Thursday Chats: The (Un)Realities of Social Media

Happy Thursday, everyone! We’ve almost made it to the end of the week! Today’s post is another installment in my Thursday Chats series. This one is a discussion about social media, with a focus on the makeup/fashion/lifestyle community in particular. I tried to be as concise as possible, so I’m sorry if I get rambly!

I think by now, we’re all aware that a lot of the posts we see on social media are not real. Rather, a lot of it is staged snapshots of people’s lives. Much of the content you see online is highly set up, curated, and edited to showcase that “ideal” lifestyle. However, even armed with this knowledge, it comes as no surprise that social media has a negative impact on our mental health. Not only is it addictive for many people, but it is also leads to dissatisfaction with our own lives.

On the surface, social media is a resource used to connect with friends and family and to show other people what we get up to in our daily lives. Unfortunately, like with all technology, it comes with a dark side (Black Mirror, anyone?). In terms of social media, it has inevitably become a means of comparison. We see these beautiful life moments that other people are sharing, and we’ll unconsciously compare our lives to what we see online. It can make the best of us feel that our own lives are inadequate, and can become a breeding ground for feelings like jealousy or inferiority.

Blogger Awards

Lately I’ve been tagged in a bunch of award posts, so today I’m copying Always Cleia, who lumped all of her awards into one giant post.

Since I’m doing so many of them all at once, I’m not writing questions for every award or tagging people individually for each award. I’ve tagged a bunch of people at the bottom, so if you’ve tagged (or even if you aren’t), feel free to answer all of these below using any of the 30 questions I’ve come up with, or none of them! Questions are at the very end.

This is probably the longest post I’ve ever written, and I found it very difficult to talk about myself, so grab a coffee or tea and sit tight!

Decluttering my Makeup Collection

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that one of my 2018 beauty goals is to get my makeup vanity/workspace set up. One of the things I wanted to do before setting my desk up is to get rid of all the beauty products that I don’t use anymore. There’s really just no point in reorganizing and finding a place to house products that I don’t use anymore, you know?

This may not seem like a very big declutter at first, but I actually own a fairly small makeup collection, especially considering I’m a beauty blogger! Depending on how much I use the products I decide to keep, I might do another declutter at the end of the year. I’ve been seeing a lot of decluttering posts lately, and it’s nice to know everyone else is starting the new year off with a clean makeup collection.

Too Faced A Few of my Favourite Things palette and the Urban Decay Vice palette

EYESHADOWS

Urban Decay Vice Palette

This is an OG palette in my collection, and it’s also the OG Vice palette. I’m 99% sure it’s the second high-end palette I’ve ever owned, after the Naked palette. This was purchased at a time when I was more into wearing colours on my eyes than I do these days. The quantity of this palette is decent – there are two shades that are Glitter Central and a few that has a stiff formula, but overall it’s a pretty decent palette – I just don’t find myself using it at all anymore.

Too Faced A Few of My Favourite Things Palette

When this palette came out, a lot of the shades interested me, but in reality I didn’t really get much use out of the more colourful ones. I liked the idea of having both face and eye products all together, and while I did get some use out of the face products, it wasn’t nearly as much as I use my single blushes and bronzers.

Beauty Brands I Want to Try in 2018

Two weeks ago, I shared an Instagram post on brands I wanted to try this year. Since there are only so many photos I can put into one Instagram post, in today’s post I wanted to share a more complete list of the brands I want to try in 2018, and specifically the products that I would like to try from these brands. I definitely won’t try all of the products on here (I’m actively trying not to reach VIB Rouge this year, ahem), but it’s nice to get a wish list going! Surprisingly, a lot of it is skincare. I tend to stick with my tried-and-true skincare products as I’m always afraid that my skin is going to freak out from new products. However, my skin is having all types of issues in the last few months, which means it’s unhappy with something I’m doing, so I think it’s time to change things up a little.

 

Colourpop

I’m a few years late to the bandwagon on Colourpop, as I’ve always held off on ordering from them because I don’t want to pay for the exchange rate/shipping/duties, but I think this year I will bite the bullet. I have an ongoing, ever-changing list of makeup products I would like to try from Colourpop, and at the top of my wish list from them are their Super Shock Shadows, Lippie Stix, and Super Shock Highlighters (not necessarily the shades shown above).

Tigritsa Giveaway Items

A few weeks ago, I received a most pleasant surprise when Tigritsa emailed me to say that I had won her 500-follower giveaway that she hosted at the end of October! If you don’t already follow Tigritsa’s blog, please do! I’ve been reading her blog since the summer and she takes the most beautiful, envy-inducing flatlays. She was incredibly generous and sent me so many items that I could barely fit them all into a group shot! Continue below to see all the goodies she gifted.

SKINCARE

Clinique Go-Go Eyes Set

The giveaway included a set of Clinique sample-sized items, including the Take the Day Off makeup remover, the Pep-Start eye cream, and the Chubby Lash mascara. It’s been a really, really long time since I’ve used any Clinique products, so I’m looking forward to start again.

Feel-Good Friday

I’ve decided to rename my Friday Reflections posts to Feel-Good Friday, since I usually use these posts to talk about discoveries that I love, or things that make me feel good, so to speak. Now that it’s officially December and all of the malls and office buildings have their Christmas decorations up, I feel completely justified in going crazy for all things Christmas. I’ve been waiting for this since the beginning of November!

I’ve started watching This is Us on Netflix a few weeks ago, and I have fallen in LOVE with the show. I went into it completely blind, hearing rave reviews about it but not knowing what it was about at all. It has so much heart and is so touching and heartbreaking all at once, and I feel like I’ve missed having a show like this in my life since I’ve been watching darker stuff lately. I usually watch TV at my desk while I’m writing up blog posts or working on calligraphy stuff, and my husband is sitting at his desk behind me playing video games. He’s admitted to me that he hasn’t been able to concentrate on his games because he’s been sucked in to This Is Us! This coming from the guy who is usually into shows with car chases, explosions, and/or cliffhangers – basically the opposite of this show – so you know it’s good!

We did our Christmas gift exchange at work last week (since a lot of people will be away in December). I went shopping with a coworker to find our gifts, and he bought this colour-changing mug from David’s Tea as his gift. I thought it was so cute that I went to buy it for myself this weekend. The little fox changes colours when you pour a hot beverage into it! It comes with an infuser, which is great because I’m the only one that drinks tea in our household, and I usually find it too much to brew a whole pot for myself. A single mug of tea is the perfect amount!

Wedding DIY: Watercolour Place Cards

Although my wedding has long come and gone, there are still a handful of DIY projects I wanted to share but never got around to – nothing wrong with sharing them after the wedding, right? Today I wanted to talk about how I made my place cards. I loved how they turned out, and they surprisingly seemed to be quite popular at our wedding. A few of our guests even told me they took theirs home, which is hilarious because I’m not sure what you would do with a place card after the wedding 😝 This was quite a tedious process that took me months to finish bit by bit, but I enjoyed the process. I also went through several shows on Netflix while working on it, so it was a win-win. If you have any bridesmaids that are willing to give a hand (or be voluntold by the bride), that would probably be a great help!

Since my general wedding design was watercolour, the place cards featured a watercolour background with champagne-gold splatters and hand-lettering that I did myself. The gold splatters are optional – our wedding colours were blush and dusty blue, but we ended up with a lot of gold accents in our décor, so I thought the gold splatters would be a nice tie-in with the rest of the room.

Sephora VIB Sale Wish List

It’s the time of the year we’ve been all waiting for! No, not Christmas – the Sephora VIB Sale! This year, the 20% off sale for VIB Rouge members starts on November 3-6, then again on November 10-15 – that’s two weekends of shopping! For VIBs and BIs, the sale is on November 10-15; VIBs receive 20% off, and BIs receive 15% off.

I’m not a Rouge member so I’m not doing my shopping this weekend, but I still thought I would share my wish list for those who DO get to partake in the sale this weekend – maybe we can get ideas off of each other’s lists! I will definitely not be buying everything on the list – it goes from most likely to purchase to least likely to purchase.

September & October No-Buy

Today’s post is a combined September and October no-buy. Both months were no-buy months, and while I was quite successful in avoiding any purchases in September, you can tell from the featured image that October was a completely different story. Sephora has been doing their Week of Wow sales where a different selection of products are discounted at ~50% every week, and let’s just say that I have had a really, really difficult time resisting them.

Anastasia Beverly Hills Liquid Lipsticks in Kathryn and Dusty Rose – $16 each

I have said before that I am not a liquid lipstick girl, but since I had a pretty good experience with the Tarte Lip Paints, I wanted to try a few more liquid lipstick formulas out. ABH’s liquid lipsticks were part of the Week of Wow sales at the beginning of the month, so I took the discounted price (originally $26 each) as an opportunity to test out a few from the brand. The Sephora near my work doesn’t carry these, and while I almost always buy lipsticks in stores so that I can swatch them on my hand and see the colour in person, I took a chance and bought these online. Luckily, both colours look pretty flattering on me, although Kathryn is more red-toned than I had anticipated. Despite the name, Dusty Rose is pretty bright – I see it more as a summer colour than a fall shade. I’ve only worn these a few times so I can’t give a definitive answer just yet, but I’m not entirely sure I’m convinced that I can ever be a liquid lipstick girl.

Tarte Tarteist PRO Glow Highlight and Contour Palette – $29

A contour kit is definitely not necessary in my makeup collection, but the Week of Wow sale sucked me in. The Tarteist Pro Glow palettes have piqued my interest a bit since they came out, but because I already own so many highlighters and have more than are higher on my wish list, I don’t think I ever would have bought this, or I would have gone for the Pro Glow to Go palette, which has two highlights and a contour shade for $30 regular price. However, they were selling this Pro Glow palette for the same price as the Pro Glow to Go, when it normally retails for $59! I did recently hit pan on my contour powder (!!!), so maybe this purchase is justified? At least, that’s what I’m telling myself. The bottom left contour shade is a cream product, and I hate palettes that mix powders with creams…so we’ll see how that works out.

BECCA Shimmering Skin Perfector Poured Highlighter in Moonstone – $23

To be honest, I didn’t even know Becca had these cream highlighters until I saw them as part of the Week of Wow sales. The Poured range offers the same shades as their Pressed highlighters and the Liquid highlighters, just in cream form. I I looked at the website the morning the Week of Wow sale went up, and all the shades were already sold out. Do people stalk the Sephora website night and day?? At lunchtime, I went to check the Sephora near my work, and they still had all of the shades except Champagne Pop and Prosecco Pop. I was most interested in Champagne Pop, but since it wasn’t available, I purchased Moonstone instead. This is probably not a product I ever would have bought under normal circumstances, but these sell for $46 and were on sale for $23, and this girl can’t resist a discounted highlighter. PS – the compact looks like this because it came with a protective film on top of the cream highlighter, and some of the highlighter came off when I peeled the film off – boo!

 

Laura Mercier Little Indulgences Hand & Body Creme – $45

Out of all of the products in my haul, this was the only one that I actually needed and wasn’t on sale. I ran out of hand cream months ago and have just been walking around with dry hands since. I wanted to try something new, and I decided on these Laura Mercier hand creams even though they’re quite pricey. Each tube costs $11.25, and they’re only 30 mL each – that’s to be expected from a brand like Laura Mercier. They’re very luxurious, and the size is quite perfect for handbags or my desk at work. I’ve only used the Creme Brulee and Almond Coconut Milk scents so far, but they smell so yummy without being too sweet and cloying.

SAMPLES:

As always, my Sephora orders came with a bunch of samples – I’ve discovered so many good products through samples, so hopefully some of these will be good!

Tarte Maracuja C-Brighter Eye Treatment

I’m almost done with my current eye cream, so I’m looking for a new one to replace it. I’ve been kind of curious about Tarte skincare, so I’m interested to see how this is going to perform.

Caudalie Vine(activ) Energizing and Smoothing Eye Cream

I picked this as a sample because my husband wanted it, haha! He’s using it right now which is why it’s not in the picture!

Briogeo Don’t Despair, Repair! Deep Conditioning Mask

I’ve never really been into hair products – besides using shampoo, conditioner, and leave-in conditioner, I typically let my hair do its own thing. However, I’m all for having smooth, conditioned hair, so I’m looking forward to trying this out.

Glam Glow Supermud Clearing Treatment

I’ve owned a full size of this mask and it was a pretty good charcoal mask, so I’m excited to get to use this again.

Jo Malone English Oak & Hazelnut Cologne

Look how fancy this SAMPLE is – it even came in a Jo Malone bag with black tissue paper inside. I really wanted to like this perfume because it’s Jo Malone…but I really don’t. It reminds me of Chanel No. 5, aka grandma perfume. My mom had a small bottle of it when I was growing up; it was a gift from someone and even she never wore it. Maybe we’re just not sophisticated enough, haha.

So, how did I do on my no-buy? In total, I spent $129 this month on beauty products, $84 of which was on makeup. That is a LOT more than I had expected – so much for doing a no-buy! If I had carried over the unused amounts of my low-buy from previous months, I think I would have been covered, but I decided to challenge myself instead and didn’t allow myself any wiggle room on my no-buy months. For most of 2017, I’ve been really uninterested in makeup, and suddenly my love for it feels like it has come back tenfold, making it really hard to resist buying anything!

I allocated $250 for November beauty purchases; taking $84 away from this, I have $166 left to spend next month. I can already tell that I will fail miserably at it, considering I have an ever-growing list of things I want to buy…but who knows, maybe I will surprise myself!

 

 

Friday Reflections

Happy Fri-Yay! Today I’m doing something a little different for my blog: talking about lifestyle items that have piqued my interest as of late. I got my inspiration for this post from Nicole at Pretty Ruff Life, who does a This & That Friday post almost every Friday. I absolutely love reading her posts, and while I’m not sure I have enough material to do a Friday Reflections post every week, I would love to do these whenever I have a list of items I’m interested in. Lately, there are so many things that have caught my eye.