Beauty Gurus: I Need Your Help!

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This post contains Amazon Associates links.

OK beauty bloggers, I am calling on your collective knowledge: I am in need of a recommendation for a good eye primer! I have a terrible time with my eye makeup smearing. My routine usually consists of an eyeshadow base with a heavy lining of black eyeliner on the top lid – I usually use Almay 16 Hour Eyeliner, but I’ve tried all kinds of pencils, cream eyeliners applied with a brush, liquid, and so on – and it always, always, always smears on the crease of my eyelid no matter what I do.

This will melt off in 5 minutes...

I know there must be a better way of doing things, since I’ll see women at parties at midnight whose makeup looks pristine – meanwhile, I’ll look smeared and disheveled by 1 PM because of my eye makeup melting off. I’ve tried the SEPHORA COLLECTION Eye Primer Pot, but it doesn’t help; I’ve tried it alone, and also tried it with powder on top like Kandee Johnson recommended; no dice. I’m seeing mixed reviews on this so I don’t know if the primer just isn’t that effective, or if I’m doing something wrong.

So tell me: How do you keep your makeup from melting off? Which eye primers do you use? Do you have any tricks I haven’t tried?

Busy, Busy, Busy

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I’ve had so much going on over the last week, and yet, there isn’t a lot to talk about because it’s all pretty mundane. I could talk about the emails and articles that I wrote, the proposals I drafted, or the photo editing that I did, but that would be the most boring read ever. When you’re self-employed, it’s easy for a week to pass without even leaving the house – not that I advise doing that, but when you’re in the middle of expanding your business as I am, it’s just a part of life. All the hard work I’ve been doing this summer is already paying off, and this crazy schedule is only temporary while I balance the extra workload that accompanies re-branding and launching new sites.

I guess I know my week sounds boring when my big news was emailing my dad to tell him that, due to an shipping error with an online order I placed, I had gotten some free toilet paper. In my defense, it was 192 rolls of free toilet paper so that’s kind of a big deal to Super Coupon Girl.

That's a lot of toilet paper.

That’s close to 400 rolls of toilet paper in my living room. I only ordered two boxes, but they sent 4 by mistake. I emailed them immediately to let them know, and they told me not to worry about it and to keep the extra. Talk about good customer service. I’m sure the other coupon clippers here will appreciate this…

Although I didn’t get out of the house much last week, that was totally fine with me. Next month, we will be in either Portland or Seattle almost every single weekend for a variety of events, so I am taking advantage of this relatively calm week to prepare for all the traveling we’ll be doing.

Blast From The Past

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New Year's LAN Party, 2004

The (Modern) games mentioned in this article were promotional copies which I received. This post contains Amazon Associates links.

I was looking through some old photos that Jai had backed up on a flash drive when I found this one from New Year’s Eve 2004. I used to host LAN parties every New Year’s, where all my friends would come over for a fun night of gaming. Jai would hook up multiple PCs and my friends would also bring their console systems so there was a wide selection of games to play. It was always a blast – I’ll never forget one year when there was a perfectly timed PAC-MAN death that happened at the stroke of midnight!

My contribution was always my SNES, pictured above. It was way outdated in 2004, and it still remains the only console I own. It’s not that we don’t like to game – clearly, we do! – but Jai is mostly focused on computer gaming, and I’ve just never gotten around to getting a newer system. One of these days, I will, but I’ve also been stuck on the same level of Yoshi’s Island for close to ten years, so I really ought to beat that before I move on. πŸ˜‰

What do you mean, it won't work? Should I blow on the cartridge?

Still, I’m not 100% out of touch. Because I’m on so many media mailing lists, I will sometimes get promo copies of new games for editorial consideration. I pass these on as gifts to my more up-to-date gamer friends! I’ve never gotten any SNES games, although there IS actually a new game being released for that console this year so I fully expect a review copy once it becomes available. πŸ˜‰ I have, however, been getting some cute games for DS, the modern version of my Gameboy. There’s been a few this year based on Dreamworks films, like The Croods: Prehistoric Party! which looked like a cute little game, and most recently, Turbo: Super Stunt Squad. I noticed that this game has an “E for everyone” rating with a qualifier that it contains “Comic mischief”, which has to be the best content warning ever. I actually saw a preview for this movie recently and it looked pretty funny. I think the snail is also a good representation of the speed with which I upgrade my gaming consoles. πŸ˜‰

What gaming consoles do you have in your house?

Mr. Moth Joins my Photoshoot

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Moth

I was out on the back deck taking some product photos for the blogs yesterday when this moth landed nearby. Since he was hanging out for the shoot, I figured I’d make use of the zoom on my camera and get a snapshot of him, too. You know it’s summer here when you see moths everywhere – they fly into the house if you have the door open for .02 seconds, and then proceed to panic and buzz around frantically. These “Visitors” inside the home are one of my least favorite things about summer, although I like them fine outside.

Last year, I was drinking one of my Nurisystem shakes from a Blender bottle, and looked down halfway through to see a dead moth floating in it. To this day, I am COMPLETELY STUMPED as to how that can happen. The bottle was in my hand the entire time that I got it out of the cupboard, added ice and the shake mixture; and I always look into my cups and glasses before I fill them. How in the world a moth could fly into a bottle with a snap-top lid while I’m holding it still stumps me, but suffice to say, I’ll never look at a protein shake quite the same way – although the moth did get the worst end of it…

My New Wedding Blog!

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My new wedding blog

Yesterday, I put the finishing touches on my newest site, Blog My Wedding. This site will focus on all my wedding planning adventures and offer crafts, party planning ideas, frugal bridal tips, and more. The official launch date is August 1st, when we’ll be kicking off the new site with a “Bachelorette Blog Bash”, so you won’t want to miss that!

What do you think of my new site? Do you know anyone who is planning a wedding?

Purex Fabric Softener Dryer Sheets Review

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Purex Fabric Softener Dryer Sheets

Product samples were received for review.

I’m obviously very frugal when it comes to most things, including laundry. Recently, I’ve been cutting corners even further by making my own laundry detergent. So for this reason, I don’t often use fabric softener sheets. I actually prefer my laundry with them – in fact, I’m in love with most scented household products in general – but I consider it to be more of a luxury, so I don’t get to use them often. So when my friends over at Purex sent over a box of their Fabric Softener Dryer Sheets to test out, I was looking forward to extra-nice-smelling laundry!

These sheets are the same ones that Purex have carried for a while, but have been revamped with an improved formula and more fragrance. I chose the “Mountain Breeze” scent – there’s something so refreshing to me about crisp, “Ocean” scents in cleaning products. (I also thought the name was funny because a local store brand soda is also called “Mountain Breeze”!) Jai and I have used these in several loads of laundry and we both like the scent a lot. And anything that can make laundry more pleasant has got to be good, right? πŸ˜‰

You can find these dryer sheets at Walmart – visit Purex.com for more information.

Never Answer The Phone

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Amazon Associate links ahoy!

A few months ago, Jai and I watched Memento on NetFlix for the first time. I have been saying “I really want to see this movie!” since it came out over a decade ago – I am so behind the times. We really liked it; I want to watch it again to try and make more sense of it, and see if there’s an alternate version available that starts at the end. Knowing me, it’ll be another 10 years before I have time to re-watch it.

So today, we were going over some of the things on our to-do list, and I said to Jai: “Everyone thinks I’m really organized, but it’s only because I write every single thing down in my planner. I’m just like the guy in Memento – I have no idea what’s actually going on, I just have a list of things telling me what to do.” He then reminded me of our favorite scene from the movie, which he can relate to so well:

I know it’s supposed to be a thrilling plot twist, but we both cracked up laughing the second it happened – if Jai were to ever get a tattoo, this is exactly what it would say! He hates getting phone calls more than anyone else I know. It’s not the phone calls themselves, but the urgency that every call seems to come with. Now that everyone has cell phones, there’s this creepy culture that has seeped in where people will call you at any hour (Including midnight) and expect a call back within 5 minutes. Smartphones seem to have really opened the floodgates and we both find ourselves having to keep our phones on mute permanently if we want to avoid being woken up in the middle of the night because someone wants to gab or show us a funny YouTube video. If you’ve ever read “The Murderer” by Ray Bradbury, it beautifully sums up how I feel about cell phones – and he predicted it all in 1953!

At any rate, I was glad that we finally watched this movie after so much time. I’m so notoriously behind on movie-watching that my brother-in-law once made a list of classic movies that I’m supposed to watch. Unfortunately, I lost the list – which also seems like something that would happen to the Memento character. πŸ˜‰