Am I Blue?

I will confess to a propensity to go more matchy-matchy than is currently fashionable. Since childhood I've often dressed in one (or coordinating) color down to my underpants. Sometimes I'll start to get dressed without having thought through what to wear, only to find I unconsciously grabbed for underwear that matches everything else I'm wearing. What can I say, it is a sickness. I associate smells with colors too, so sue me.

So when I put on this pretty blue sweater today, I had to stop myself from rifling through all the lovely blue eyeshadows I've acquired but rarely wear. Instead, I grabbed MAC pigment in Blue-Brown, which just adds a layer of teal shimmer to a red-brown shadow, and blended that with a little Bootycall from the Urban Decay Naked2 palette.  I added a touch of a blue-violet pencil in the outer V and black mascara. Blush is MAC Dainty and lipstick is MAC Viva Glam VI.

OK, I see I look slightly deranged in that photo, but I'll post it anyway. I bet you all look like it's the end of the week too. Just keeping it real.

Perfume of the Day: BPAL Womb Furie from the 2012 Lupercalia collection. "Snake Oil and three types of honey." Sanke Oil, BPAL's creator's signature scent, is really growing on me. When I first tried it I thought it was too heavily resinous and musky, but now I've come to appreciate how rich it is and how it dries down with a lot of depth and vanilla sweetness. It's extra great in this blend with honey.

Perfume and Makeup and Blogging, Oh my

Either you can teach an old dog new tricks, or I am exceptionally immature, but I find myself 43 years old, with an established career as a lawyer and three children in the suburbs, suddenly living out my teenage dreams of getting my hands on all the cosmetics and perfume I could ever desire. Well, "all" is an extreme word given the cost of this stuff, in a world where beauty bloggers receive truckloads of high-end stuff to review, while I pay retail. By that standard I'm downright deprived. But I'm a big girl now, and I have disposable income, and given my status as a mother of three boys with a full time job, I figure I'm entitled to a few little luxuries.

And so I find myself at a point in life at which, if you were to believe the magazines, I think I'm supposed to be wearing a "signature" scent and a "signature" slash of lipstick, but instead spend glorious minutes in between conference calls, carpools, and diaper changes trying on eyeshadow pigments or trying to sniff out elusive notes in perfume blends.

So this blog will chronicle my experiments, disappointments, random thoughts, wishlists, and product reviews. I apologize in advance for the quality of pictures, as I'm generally too busy/lazy to do much more than shoot with my iPhone and email the resulting ill-lit photos to myself. But it's good to have areas in which you can improve.

Other ways in which I spend my time include knitting, cooking, making cocktails, trying not to kill all vegetation in my garden, reading (including mysteries), and watching TV, but the good stuff, you know. Sometimes maybe I'll talk about that instead of what's on my pulse points.