Favorite Hair Products

I have always had a love/hate relationship with my hair that generally leans more toward hate. If I let it air dry 100% naturally and did nothing else to it, I would never ever leave my house because it's pretty much just a frizzy mess. That's why I've been using a straightener on it for basically as long as I can remember because that helps get the frizz under control. I've tried tons and tons of hair products, but nothing helps it like a little heat from a straightener.

Over the last few months though, I've found some products that I really like and have helped me.

I always use the John Frieda Smooth Start shampoo and conditioner. I really like this stuff because it always makes my hair feel super clean, and although my hair is still pretty frizzy, it's not quite as bad as it was before I starting using the Smooth Start products.

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If I'm straightening my hair these days, I always use the Garnier Sleek & Shine Flat Iron Perfector. You just spray this on a section of dry hair and then immediately straighten over top of it. It makes your hair smoother and shinier, but it's also a heat protector. Since I use so much heat on my hair (unfortunately), protecting it from the heat as much as possible is super important. I love this stuff!

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I also discovered a new trick for my hair that requires absolutely no heat - beachy waves!

I haven't done this a ton, but I was happy with the results (although the one day it rained and my hair was SO frizzy that I decided beachy hair will not be happening on rainy days - ha!).

It's super easy though, and I love that I can do this every once in a while to give my hair a break from the heat. After I shower at night, I use a little of the Pantene BB Creme on my damp hair to try and reduce some of the frizz (I've been using this when I blow dry my hair too!).

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Then I spray my hair with the Not Your Mother's Beach Babe Texturing Sea Salt Spray. I love this stuff because it smells so good! Then I section my hair off into three braids and sleep on it. In the morning, I take the braids out, and I'm left with beachy waves.

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I know this picture isn't the best, but this is what my hair looks like when I do the beachy waves!

If you have naturally frizzy and crazy hair like me, you should try out some of these products - I've been impressed with all of them!

Fabulous Friday

The Friday before finals (the 18th) was such a fabulous day. I didn't actually have to go up to UC, so I had an entire day free.

My mom and I kicked off the day by meeting my aunt and cousins at Taste of Belgium downtown. I tried something new this time (the Banana Nutella Waffle), and it was so delicious. I can't even begin to tell you how much I love everything at Taste of Belgium.

Such a fun girls breakfast!

We then piled in my aunt's car to head over to Findlay Market to do a little shopping and browsing.

I hadn't been to Findlay Market in years, but now I really want to go back when I'm hungry - ha! I'm not really a fudge person, but I have to admit that this Easter themed fudge looked like it could have been good.

I just love that I live in a city with fun things like Findlay Market :)

After that, my mom and I headed over to Fountain Square to stop at the bank and get my money for my upcoming Canadian trip I'm taking through school. I'm so excited!

Then we headed out to Kenwood to finish our day with some shopping. My best purchase of the day was the Too Faced Chocolate Bar Palette. The eyeshadows are made with real cocoa powder, so the palette itself smells like chocolate. Plus the names of the shadows are all dessert themed like Salted Caramel and Haute Chocolate. I am absolutely obsessed!

That was my fun filled Friday! I'll spare you the details of the rest of my Friday evening which consisted of working on homework the entire night ;)

Perfect Weather & The Greene

Our weather has been very nontraditional this summer. Normally it's super hot and muggy. This summer though, it's been pretty comfortable. The temperature has been dropping to the 60s overnight and gets up to around 80 during the day. It has been terrible swimming weather, but perfect weather for just about everything else.

On Sunday I ran out to the store, and I snapped this picture on the way home. The sky almost looked fake it was so pretty.

That night my family went out to eat down the river. It was perfect!

I took this picture Monday night. Every evening Coco lays in my parent's bed until we all go to sleep. This allows her to fall asleep so that when she gets in her cage for night, she doesn't start barking. I'm usually the one to put her to bed, and it's always so cute because she is SO out of it that she will actually let me snuggle with her a little :)

On Tuesday my mom and I headed out for a day of shopping. We went up to The Greene since there is just nothing like it close to where we live. We tried a new restaurant too called bd's Mongolian Grill.

The restaurant had a really interesting concept. They gave you a bowl, and you went up to a buffet and filled up the bowl with raw meat or seafood, veggies, sauces, and spices, you gave the bowl to the workers, and they cooked it on a huge grill right in front of you. It was good, but I was an amateur and didn't fill my bowl completely, so I left a little hungry (they charge you more to go up a second time). Oh well! It was pretty good, and I learned my lesson for next time.

I just love shopping at The Greene! It's similar to Easton, just a bit smaller and closer to home.

I just about died when I went into Sephora and saw that the Disney collection has returned.....this time with Ariel! The Little Mermaid was my favorite movie growing up, and at one time my entire room was Ariel themed. You can see the whole Sephora Little Mermaid collection here!

If you're not familiar with the Disney collection, here's the scoop. Every few months Sephora has been releasing a limited edition Disney Princess collection. So far, they've done Cinderella, Jasmine, and now Ariel. The collection usually includes nail polish, lip gloss, an eyeshadow quad, a large eyeshadow palette, and perfume. I have the Cinderella eyeshadow quad, and I love it! So I went for the Ariel quad as well. Even the box it came in was super cute.....

The outside of the quad is adorable as well. It's officially called the Part of Your World Eyeshadow Palette - how cute?

And this is the inside of the palette. The colors even have Ariel-inspired names....Who's-It, What's-It, Dinglehopper, and Snarfblat. Love that!

I haven't actually tried the colors out yet, but when I do, I'll let you know what I think.

I also got a freebie with my purchase. I have a Sephora Beauty Insider card, and when you get to 100 points, you can pick out a free gift. Sometimes the freebies are really small and kind of lame. I actually reached a 100 points last time I bought something, but I didn't trade them in because the free gifts at that time were stupid. The freebies now are really good though. I ended up going with a small bottle of the Deborah Lippmann nail polish in Happy Birthday. It's a little more than half the size of a regular bottle, and the regular ones retail for $19. I could never justify spending that much on a bottle of nail polish, but I was all over the free one. It's so pretty painted over another color, which is what I'm wearing right now.

Since we hadn't eaten a big lunch, we stopped for a strawberry cheesecake crepe in the afternoon too. It was so yummy!

I saw this book at the bookstore there, and now it's on my list of books to read! I didn't buy it since I've got a few I still need to read, but from the cover, it looks right up my alley.

After our shopping, we had to go to Rita's!

We also went to the Dayton Mall just to look around. It looks pretty big from the outside, but it ended up being kind of lame. They had a lot of super trendy and weird stores (I'm pretty sure there were 3 separate stores to get your eyebrows done). It was just a little bizarre, but the Macy's there is pretty nice!

Then since we didn't need to be home for anything and were driving right by anyway, we stopped at the outlets. I had only ever been to these outlets once before, so it was fun to look around. I didn't buy anything though. This whole I-have-over-$100-worth-of-college-textbooks-charged-on-my-credit-card thing is cramping my shopping style - ha!

We ate dinner that night at Applebee's, and since we had to wait a little while for our server to get to our table, we got a free dessert. Bonus!

This was the sky on our ride home!

I really can't believe summer is almost over. I'm really trying to soak up these last few weeks before college starts. Yikes! Hope you all are having a great summer too :)

Urban Decay's Moondust Eyeshadow

Normally I like to wait until I have a few new makeup products and then write about them in one post, but this product is so good, it deserves its own post.

I just couldn't wait to tell you about it, since it might be one of the most fun makeup products I've ever bought.

It's the Urban Decay Moondust Eyeshadow.

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The worker at Sephora told me that Urban Decay used to sell the Moondust Eyeshadows but took them off the market several years ago. They just recently re-released them though after they improved the eyeshadows.

The eyeshadows come in 7 different shades, including a silver, dark brown, purple, light brown, pink, dark green, and light green. I got the light brown shade called Space Cowboy.

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What sets this eyeshadow line apart is the glitter. They are the most glittery eyeshadows I have ever seen. However, they are super gorgeous and wearable.

They pack on a lot of glitter, but it isn't chunky glitter. The glitter is super fine, which is different from most of the glitter eyeshadows I've seen. A major plus to the fine glitter is that you don't get a lot of fall out. I wore it for the first time last week, and when I took it off at night (about 12 hours after I had applied it), I had very little glitter under my eyes, and my eyelids looked the same as they did when I put my makeup on in the morning.

If you're looking for something fun to add to your makeup collection, I would definitely recommend checking out the Moondust Eyeshadows. I don't see myself wearing it every day, but it's just such a fun product. You also need such a small amount, that I could see this product lasting for years, making it worth the slightly more expensive price.

Here's a couple of tips I have for applying the Moondust Eyeshadow.....

1. At least with the Space Cowboy (since it doesn't really have any pigmented color), apply your eyeshadow as you usually would, and then apply the Moondust Eyeshadow on top.

2. Use your finger, not a brush, to apply it. The lady at Sephora told me the brush tends to just flick glitter everywhere and that your finger actually does a better job.

3. Use an eyeshadow primer (I personally like the Urban Decay Primer Potion) before you apply your eyeshadow to help keep the glitter in place.

4. Apply your eyeshadow before your foundation and under-eye concealer. That way, if you do have a little bit of fall out initially, you can cover it up easily.

5. You need such a small amount (a little goes a long way) that all you have to do is touch the eyeshadow with your finger, and you get plenty!

I'm super excited about this new product, and I can't wait to keep using it. If you're into makeup and like trying out new things, I think this eyeshadow collection is definitely a winner!

Makeup Monday {5 Minute Face}

I'm one of those girls that doesn't leave the house without makeup on. I like to at least even out my complexion and put on some mascara before facing the rest of the world. If you're like me though, you don't have a whole bunch of time in the mornings. If it's a weekday, I do a minimal amount of makeup because I don't have time to do a whole face of foundation and a bunch of eyeshadow.

This routine is what I expect I'll be using a lot in college this fall. In high school, I did pretty much everything except the eye color since I went to an all girls school and most of the girls barely even brushed their hair let alone applied makeup - ha!

So today I'm sharing with you my 5 minute face. It's quick, easy, uses only a handful of products, still provides good coverage, and makes you look much more awake and human.

Step 1: Moisturize

I usually use the Clinique Dramatically Different Moisturizing Lotion, mainly because I can get it for free during Clinique Bonus a lot.

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Lately though I've been using the Estee Lauder DayWear Advanced Multi-Protection Anti-Oxidant Creme. I have found it to be moisturizing, while also helping my makeup stay on a little bit longer throughout the day. It smells good too and just seems to be an overall really good product. I think I like it better than the Clinique moisturizer.

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Step 2: Eyes
I have found the perfect alternative to a full lid of eyeshadow when you're running out of time but still want something on your lids. I start off by using the light gold end of the Revlon Smoky Shadow Stick in Atomic. I apply it all over my eyelid.

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I then smudge a little bit of the Clinique Chubby Stick Shadow Tint for Eyes in Fuller Fudge on the outer corner of my eye and blend it towards the middle a bit. I have really been using this product a lot lately. It's the same idea as the Revlon Sticks, but I do find that the Clinique one is better quality and applies much smoother.

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I then use a little bit of the darker side of the Revlon Smoky Shadow Stick on the outer corner.

I finish up my eyes with some mascara. If you only have 30 seconds for makeup in the morning, you should do mascara! I alternate between the three different mascaras I have, which are Benefit's They're Real!, Clinique's High Impact Mascara, and Covergirl's Waterproof Lash Blast Volume. Lately though I've been using a little bit of the Clinique and then going over it with a second coat of the Covergirl.

Step 3: Face
If I have time, I use the Urban Decay Pore Perfecting Complexion Primer Potion next. It really smooths out your face. I just apply it to my nose and cheeks, as those are the areas that are the roughest for me.

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Now, I have to admit something................
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I haven't used liquid foundation in weeks! In fact, over the past few months, I have really only used it a handful of times!

Instead, I have been using Clinique's Age Defense BB Cream (Shade 2). I find that it's quicker (you just apply it with your fingers), and it provides excellent coverage when used with a moisturizer and primer. I can put it on in the morning and go all day (even in the summer), and when I take off my makeup at night, it's still on my face. It feels much more natural than a liquid foundation too. Basically I just use foundation on special occasions now when I want a little extra coverage (the last time I used it was at my graduation!).

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Step 4: Concealer
My favorite concealer is the MAC Studio Finish Concealer (Shade NC20). It's a little pricey, but I've been using it everyday for probably about 9 months and I haven't even hit the bottom of the pan yet. A little goes a long way, so I think it is well worth the money since it doesn't even have to be purchased once a year!

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Step 5: Powder
I cover my face with a thin dusting of powder just to set all of my makeup. I use the Covergirl Tru Blend Pressed Powder (Shade Translucent Fair).

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Step 6: Undereye Concealer
This is another step that I never miss when heading out the door. The Maybelline Instant Age Rewind Dark Circles Eraser (Shade Fair) is the best stuff ever!

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Step 7: Blush
Blush is one of those items that is super flexible in my makeup routine. I usually end up picking whatever shade I feel like wearing. One of these days I need to get a few more blushes to choose from, but for now I have three. The Tarte Amazonian Clay 12-Hour Blush in Exposed is one I use more in the fall and winter since it's a little bit of a darker tan-ish pink (it just looks like a winter color to me). I really like the Maybelline Dream Bouncy Blush in Candy Coral since it's the perfect coral color. The texture of it is a little weird though, as it is a cross between a cream and powder blush. My only drawback to it is that the loose bristles in my blush brush tend to get stuck in the blush and winds up looking kind of gross - ha!

My favorite blush though, and the one I use probably most often is the Nars Orgasm. It's the perfect pink with little flecks of gold. That was the first high-end makeup product I ever bought, and I still haven't hit the pan on this one either.

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Step 9: Lips
Again, this is one of those parts of my makeup routine that I can have a bit of fun with. I usually keep some of my favorite lip products on my desk within reach, so I'll either grab one those, or I'll apply it later (if I'm not leaving the house right away) when I'm heading out the door. I have so many lip products (an almost embarrassing amount but I seem to just keep buying more) that I keep a couple different ones in each of my purses. I tend to switch purses almost daily, so I'm constantly rotating lip products too.

And that's my super quick school morning makeup routine. It takes me about 5 minutes, but the payoff is great. My skin tone looks even, my eyes look awake, and my eyelids look like I spent a lot of time on them when I really didn't. Overall, it works super great for me!

Makeup Monday {Spring Products}

I haven't done a makeup post in forever because I wanted to wait until I had a few products to talk about. I have found some really fun new products that I have been loving lately, and most of them are pretty inexpensive because they come from the drugstore!

Here's some of my new favorites that I think I'll be using a LOT this spring when it finally gets here! We have another snow day today, so spring still feels kind of far away....

Clinique Age Defense BB Cream

It seems like BB creams are everywhere lately. Almost every makeup brand has their own version. Basically it's a product that does multiple different things, like moisturizing and concealing.

I decided to try the Clinique one simply because I've been happy with Clinique products in the past. It was also a little cheaper than some of the other brands, and you got a lot more product.

I've been using it for maybe about a month now, and I really like it. First off, I like that the Clinique counter will find the right shade for you. The BB Cream only comes in 3 shades, so since I am pretty fair skinned, I assumed I would need Shade 1. The lady at the Clinique counter tested them for me, and told me I was more Shade 2. Glad they did that before I bought the wrong one!

I find that it does moisturize your skin, while also having SPF 30. It provides enough coverage that you can use it alone or under your foundation. If I'm running late, I'll just wear it on its own, otherwise I'll put a little layer of foundation over top. The tube you get of it is also pretty big, and you use such a small amount that I can see this lasting a long time! I would definitely recommend this one if you're looking to try out the BB Cream trend :)

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L'Oreal Carbon Black Felt Tip Liquid Eyeliner

I have never been a huge eyeliner person because I've been that good at apply it. I recently fell in love with the gel liners from the Defining Eyes Palette though. Ever since then I've been wanting to try a liquid eyeliner with a felt tip in black. I tried this one, and I have really been liking it. It's pretty easy to apply and looks great even if you're like me and not usually very good at applying eyeliner!

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Maybelline Dream Bouncy Blush in Candy Coral

I LOVE this blush! I wasn't real sure what it was going to be like when I first bought it, but I am obsessed. The product is unlike anything I've ever seen before because when you do touch it, the blush does have a little bounce to it. It is weird but really neat at the same time. It's more of a cream blush than a powder, and the color really transfers well. I think the Candy Coral shade gives you the perfect spring glow. I've been wearing this every day since I bought it last week!

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Maybelline Vivids Lipstick in Pink Pop

I had heard good things about this lipstick, so I went ahead and bought it this weekend. And then I opened it and got really scared. It is a CRAZY pink. The color is a little off on this picture - it's even more of a bright pink in real life. When Maybelline says vivid, they mean vivid! When I first opened it, I thought it was going to look stupid on. I thought I would look like I have cotton candy colored lips - ha! But I actually really like it. True, it is bright and you don't need a lot of it, but it is SO different from any other lip color I have. It does make your lips a bright pink, but it isn't a tacky, unwearable bright pink. Brighter lips are big this season, and I think this is a perfect spring color to hop on board with that trend.

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And those are a few of my favorite new spring products. I hope you'll try out a few of these - I think they are all such fun products!

Makeup Monday {Organization}

I don't have a crazy amount of makeup, but I have enough makeup products that I can't just throw them in a small makeup bag and call it a day. That's why today's post is all about how I organize my makeup! I personally love getting ideas about this from other people, so I wanted to share my own.

I don't have my own bathroom in my house, so that means I have to keep all of my makeup in my room. I used to just have a makeup bag with all of my favorite products thrown on the floor of my room because I didn't have anywhere else to put it. I recently organized though and now it's in a much better spot!

I keep all of my everyday products on the bottom shelf of my desk because it's right there so I can grab it quickly every morning.

(And don't you love that throwback picture from grade school - ha! That's me with my friends Abby and Ashley, and they gave me this frame when we graduated. I just recently found it when I was cleaning things up, and I had to put it up. It cracks me up how much we've changed in 4 years!)

I keep my palettes and makeup brushes in the front (just because I think they look cute), and my makeup bag in the back.

I used to just throw my brushes in with the rest of my makeup, but I was worried that they would eventually get ruined. So I got this super cute chalkboard jar from Target! I think it was only $6, and they had a bunch of different sizes and colors. I just think it's the cutest thing. I still need to find a piece of chalk to write on it though :)

Then I have my makeup palettes in this little basket. This basket is the perfect size, and I love how it kind of displays my palettes. I've had this basket for years - I actually think it was part of a cookie bouquet I got years ago.

Then my makeup bag (Clinique) is basically a catch-all for my everyday products. I keep my most used items in there so they're all together in one place.

Most of my lipgloss I keep in my purse. Actually I have so many different tubes of lip gloss that I have maybe 2-3 in each of my purses so that when I switch purses, I have some different ones to choose from that I haven't used in awhile - ha! But I also keep a few on my desk so that I can use one as I'm running out the door in the morning. I usually keep my Revlon Lip Butters here because I use those the most often.

Then I keep everything else in a drawer in my closet.  I have 2 of those pretty large Rubbermaid containers with the plastic drawers in my closet. Those have definitely helped me be more organized (although my closet is still pretty messy....).  I have one drawer specifically set aside for makeup products. In there I keep the stuff I don't use every day. Basically a bunch of mascara, eyeshadows, powders, and lip gloss that I either got tired of using or just haven't been my favorite.

And those are my organization tips! I think it's best to keep the products you use a lot somewhere that you can easily access them, and then the products you don't use as often in another spot. That's what works for me.