One Direction Makeup Kits - Mascara, Lip Gloss, Nail Polish

Even though my daughter is not a One Direction fan, I had to try their new makeup. I mean, when I was her age, I had the Debbie Gibson perfume (which I would still wear if they still made it!) but I don't remember if any celebrities made actual makeup products. Since there are gobs of One Direction fans out there, I needed to make sure this stuff was at least decent makeup. 

First up is the mascara. It comes in three colors - "Why Don't We Go There?" is blue, "Does He Know?" is pink, and "Story Of My Life" is yellow. Personally, I think yellow is a weird color for mascara but I'm not the one that has to wear it. Back when I was in my early 20s, I used to wear blue mascara. Never tried pink though. The cool thing about these is that they also double as a "hair mascara." If you want to add a stripe of color too your hair, you just swipe the brush through the strands. Since my hair is dyed, I'm not going to try that. I will, however, put this stuff on my eyelashes!

All three of the colors came out spectacularly bright. While the yellow is not  my favorite, it still looked nice. Both the blue and the pink looked fabulous! And it is pretty easy to put the colors together for a new look. Say, do your entire lash blue but then put some pink on the very ends. I love it!

Of course, there is also a lip gloss set. This one also has three colors - "Through The Dark" is red, "Taken" is pink, and "Kiss You" is an orange. These glosses supposedly change colors under UV light. However, I don't have a UV light to test that theory. According to the box, the red turns neon red-orange, the pink turns neon pink-orange, and the orange turns neon yellow. I'm not sure how many teenage girls have UV lights in order to take advantage of this "feature." 

All three of these lip glosses have glitter in them. Quite a bit of glitter, to be honest. Considering the target audience, I don't blame them. I think the teenage girls will love glittery lips. The orange one is probably the worst. It barely shows up on the skin. It's basically a lot of glitter with a little color. The pink one isn't too awful. It does have a nice candy pink color, again, with tons of glitter. My favorite is the red one. (OK, they call it "poppy." It's red.) It has some really nice color to it with just the right amount of glitter to make your lips sparkle without looking like you tried to eat a craft store. 

The last piece of the puzzle is a nail polish kit. This kit has three polish colors and three different colored glitter bottles. "Happily" is the blue nail polish, "Moments" is the pink, and "Diana" is a silver glitter polish. The glitter bottles consist of "Kicks" (blue), "Not Afraid" (pink),  and "Star" (purple?). Supposedly all of these also react to UV light.

These things are just weird. The best of the three is "Diana." Even though it is basically a clear nail polish with glitter, it still looks much better than the other two. "Happily" is so sheer that you can see your nail right through the blue. You would need at least three coats for this to have any real effect. "Moments" isn't terrible but it is a very neon pink. Like 80s neon pink. I'm not sure 2014 girls would even want to wear this color. 

I will admit that I did not try to add-on glitter. One, it looks super messy. They come in these tiny little pots and, in order to use the glitter, you would need to pour it out onto a plate or buy a separate brush or something. Two, there isn't a whole lot there. Since I don't particularly want glitter nails, I decided to save it for someone who would want to use it. You might be able to get one whole hand out of each pot. I'm not sure why they made them so small. The nail polish is definitely my least favorite of the three kits.

As a whole, I am kinda impressed with these kits. I figured that, since they are celebrity endorsed products, that they would be complete crap. Just another product made to drain the teenager's money. However, they aren't half bad. The nail polish sucks a bit but it can be pretty hard to find decent nail polish that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. If I were a younger woman, I would definitely use the mascara and probably the lip gloss. They would be absolutely awesome for costumes though. Very bright colors that can be seen from far away. Good job, One Direction!

Want to win your own set of One Direction makeup? Here you go!

I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free. Regardless, all opinions contained within are solely my own. 

Majestic Bombay Tweezers

I have a tweezer....thing. While we have multiple sets of tweezers in the house, there is only one that I really like and my husband keeps stealing it to use on his fishtank. So, when the opportunity arose to try these tweezers by Majestic Bombay, I got rather excited. If they were awesome, I would have a new set of amazing tweezers. If they were awful, my husband could use those for his fishtank instead of my good tweezers. 

This set of tweezers arrived in a cute little plastic sleeve. I've never had a holder for my tweezers so I thought this was cool and the tweezers are pink, which is my daughter's favorite color, so that makes these cool times two. The tweezers, themselves, are lightweight and the tip has a really nice sharp edge. Impressive!

Time to try them out! I have these annoying little hairs on my jawline. There are three hairs that stick out like a sore thumb. (At least they do to me. I bet no one else even notices them.) I frequently pluck these hairs so I don't feel like some sort of warty evil witch with chin hairs. (OK, they aren't on my chin, they are on my jaw. Don't judge me!) I need my tweezers to get a firm grip on these hairs to make them easier to remove. Even with my "good" tweezers, I have to attempt the plucking a few times before the hairs actually come out. 

The Majestic Bombay tweezers were amazing. They actually grabbed onto the hair the very first try and pulled it right out. I didn't have to try two or three times! I don't think I have ever had a pair of tweezers that worked like that. The only "downside" is that these tweezers are pretty sharp. You need to be careful that you aren't scraping your skin too hard with them or you'll end up with a little cut. However, that isn't very much of a down side for me. I like that the tweezers are on the sharper side so I can get really close to the base of the hair I am plucking. 

That was probably way too much information about my face, right? Anyway, I love these tweezers. It looks like my "good" tweezers weren't all that good. These will be a great replacement. 

I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

Dot&Dot Multi-Purpose Bag

When I received my box of Dot&Dot Packing cubes, I also received their Multi-Purpose Bag. Since I liked the packing cubes, I was hoping that this bag would be just as good. 

I received the x-small version of the bag. This one is 7.5" x 3.5" x 1". That makes it ideal for carrying smaller travel-sized products or a few bottles of nail polish, as seen in the picture above.  A rather heavy-duty zipper holds the bag closed while a clip hangs from one end in order to clip the bag to your luggage. 

While there aren't a ton of things that will fit into the x-small bag, it has been put together very well. I would probably get a lot of use out of the larger bags for carrying around my shampoo, conditioner, and deodorant when the family goes away on vacation. I would probably get more than one bag so I can keep my daughter's stuff separate from mine. If you travel a lot, these bags are definitely worth the price. 

I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

Oleavine Konjac Charcoal Sponge

I have a bit of a fascination with charcoal beauty products. On one hand, they seem to work very well. On the other hand, they tend to be very messy. When I got the chance to review the Konjac Charcoal Sponge by Oleavine, I was super excited. 

Supposedly, you do not need to use any sorts of cleansers with this sponge. You just wet it and wash. When I wet the sponge, I was very surprised that no black charcoal bits came out. Of course, this makes me wonder if there is actually any charcoal in it. I used to use Lush's Dark Angel face cleanser, which has charcoal, and it was a big black mess all over my bathroom sink. This didn't even have any black water, like when you get a new Brita filter. That left me suspicious about their charcoal claims. 

Even if there is no charcoal in the sponge, it is pretty nice. It is rock hard, almost like a pumice stone, when you get it but it gets super soft as soon as it gets wet. Even though I didn't use any cleansers with it, it also somehow managed to make my skin feel smooth. Though I will admit that I did not feel any sort of exfoliation, which is another claim Oleavine makes about their sponge. 

In the end, I am very torn on the sponge. I am rather disappointed about the lack of charcoal in the sponge. I was hoping that this would be something like the Dark Angel cleanser but in a sponge form. In reality, what I got was a nice soft sponge that just did sponge things. Maybe I can find a way to use Dark Angel with this sponge and not make a complete mess of my bathroom. That would be pretty ideal. 

I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

Dot&Dot Packing Cubes

My house is rather small. It is over 100 years old and, as a result, has very little storage space. Unfortunately, between my husband, my daughter, and I, there is a ton of stuff.I was pretty thankful when the opportunity came up to give these small packing cubes by Dot&Dot a try. By the way, I picked the pink ones because that is my daughter's favorite color.

When the cubes arrived, I was a little disappointed. They seemed a lot smaller than I expected. Little did I know how much stuff I could fit in each cube! I have managed to pack all of the samples I've received from the various subscription boxes into one cube. It also made it a lot easier to carry around all of the makeup and hair supplies I needed for a recent photoshoot. However, I have not been able to convince my daughter to use a few of these cubes to clean up her room. I think they would be a great place to store all of the little toys or knickknacks that she has collected. 

I love these cubes so much that I think I might pick up a set of the larger cubes to try to store some summer clothes or something. I also love that they come in so many different colors. We can have pink cubes for my daughter, blue cubes for my husband, and red cubes for me. Organization, for the win! 

I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

StyleWriter 4

I think I am a decent writer. Granted, I do better at "free thought" blog-style than I do at formal paper writing. I am just not a formal person. When I got the chance to try StyleWriter 4, I figured it might give me some tips on improving my writing. 

It turns out that StyleWriter kinda hates my writing. I copied one of my previous blog posts to my computer's clipboard and tossed it into StyleWriter. From what I can tell, you can't really do a copy/paste. You copy the text you want to use then you open StyleWriter and, BAM, there it is. Very weird. There also wasn't a way to directly type the text into the program. I would think it would do better as a sort of smart word processor but maybe this works for people.

StyleWriter 4 told me that I use a lot of "glue words." It seems that they consider adjectives and adverbs to be "glue words" and that these are terrible things. I think it makes my writing more personable and easy to read. It does give ideas on how to rewrite your work but I didn't think their rewrites worked with my style. 

There are three different versions of StyleWriter. The Starter Edition is for students and people on a budget. The Standard Edition has some advanced editing techniques. The Professional Edition is aimed at lawyers, journalists, and other academic writers. I'm fairly sure that my version was the Starter Edition. This version is extremely basic. You will get notes if you use a homonym incorrectly but I don't think you will get any amazing editing from it. 

If you would like to give StyleWriter 4 a try, they are offering a free trial of the software. You can download that here: www.editorsoftware.com/stylewriter. Let me know if you think it is a useful tool or complete garbage. I'd love to know what other people think about it. 

I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

Old Factory Candle Gift Set Review & Giveaway!

I love candles but I don't get to burn them very often. My house is filled with all sorts of things (both animal- and people-related) that will easily knock over a lit candle. The last thing I need is my house burning down! Sometimes I burn candles in my office but not very frequently because there is a LOT of paper there. Fire hazards everywhere! But I couldn't resist the Winter Wonderland gift set from Old Factory Candles. I know, I know. I hate winter. These aren't cold, though. They just smell like winter.

The gift set contains three 2 ounce soy candles. This particular set has Hot Cocoa, Roasted Chestnut, and First Snow as the scents. I mostly picked it for the Hot Cocoa. I can never have too much chocolate!

Hot Cocoa smells exactly like a steaming cup of hot cocoa! Just like cocoa, the scent is more along the lines of a dark chocolate instead of milk chocolate. It is a very deep, pure chocolate smell. If you have ever been on the tour in Hershey's Chocolate World, you can find a similar smell in the beginning parts of the tour. It is delicious!

Roasted Chestnut is a little more difficult to describe. You would think that it would have a nutty smell but it doesn't. It has a light scent that sort of has a vanilla type of feel to it. I think that this would probably be good if you are looking for a scent that isn't very overpowering. Something that will just give you a slight wintery feel without going overboard like a pine tree or gingerbread scented candle might.

First Snow is an interesting scent. I'm not even sure how to describe it. I wouldn't say that it smells like snow. It has a little more of a baby powder type smell to it? I don't know. It smells nice but it is a scent that has you thinking "I should know what this is but I don't." Very weird.

If these scents aren't for you, they have a ton of others available. Coffee Shop, with Coffee Bean, Hazelnut, and Chai Tea scents, sounds perfect for the person that loves coffee. There is a Fall Harvest set that contains Pumpkin Spice, Cranberry, and Autumn Leaves, which might be great to get your house set for Thanksgiving dinner. Or, if you are super into Christmas, there is a Happy Holidays set with Christmas Tree, Candy Cane, and Gingerbread scents. And there are even sets for the "Manly Man" type. The Man Cave set has Straight Razor, Leather, and Mahogany, which definitely sounds interesting. 

So even though I'm not ready for it to be winter yet, I'll be burning some of these candles to try to try to get me hyped for the colder months. Maybe they will help me get through the next six months until summer comes back. I'm ready for you, summer!

Old Factory is being awesome enough to give away one of their candle sets for free! The giveaway runs from November 11 through November 18. Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Powered by BrandBacker

Returning full blast next week!

I am so sorry that I have been absent this week. I somehow managed to get an awful cold that has thrown me for a loop. Instead of doing fun things like testing products and writing, I have spent this week sleeping all of my free time away. But now I am on my way back to normal! (Not that I know what "normal" is....) So, expect lots of new reviews and whatnot starting Monday. I can't wait to tell you about some of the stuff I've been trying. It'll be exciting! 

Green Smoothies: The Weight Loss & Detox Secret

I've always been intrigued by smoothies. Like everyone else, I want to eat healthier and be healthier but smoothies always seem to take more effort than they are really worth. So, when I received a copy of the Green Smoothies ebook, I figured I would give it a try. 

There are 8 chapters in the beginning of the book that give you a little information about green smoothies. Ranging from the health benefits of these smoothies to tips on how to make your smoothie tastier, these short chapters should not be skipped. They are only two or three pages each anyway. 

The bulk of the book is made up of various recipes. I haven't had a chance to try every single recipe but they all sound very delicious. My favorite recipes are the ones with nuts in them. Since my daughter got braces in April, she isn't supposed to eat nuts. This is an easy way to make sure she gets the nutritional value from the nuts without taking the chance that she will break a bracket or something. 

I'm looking forward to trying more of the green smoothie recipes. Healthy living, here I come! 

I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.