Review -- IT Cosmetics Luxe Eyeshadow Palette

Over the past year, I've become a serious fan of IT Cosmetics.

Last month, I reviewed the fabulous the IT Cosmetics Naturally Pretty Vol. 1 Matte Luxe Transforming Eyeshadow Palette and after trying it and loving those matte shadows like nobody's business, I decided that I wanted to test out some of IT Cosmetics' other shadows.

So I picked up the brand's other large palette, the Luxe Eyeshadow Palette.

This one contains 12 shadows, which are actually a blend of matte and shimmery shades.

Review -- The Balm Instain Long-Wearing Staining Powder Blushes (Pinstripe, Houndstooth, Argyle, Swiss Dot, & Toile)

For as long as I've been wearing makeup -- and we're looking at about 20 years at this point -- I've always had a trouble getting blush to last on my skin.

When I was younger and my face was super oily, It made sense -- it just sort of melted away.

But even now, with my skin becoming more normal, even downright dry at certain times of the year, my blush still manages to fade away by about halfway through my makeup-wearing day.

It's almost as if my pores just eat up the damn blush or something.

And, yeah, it's seriously annoying.

I've had some better luck in recent years --  I can get nearly 6 hours of wear with Tarte's Amazonian Clay Blushes, which is pretty good in my book.

So good, in fact, that I pretty much considered the Tarte blushes my holy grain cheek product.

Well, that is until I tried The Balm's Instain Long-Wearing Staining Powder Blushes.

Review -- Urban Decay Naked3 Palette

It's no secret that I'm a big fan of natural/nude (whatever you like to call them) eye shadow palettes.

I have a hundred of them.

Well, not really. But I probably have at least 10, which is nuts enough, right?

I feel like it was the Urban Decay Naked Palette that really started the natural eye shadow trend, so in some ways, I feel like that palette is the granddaddy of them of all.

Personally, though, I prefer Urban Decay's Naked2 Palette. I tend to gravitate toward its cooler tones, though it's difficult to argue with how effective the original Naked Palette's warmer shadows are in bringing out my blue eyes.

Bottom line -- they're both lovely palettes that are pretty versatile, easy to use, and can even work well together.

Still, I think that the latest addition to Urban Decay's Naked line, the Naked3 Palette, may be my favorite.

MIA Yet Again...

I know that I haven't posted much lately, but for once, I have a legitimate reason.

Back in September, I lost my amazing dog, Brownie.

She is still missed everyday, and we held off on getting a new dog because we still missed her so much.

At some point, I think we realized that we're always going to miss her and if we waited for some magical time when we didn't to get a new dog, we'd never do it.

So after the holidays, we decided that maybe we would start looking for a dog to adopt. We thought it would take a while to find exactly what we were looking for -- a Lab for sure, preferably a yellow and a boy so we wouldn't make too many unfair comparisons to Brownie.

Well, it all fell into place a lot quicker than we imagined so I'm happy to introduce the newest member of our family, Charlie:

Charlie at 8 weeks

 He is a Lab mix and just about 8 weeks old. He was rescued from a storm drain in South Carolina, where his mom had put him and his siblings to keep warm. We got him from a great organization here in NY, Unleashed (if you're in the NYC-metro area and are looking for a puppy, I'd definitely recommend checking them out. The whole process was terrific and it's such a great cause.), and while he's a sweetheart, I'd forgotten exactly how much work a puppy can be. 

I am seriously exhausted chasing this little guy around.

But it's so much fun that I can't complain in good conscience.

Charlie's still getting comfortable and we're trying to come up some sort of schedule for him, so when things settle down in the next couple of days, I'll be back to blogging regularly.

I've got a review of the Urban Decay Naked3 Palette just about ready to go so keep an eye out for that.

And you know, as I'm writing this, I just realized that today is the blog's 2 year anniversary (!), which is just crazy to me.

But I'll be doing a big giveaway in the next week or so to celebrate that, so there's also that to look forward to.