Friday, January 6, 2012

Holiday Cheer

Greetings, earthlings! Happy solstice, happy new year, and all the appropriate greetings of the season.

I am sure I'm not alone in getting into the shopping frenzy that accompanies the season and ending up picking up a few things for myself while I'm at it. This year I really tried to avoid going overboard, but I did manage to add to my makeup-perfume-bath product-clothing stashes. Hey, nobody else is going to get me this stuff!*

A few things worth reporting about:

1. Scrubz, a local maker of natural bath products participated in a holiday fair at work, and I picked up a few of her items as gifts and for myself. I'm especially loving her Winter Wonderland sugar scrub, spicy ginger with oatmeal and honey. I follow that with an application of Milk & Honey body butter, which is luscious, and it's doing wonders for my dry skin.

2. Seems like all the beauty mavens I know are raving about Revlon ColorBurst Lip Butters and for good reason. For an amazingly cheap drugstore price you get a high-end feeling silky and lightweight lip color with good pigmentation. Like all drugstore products you have to take a bit of a chance on the color, but so far I'm loving Pink Truffle and Berry Smoothie and expect that if I get my hands on a Fig Jam it will be great too.

3. I'm awash in Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab Yule blends and bath products from sister company Black Phoenix Trading Post. Still working through a pile of decants to figure out which are going to make the final order.

4. I succumbed to the lure of the MAC counter recently, and bought a few new lip colors. Dark Side and Dare You are fulfilling their roles as the deep plum and deep red shades I was looking for, and they both look good with a coat of Ornamental Lustreglass for glossing. I also got a Viva Glam VI, which like many Viva Glams before it is a wonderful near-universally flattering shade.

5. And even though I tried to resist, I did end up buying Urban Decay's Naked2 palette. I pored over the Temptalia swatches comparing it and Naked1, and though there is a lot of similarity, there are enough differences to make it worthwhile, especially with a neutral skintone like I have -- I really can go warmer or cooler and it changes my whole look. I'm finding I love Naked1 when I'm wearing browns, golds, and greens, and Naked2 works really well with plums, grays, and blacks.

*NOTE: My #1 son did, a couple of years ago, personally select a gorgeous Bobbi Brown holiday sparkly eyeshadow palette for me, and it's my go-to palette for festive occasions since. Love that child.