A beauty blog blooming with fresh makeup reviews, swatches and beauty tips from your friendly neighborhood beauty addict
I’m going through a “barely there” blush phase and keep reaching for this shimmery, warm peach. 🙂
It’s MAC Mineralize Blush in Amber Glow ($23.50), and you can find it now at counters and maccosmetics.com.
From the new Apres Chic collection.
Well, I guess these now belong to Tabs. Big surprise!
Five of the new MAC Pressed Pigments ($21 each). Available now at maccosmetics.com.
A 15-minute drive south from where I live in Novato there’s a small park around the corner from the Village Mall in Corte Madera with a marsh and views of the San Francisco Bay and the East Bay hills (where my parents live).
I stopped by earlier today to get a look at the water because, as the saying goes ’round here, any day you see the Bay is a great day.
Or maybe that’s just a Karen thing. 🙂
Don’t tell Tabs, but while I was down there I made friends with a tiny dog…or perhaps it was an Ewok.
When the Ewok dog bid me farewell, I headed over to the nearby mall, where among other things, I visited the Kate Spade store and spotted some cute new spring bags and shoes.
Yeah, it’s hard to compete with the epic grandeur and sweeping vistas of the San Francisco Bay, but Kate Spade holds her own, and today she did it with comics! And bright colors! And shiny patent leather!
I’m pretty sure my eyes were bugging out TO HERE!
When I asked what was new for spring, the gals working at the store were nice enough to let me see a few items from a new collection that they hadn’t put out on the shelves yet. They said the new collection doesn’t “officially” debut in Kate Spade stores and on katespade.com until next Sunday, so this was like a sneak peek.
The release includes a full range of accessories, totes, clothes and shoes made to go with the playful, pop-arty comic theme.
Three of the smaller bags caught my eye right off the bat — the hot pink and white polka-dotted Daycation Pop Bag ($78), the Davie Daycation Comic KSNY zippered makeup bag ($60) and the Sunglass Coin Purse ($98).
Because I’m such a ho when it comes to shoes, it didn’t take much to convince me to try on this pair of jade green patent-leather Karolina heels ($328).
Solely (no pun intended) for “research purposes,” of course. 🙂
I always stop for vibrant pinks and reds. 🙂
I’m at the mall right now. Just finished a late lunch at the Cheesecake Factory and wanted the first day of the year to be filled with fun things, as in malls and makeup.
My mom gave me a Nordstrom gift certificate for Christmas. Not sure what I’m gonna do with it yet, but I’m having fun looking for ideas.
Like maybe Bobbi Brown’s new Pink & Red Collection.
It’s barely even January, and this collection’s already channeling Valentine’s Day!
I guess you can never be too early (hint, hint, El Hub)…
Bobbi’s got some pieces here for cheeks, lips and nails, divided into pink products and red products.
Makes it easy for significant others to give gifts. Just send your partner to the counter with instructions like, “You can get me all the pink (or red) stuff.”
Here — hold my purse while I snap some pics with my phone.
WINNER: The giveaway is closed now, and the winners are Becca C (prize package 1), Darbie (prize package 2, first winner) and Alyssa Lee (prize package 2, second winner). Congratulations, gals! If you entered but didn’t win this time around, keep trying, and click here to enter any ongoing giveaways before you jet. 🙂
A pet assistant’s job is never done…
You might think that Tabs, being the forward-thinking feline employer that he is, would have been so kind as to give me the day off today, it being a national (and worldwide) holiday and all, but nooooo. There are tums to be rubbed, food bowls to be refreshed, cat grass to be watered (he now insists that I feed him one blade of grass at a time, BY HAND, like they’re grapes, and he’s a Roman emperor), corporate takeovers to plot, etc., etc.
For the most part, I don’t mind the extra workload, especially when it involves makeup, like it does today with this giveaway for two prize packages from Sophisti-Cat Cosmetics, an up-and-coming indie makeup line of cruelty-free, pigmented products made in the USA.
To learn more about the brand, check out According to Sophisti-Cat Cosmetics, Meow Is a Purrfect Time for Cat-Inspired Makeup.
As a card-carrying Sophisti-Cat himself, Tabs was so stoked about about it that he volunteered to model the prize products… 🙂
I hope you’ll enter, because you never know when you’re luck will hit. 🙂 Win today’s giveaway (three separate winners will be chosen), and you’ll be quite the Sophisti-Cat yourself.
One (1) lucky lady or gent will win the following Sophisti-Cat Cosmetics prize package valued at more than $100:
Two (2) additional winners will each receive the following Sophisti-Cat Cosmetics prize package valued at $22:
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
WINNER: The giveaway is closed now, and the winners are Becca C (prize package 1), Darbie (prize package 2, first winner) and Alyssa Lee (prize package 2, second winner). Congratulations, gals! If you entered but didn’t win this time around, keep trying, and click here to enter any ongoing giveaways before you jet. 🙂
Issey Miyake’s Pleats, Please! 🙂 I was at Nordstrom last Saturday looking for a birthday gift for my mom (she just turned 64, happy birthday, mommy!), and while I was looking around, I stumbled on to a perfume I’d never seen before called Pleats Please, by Issey Miyake.
First thing that caught my eye was the bottle. Look at it! It’s almost like someone was holding it in their hand and crumpled it like a piece of paper. Anyway, I thought it was just really cool, and so I gave it a sniff.
It’s like a white floral, and it totally reminds me of Michael Kors — mostly plumeria, light and effervescent, but with a musky feeling to it.
When I got home I did a little research on it, and I guess it launched in September. I just hadn’t seen it here in the United States until now.
It’s based on a fashion collection — Issey Miyake is a fashion designer from Japan — from 1993, and apparently, the clothes had lots of pleats and colors, and the pieces had/have a sense if movement to ’em.
And, ya know, I can see those same traits in the bottle. That same flow.
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You might be wondering, “So what the heck is this Monday Poll thing anyway?”
Well, it isn’t much of a poll. It’s more just a constantly evolving (devolving?), somewhat random list of questions I’ve been putting out to readers every Monday morning for the past four years. I’ve always enjoyed reading your answers in the comments, and I hope you enjoy reading mine.
To complete the Monday Poll, just copy the following list, and paste it with your answers in the comments.
Le List
1. How do you feel right now?
2. What’s one thing you’ve been doing a lot lately?
3. What’s one of the best things that happened to you in 2012?
4. What are you hoping for in 2013?
5. Are you protective of anyone?
6. What fragrance have you been loving lately? Have you been loving any fragrances lately?
7. Have you ever worked a retail job over the holidays?
8. Overall, how would you characterize 2012?
9. What are you doing tonight? Are you going out for New Year’s?
10. What are your weekly goals?
It’s the last day of 2012. We made it through another year together, and I feel like I say this every year, but this one really did seem to go by fast, and let me just say that as you get further up into your 30s, something odd happens where the days seem to just fly by, and the seasons fly by, and it’s honestly something that I never anticipated happening.
Just you wait. Wait until it happens to you, you’ll be like, “Hey, Karen, you were so right!” 🙂
I just want to wish you a happy new year, for one, and say that whatever you’re doing today, even if it’s just working, or you’re puttering around the house, or just hanging around with your family, I hope that you get to do a little something for yourself today that makes you happy. Maybe it’s painting your nails, or curling your hair, or straightening your hair, whatever it is. Try to end the year on a good note.
Before you know it, we’ll be talking in 2013.
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
I’ll be happy to do jazz hands with you (JAZZ HANDS!!), but please don’t ask me to plié or relevé. A ballet dancer I am NOT.
Anywho. Thankfully you don’t have to be a prima ballerina to enjoy the Laura Mercier’s new Arabesque spring collection, which twirls onto counters in January.
