I love to try new products, but since I am my own sponsor, I have sort of reached the saturation point on things like $18 eyeliners and $25 blushes.  These days, those things are on a replacement basis only.  I live out most of my makeup fantasies vicariously through Karen’s regular shipments of free Chanel and MAC from the makeup gods (confidential to MAC, Chanel and Dior: I can be very, very unbiased if given half a chance.  Wink, wink!).

However, I can always find room to try something that’s been marked down to $3.  At $1, I just might try it twice.  So whenever I hit Sephora online to replace a regular product, I always spend a few minutes combing the lowest end of the sale items.  Here are my steals from my latest order, which have turned out to be quite good!  (Product links are at the end of the post.)

brow pencils and sharpener

Above, two brow pencils — the silver one is a standard pencil ($1, originally $13), and the black one is a ‘sculpting’ pencil ($3, originally $10), which means it has a little wax in it.  The other thing is a sharpener.  I’ll show that to you in a second, but here are some swatches of the pencils.  They both work with my coloring, but the regular one is warmer and some reviewers complain that it’s too red, so be warned if you are a cool brunette.

Top: eyebrow pencil in brown 02. Bottom: brow sculpting pencil in medium.

Now the really cool thing: a sharpener that fits onto the end of a pencil, so it packs easily and you always know where it is.  Since sharpeners don’t last forever and these were $1, I bought two.  Without the cap, ready to sharpen:

With the cap on, snug on the non-business end of the pencil:

The other thing I was excited about in this order was that I was going to replace my mini MUFE Aqua Eyes black pencil (best liner ever, but $18 for full size, ugh!), but a mini was one of the 100-pt Beauty Insider perks!  I tend to hoard my points for something I really want to try or would have bought anyway, so it was fate.

Find any good cosmetic deals lately?

Products:

• Sephora Collection Eyebrow Pencil, Brown 02 $1
• Sephora Collection Brow Sculpting Pencil, Medium $3
• Sephora Collection In-Cap Sharpener $1

High atop Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park, September 2009

Overall, I’d have to give this week 8 out of 10, mostly on account of having taken Monday off for Valentine’s Day!  Let’s see how the week washed out:

Work:

• Low: I have been so tired at work all week that I can hardly focus and had to lock myself in an empty conference room for 10 minutes so I could close my eyes!
• High: Tomorrow we find out about our bonuses for 2010 and there will be doughnuts!

Leisure:

• Low: I got burned by my hot stone massage!  Nothing severe, but still uncomfortable and unexpected.
• High: That I had a massage at all, of course!  And a full day at a great spa with my valentine.

Food:

• Low: We are out of dessert tonight and I was too tired to bake something. :(
• High: I can definitely get a week’s worth of high just remembering our Valentine’s Eve dinner at Rainbow Lodge!

Beauty:

• Low: Hair was out of control this week for no apparent reason and my next cut is still a few weeks away.
• High: I wore red nail polish for the first time in at least a year and realized I love it!

Shopping:

• Low: Inspired by my red nail polish, I decided to Back-to-MAC for some Russian Red lipstick at the closest MAC counter.  They were sold out!  Tried my next option, MAC Red.  They were sold out of that, too!
• High: Took home Syrup instead, which is so pretty it may be my new everyday shade.  And I still have plenty of empties to try again on that Russian Red.  Is anything more fun than free makeup?  Maybe a kitten, but just barely.

How was your week?

All spring and summer, my casual go-everywhere bag was a pink- and white-striped tote with a butterfly on it.  It didn’t seem right for fall and winter, so I asked the internet to show me what I could use to supplement it.  I quickly found a bag that I loved at Zappos, but the price was more than I had planned on spending.  I thought about it all day, then came home and tried to buy it.  But by then some jerk had bought the last one in the color I wanted!  Seriously?  Of the trillions of bags on Zappos, someone had to have exactly the one I wanted?!

I was sad and mad, and suddenly ridiculously determined to find that bag, but more internet scouring than I care to admit to turned up only one other vendor, and the price was significantly higher.  Resigned, I found a substitute bag that I liked a lot and which cost far less, and I ordered it.

Nearly three weeks passed, and I thought, “Huh.  Wonder when that bag will arrive?”  I checked the vendor’s website, which states that most orders go out within 48 hours, and it showed my order as ‘processing.’  I talked to a representative via their live chat and found out that the bag was discontinued in the color I’d wanted.  I don’t know when or if they had been planning to tell me that, but I cancelled the order.  I went back to Zappos…and lo and behold, there was the bag I had originally wanted!  There was only one in stock and I snapped that sucker up.

Is there anything quite as satisfying as the triumph of a successful hunt, coupled with the knowledge that Zappos will have the item in your hands the very next day?  Doubtful.  Maybe I sound like a shill for Zappos, but I really do love that company.  Brilliant customer service.

Anyway, here is the object of my affection:

It’s made of goat hide and it’s so soft.  I love the subtle leopard pattern here and there that makes it fun but doesn’t take over the whole bag:

What’s your must-have item this fall?

I was good with my two regular sample sale websites (in truth, I belong to a few others, but I turned off notifications and I browse them only once in a blue moon).  And then for some unknown reason, I went and joined one more.  Why did I do that?  Seriously.  For now, when I do my rounds on all THREE, I can at least tell myself I’m scouting Christmas gifts.  If I happen to see something I cannot live without, then oh well.

But I’m not going to kick myself too hard, because it almost immediately paid off.  You know I sometimes like my jewelry a little rock ‘n’ roll, and this fit the bill:

This puppy sparkles.  I wore it out to dinner over the weekend, and Mark’s first reaction when he saw it was to declare that if our car broke down or we got into trouble, it would be my job to signal the HPD helicopter.

The other thing I like is that it has a lot of heft to it.  I’m not a small person, so I tend to like my jewelry to be in scale with the rest of me.  This is a nice size for me (even if my wrist just barely fits!):

I was wearing an unusual amount of sparkle that night — sometimes you just feel like a disco ball.

Yesterday I had my zillion photos from New Mexico open and I was narrowing them down to what I wanted to share next, and then somehow I lost all my progress.  Doh!  I don’t have the energy to redo that just now, so I thought I’d share some assorted snaps from the past week.

Who’s that reading my favorite book?

It’s Sammy!  He was a birthday gift from my parents.  He looks great on our bookshelves!

He came with a note from my mom:

Mark and I ordered burritos the other night for pick-up.  There is a Freebirds just up the street and I think they put something addictive in the meat.  The staff is young and cheerful, and we have long suspected that at least a few of them are having special smoke breaks during their shifts.  Evidence:

I ordered two so I wouldn’t have to make lunch, and they made sure I knew which ones were mine:

When I sat down at my desk the next day, I noticed the bag:

Speaking of places with herbally-enhanced employees, we made a Whole Foods run tonight and I picked up some treats containing my own favorite herb:

I have a slight obsession with rosemary.  I sort of have a personal theory that rosemary is the new bacon.  You heard it here first.  I’m very excited about these!

Also spotted at Whole Foods (it looked a lot better on my 1″ x 1″ cell phone screen!):

You know the holidays are here when the sock monkeys show up en masse!

Tonight I hit Houston’s launch party for MAC’s new Venomous Villains collection.  I’ve never been to one of these things before, so I was not prepared for the utter chaos.  We all had to stand in line for a turn at the goods while a security guard made sure the store contained only as many people as could fit shoulder-to-shoulder on every inch of floorspace.  I was behind a couple in the running for Parents of the Year as they studied the annotations their daughter had made to a cheat sheet, marked in purple and pink highlighter to delineate what she ‘needed’ and what she ‘would like to have.’  I’d estimate about $400 worth of cosmetics on her list.  The women behind me, nurses or med students from the sound of it, conducted a caffeine-fueled discussion with more than a couple TMI tidbits.

I’m not necessarily a Disney fanatic, but I am a Maleficent fanatic and always have been, so I have eagerly anticipated this collection.  I don’t know whether it’s the raven sidekick or the horned hat, but being bad never looked so good.  The launch party tonight had Cruella de Vil and Evil Queen costumes to try on and pose for a photo in, but I will only risk headlice for Maleficent, and sadly that was not an option.

If you, too, have been waiting for this collection, you probably just want to know what I picked.

I picked up She Who Dares mineralize eyeshadow, Devilishly Stylish lipglass, and Bad Fairy nail polish (I really liked the other two polishes as well, but I’ll probably hunt down the Orly dupes).  Can’t wait to use all of them.  I put the lipglass on as soon as I got home, and it is an absolutely perfect nude for me (N4, if you’re curious).

Did you attend a launch party (and did you try on a costume)?  If not, what (if anything) are you planning to buy?