Hurricane Watch

So I'm not sure, you may have heard mention of this small weather event we here in the Northeast are stoically and calmly preparing for. While part of our town is under mandatory evacuation, we don't live close enough to the water to be covered, so we're cooling our jets at home WITHOUT STARBUCKS, which we discovered this morning had closed preemptively. Closed, too, is all of Broadway, naturally being the weekend that we had tickets to The Book of Mormon to celebrate Mr. Gateau's birthday.

Such is life.

Yesterday I took the 9-year old to NYC to visit the Museum of Modern Art (his choice), where he made the below painting using a very nifty digital program with a touch screen that actually simulates wet paint.
You can see, he's getting in the autumn mood already.

After that, we took a small detour to Saks Fifth Avenue, where I made a relatively modest haul at the Armani counter. My Holy Grail foundation is their Designer formula, which I'd had in a fair tone, their #4, which of course was discontinued. I despaired, and was reluctant to try to order a replacement online given how hard it is to judge foundation color in real life, much less on a monitor. There isn't a convenient Armani counter to me, so I had to wait for such a trip, and boy am I glad I did because the charming Raffy hooked me up with #5, which is a more yellow-toned fair, and perfect for me. I also finally got one of the gorgeous Eyes To Kill Intense Eyeshadows in a beautiful and useful bronze, #15 (Copper/Black Grey). Raffy helped me choose a fall lipstick, Rouge d'Armani #525 which is a mauve-pink and a matching lip gloss, one of the new Gloss d'Armani longwear formulas. I was pleased and surprised to find that these pinkier colors work well on me, and Raffy explained that I'm not really as warm-toned as I've always assumed, but really should think of my skin as more neutral. These items are definitely on the pricey side, but I have also found my Armani purchases to last a long time, perform well, and provide excellent value.

There is something about making a purchase of serious makeup that always inspires me to do a little destashing of the accumulated stuff. As I mentioned, Ms. Cake and I amassed giant collections of NYX pigments recently, and there is no way in hell I need all that eyeshadow. So I'm going through it, swatching, and figuring out which I should keep and which would make nice goodies to add to the many swaps I've been participating in at Ravelry and BPAL Madness.

Today, given as there isn't anything else to do, I got started with pinks and reds. As you can see, there is a lot of overlap, and while there are slight differences, there's a limit on how much bright pink sparkly eyeshadow one 43-year old suburban mother really needs.
Top: dry. Bottom: dry and wet, both with flash. From left to right: NYX Red, NYX Geisha, NYX Lemon Drop, NYX Cosmo, NYX Sunshine, NYX Princess, NYX Apricot, Jesse's Girl Sunset Blvd.

Obviously I'm crap at photography and lighting, but you get the idea. These definitely work better when wet, unless you're just dusting it on as a highlight. I'll probably keep the red, one bright pink and one golden pink.

Since there isn't much else to do while we wait out the storm, stay tuned for more swatching.