I’ve never in my life been afraid of lipstick (#13), but numbers 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 15, 18, 19, and 20 are the ugly stories of my 20s.
Let’s break it down:
Cons: Skinny eyebrows, too much foundation, no blush, too short bangs, picture so old it was in an actual dusty photo album
Pros: Red lipstick, cool rep from smoking
Conclusion: It didn’t matter as much back then if my eyebrows were too thin because I had them young boobs. Thank GOD I learned my lessons though. A lot of those mistakes don’t age well.
I learned about them from Mindy Kaling. My good, personal, imaginary friend, Mindy Kaling.
Mindy says:
“Not only will they scare the shit out of your boyfriend if he visits your house, it will make your hair grow faster, thicker, and keep your skin glow-y and smooth.”
Beautiful hair AND a funny prank all in one bottle? Yes, please!
Before I started taking these, I had never finished a bottle of vitamins in my life. After I started taking them, and found out she was right on all counts, plus they do great things for your nails, AND they helped with my chronic anemia (I’m so precious and delicate, like an antique Taylor Swift doll), I gulped them down and bought more!
Thanks, my so-close-we’re-actually-more-like-sisters friend, Mindy! See you at brunch on Sunday with our other best friends; Tina Fey, Poehlcat, Julie Klausner, RuPaul and Adele.
*These vitamins won’t actually get you high. Sorry.
You know that thing where you do your nails, wait a couple hours, then go to bed because you think they’re dry, and in the morning you wake up to find out you were wrong, you wasted all that time, and now your nails look terrible so you just cry out of sheer frustration because it’s like WHAT THE FUCK WHY IS THIS MY LIFE?
You know what I’m talking about?
It sucks, right?
There is a solution. A real solution. You already know you can’t sleep with your hands perfectly still on top of your blankets, so it’s not that. It’s not ice water (that gets you gummy smudged nails), it’s not olive oil (that gets you greasy smudged nails), it’s not cooking spray (see olive oil), it’s not even those old timey nail dryers like the one I had when I was 12.
It’s Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat.
I’ve been using this top coat ever since the first time my mom brought it home from the beauty supply when I was in high school. It’s very shiny, super strong, chip resistant, and it dries your nails so fast that I don’t even remember the last time I had sheet marks in my mani. I love this top coat so much, I take it to the salon with me when I get my nails done.
I got this manicure done, using Seche Vite, on the morning of May 3rd. That’s almost two weeks of washing dishes, showering, typing, chewing on my cuticles, night terrors (COBRAS!), and dog scratching. I have a little growth at the top, and some minor tip wear, but overall, it’s still pretty intact. And from far away? They look really good!
If you’re like me, you don’t get gel polish because you want the option to change your nails frequently. AND, if you’re like me, you also want the option to just be lazy and let your nails go for a long time without them looking completely disgusting. This top coat, with its fast dry time and long wearing finish, is a really great alternative to gel coats and shellac type manicures.
I can’t recommend it enough. Like I said, it’s not a new product, I’ve been using it for years, but I don’t feel like I should rest until everyone knows it exists.
It’s finally giveaway time! I have two pore cleansing pads, and two body butters. That’s enough for four winners! That increases your odds of winning something!
I’ve never done a giveaway before, and it’s already going great!
Man. Everything is going great! It’s only been a week into this, and we’ve hit over a thousand views! I’m tempted to be really excited, except I’m afraid that’s not actually a lot and I’m just getting worked up over nothing. I keep asking Jason if that’s a lot, and he says encouraging things, but he never says, “Yeah! That’s a lot! You’re internet famous now, baby. You did it! Collect your internet money, and let’s retire.” So, I don’t know!
FUCK IT.
I’m excited! If I wasn’t slaying the beauty blog game, would I have received this prestigious award?
Yeah. See what I mean? They don’t hand these out to just anybody!
I couldn’t have done it without you guys. And since a compliment for me, is a compliment for you, we’re all winners! I’ll hold the award here, at my house.
Don’t worry though, there are still more prizes to give out! Just leave a comment on this post, and you’re entered to win one of the four products. If you share this on Facebook or Twitter, leave another comment, let me know (link to it if you can), and you’ll get another entry! My lovely assistant and I will choose the winners on Friday.
This photo of Cher has been hurting my feelings with how beautiful it is since the beginning of the new Willenium. The glossy effect is done using petroleum jelly. That’s cool for a photo shoot, but way gross for real life. I’ve tried it out of curiosity, and it didn’t go well.
I thought about this look when I saw Urban Decay’s Moondust Eyeshadow in Diamond Dog at Sephora.
Honestly, I just think about Cher a lot. She’s one of my beauty idols. She took her unconventional beauty and became a STAR.
Urban Decay describes this color as, “deep brown with white-gold sparkle.” The shadow is very pigmented, it can be applied wet or dry, and you can build it from a sheer wash to a deep, smoldering color. This makes it a great color for day, or night. I was worried about the “sparkle,” since UD’s shadows aren’t always easy to work with because of the large chunks of glitter. As a semi-responsible contacts wearer (they’re old, but I keeps ’em clean), I know glitter fallout can feel like someone dumped a handful of gravel into your eyes. However, the glitter is so fine, and the shadow is so silky, it applies beautifully with surprisingly minimal fallout. I wore this over Urban Decay’s primer during an unseasonably hot evening out, and even though I was dancing, drinking and sweating, and it didn’t go anywhere. I did have a little sprinkling of the fine glitter drop into my eyelashes over the course of the night, but it wasn’t too bad.
Diamond Dog on the lid, Urban Decay’s Bootycall on the brow bone
Yeesh. It’s going to take some time to get used to these up close photo of my own face.
This shadow is so lovely and multi dimensional, it was hard to get all the depth to show. Rest assured, it is flat out gorgeous from every angle.
Due to the shimmer in the shadow, Diamond Dog will apply best with a damp brush, or over something with a tacky or adhesive base, like a primer or a makeup epoxy.
The beauty of a Cher inspired eyeshadow job, with none of the Vaseline-in-your-eye side effects!
That’s maybe the most cliched title for a Monday morning post, but I’m still finishing my coffee. Plus, the only other option I could think of was, “Morning Wood,” and that doesn’t even make sense. Unless you have a boner, maybe? If you have a boner right this second, I’m sorry I didn’t use that title instead. That would have been funny for us!
Did everyone have a good weekend? Did you all go out and look so fucking hot?
I bet you did. You sexy beasts.
I spent most of the weekend wrapped in ugly double carpal tunnel braces. I’m more machine than man! I’m a monster! Someone should make a wrist brace that’s easy to text in, and doesn’t look like shit. I’d buy two!
Enough of that! Am I running an orthopedic brace blog? What am I doing? Shut up, Sarah!
Here’s a look at some other stuff I’m doing this week:
FUN!
I have an eyeshadow review coming up in just a bit, and we’ll kick off the giveaway today too. I’m so excited!! I might let my lab assistant pick the numbers out of a hat. She doesn’t have thumbs, but she makes up for it in personality.
We have bare faces in this photo, but we are not ashamed!
It’s Friday night and the MOOD IS RIGHT, Y’AAAALL!
I wanted to find the clip from Full House where D.J. wins a radio contest and everyone goes to see the Beach Boys, but I watched this instead:
Jesse Cochrane-Katsopolis is BEST FRIENDS FOREVER with the Beach Boys. Seems to me like maybe they shouldn’t have had to win tickets to go to their show? Did Uncle Jesse put a bunch of hot babes on the list instead of his family?
I got way distracted by that video!
I was originally looking for that D.J. clip to let you guys know I got some prizes for my first product giveaway! We’re going to kick that off on Monday. I’m so excited!!
My first beauty memory is of being, like, 5 or 6, and sitting at my fancy grandma’s cosmetics littered vanity while she put straight gold glitter on my eyelids. She had tons of fur coats, red talon-like nails, a whole room for wigs, and I thought she was the most glamorous fucking thing I’d ever seen.
She wasn’t the best grandma, maternal instinct wise, but she was the best grandma at letting a 6 year old wear diamond rings and eat shrimp cocktail.
I wasn’t joking about showing you the Band-Aids I use to cover my poor fingers. The one with the gold chains is my favorite! I wish I could get a whole box of just those.
When I was a kid, my mom made a deal with me that if I quit chewing my nails, she’d take me to get them professionally done. So, I moved on from gnawing on my nails and started picking at my cuticles instead. My fingies have hurt a lot over these last 20-something years, but I got my manicure, dammit. Neon green. Because it was the muthafuckin’ 80s, and I was 8, and I was RAD.
P.S. Please resist the urge to photoshop dicks into my hands.
“Hazel. Your hair isn’t big enough and you know it. This is beauty school, not nursing school, dammit!”
I’ve been a bad, bad girl.
I’ve been careless with your delicate faces.
In my frenzy to share the good news about the Sephora Pore Cleansing Pad, I failed to warn all of you about the dangers of over exfoliating. Thankfully, it’s only been a few days, so there shouldn’t be too much damage done.
Please forgive me. You know I gets excited!
To make amends, let’s go over some basic skincare. We’ll put that esthetics license* to work!
Hey, man. I didn’t spend all those months locked in a room with bad teenagers** for nothing.
Cleanse
Before you can choose an effective cleanser, you have to be realistic with yourself about the strengths and weaknesses of your skin. Not your perceived weaknesses. The actual weaknesses. Just because you always had oily skin while you were a teenager, that doesn’t mean you’ll still have oily skin in your 20s, or 30s. You can’t keep using the same types of cleansers forever. I learned that lesson the hard way. I legit blame my own inability to follow this rule for the nearly two year struggle I’ve had with my skin.
A couple years ago, I was in the market for a new face wash. I’d always heard good things about Kiehl’s, and since we were living in LA, there was a Kiehl’s counter in a Bloomingdale’s close by. Practically fate, right?! Wrong. WRONG.
I went over there and had a whole conversation with the girl at the counter about their cleansers and masks. Purposely letting it drop that I was a licensed beauty professional, and not so purposely letting it drop that I was a huge asshole. I just really hate sitting through the whole fancy spiel about products. I don’t need to be sold to that way, it’s better for everyone if we don’t go through it, and I start to get bitchy immediately if we do.
Ugh. I’m totally just excusing my rampant self-importance right now. SOMEBODY HELP/STOP ME.
Anyways (GOOD LORD), when she asked what my skin was like, I told her the usual story: I’m pretty oily, I don’t get a lot of zits, but I battle with dullness. False. True. True. At this point, I was already most of the way through my 30th year, and I had been doing the same old routine for so long, I hadn’t realized that my skin had changed as I got older. I wasn’t that oily anymore. I think I was confusing “oily” with “sweaty.”
That’s so fucking gross. You’ll have to excuse me, I’m feeling particularly candid this morning.
Our skin tends to get drier as we age. Your skin changes a lot from your 20s to your 30s, I was out of my 20s, and not noticing the real reason why my skin care products had stopped working. This is the exact reason why, once a year or so, it’s so important to take stock of where your skin actually is. I think we sometimes get so hung up on what we’ve always thought our problems were, that we don’t see anything else. If you keep using products that address problems you don’t actually have anymore, your skin will only get worse. Cleansers for oily skin can over dry and cause oil production to increase. Acne cleansers can do the same thing, if you don’t need them anymore, leading to more acne. What a fucked up cycle, right?
I should have stopped using clarifying products, and started using combination or normal products. Instead, I bought another oil fighting cleanser and a fucking clay mask. Like an idiot. Horrifyingly, the combination of those two products totally demolished my skin. Both of my cheeks became giant, scaly surfaces. I mean, cheeks so dry and rough, they felt like scar tissue. It’s taken me nearly all of the time since then to repair the damage.
Find a good cleanser that will suit your specific skin care problems, and you have a good foundation.
Get that good cleanser and wash that face! Every day! It completely boggles my mind when people tell me they don’t have a face wash. Like, what the fuck are you doing with your life?! How do you take off your makeup? How do you clean away all the sweat and grime that lands on your face while you’re out being a person in the world? What else don’t you have?! Toothpaste?! Conventional wisdom says you should wash your face twice a day, in the morning and the evening. Personally, I usually only wash my face with cleanser in the evenings. In the mornings, if I’m not showering, I just use water.
Exfoliation
I woke up in the middle of the night, last night, and had a near meltdown when I realized I had condoned daily exfoliation to literally dozens of people. DOZENS! That was totally irresponsible of me. Especially since one of the first things I usually tell people is to stop exfoliating every day. Those cleansers with exfoliating beads in them bug the shit out of me. They’re usually too harsh and abrasive for daily use, and to make matters worse, they’re frequently used in acne cleansers. Exfoliating acne prone skin every day can cause an overproduction in oil, more irritation to the skin, and it can spread bacteria all around. If you have acne prone skin, you can gently exfoliate maybe once or twice a week.
That’s a good place to start for everyone.
If you want to get into an exfoliation routine, start out slowly, with a gentle exfoliating tool or scrub, once or twice a week. Then, if you feel like your skin can take more, increase the frequency. If your skin starts to feel tight, or tender, or bumpier than usual, you’re exfoliating too much. If you start getting more zits, you might be exfoliating too much. It’s really, really important that you don’t overwork your skin. Scale it back, and you’ll see good results. Cleaner, smoother, brighter skin.
Moisturize
Everyone should be moisturizing. EVERYONE. A lot of oily skinned people think they don’t need to, or shouldn’t moisturize. Not true! Moisturizing can help to balance out the oil production, and calm your skin. And most importantly, daily moisturizing is one of the most effective ways to combat aging.
Who wants dry, wrinkly old lady skin? Not fucking me. That’s for sure.
In my experience, simple moisturizers work best. Things with too much perfume can be drying and irritating and that’s the opposite of what we’re trying to do here. Apply your moisturizer after you wash your face. Every time. WATER can be drying too. Especially if you have crazy hard water, or you love hot showers. Those hot showers feel good, but they’ll dry your skin out soooooo bad. Worth it? The answer should be “no,” but I’m going to say “sometimes.” I’m not going to begrudge anyone the occasional super hot shower. Use a moisturizer with an SPF 15 for day to day, and one without for evenings, or any time you’ll be photographed with flash. SPFs show up white under flash. Eww! Don’t get caught looking busted like you can’t match your face to your neck.
So, my skin care basics come in at over 1,000 words. You’re welcome? Sorry? I don’t know. I’m just so passionate about all of us being as good looking as possible!
*License only valid in CA
**Not all of those teenagers were bad. Some were completely adorable.
