Good afternoon my darlings. Have you ever had a day where everything just chugs along as expected. No mishaps, no emergencies, no surprises? Just the day quietly moving along as planned? I know it is the sort of day that once it is passed will slip through the cracks in my memory and be forgotten in a haze, but to be honest it feels fabulous.
I think it has just been such a strange spring for me. Every time I turned around there was another large must deal with event coming down. There were some high points but there were some low points but it was a very spiky looking graph because there seemed to be no mid points.
The transmission on my vehicle started to slip and needed expensive repairs. I got a commission on a project I really wanted to work on. My brother died. I received an award. My heating and air conditioning unit needed to be replaced. One of my younger cousins had twins. One of my best friend’s father died. One of my cousin’s kid’s graduated with honors. A friend got married, two friends got divorced.
I’m sure there were a few more things in there. Some of them happened to me, some around me, but this was not a quiet spring. It was a season of emotional rollercoasters. It felt more like a cork had been popped out and everything just sort of spewed forth in one big gush. I think a lot of it might have been things that were delayed due to earlier lock downs and rescheduling issues and it just all happened to land at once. But it kind of makes me appreciate the solidly steady quiet days where things just go as intended.
Today, I watered, I worked out, I showered and dressed for the day, I worked, I had a a Smoothie Box smoothie (Orange – it was delicious) for lunch. I went back to work. Then I remembered I was going to marinade the salmon we were having for dinner (we just got a Vital Choice order, in fact because it came in around the same time as the Smoothie Box we are thinking of getting one of those small stand alone coolers Nothing large, but in the summer we eat a lot more fish so we order Vital Choice more often (plus there is a huge sale going on right now, I;ll link it below) so that it is on hand and my babydoll wants more room to stash his freeze pops. Yes those plastic tubes of colored sugar water and ice you freeze. He loves them and couldn’t find space in the freezer).
The marinade is my favorite, equal parts maple syrup and soy sauce, freshly grated ginger, a couple of pinches of pepper flakes and that’s it. I put everything in a bag so it is easy to turn after two hours and I put the bag in a bowl in the fridge so if the bag springs a leak there won’t be sticky marinade in the fridge. We are having it with roasted green beans that have a dash of sesame oil and some sesame seeds on them. Beans are in season here so you can buy huge bags locally. I roast a whole pan and the left overs will get pureed and mixed with potato so so tomorrow we will have a sort of vegetable pancakes to go with our gochujang chicken.
Yup my biggest concern thus far was making sure I had a plan to use the leftover beans I know we will have.
Ah, normality, how I have missed you.
Today’s Look:
Primer: Sephora Smooth + Blur Primer
Foundation: Revolution Fast Base Foundation Stick
Bronzer: Too Faced Chocolate Soleil Bronzer
Blush: IBY Beauty Blush in Sun Kissed
Powder: Kim Chi Beauty Puff Puff Pass Setting Powder
Eyeshadow: Maybelline Color Tattoo cream shadow and Lottie London Metallic Pigment
Mascara: Marc Jacobs Velvet Noir (the link goes to Sephora for reference but it is out of stock everywhere and discontinued)
Lips: M2UNYC Matte Liquid Lip and TYS Lip Treat Lip Plumper
Today was an interesting mix of new and old, or maybe I should say established. I started with the trial size of primer that came in my Allure. It is one of those tubes that is mostly empty. I might be able to squeak two more uses out of it. It is from the Sephora line and I have to admit when I saw it in the Allure box I wasn’t thrilled, but I did think that if it was there then maybe it was there because it was really good. It is the sort of slippy silicone feeling primers. It works well. It isn’t fabulous but it is functional. It is the sort of thing that if i was placing a Sephora order and needed one more thing to push me over a spending limit, I might add. It is not something that I would look for or specifically go to buy. It is a $16 primer so it is more affordable, but honestly I think the Elf primers are $8 or $9 depending on where you get them and they are better. So if you were looking for an affordable primer I would go there before going to the Sephora line. It does a decent job, it just isn’t rave worthy.
The Revolution Fast Base foundation stick on the other hand is a standby summer favorite. I finished up a tube last summer and then when Revolution had a sale I restocked. This was my first use this summer and I do love this foundation stick. It doesn’t need to be warmed up, blends easily and I found my perfect match (F11 in case you are wondering). It is something that I can wear now and will be able to wear throughout the summer and into the fall when my tan fades. I generally end up using up a tube of this foundation every summer.
The Too Faced bronzer, is a regular use product, it tends to work better for me when I am more tan so it does get more use in the summer. and lets face it the compact is beautiful too so it is nice to play with.
The IBY blush I saw in the drawer this morning and could not honestly remember using. I opened it and it looked untouched. It also looked like a good shade for me. I’m guessing it came in a subscription over the winter and I thought ‘summer shade’ and put it to the side. It is a darker tone and for a first use it worked well. It isn’t highly pigmented but it beldns without disappearing which is nice. I’ll play around with it and see if I am going to add it to my summer makeup, but first use seems promising.
I like the Kim Chi Powder. It is a good quality and with the powder pudd I don’t need to use all that much which keeps it from looking powdery. I did notice if I used a brush then it could look powdery, so I always use the puff with this powder.
Because I wanted to play around with the metallic foil I just used the Maybelline to give me a little darker shade towards the edges. I really do love these color tattoo shadows. It took me a while to figure out how to work with them but in the end they turned out to be fantastic. I need to figure out how to get myself to reach for them more. It is an on going problem with the single shadows. I paired them down to the ones I really like, but I just need to figure out an organizational system that works. So it worked fantastically as always. The gold was the pone I was playing around with. It is the Lottie London. When I used a brush, there was fall out. when I used my finger there was less fall out but it was a bit messy because my finger was just too large. Today I soaked a cotton swab with Setting Spray (Benefit Cosmetics Super Setter) and it was perfect. It had the rounded tip of the finger and the dampness locked in the powder so there was no fall out but it had the maneuverability of a shadow brush. I now want to try this with all of my loose pigments. I don’t know why I didn’t try it before. It was a fantastic solution and thus far I have had zero fall out.
Even though Marc Jacobs Beauty is no more, I found an unopened back up of the Velvet noir and decided to use it. I’ll try to use it more on the days when I don’t post a daily so that I am using products available to purchase if you find them appealing (I hate when I see something I like only to find it no longer exists). this was my favorite mascara for a long time, but Marc Jacobs Beauty has closed. Also I saw an article about Revlon closing too. Which I admit stunned me more than Marc Jacobs.
Revlon is declaring bankruptcy. That seems almost unfathomable.
So we end with lips. I chose the M@UNYC because I like it, it is matte and it dries fairly quickly. I wanted to try the lip plumper over it. The TYS doesn’t have a huge amount of plumping that I can see (but it does tingle a lot) and it has the same effect over lipstick as it did on bare lips. Which was what i was testing today. And it worked.
And so that is me. I was a bit long winded today, maybe with everything seeming calmer I just felt like chatting. I hope you don’t mind. I am tickled my cotton swab idea panned out and I will be trying it elsewhere. I am also thrilled I thought up an advance plan for the left over green beans. I know, not buckets of excitement, but today, that is an amazing thing. Have a great rest of your afternoon.
Ms. Mimsy Reviews 