February Empties

Over the years I've amassed quite a horde of makeup and beauty items. I tried containing it, organizing it, and purging it to no avail. So I've decided to take a new approach: monthly inventory. I am the type of person who has to bookmark upcoming chapters in a book just to be able to power through a chapter, and that's even when I love a book. Why wouldn't this work with making sure I use my beauty items? It's not a guarantee that I will end up with piles of garbage and unwritten blog posts following up on this project, right? *cough*

January 2019 Sephora Play Review

I must preface this by saying one of my kids was eating Sour Punch straws near the keyboard and now my space bar is out of control so I apologize for any elementary formatting errors you may come across in this post.

Play! by Sephora is a $10 subscription that provides users with 5 samples, a bonus item, and 50 extra beauty insider points with a purchase every month. The great part about this subscription: everything offered can be found inside Sephora or online at Sephora.com. The downside: I have never received a full sized item. That said, the samples are typically large enough to allow me to determine whether or not I actually like a product and if it's worth purchasing.

January 2019 Ipsy Review

Ipsy is a $10 a month subscription that offers a makeup bag and 5 makeup, beauty, skincare or hair care items. Items vary from sample to full sized and the brands can be drug store, indie label or masstige. What I love about Ipsy is it's a great way to build up a beginner makeup collection without investing too much money, the bags are perhaps the most personalized of any subscription service I've seen, and the sample sizes are great: I've never received a foil packet in the 3 years that I've been subscribed!

I got some serious Judy Garland vibes from January's bag. It's made of a very folksy blue pinstripe patterned fabric-yeah, I know Dorothy wore gingham, not pinstripes. It is far from my favorite with it's down home country feel but somebody out there has to love it, right?

January 2019 Birchbox Review

Birchbox is a subscription service that provides members with 5 sample sized beauty, makeup or hair care items for $10 a month right to your front door. Now, unfortunately it looks like the price will be going up to $13 a month (there damn well better be an improvement for that price point) but you can lock in a year for $110 if you subscribe before 24 Mar 2019.

FOTD

I went through the effort of building a FOTD post including taking numerous pictures and notes on how I felt about some of the products. In true Morgan fashion though, I forgot to follow through and post. I managed this very basic look using a couple a ton of products I have on hand at home. My intention was to only use a few of them. Things quickly went south.

January Empties

I thought I would try something new and write up an empties post. I like seeing these from other people to get an idea of what did and didn't work throughout a given month. Also, I'm a slob and a hoarder. This allows me to tap into that latent characteristic of mine. For ease, I divided this into subsections: hair care, bath and body, cleansers, makeup, and miscellaneous.

Walmart Beauty Kits: A Long Winded Review. a.k.a. “I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.” ― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt

Alright kids, this is going to be a doozy, you uh, you might want to grab your coffee for this one. I'm sure I've stated on more than one occasion how much I hate stepping into Walmart. I just don't have the patience anymore for the lines, the crowds, the people asking me how pregnant I am and me being forced to explain I'm not pregnant, it's just baby weight. They don't need to know the baby is 9 months old. And then after such exchanges I just end up wasting a shit load more on apple cider and chocolate or frozen pizza bites as comfort food. Not worth it.

Last weekend though, the planets aligned and suddenly it was worth it. I was skulking through My Subscription Addiction one day and I stumbled across a post announcing Walmart would have beauty boxes. "Oh ha ha, that's great, are these the usually $5 boxes that are mostly foil packets and forgettable?" "No bitch, but that was cute. Remember that money you were promising yourself you wouldn't spend? Mine now. Let's roll." ...And so it goes. There were numerous other kits, these just happen to be the two that caught my attention.