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August 3, 2010, at 10:00 pm
This one is for the cosmetic junkies.
I don’t think I have ever finished a lipstick. I have finished a few lip glosses and eyeshadows (and a blush! Twice! And I just found out that my color was discontinued more than a year ago; I think I have a couple years left in the current pan), but I’ll usually decide I’m over the color and toss it before I’ll finish it. The exception is anything above drugstore level. I know you’re supposed to toss things after a certain amount of time, but if I paid $14+ for it, I have a problem doing this, even long after the expiration decade has come and gone. (Mom, if the idea of my ancient makeup is making you make that sound, trust me — this post is not going to get any better from here. Proceed with caution.)
Case in point: my first MAC lipstick, from 1995. Still smells normal, looks normal, goes on smooth. My internal monologue goes something like this: Will I wear this color again? Nah. Wait, maybe! I’ll just hang on to it, then. As a result, this lipstick has been with me through seven dorm rooms, two apartments, and three houses. Check the old-style tube. The silver tube is probably close to ten years old and it’s now a permanent color in a normal, black tube. Just for reference, the last tube is the last lipstick I bought (probably also technically past its expiration by now):
So, eyeshadows. There are only a couple colors I use quickly enough to have replaced more than once. As you can see by the packaging, the color on the left isn’t one (the one on the right is in current packaging, which has been around forever):
One of the other brands I like as much is Urban Decay. How long have I had the one on the left? Long enough that the color has been discontinued, for one. I’m sure I bought it in college, if not high school. You’d never know how often I use it by the amount left in the pan. Hopefully this one will last until I die since they don’t make it anymore. Just kidding, Mom & Dad!
I do think the old pans were cuter, if slightly less practical.
The last really old thing I have is an Urban Decay lipstick. Definitely bought this one in college. I don’t have any of their new lipsticks, so I stole a picture from their website to compare. I think the old packaging was cooler on this, too.
This has been a lesson in why you shouldn’t share makeup. Thanks for coming; Lysol wipes are by the door.
June 13, 2010, at 10:00 pm
I love bath and body products. Really love them. But my rate of use seems inversely proportional to the amount left in the bottle. Here’s the body lotion situation under my bathroom sink, with the two largest bottles containing no more than 10% of their original volume:
That doesn’t include the bottles that I stuck in my gym bag in hopes of using them up. And let’s not even talk about the perfume situation, or the hair product situation, because I really like trying a variety of those things, too. To be fair, though, the hair product situation is usually worsened by running out of my products of choice, not finding them at the store, and having to substitute with something that ends up being kind of crappy but not necessarily awful, and therefore really difficult to use up. But now I order my mousse by the economy pack (see left side of picture), because just when I find something that really works, they stop selling it in any brick and mortar store and I have to hoard it by the case via Amazon.
Now that I’m looking at that picture, I’m pretty sure a couple of those items are probably close to ten years old. Once in a while the whole ‘products’ thing just gets so out of control that I purge anything I know I’ll never use, but apparently I am in denial about some things. I’m really sick of looking at this motley collection of lotions, so I am currently sporting the most thoroughly moisturized skin in Houston. Darn it, I am determined to get through these stupid lotions…so I can try some new lotions.
June 6, 2010, at 10:00 pm
We all know that we should be wearing sunscreen. But what if almost everything you thought you knew about sunscreen was wrong?
The Environmental Working Group is a non-profit group of science and policy experts who review scientific literature and do some in-house work for the benefit of public health and the environment. Their 2010 Sunscreen Guide took a look at 500 beach and sport sunscreens and recommended a mere eight percent of them.
The offenses:
- misleading SPF claims, including not protecting against UVA rays
- containing retinyl palmitate (vitamin A), which may be photocarcinogenic
- containing oxybenzone, a potential hormone disruptor
What does the FDA have to say about all this? Not much; they’ve been working on sunscreen regulations for over 30 years and still haven’t finalized any. Well, what about the Skin Cancer Foundation seal of approval? It’s available for any SPF 15+ product, with a $10K donation.
So what should you look for? Forget the SPF 50+ sunblocks, for starters. According to BASF research, you’re not going to get better UVA protection than SPF 20, and you may not get any if you simply trust the claims on the front of bottle. So apply liberally and often. Really, you need to reapply it! I’m certainly guilty of not reapplying as much as I should. It just seems like so much work when I come back from a vigorous swim and sand gravity sets in.
Your best bet for broad-spectrum protection is a mineral sunblock — something containing zinc or titanium. Mexoryl and avobenzone get EWG’s go-ahead, as well. The hard part is that you’re not going to find a lot of these at the drugstore. Again, you can’t go by the claims on the bottle — you need to read the ingredients. Either shop online or make a list of the good ingredients and bad ingredients and bring it with you. You could also check EWG’s ratings and write down a few brands. I found a small array of mineral sunblocks at my local Whole Foods. Some of them were imported and were outrageously expensive. I decided to try one by Goddess Garden, which was one of the better values per ounce:
I tested it on Saturday, as we were supposed to go to Galveston Island for the day. We never got there, but I did wear the sunblock all day while we did errands around town. My first impression was that it is a lot thinner than the chemical sunscreens that I’m used to, but getting it absorbed still takes some work. To my eye, there was still a faint whitish cast to my skin for a little while after it was absorbed, but that is probably to be expected with titanium, which helps give some paints their opacity. I wouldn’t call it greasy, but it does have a little bit of the typical, heavy sunscreen feel when it first goes on. This particular sunscreen has a light, pleasant lavender smell which dissipates fairly quickly.
That’s all well and good for the beach, but I’m not sure it’s a product I want to use on my face on a daily basis. EWG does have ratings for moisturizers and makeup with SPF, which I’m going to have to check out. I’ve been using this product for a pretty long time and love it:
Excuse the scuffed and dirty appearance of my bottle — it travels in my gym bag every day. It does double-duty for me as a primer and a sunscreen, but to my disappointment the ingredient list contains both retinyl palmitate and oxybenzone — they even tell you right on the front that it contains vitamin A! I’m not too concerned for now because I work in an office and am not exposed to much sunlight, but I suppose I won’t be wearing it to the beach and will have to do some shopping once I finish the bottle.
May 25, 2010, at 10:00 pm
I can never decide whether it’s more fun to send a care package or receive one, but someone important to me was in the hospital recently so I put together a little pick-me-up for her:
 Contents:
- Juicy Couture makeup bag
- Body Shop lotion in her favorite scent (plus they threw a little sample of something into the bag)
- Philosophy’s Purity Made Simple face wash (this is a great gentle wash, similar to Cetaphil but smells much nicer)
- MAC lipglass in Nymphette (I recently got a tube of this color for myself on Karen’s recommendation and I love it; it’s one of those rare colors that look great on a lot of different skintones)
- Ole Henriksen’s Three Little Wonders minis
- Magazines: Victorian Houses, Cooking With Paula Deen (later I thought maybe that’s a little cruel when you’re on hospital food..?), the Mother Earth News Guide to Growing Your Own Food (surprisingly, I found all of these at Target, which I usually regard as having a lackluster magazine section)
- Glittery butterfly greeting card
The hardest part was to stop shopping! What would be a must-have if you received a care package? Tops on my list would probably be Swedish Fish, followed by a book of crosswords or sudoku.
March 16, 2010, at 10:00 pm
I love nail polish, but I can’t be trusted not to mess up painted fingernails immediately, which is why I usually just do my toes — I don’t write or cook with them (aren’t you glad to know you can safely accept a dinner invitation from me?) and nobody gets close enough to notice a dent or a smudge. Or sheet imprints. How do I always get sheet imprints on my nails, hours after I’ve painted them?
For the last year I’ve used a quick-dry oil on the occasions that I wanted to paint my fingernails, and it worked pretty well, but I still had to sit around with my hands in the air for a while afterward to keep from denting the polish. Plus my topcoat kept getting destroyed by my daily sunblock, which really makes all the effort seem pointless. When I ran out of the quick-dry oil, I decided to try a quick-dry topcoat that I found at the grocery store:
 So I gather from the label that this stuff has been around a while and I may be the last person to know about it, but it is my new favorite thing. It was inexpensive, it dries ridiculously fast and hard, and so far it seems immune to my sunblock. I’m so excited to finally be able to enjoy nail polish that I have to keep myself from running out and buying ten new colors!
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