street and taking pictures...over and over again...it turns out the building was the exterior shot of Monica, Rachel, Joey, and Chandler's building on "Friends". So funny...people really wanted to see it!I ate a salad and french fries...I was still in my "not-eating-I-am-too-sad" phase then.

We also went to Purl and Purl Patchwork, where I ogled lots of awesome fabrics and Tracey signed up for a sewing class. The shops were soooooooo tiny, but totally neat and cute and, if you are into fabric and yarn, very yummy.
And I got to go to ABC Carpet, a home goods store I have been dying to see for a long time. It is like the mom of Anthropologie. It is huge, taking up an incredible chunk of NYC real estate, with multiple floors and another store across the street. Full of jewelry, clothes, bedding, rugs, housewares, lighting...ooooo, me likey.
Hannah and I got caught in a big thunderstorm one night, where in the space of five minutes all the thousands of people walking, eating, drinking, chatting and skateboarding on the streets disappeared into the thousands of cabs that magically materialized...we couldn't get one to save our lives, so we walked back to the car and got nice and soaked. It was fun, though.

More to come...nothing here is about beauty products. Hmmm. I'll work on that.

And if anyone can tell me how to make the photos next to each other here, I'd love to hear it!

I must like something, right?

It is hard right now to think of things, people, places, or anything I like. But I am going to force myself to list some now, because I could easily start slipping into a very dark, bad place from where I wouldn't be able to get out. How the heck to people recover from this break-up/betrayal shit?!?! I have a whole new respect for a big group of people out there.

Anyway, I like...

*tea
*soft tissues like Puffs Plus
*school supplies
*my bed
*not having to take off my make-up because I cry it off--handy!
*my iPod Nano
*books by Susan Isaacs
*my cats, who love this whole situation because I am around all the time, and that means a warm lap is around all the time

Hope everyone is good and not looking for a lot of beauty advice on this site right now! Try BellaSugar is you want some stuff about make-up...that is a fun site, part of the PopSugar.com group.

Happy day.

Stormy Weather

Stuff I don't like: Coming home from my vacation, where I did get sunburn and had a bad tummy experience, and finding out that my boyfriend had been dating online for a couple months and had cheated on me while I was gone. Nope, don't like it, not one bit.

So, for right now, there are no products I am enjoying, no ice cream that I can rave about (I can't seem to eat this time around), and nothing really seems to be good. I know that at some point I will like things again; be prepared for some lackluster postings in the meanwhile, though.

And if you want to share your story of cheaters and the lies and badness they spread around so easily, post a comment and maybe I can figure out how to copy some of them onto the blog.

But I did learn a little more conversational Spanish.

Adios

Off to Mexico I go! When I come back, I will speak Spanish fluently, I'll have a nice golden tan, and a wonderful, perfect maid-of-honor dress will have magically appeared in my closet. And I will have toned my upper arms, thighs, and tummy while enjoying lots of delicious Mexican foods.

Really, I hope I learn some conversational Spanish, don't get sunburned, and that my famously sensitive tummy handles all the newness coming at it. An OK dress is coming in the mail from Nordstrom, ordered in two sizes so I can do that trying on here when I get back.

Time to pack!

Have a happy two weeks!

Love,
Christina

Messy

This is what the top of my little cabinet in the bathroom looks like. It is a small example of what the rest of the house looks like. I am out of control, people!


I just really, really don't want to clean. Today I had some sort of flu-y stomach thing, so I sat around all day, sleeping or reading or eating broth. Yes, I ate broth and thought it was so yummy. No ice cream for me right now.

Anyway, that stuff up there...it's good. The little blue pot is the nighttime lip balm I'm into. It is nice and creamy and soothing. Not sure what makes it nighttime specifically, except that it doesn't have sunscreen. And the white jar is my Eucerin Redness Relief night cream. I do think it actually works and reduced the redness that I tend to get on my cheeks and nose. There's the nail polish base coat I wrote about, and a nice smelling Lush powder. See, I use what I recommend!

That cracked, skanky looking powder container is my bare minerals foundation. I love this stuff. It is good for dry skin and oily skin and normal skin. It is easy to apply. It makes your skin look very nice and even. And a container lasts a long time. The one problem I have is that I drop the lid a lot and it always cracks. Anyhoo, you can get this stuff from an infomercial on tv...you've probably seen them...or at Sephora or a bare minerals store (Stonestown has one). I really do recommend this foundation to a lot of people; it is gentle and natural looking and does what is says it is going to do. (Are you reading, my friends getting married? It looks good in pictures...)


And here is a picture of Scout...my first child...just for Michaela.
Happy day!

Before being boobed...

Here is the Outlast before the stripper had at me. Isn't Leah the cutest?!

And to address the dryness questions about these all day dealies: I think that you really need to have some moisture underneath when you put them on, or else they feel awful. BUT, it can't be too much or else the color just slides off. So, a little experimentation is called for. Be sure to use the top coat frequently, too, because that makes your lips feel nice and smooth.

An oily make-up remover (baby oil is fine) is needed to get it off if you don't have a stripper handy.

It lasted ALL night...

Last night was Lizzy's bachelorette party. It was lots of fun; it started at a great restaurant, went into some so-so bars, and ended at a strip club. Not a Chippendale's strip club, but a ladies getting half-nekkid strip club. Good times. There were a few stops for things like cupcakes eaten on 16th Street and hailing a cab from the middle of Valencia Street...so we were a bit all over the place, with lots of cosmos and mojitos and beer to keep us going.

I tried out the Cover Girl Outlast All-day Lipcolor last night. I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with the "all-day" lip thingies, because they are often a pain to put on, if you use liner it can get cruddy looking at some point in the wearing, and lots of times the stuff doesn't actually stay on. This stuff did...until it got taken off in a most dramatic and unusual way...see below.Here is my advice for getting this stuff on the right way:
1. Start with--you guessed it--lightly moisturized lips. Put your balm on when you start getting ready, then when it is time for lips blot them until almost all the balm is gone. This lip stuff doesn't stick to really lubed up lips.

2. Use the wand almost like a liner, and outline your lips carefully first with the lipcolor, then fill in the rest. You have to move kind of quickly at this point, because the stuff dries and then it is unmoveable.

3. While the lipcolor is still moist, add some liner on top of the part you already did so it makes a nice even outline...blend it in with the lipcolor as much as you can (the color will be pretty dry now, so it will be hard).

4. Wait a minute or two, and then put on the glossy top coat. Yippee! You won't have to put on color for a long time...you'll use the topcoat every now and then to keep your lips from cracking from dryness and looking super gross.

So, the color stayed on all night. I used a regular gloss on top to keep it moist. And then, when we were in Hustler Club, I was sitting at the stage giving away my dollar bills. One of the girls came up to get a dollar, took it with her mouth from my cleavage, and then gave me a full-on body rub with her boobies...and ended up with a nice pink lip mark on her bra. Which was white. Ha ha! I guess that was the moment the "all-day" part of my Outlast All-day Lipcolor ended.

GOOD TIMES!!

Time Flies!

Wow, I have been very busy. Too busy to write about all the nice things in the beauty world that I like. My house is a mess and right now, at 9:15 on a school night, I am planning lessons for my classroom, and I still need to pack a lunch and put away the mountains of clothes on my bed. Do you ever have those times when you have started several projects and haven't finished any of them, and you continue to take things out of closets and drawers but you don't put anything away, and it all just gets away from you and there is no stopping? Welcome to my crazy, mixed up world. For example, right here on my desk is a lovely little vase with pretty pink flowers from a wedding I went to on Saturday, and sitting right next to them is a can of WD-40. Does that make sense? I think not, yet I am in no hurry to find a better place for the WD-40...it has sort-of become a part of my landscape here.

So, what I like right now:

1. Pink flowers--I bought some pink peonies at Trader Joe's today and they look great. The pink English roses and calla lilies at the wedding were awesome. And the pink pillows I made, that the cats like to shed on.

2. Softlips lip balm. It is in a tube. Kareen inspired me to try it. It's nice, and on sale at Walgreen's. And it does NOT form an occlusive barrier.

3. The mini peanut butter cups from Trader Joe's. Yum.

4. The geranium soap from Pangea. They are an organic and evironmentally sound company that makes lotions and soap and stuff. The soap came in this little cardboard-ish box that has seeds right in the paper. You soak the box and then plant it and then herbs and stuff grow. Neat! The soap smells yummy. I got it at Cost Plus, but I think I have seen the line at natural food stores, too.

5. WD-40. It's handy to have around.

That's all for now. I need to lesson-plan and figure out how much more I cram into the brains of my third graders in three weeks. Summer is coming!!

High Maintenance

I love me some products, and I'm not afraid to use them. I will do my make-up for 45 minutes before going out, combing my eyelashes with a metal comb and lining my eyes with a pencil and then a brush dipped in shadow...I will exfoliate in the shower and then use one moisturizer for the really dry parts (knees and elbows), then use the self-tanner on the rest of me, carefully washing my hands and scrubbing my cuticles (and then moisturizing them, for goodness sake) to get the tanner off, and then walk around nekkid for ten minutes so no tanner strays...I will tweeze something on my brows nearly every day, and I am slightly obsessed with my toes and how the polish looks on them, and I have WAY TOO MANY nail polishes...I am high-maintenance in those ways, and totally fine with it. I love using and trying all that stuff.


For a long time, however, I had low-maintenance hair. It was so short that I could blast it with a hair dryer for three minutes, throw some pomade on, and be done. I could wash it with whatever I wanted, and it never was damaged because I didn't (and don't) color it and I got haircuts so often there was no time for ends to split. I was into all the other stuff, but not into doing my hair.

And then I started the growing out process. Sigh. It's become such a time-consuming obsession. First, I would pounce on any photo I could find of Victoria Beckham, Rihanna, or Katie Holmes, because they all had or have a version of what I was going for, and I would really think I was looking a lot like them. Then I passed that stage, and had a funny little bob. During both these phases, I would carefully blow-dry with a round brush and then straighten with a straightening iron. I bought several round brushes. I bought new goopy stuff to protect my hair from all that heat. I used an awesome olive oil product that I got in the Black haircare section...made my hair look super sleek and shiny.

Now I'm just at a loss. I am letting the natural curly hair on my head do it's thing, and boy oh boy is it hard. No more cool shiny wave over my eye. No more slightly sassy look. Now I have curls springing here and there and strange dry ends and sometimes it is super curly, almost in a Jheri curl way, and sometimes it is flat and barely wavy...but it takes so much work!! I am now devoting about 20 minutes to my hair in the morning...for someone who hits the snooze alarm for 45 minutes (remember?) that is too much hair time.

Anyhoo, what I do like, and what has made me feel a bit better for a while now, is this shampoo and conditioner, Matrix Sleek Look. They are designed to make your hair straight and smooth, and there are two other products in the line...some sort of setting stuff and then a finisher, I think. But I do think the shampoo and conditioner do what they say. They make my hair easier to style and flatter if I want it straight, and hopefully a little smoother and less fly-away-y when I want it curly.

When I wore my curly natural hair to school the first time, I had kids from my class and other classes running at me across the playground (seriously!), yelling about my hair. It was pretty fun. But not quite pretty, if you know what I mean. We'll see.

Happy Mom's Day!

In honor of Mother's Day, today's post is about nipple cream...just kidding, the day I write a post about nipple cream is the day I myself need it--so don't hold your breath.

Today's post is, though, about cool things that moms and the rest of us might like, including a potion called Jing Jang Creme, which I suppose one could put on one's nipples if one was so inclined. It is a mysterious little jar of essential oil infused balm-like stuff, and it can be used for so many things. On the label it says that it will help "most skin irritations including abrasions, dry skin, razor burn, after-waxing skin agitation, bruises, diaper rash, sunburn, and vaginal soreness." Ummm, OK. Love the use of the word 'agitation', and I suppose you could take it along with you on a romantic weekend to get rid of that dang soreness.

I use it to soothe my nose after I have blown it a lot, and this weekend I was blowing my nose like crazy. NOT a romantic weekend by any stretch of the imagination. I use it on my lips, too, but the smart people over at Jing Jang central created a lip balm, which I bet is good stuff (appropriate for moms and others and boys, as well).

The other thing I like is my Dove soap. I use it at night to wash my face, and it takes off my eye make-up and doesn't dry my skin out. Now, I have washed my face with various skin care routines since I was about twelve, and believe me, I have done the multi-step routines and the simple routines. When I was a teenager it was the three step Clinique regime (wash, toner, moisturize) and when I worked in retail I tried the Erno Laszlo routine (wash, splash with hot water, then cool water, like 25 times, then tone, use special cotton, leave this face-colored powder stuff on your face...blah blah, but it does make your skin look nice). This is what product whores do--try out many, many possibilities, searching for THE ONE.

Now I wash my face with Dove and moisturize. Because I can't leave my whoring ways completely, I use Olay Regenerist Serum under the moisturizer, I use Boscia hydrator sometimes (I'll write more about that some other time), and various other eye creams and accessories (more about those later, too). But for the actual, basic routine...it's Dove soap and moisturizer. Dove is nice and gentle and you can use it on your body, too, and it cost less than $2 for a bar. That's good stuff!

Moms like simple routines, right? Use Dove soap and warm (not hot) water to wash your face at night, and then throw on some moisturizer you like. Happy day.

Look it up!

I have received many comments about the word "occlusive" in my last post...my goodness, don't you people care about what REALLY matters (lip stuff and sunscreen and things like that)??!! Ha ha!

I looked it up, and here it is: to "occlude" means to prevent the passage of; to shut in or out. An "occlusion" is an occluding or being occluded. And "occlusive" is the adjective form of the noun. So I'm sticking with occlusive and I feel very happy with my decision.

Right now I like Webster's New World Dictionary!

The great debate...in my mind only, perhaps...

When I worked retail and did people's make-up all day long, one thing that I always advised was to put on some lip balm right when you start your hair or make-up, and then when it is time to get any lipstick or liner or even lip gloss on your lips, it will all just work better.

And then I would enter the great "lip balm" debate. A customer would pull out their ratty, dusty tube of whatever from their purse...and I'd go into my spiel.

If you want your lips to be nice and smooth and soft for color application, don't use Chapstick. Don't use Carmex. Don't use Vaseline. They don't work in this case, though they are lovely for other things. For example, if you are skiing down a windy cold mountain and need to have a nice thick barrier between your lips and the air, use Chapstick. If you are feeling the happy little tingle of a cold sore beginning, use Carmex. And if you have dry cuticles or elbows and want to go old-school on them, use Vaseline. You can even put some of that Vaseline (petroleum jelly, people, ug) over the Chapstick when you're on the mountain, and really protect the hell out of your lips.*

Many lip treatments form an occlusive barrier that keeps moisture from escaping, but when you are about to apply color you need something that soaks into your lips so that color can actually grab onto the smooth, soft surface. If you put gloss or liner or lipstick onto a thick coating of a waxy balm, it won't stay...it will slowly start to slip off.

If you put on a bit at the beginning of your morning routine, blot your lips on something handy (I use the back of my hand, and then rub in whatever came off) and then apply your color.

And another thing...Carmex is not addictive. If your lips feel dry and peely after you use it, and you feel that you now need more lip balm, well, you're right. The menthol and camphor in Carmex are there to dry out and heal little cold sore boo-boos, and so if they are all over your lips they are going to do they're job.

Most of the lip balms I love the most are in little tubs, though that grosses some people out so then look for balms in tubes. You want them to feel a little slippery and moist, not waxy or stiff...sounds sexual, or is that just me?...I like Neutrogena, Bourjois, Burt's Bees, and an all-time fave, Kiehl's.

*That won't protect your lips from the sun, though, and that is another way your lips can feel really dry and awful. Sometimes people would tell me their lip balms weren't working, and then I would find out that they had been out in the sun for hours, and their lips were really burned and irritated! Use lip stuff with sunscreen, please oh please. Even if you tan or your skin is lovely and dark...you still need sunscreen.

Right now...

I went to school today with my tee-shirt on backwards AND inside-out. Hmmm...some of my sweet third graders pointed it out to me, got all nervous that I was going to have to change at school and someone might see me ("You guys, she has on a tank top underneath!" was said by one sensible girl, with that "DU-UH" tone of voice), and then we all settled down to some possessive pronouns again.

I think I may be a bit distracted.

Stuff I like right now:
--Toblerone chocolate bars. Yum.

--www.hungrygirl.com because it breaks down the numbers of calories in certain popular foods (haven't seen Toblerone bars on there yet), and gives you alternate recipes for yummy things that are really really bad for you (like Taco Hell stuff)...

--my Sonicare toothbrush...it gets your teeth so, so clean (so I can eat lots of Toblerone bars). It's really amazing, my cute sweet dentist loves them, and I have almost nothing for my cute, sweet dental hygenist to scrape off when I visit. That is the best part...

--Burt's Bees Almond Milk Beeswax Hand Creme. Feels greasy at first, then soaks in and really moisturizes and the scent is nice and mild. I want to buy the Banana flavored one next, but Burt's Bees was purchased by the Clorox corporation a few months ago so I am not sure if I can keep supporting them in good conscience. We'll see.

--My FAVORITE thing right now? The comments from my friends. Thanks!! It is so fun to read them. Oh yeah, and some people answered the poll questions, so now I can add some posts addressing particular needs. Yippee!

Happy Friday.

sweet...

My sweet friend Alice has been taking care of me and my sad self by giving me little gifts, and a very funny card that had a lot of swear words attached. (Well, they were the $%&#(@!! kind of swear words, but the meaning was clear.) One of the presents was some Bath & BodyWorks Sleep Pillow Mist. This was a very good gift, because I have had trouble sleeping.

A word on me and sleep: I love it, I am a sleep expert, I can do it pretty much any time, any place. I lie down and fall asleep in about two minutes, and sleep all the way through the night until that awful sound, the alarm, jolts me back. I get really pissed off at any poor unfortunate soul that might wake me up. I often fall asleep on airplanes before they leave the runway, and I missed a lot of Europe because I would fall asleep so much on the train. I don't have a problem sleeping...except, well, now I do.

I must be pretty %$&^% up, because I am tired but not sleepy really late at night, I lie there in bed being sad, and then I wake up really early and can't go back to sleep. So last night I sprayed the yummy lavender vanilla sleep spray on my pillows, then went and wandered around my flat for a while trying to get sleepy. When I went to bed I spent a little less time lying there feeling bad, and then I fell asleep and slept all the way to 6:15...then proceeded to hit the snooze for another 40-ish minutes. That snooze part is totally normal behavior for me, so I think I am on the right path. Hooray! I am going to credit Alice and the spray, and I am going to keep on spraying like my life depends on it.

Which it does, in a way. : )

Tell me!

I put a little poll at the bottom of the page. Answer it and let me know what you think!

I hope everyone is enjoying warm weather...and wearing their sunscreen!!

The good bad stuff

Since I have been nursing my broken heart for the last two weeks, I have eaten lots of ice cream. Pints and pints of it, in fact, though I think since my body is on the break-up diet I haven't gained weight. Extreme sadness is a bit like breast-feeding--the pounds just come off.

So the stuff I like today is Ben and Jerry's ice cream. I have eaten pints of Half-Baked, Smores, Cake Batter, and One Cheesecake Brownie. They have all been so, so good. I am still feeling really awful, so it looks like more ice cream is in my future. Maybe I can work my way through the entire Ben and Jerry's line...we'll see.

All out...

I went to Walgreens yesterday to get mascara...and they were completely sold out of Lash Blast. Not one single tube was left. Do you think it is because of this blog?!?!

I'd like to think I had a teeny tiny part in that...

Deee-Lush-ious!

Do you ever feel like that gal over there when you're in the tub? Me neither...

I'm a smell snob. Lots of times I decide whether or not I am going to buy a shampoo, lip gloss, soap, or lotion based upon the smell. There have been products I'm interested in, or have been recommended to me, or that I have read about and am all ready to buy...and then when I get a whiff, it's a no go. I don't like the smell of green apple or watermelon in the stuff I use on my body, and I really hate it when whatever I have on my lips smells like strong vanilla, cinnamon, or candy. And those "sport" scents in deodorants and shower gels? Gross.

There is a store, Lush, that smells so, so good to me, and satisfies my smell-snob. I always know when I am approaching Lush because the yummy smells waft out of its door and down the street. It is full of bath and body items that make me so happy: bath bombs that fizz and make the bath water super creamy or bubbly, solid perfumes that last a long time and make me sniff my own wrists over and over, and lotions that are delicious and actually give you soft skin.

One of my all-time favorites in the store is the Butterball bath bomb. It smells like sweet, vanilla-laced cocoa butter, and after your bath you smell good and so does the bathroom. It has actual pieces of cocoa butter in it that melt in the warm bath water and then attach themselves to you as you bathe. (The tub can get a bit slippery--be careful.) I like to store the bath bombs in a drawer sometimes, because then my clothes can smell like them, too.

It's a bit of an addiction, Lush is, and I am a happy addict. And a happy snob. (Admit it--you're one, too!)

Look for a store or shop online at www.lushusa.com. There will be more posts about Lush stuff...I can't get enough! And sorry --I used the word "smell" ten times in this post!!

It's the little things...

I rarely polish my fingernails. The polish chips, or I get antsy waiting for the polish to dry, try and do some little innocent thing and smear three or four nails. I do toes, but I don't go to the nail salon to get my toes done, either, because for some reason I always get cut by those scary little clippers they insist on using...and when I ask them to do no cutting, just pushing back, they look at me like I am weird. And then there is the ticklish factor...it is very, very intense.

So. I do my own toes, and they usually come out great. One reason they look good is that I use this awesome base coat. It makes my nails really smooth and it gives a nice pale color all by itself--both good qualities, especially if you are going to use a pale polish over it because it won't look streaky. And, the polish will last a long time. I do not put on a new top coat every three days like the magazines tell you to do. I always figure that if toenail polish chips a bit, that is OK. Toes are far away from eyes most of the time, and you can't notice chips from a distance!

It's not the cheapest base coat in the world, but it is a little bottle that does what it is supposed to, and I like that.

Barielle Natural Nail Camouflage--Usually at nail salons and at drugstore.com.

I love this mascara...

I am totally into this mascara, and keep giving it as a gift to girlfriends. It is volumizing, which is what I want the most in a mascara, plus it stays on, doesn't flake or smudge, and it is easy to take off with soap and water. And, it is at drugstores, so it doesn't cost an arm and a leg.

The tube is pretty fat, and the brush is nice and fat, too, with fun rubbery bristles. It may take a while to get used to using the big brush, but when you do, it will be worth it. Remember not to pump the brush in and out of the tube (the only thing this accomplishes is drying out your mascara); just push it in and pull it out once for each eye.

Get the brush right at the base of your lashes, wiggle it a little bit, and then pull it through. Yea! Pretty lashes!

Look for the big orange tube of Cover Girl Lash Blast Mascara--it rocks!

Hi everyone!

I am creating a blog to share some of the cosmetic and skin care products I use and love. I will try to add something every now and then, and I will spread the word to my friends (some who love make-up and products almost as much as I do...and some who just dabble) to check it out and add their ideas and tips, too.

Thanks for reading!

Christina