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What's in my Makeup Bag?

*originally posted here on my family blog...definitely fits over here better :) *

First off,
I must give warning and let you know that I am no beauty professional,
and I sure don't use any fancy shmancy products.
Sorry to disappoint if that's why you're here :)
I'm pretty plain-jane.
And obviously suuuuper old school/behind the times,
considering that I just barely updated from my hard-shelled Caboodles case to a new-styled bag(...but still Caboodles...ha).


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Let's take a peeksie...

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I didn't number these top flap items because I think they're pretty self explanatory.
Moving on...
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This is my best zit-zapping friend. And trust me, I know zits. I would bawl and bawl about them in middle school and high school and make my mom take me to the dermatologist multiple times to try and find that one "magic potion" that would make them all disappear. Too bad I didn't realize that I just had to wait for the sea of raging hormones [to ebb] (name that movie)...The secret here is that it(Terminator10) contains 10% micro-benzoyl peroxide. Yeah that may seem a little too harsh for some, but it does the job for me. If you have super sensitive skin I'd probably recommend not using it every night(the back instructions will tell you this too), but for someone like me who basically burned my face(k, not literally, it would just get suuuper red) with chemicals for years trying to make them go away, it's fine... After I wash my face each night, I put a thin layer of this on. I am religious about using this(as well as face-washing before bed). I will not skip a night even if I'm camping. Ha ha. I buy it from Walmart usually, and if I see that they're out, I will grab Clean and Clear's persa-gel 10:
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(same thing, different packaging/branding. and it still has 10% benzoyl-peroxide)

2. Your standard black brush (i got mine from Walmart a loooong time ago).

3. Vaseline
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This is good stuff you guys. Especially for taking off mascara. I might not wear foundation, but I sure as heck wear mascara. And because I do, I want to be careful with my eyelashes when taking it off. That's where good 'ole Vaseline comes in handy. I put a little Vaseline on my index and thumb and put a nice layer of goop over my eyelashes. Then I let it sit for maybe three minutes or less-just letting it sink in and really soften that mascara. I then take a WARM to HOT wash cloth and carefully/slowly wipe it all away. Works like a charm. And my eyelashes are thankful that they haven't been harshly scrubbed out or frozen off. This is another thing I've been doing forever-or at least since I began wearing mascara. My mom taught me this trick ;)

4. Summer Eclipse Bronzing & Shimmery Face Powder-Moonlight3104

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I love this stuff! I don't wear it a ton-mostly when going to church or on date with the hubs, you know, all those I'm-going-to-be-seen-in-public moments. This is kind of like my foundation/blush?...kind of. But it doesn't go all over my face like foundation would, it just gives it that healthy glow/look everyone wants. I brush some on my forehead, and cheekbones, and put a teeny bit on my nose. I've been using this for five years now, and the best thing I've noticed is that it doesn't make me break out. Boo-yeah!

5. A basic Goodie claw that I use when sectioning off my hair to style it.

6. Q-tips
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Used for everything from ears to wiping off excess mascara around my eyes. I never travel without these bad boys!

7. NYC-Union Square 818A
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Am I boring you with how non-exciting my makeup items are? Well, it's going to get a whole lot more boring. When it comes to eyeshadow, like everything else face-related, I stick to my neutrals. I just cannot break out and try colors. I don't believe they were made for me.  ha ha.

8. Scope Mouthwash in Original Mint
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Travel size. No one likes bad breath.

9. Dental Floss Threaders
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These are nice and handy, especially when you have a permanent bottom retainer, like me.

10. Floss
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...need I say more?

11. Another basic Goodie claw that I use to section off my hair while styling.

12. Back Comb
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Where has this been all my life?! ha ha. We all know I love me some hair volume. If you can believe it, I've even toned it down since high school. HA. But Kevin still says it's too much...oh well. I feel I look ugg without any! I've had this comb for about a month(i know, again, so behind the times-all you beauty school girls are probably shaking your heads at me) and I got it at Sally's for about $3. It makes teasing my hair lots faster, so I looooove it!

13. Artificial Tears
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Sometimes my contacts and eyes get dried out so I use this.

14. Just a basic comb I've had forever-again, got it at Walmart. I don't use this one a ton anymore tho-sometimes to part my hair..

15. Neosporin
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Sometimes when I get hangnails I'll put it on all my cuticles and in the morning-woola! no more red and soreness. Like the floss threaders, this is just good to have on hand.

16. Maybelline Mascara-Full N' Soft, very black(J300)
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Okay, I've said it before, and I'll say it again: If there is one thing I don't leave the house without, it's mascara! Nope I have never used Latisse or done eyelash extentions or used falsies (although the previous two have sounded appealing before). I stick to my tried and true mascara. This one, Full N' Soft, is actually the one I use second, to fill in my lashes and make them look thick.

17. Maybelline mascara-the Colossal Volum' Express, classic black(J503)
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I used to use their line called Illegal Lengths, and it was a sad day for me when that got discontinued, but this Colossal Volum' Express works the same and does a great job at extending my lashes. So this is what I put on first, then the Full N' Soft. I'll then take that pin (hanging in the top flap picture) and separate them if they clump. Usually I will go two, sometimes three days(rarely), without taking it off. Ahhhhhh and I can't stress enough how much the vaseline and warm water helps to easily remove mascara! Your eyelashes are precious girls. DON'T scrub them off! (ps-i hate waterproof mascara and only wear it to swim, and i have never worn eye-liner. i feel that less is more in my case and simply don't want to add another beauty item to my bag, when i don't feel i need it. but it looks amazing on most everyone! )

18. Almay Clear Complexion Concealer, light/medium(200)
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This, my friends, is what I use as my "foundation". Yes, I know it's a concealer-something that is supposed to go under your foundation to cover-up those unpleasant red marks better. But I have oily skin and HATE foundation (something you wouldn't believe if you saw my little high school self) and so I simply use this around my nose a little, under my eyes, and then on a zit or two if I'm breaking out. It's the bomb.

That's it for my bag,
but here are two more items that are my faves:

LEFT: Clean & Clear Continuous Control Acne Cleanser(it also contains 10% benzoyl peroxide). This is my facewash/makeup remover. I use it twice a day-once every morning(usually when I'm taking my shower), and once again at night before bed to remove my makeup. I cannot stand going to bed with makeup on(mascara obviously doesn't bother me one bit). This is another thing my mom taught me. A clean face is a healthy face. Washing it at night (with warm water) opens your pores and lets them breath from all the junk we girls can cake on! This is also ideal for when I apply my acne cream.

RIGHT: Fake Bake Airbrush Instant Self-Tan. This is a fun subject for me. ha ha ha. If you've met me within the past five years then you have known the "tan" Audrey. But there used to be a "pasty-ghost-white-translucent" Audrey. I know, hard to imagine. Long story short: I started tanning when I met Kevin, loved it, did it too much (you could say I was addicted-Kevin likes to), looked super fake(ha!), and then got pregnant and stopped. I honestly didn't even think about tanning while pregnant. I believe the whole excitement of my very first baby was too overwhelming :) ...you know? Anyways, a few months ago(after Bronx was born) I wanted to start again because I felt ugg being white and because I still had lots of baby fat. I feel that my skin looks a little less "fat" when tan, and I wanted some good vitamin D!....buuuuut I didn't want the side effects like wrinkly leather skin. We've all heard people say "she's 30 and looks like she's 50!" and Kevin had started telling me that he didn't want me to look that way in a few years. Yikes! Neither did I. HOWEVER-and this is a big however-I was NOT going to use a tanning lotion. My freshman year of college I used the Jergens Natural Glow....and it turned ugly fast. It was the worst peely, streeky, crap ever! So I just kind of gave up and was about to give into my white side, when I came across this post by the Barefoot Blonde. I was hopeful (but more doubtful) and bought myself a bottle to try and see how "awesome" it really was....
Aaaannnnd we have a winner!
Like Amber says: NO streaks and NO orange!
This stuff rocks. I also love that it doesn't stink and I see exactly where it's going. It gives me just enough color to not make me whitey-white-white. Another plus? I don't get wrinkles. It lasts about 5 days and is dang cheaper than a tanning salon! Kevin's pretty happy about that :)
(click HERE to learn more about it)
*update: I should note here, that I work out a lot, and sweat a lot. This spray doesn't come off when I do! It doesn't feel heavy or thick on my skin-I don't even notice it after it dries! (and it dries nice and fast!)
Also, I haven't Breastfed Bronx since about month 2. I would advise moms that do, to just not apply the spray that far down...you know, where that sweet little baby goes. If you do, you might end up with something like this:
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ha ha ha!
(my sis-in-law Lins texted me this pic and i couldn't stop laughing!)

This is the other little bag I have.
It fits inside the bigger one for when I travel,
and I just keep my liplgosses/chapsticks and safety pins inside(you never know when you might need one!).
I have never worn lipstick,
and I know that may sound silly especially now that I'm a mom (that's what i feel like moms do-wear lipstick),
but I just can't get myself to wear it or buy it!

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Hopefully you are not bored out of your mind!
I have a few items left to share,
and they are found in my medicine cabinet.
(i won't include individual pics here because you can see it all well in the above pic)

1. Irish Spring deodorant. I must admit I wear men's deodorant. That is my deep dark secret. I honestly just love the smell.
2. Freeze It Hairspray, Mega Freeze. Oh this stuff is the bomb. I have thin hair (another BIG reason I tease it-to make it look "fuller") and this hairspray helps keep all that teasing in place. I always have extras of this on hand.
3. Dove dry shampoo. I've posted about this before, using Beyond the Zone's Rock On brand. I honestly like both. I was at Walmart getting hairspray one time and saw the Dove brand and decided to get it. It's much cheaper and does the job just fine.

Everyone has their own "scents" that they love and here are mine right now:
4. Pure Seduction body spray by Victoria Secret.
5. Mango Temptation by Victoria Secret. I got this a couple summers ago-pretty sure it's not in their main line.
6. Revert Eco by Rue21.
7. Pink Ice by Rue21.

Whew.
That's it.
You've probably found out more than you care to know about me,
but hopefully you found something that you like and want to try from reading!

Chevron Nails:gold on black

These nails were inspired from this post by Kandee Johnson. She's seriously the cutest and greatest. Go check her out! 

So I have an obsession with nail polish and glitter and all things girly. After reading that post I wanted to do the same to my nails. I didn't have the exact colors as hers, but they were close:

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Orly "LAB4402"(i'm sorry! the sticker fell off!) and "Goth"

I started out trying to get the same effect of that pretty gold falling down her black nails, but my gold was too thick, and definitely didn't give me that desired "snowing" look...

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Dangit. Luckily I remembered seeing a tutorial on Pinterest (oh, you good 'ole Pinterest, you) where scotch tape was used to create a cool design. So I tried it.

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I threw the tape on (TIP: i recommend doing tape on just ONE hand first, then letting it dry and then move the tape to your other hand-saves messes and you don't have to tear off a billion tape pieces..) and finished painting.

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Much better than what I first had going on, right? Right. This was the first time using tape and won't be the last! ha ha I really liked how these turned out. Can't wait to try different colors and patterns like this and this!

A Little Candy House

Made of gingerbread. And HOMEMADE! 

I am sounding crazy, I know. But I really wanted to prove to myself I could do it. I followed my Grandma Huber's recipe and used the easy-peasy cardboard pattern (my mom cut out for me-she is so great) to cut it after pulling it out of the oven...

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(obviously i let my thumb get in the way while pulling it out. boo)
It is SUPER important to cut the gingerbread right when it comes out of the oven and is still soft. If you wait, it will get too hard and break if you try to cut it!

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I let my gingerbread sit for a couple days(right like that in the pan just on my counter), but you could put it together sooner than that, as long as it is cool. We finally got around to decorating ours last night!

Here is the my Grandma's recipe (the icing is seriously like glue!):

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Easy Neighbor Gifts

This holiday season is all about giving right? Right. I wanted to get our neighbor gifts ready early this year (HA! it's not even December yet), and I decided to go with an easy gift that has cute word play. My mom always made these (along with plates of goodies to hand out to neighbors), and I wanted to copy her. 

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All it takes is some cheap wire whisks (i got mine from Walmart-pack of 3=under$3) and some Kisses. Well, you can see I used hugs. I obviously wasn't thinking straight when I got to that candy isle. I LOVE Hugs...so Hugs it is...

just pretend they are Kisses, okay?

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Wrap a small handful of Kisses in some Cling Wrap, and maneuver them inside the whisk like so:

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Then I got on my computer and printed out the phrase: "We "whisk" you a Merry "kiss"mas!

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Cut them out and grabbed my washi tape(i got mine from Target).


I tore off a long peice, and folded it over. Then I glued the cut out phrase to the tape, and cut the end of the tape to look like a little banner/flag:

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Punched a hole through the left end...

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Threaded some ribbon through, tied it up, and ta da:

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You've got your neighbor gifts all ready to deliver!

Christmas Vinyl

So there's this spot above my sink that has been in desperate need of some lovin', and I finally got around to it the other day. I liked this craft because it was super fast, yet looks super cute. I already had the red wreath, but it looked lonely and too small to stay there by itself. When this little phrase popped into my head I knew exactly what to do with it!


Here's how:
I wanted a classy font and a fun font. I chose Lucidia Handwriting for "'tis the season", Century Gothic for "to be", and LDJ Kris Kringle  for "Jolly".

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Because the Lucidia Handwriting font is "cursif-ey" (i know, not a word..) the letters touched and there was overlapping that was going to occur, which meant that cutting into letters, where letters weren't supposed to be cut was going to happen. I fixed that easily by tracing the whole phrase. See how it's blacked out up there along the right side? Doing this also made it WAY easier for me to put it on the wall (phrase vs individual letters). Here's where I got stupid-HA-and I'm pretty embarrassed about it: I wanted to still have the letters with "spaces" (the s,e,a,o) be cut out, but I didn't know how. So I just typed up those letters (underneath the blackout phrase) thinking that I would just take out that letter and use it for the above....have I lost you? Ha ha. I know. I'm ridiculous. Anyways, in the end I bagged that complicated idea and just stayed with the blacked out (traced) phrase. I added the "to be" phrase on there and cut my vinyl(i got mine at Walmart forever ago, $9-there are way better deals on Amazon for packs if you're wanting to try out a bunch of different colors).

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Then I just added the "Jolly" to the same paper, deleted the other phrases, and cut. I know that it'll have to come down after the holiday, but for now it's a great little touch to that little kitchen of ours!

Gingerbread Garland

Just wanted to stop in and share this simple craft with you today. I went AWOL decorating the casa for Christmas over here, and as I was pulling fake snow out of boxes and setting up mangers, I decided that a gingerbread garland would look cute in my kitchen.

So I went over to Lettering Delights to find myself a cute little gingerbread man. There were tons of cute ones, but I was looking for a more traditional shape, and finally stumbled across the Old World Christmas graphic set. Here is what it looks like:

Old World Christmas


LD: cut it sale!

Okay all you crafters, you do NOT want to miss this sale going on NOW until November 29th at midnight, MST. Seriously, Lettering Delights has the cutest cut-its around!


Just click HERE or the picture above to start shopping!

Alphabet Cards

It might seem silly that I am already making Bronx these, but I couldn't help myself. I really wanted to make him some cute animal/alphabet flash cards! I knew Lettering Delights had a ton of cute animals I wanted to use, so I headed over there, pulled out my Silhouette, and got to work.




I got all my animals from Lettering Delights BUT the alligator, kangaroo, narwhal, quail, umbrella bird, and vulture. The alligator, kangaroo, umbrella bird, and vulture I found on Pinterest, and the narwhal and quail I found on google images. I took them into the silhouette studio and traced them. Easy peasy. I also kept track of where I got each file, so if you want to do them yourself, here's the list:
(just click the pic and you'll go right to the site)

For the bird and fish:

For the cat, horse, pig, and rabbit:

Farm


For the dog:

Stringbean Dogs


For the elephant:

Stringbean Dogs


For the giraffe and yak:

Love Pets




For the iguana and snake:

Stringbean Dogs


For the jellyfish:

Something Fishy


For the lion and monkey:

Nancy's Buddies


For the owl:

Woodsy


For the turtle and fox:

Woodsie Critters


For the whale:

Sea Life


For the zebra:

Zoo

(if you notice above, i actually cut my own zebra "stripes" freehand with sizzors)

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On the back(or front i guess, however you look at it) I used the font "A Truer Blue" to cut out the capital and lowercase letters. I took the above photos before I added their names, because i was trying to decide if i wanted to free hand them or cut each animal name out. I decided to cut the names out("Ariel" font), and I added them directly underneath each animal.


I knew I wanted them laminated to make them last longer, and when I was at Costco the other week, I remembered that my mom had gotten her laminator from there. I called and asked her how she liked it, and she did, so I grabbed my own (it's the Purple Cow brand-i found it over by the ink cartridges and office stuff). Totally worth the $19.85, especially since I am going to use it for multiple projects! It was suuuper easy to set up and use too (ha-i'm always nervous for that part!).

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Here they are all done and laminated! I'm so excited to finally finish this project. What I forget is that having a baby around makes everything take 10x longer. ha ha. So instead of busting this out in an afternoon, it took me like 2 weeks. The baby's definitely worth it :) I sat down with little B today(4months yesterday!) and went through them all, and he loved looking at the colors!