Super quick hi on this beautiful Thursday morning because I’m running late, ahh!
Here’s a bright pink I wore yesterday to work, MAC Billion Dollar Smile, a bright pink that’s totally up my alley. 🙂
What lip color are you rockin’?
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
I’m a little surprised that I don’t look more frazzled in this picture because about 20 minutes before I took it, I stumbled down the hill in our cul-de-sac like a Looney Tunes cartoon character!
No seriously, I full-on rolled down a hill. We live in a neighborhood with tons of oak trees that produce these gigantic acorns, and as I was walking Connor down the hill to school I guess I wasn’t really paying attention to where my feet were landing, so when I stepped on an acorn, which basically was like a massive marble, my right ankle rolled underneath me.
That set off a chain reaction of me falling to the ground, and right as I hit the pavement, I reflexively tucked into a round ball, which then caused me to tumble down the steep hill even more as I clung onto Connor’s little pink backpack with dear life!
Honestly, I’m at a point in life where I’m just happy that if I fall, 1) I actually get back up, and 2) I have all of my teeth intact, so thank you, Goddesses of the Universe, for having my back. Otherwise this selfie would’ve looked very different, OMG!
Long story short, I’m wearing Rare Beauty Soft Pinch Tinted Lip Oil in Happy, which is a cool pink. Oh, and my ankle is a little bruised. Not sprained though.
This lip color will forever be burned in my mind as what I was wearing the day I rolled down the hill.
Oh, and here’s more thing that was super weird about it. It seemed to all happen in slow motion, like, I floated out of my body and was watching the whole thing happen right when it was happening. So weird!
Anyway, my coworker noticed that I was limping and asked what happened, and after recounting all the sordid details, she proceeded to tell me an even crazier story of when she fell and rolled down a hill.
She lives in San Francisco on a very steep hill, and as she was walking her dogs, they ran into two puppies with very bad manners (she called the puppies “Menace” and “Mischief”). Somehow her dogs and Menace and Mischief got into a scuffle, and she ended up rolling down the hill in her pajamas and landing in a big pile of dog poop.
Rolling down hills, 100% do not recommend!
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
Happy Tuesday! For day 2 of the Fall 2024 Lipstick Challenge, I’m wearing an oldie but goodie — NARS Dragon Girl, a cool-toned red lip crayon.
I’ve got the old school version in the black packaging, RIP. NARS reformulated their lip crayon line into what they call the Powermattes, and you know, sometimes I wonder why brands don’t just leave well enough alone. Anywho, I like the color of the older version, which I think is slightly cooler and more magenta.
Two things before I head out! One, for some reason I always want to call this lipstick “Dragon Roll,” like it’s a type of sushi, hahaha! The second is that if I look a little dazed and confused in these pictures (which I took right before heading into the office), it’s because my co-worker caught me taking selfies, and I was kinda embarrassed to be having a full-on photo shoot in my car so early in the morning. 🙂
What lip color are you wearing today?
Have a most excellent Tuesday, my friend!
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
I’m challenging myself to wear lip color everyday this week! I got started a little early yesterday with a MAC liquid lipstick called A Little Tamed.
Do you want to join me? I’m setting the bar pretty low and giving myself the option of wearing the same color a few times, but I’m hoping that I’ll feel motivated to do a new color every day.
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
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Hey, hey Saturday! I’m still around, and I’m still alive, and I’m still wearing Candy Yum Yum lipstick by MAC! I found it last week while I was rooting around inside a makeup drawer and decided that even though it’s fall, hot pink is still wildly appropriate for the season, ha ha ha!
I’m just realizing right now that I’ve yet to wear any dark, rich and cozy wine, burgundy, brown, garnet or red fall lip colors, hmm. In fact, my lipstick game has been pretty MIA for a while now.
Still, I gotta give props to myself and to all the makeup lovers out there who are doing a decent job filling in brows, curling lashes and basically doing the bare minimum to look somewhat undead. LOL!
It’s funny to me that I haven’t really been wearing anything on my lips because lipstick and gloss are usually my favorite part of the makeup process.
Lately, I’ll paint on some base and blush and whatever else I have time for in the mornings, and by that time I realize I need to leave or I’ll be late, so, I just assume that I’ll put on my lip color at work after I have some tea.
But is that happening? NOPE! Maybe I should do a short week-long challenge to wear a lip color every day next Monday through Friday to work. Who’s with me?
Speaking of work, here is my forever challenge: I get back home after picking Connor up from school, and then I start doing chores and prep for the next day, and then the last thing I want to do is make dinner because I’m starving.
I ran into an acquaintance recently who’s also a working mom; she works in the food industry and knows lots of good tips and tricks for making meals and whatnot. Anywho, she told me she experiences this same sort of hanger (aka hungry anger), too, and the way she gets through it is to snack on a little fruit and cheese while she prepares dinner.
I started doing this, and WOW! Amazing how a little snack can be so life changing.
Last week I snacked on a bit of Breakfast Cheese by Marin French Cheese (I get it at Trader Joe’s) with apple slices or grapes while I made dinner. I felt like a human being again.
This is a little random, but while we’re on the subject of fruit, I’ve found the best way to get my people to eat ALL the fruit in the house.
When I get home from the grocery store, before I put the fruit away, I wash, dry and prep all the fruit, stash it all into clear containers, and then chuck them into the fridge so it’s available to eat right away.
I’ve noticed that when I do this, every single last bit of fruit gets eaten and none of it is ever wasted. Try it sometime!
Last but certainly not least, how is life on your end of the keyboard? I hope that you’re happy and healthy and that work has been treating you kindly.
I’m off to take Connor to a dance performance, the first one of the year. Her dance team is dancing to “Grease Lightning” at a local street fair celebrating classic cars and nostalgia for ye olde days of yore, which I’m realizing now, are like, the ’90s and early 2000s. Ha!
How are you spending your Saturday?
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
Rosie soaked up the last bits of summery weather today. She enjoyed basking underneath the trees, which still have leaves on them (but not for long).
Among the many things she contemplated were cold fusion, a better way to produce nutritionally dense cat treats, how Marnie the dog is slowly ruining her life, and most importantly, what she’ll wear for Halloween.
Unlike Tabs, who loved elaborate costumes, Rosie likes to keep it simple and chic.
I asked if she needed any help brainstorming, but all I got were slow blinks and a tum flash in return.
When it got too hot to be outside, Rosie made her way back indoors.
I couldn’t help but notice her ignoring Marnie…
I suspect Rosie’s afraid of Marnie rocking a costume that will steal Rosie’s thunder.
Marnie, on the other hand, hasn’t even begun to think about Halloween. She started Marathoning Gilmore Girls this weekend, and she’s currently obsessed.
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
So…what is the Monday Poll?
Excellent question! It isn’t, contrary to its name, an actual poll, like with little clicky buttons. It’s just a list of more or less random questions I’ve been posting on this blog every Monday morning for the past quadrillion years (since 2007).
My coworker last week. I was wearing a little more coverage than usual, so I think the overall look was more polished than the bare bones FOTDs I’ve been wearing for months now. Amazing what a difference a little bit of concealer makes!
Marnie and I were like the Scooby Doo detectives in our neighborhood, ha ha ha! We were working a case to unveil who had stolen all the tuna sandwiches in our circle.
The Bay Area is experiencing a heat wave, ugh! It’s supposed to hit 94. I’m so over it.
Lately I’ve been obsessed with snickerdoodles.
Pretty good! I’m mostly happy to be relatively pain free; I fell down a couple weeks ago and hurt my neck and back, and it’s only now that I’m finally starting to feel like myself again. It should also be finally slowing down at work for a bit (it’s been a crazy couple of months), so I’m hoping to not be so exhausted at the end of the day and have more energy for my non-work life.
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
P.S. Here are the questions to copy/paste with your answers in a comment. Talk to ya soon.
1. Last person who complimented you on your makeup?
2. Last dream you can remember?
3. Today the temperature in my neighborhood is/was ____.
4. Your cookie of choice?
5. How do you feel today?
I swear, I can get away with wearing so much less makeup when I’m wearing a bright lip. I can feel completely put together with just a bright lipstick, mascara and concealer.
A smile is that much bigger and brighter with a bright lip.
Red lipstick never goes out of style!
They last through water, coffee, cat kisses…
You can never have enough. 🙂
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
Please enjoy this repost featuring one of my favorite eyeshadow palette for easy smokey eyes. Also, side note, I need to get back on the MAC Face & Body train. I forgot how beautiful it looks in pictures!
The Honest Beauty eyeshadow palette comes with a card with four looks you can do with the palette. I followed the one called “Classic Smoky Eye” for this post, although with one tweak. I started by buffing the matte beige shade (Vanilla’d Velvet) all over my lids as a base so the subsequent colors would pop a little more.
I was a wee bit nervous about using the shimmery gold all over my lids and the shimmery dark purple on the outer corner because…I’m in my 40s now, and shine doesn’t always play well with my 40-something skin, particularly in the crease. Some may even say that I’m “overly picky about shimmery finishes,” *ahem*. Can you blame me though? One false move and you see every fine line!
Buuuut, I decided to go for it anyway, hoping that the matte beige underneath would tone down the shine, and it did!
As I was blending, I realized another reason to love this palette. The more you buff and swirl these shadows, the less intensely they shine, until they have more of a satiny finish. The finish ends up as a soft, pearly glow, which makes this classic smokey eye very workable for daytime wear! When I dropped Connor off at school this morning, I didn’t feel like I was wearing “too much.”
Oh, I’ve been meaning to tell you — I found the most beautiful cream blush by Chanel! It’s Les Beiges Blush No. 20, a stick blush, $45 (!), but dang, lady! It’s so good. It’s a bronzy, peachy tan with the finest flecks of pearly gold, and it adds a hint of natural-looking color to cheeks. I love how easy it is to blend and that I can’t see it sitting on top of my skin or in my pores.
If you’re a real stickler for blush that doesn’t heavy on your cheeks, then you might want to consider it because it’s so natural-looking on skin.
FYI, if you’re lighter than I am, No. 20 will probably function more as a straight-up bronzer on your skin, and if you’re darker, then you might better off with one of Chanel’s brighter cream blushes like No. 21 or No. 22, since I’m betting No. 20 won’t show up as readily on darker skin.
Other things I’ve been into lately: mixing two shades of Honest Beauty liquid lipstick, namely Passion and Off Duty, to create the purrfect mid-toned coral pink; and wearing an old-school standby base combination with MAC Face and Body (I mix C4 and C5), set with the tiniest smidgen of MAC Mineralize Skinfinish Natural Powder (my shade is Medium Golden).
Seriously, why did I ever take a break from wearing Face and Body? IT’S SO GOOD, especially for no-makeup makeup. I’ve talked about it ad nauseam on MBB for years, so if you’re relatively new here and want to know more about why it’s the stuff, hit me up in the comments and I will repeat myself once again, LOL! LOVE IT.
Oh, my gosh, one last thing before I leave you — have you seen the Britney Spears documentary on Hulu? I kept hearing about it, and I told myself, “OK, I’ll give this 10 minutes of my life, and that’s it,” but then I started watching it and I COULD. NOT. LOOK. AWAY.
The one-hour documentary by The New York Times charts Britney’s rise to fame, her very public issues in the press in the early 2000s, and the conservatorship that was placed on her in 2008, which some people believe was against her will. Some conspiracy theorists go so far as to think that her Instagram is an entire series of coded cries for help.
As you might know, I’m solidly on #TeamBritney, and so watching the doc left me with the hope that one day she’ll surprise us all (in the best possible, emotionally healthy way).
To Britney and all my ladies out there currently holding on, make that delicious lemonade out of those lemons, mama. You hang in there!
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
So…what is the Monday Poll?
Excellent question! It isn’t, contrary to its name, an actual poll, like with little clicky buttons. It’s just a list of more or less random questions I’ve been posting on this blog every Monday morning for the past quadrillion years (since 2007).
I really enjoyed “Killers of a Certain Age” by Deanna Raybourn. I’ve been needing a fast, fun read and it hit the spot! Next time you need a book for a plane ride or a vacation, grab it.
I’d move us to the Manoa neighborhood on Oahu in a heartbeat.
I don’t know if it’s super weird, but I do love a toasted frozen waffle slathered with peanut butter and sprinkled with raisins. I don’t know how I got the idea, but I started eating it in college, and ever since then, it’s been my go-to quickie meal for breakfast or really any time of the day. When I was pregnant with Connor, it was pretty much all I wanted to eat, so the big joke around here is that her body was built on peanut butter, Eggo waffles and raisins!
I like to save my morning and afternoon breaks and tack them onto my lunch so I can take a longer break in the middle of the day. When I take that longer lunch break, I usually go home, take Marnie out for a quick walk, and then eat lunch while I read at the kitchen table. If I do decide to take a morning or afternoon break, I’ll go out for a quick walk to move my body around. Staring at a computer screen for hours does me no favors, ya know?
I like to think so!
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
P.S. Here are the questions to copy/paste with your answers in a comment. Talk to ya soon.
1. A good book you’ve read recently?
2. If you could move anywhere in the world without having to put any effort into it at all (assume someone takes care of the packing, logistics, paperwork, finances, etc.), where would you go?
3. What’s a weird breakfast that you like to eat?
4. How do you spend your breaks at work?
5. Do dreams come true?