Weekly Catch Up

Recently I was reading a blog and came across a great idea that she does. Every week she writes her weekly catch up posts on Tuesday about what happened during the previous week. I decided I should try this. Here is to my first weekly catch up.
This past week went by so fast. I think that is the theme for 2014. Everyone is saying how fast things are going by this year and its true. Its going to be August this week. AUGUST! Its totally insane for me to believe that.
Monday through Friday was my typical work day weeks, I work 8:00-5:00 with a standard hour lunch. I wont say too much about my job here because it is sensitive information I deal with. Basically I help people apply for disability benefits, through the federal government so its dealing with their emotional, physical, mental, financial lives. It can be a lot of emotional draining. Anyway, this week nothing too exciting happened at work. We did get a new person hired onto our team so that was fun. Then the rest was just normal day to day stuff.
When I get home from work on the weekdays I typically cook dinner, do laundry, catch up on TV shows etc. Can we talk about the Bachelorette? I am excited for tonight's finale and I am currently watching it while I write. This week Zack and I finished watching the Star Wars saga, we watched all 6 movies and we started Indiana Jones this week too. I love movies, they are my favorite thing.
This weekend we went and saw WICKED. It was so amazing! I loved every minute of the play, it was my first time seeing the play and not sitting on the balcony so that was a good first. Elphaba and Glinda were so good, they had amazing voices and it was just an incredible experience.
That was basically my week, not a whole lot happened but I will try and get more exciting for my next weekly catch up post.
XO
Caitlin
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Vanity Inspiration

My makeup collection has seriously gone crazy. I have gotten a lot of makeup over the past 3-4 months since I started this new hobby. Because of this I have been searching for a vanity system that would work in my apartment. I have been saving up my money to buy one and will get it in a couple of months. I'm super excited.
I have a few ideas going around in my head of what I want it to look like and here are a few:

(Rather than listing all sources individually you can find them on my pinterest account HERE)

Elf Smudge Pots Review & Swatches

I am excited to do this review. I recently realized that ELF cosmetics (Eyes Lips Face) is having a 50% of sale right now on all of their products. Its great, I have already purchased a lot of makeup through this sale and E.L.F. has some amazing products right now and the best part is they are very affordable. Today I wanted to review the smudge pots. I picked up all colors except for one which was pearls of wisdom. This color is a sparkling white shade with a sheer tone finish. I already have the maybelline color tattoo in too cool which I feel would be the exact same color, so I didn't buy that smudge pot. Right now these shades are retailing for $3.00 on eyeslipsface.com. Go check out the site, I will be adding a few other products for review as well that I picked up, like the concealer, foundation, lip glosses, blushes and brushes. 

There are 9 smudge pots total on the website and I picked up 8 of them, I'm showing 9 in the picture but that is because I bought two of the color crusin chic. More on why I did that later...

First color: Aint that sweet

This is the lightest shade (besides the white color) and is a shimmery creamy pink shade. I have used this color this week as a base under my Urban Decay Naked 3 palette. These shadows are very long lasting. My eye makeup looked great by the end of the day, it hadn't moved at all. So once you apply the colors make sure and work quickly otherwise they will stay put in places you don't want. Here is the swatch:

As you can its very shimmery and I only had to swatch the color once so I think the pigment of this particular shade is really good. 

The Second Color is: Back to Basics

This is a golden creamy color, it really applied pretty well and the swatch turned out great:

Its a pretty brown color and would look as a good base or as a definition color in the outer V of your eye. 

Next color is: Gotta Glow

As you can tell this is a golden shimmery color. It applied a lot lighter then I had expected but you could use this with the Urban Decay Naked 3 palette, or the Lorac Pro 2 palette as a base for those jewel toned shades. 

Here is the swatch:

The gotta glow color is on the left and it was very creamy compared to the other shades. I forgot the two shades in the middle. 

The one next to Back to basics is called Brownie Points:

This is a very chocolaty rich color, it didn't take any effort to get that deep brown in the swatch. I feel this would add great definition to any of the other shades. 

Here is the actual swatch:

The next color is called Cruisin Chic:

Unfortunately my picture of the pot didn't turn out very good. This is a beautiful color. I have also used Cruisin Chic this week as a base for an eye shadow look when I used the Urban Decay Naked palette. Its a really pretty light bronze color which would pair well with any colors of the same family. Here is the swatch:

Its a very light shade, but really applies beautiful and works as a great base. 

Next Color is Ocean Bound:

Love this color. Its a metallic blue shade and it is very bright. I'm a little nervous to wear it actually (I usually stick to more neutral palettes) but I think it would work great to add some definition. 

Here is the swatch:

It is very blue. I will have to experiment more with this color. I only had to build this color up with two swipes so I feel that it can be worked with pretty easily. 

The next color is Poppin Party:

Unfortunately out of all the colors this was my least favorite. I had to reapply the swatch about 7 times before the color finally built up. At first it applied really muddy and I wasn't as impressed with this as I was with the ocean bound color. 

Here is the swatch:

Its not a bright purple and I thought that originally it would turn out brighter. I could see me using this to help deepen an already dark purple color but other then that I doubt I'll use it much. 

The last color is Hit the Town:

This is a metallic gray color and has a little bit of shimmer/shine to it. Here is the swatch:

It has blue undertones and you can tell in the picture. I think this would work great with a gunmetal smokey eye. I did have to build it up like the purple swatch but the color turned out exactly what I thought it would. 

So there you have it, these are retailing for $3.00 and I think the five lighter colors are totally worth that money. 

XO 

Caitlin

Plus Size Style

For those of who know me it comes at no surprise that I am plus sized, you know I fall in the line between a size 14-24. I am also 5'11" so almost 6' tall. Its hard finding clothes and pants and a lot of things that are just long enough for me, especially skinny jeans. I am always having a problem with skinny's. They are usually always too short and end up looking a lot like floods on me. Its pretty ridiculous. Online shopping can be scary for this reason, I never know if it is going to be long enough for me or if I will end up regretting the fact that I bought an expensive pair of jeans online. Last week I decided to take the risk and go ahead and buy a pair I had been eyeing for a while. This pair actually, from ASOS:

(Source)

The BEST part about ASOS is you can order multiple lengths! That is exactly what I did, and it was perfect. These jeans are also super soft, I wish I had a picture of them on me it would just make it that much better. These were worth every penny I spent because I of course plan on wearing them at least 50 times. 

The other thing that is hard for curvy girls to find is watches. Why is this so difficult? I bought a watch from Feral a year or so ago and that was a terrible experience. It was so small and was very cheaply made. The watch lasted about a week, which made me sad. I then bought another watch from Lane Bryant. This one was awesome, it had a big face on it, was really cute and fit my wrist. Only problem is that the link was weak and broke. When I took it took get it fixed the jeweler didn't have the right type of link to make it look uniform so I had to go buy a new one. 

When I decided to buy these jeans I went ahead and looked at their accessories as well. And low and behold this beauty showed up: 

(Source)

It was literally the perfect watch for me. I have been wanting one with a gold face in the longest time. I am just so happy that this one is so beautiful and I can wear it with everything. My asos package was on my porch when I got home, it was so fun opening all these items and finally discovering for myself why everyone loved them so much. 

I will take pictures this weekend of me wearing the clothes and will post them on here sometime for you, the jeans are just so flattering on me and I love it so much. 

Well until next time 

XO

Caitlin

Naked Basics Tutorial!

Naked Basics Palette
So I actually took a bunch of pictures of this tutorial on myself and only half of them saved on my iPhone so it wasn't going to work out. I think next time I attempt a tutorial I will try using an actual camera. I tried my DSLR but it was really difficult so I think I will go with my good old point and shoot. Hopefully that works. Anyway I decided to go ahead and show you guys a list of links and referrals to some great sites that have awesome tutorials.
This is the one I used for my makeup and generally when I grab the naked basics palette this is my go-to look: Back to Basics with UD.
I love this link because it has 5 really awesome looks to try. 5 tutorials to get a look you will love with UD Naked Basics. 
I also like this graph and would use this look but i haven't tried it yet:

Link to this look HERE its a really good blog to read and has lots of great tips.

And finally here is the finished look on me, I followed the first link above and it turned out pretty well on me.

Also you can kind of see my new hair color, the light was a little more yellowish then I wanted it be so you can't really see the definitions in the colors I am using but it looked really good. 

I am thinking of putting together a style board for Wednesday's post. I recently got a lot of new clothes and jewelry at Maurices, and Asos. I wanted to share that style with you all and how it turned out. 

Well until next time 

XO 

Caitlin

June Favorites 2014

Yay!! June Favorites are here. I am excited about this post. I know I said I was going to post every Monday, Wednesday and Friday and I know I failed miserably at that schedule. There is just something about being home alone that throws your schedule off you know. I haven't been keeping my schedule at anything since he has been gone so don't worry, this blog isn't the only thing being neglected and I am going to try my absolute best to keep a Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule. I also want to start incorporating new beauty posts into my blog since I have been having so much fun with makeup lately. I am going to start with some Naked Basics palette tutorials so hopefully that sparks peoples interests. I am thinking of doing beauty posts on Monday so stay tuned for that.

My June Favorites! I am so excited about a lot of them. First off I want to start with the Urban Decay Naked Basics palette. I know this palette has been out for about two years and I am way behind on the game for this, but I am in LOVE with this palette. I just got it this month and honestly it exceeded my expectations by far:

Here are the colors. I love using Walk of Shame, Naked 2 and faint for a really good every day look. But I love that you could had crave to your look and get an even smokier eye, if that is what you are going for. Foxy and Walk of Shame are really similar except Foxy is more yellow under tones and Walk of Shame has more pink undertones. My skin has more pink undertones so I think that Walk of Shame is my go to color, in fact I know its my go to color. I just love this palette, its versatile yet compact so you can take it traveling and get a bunch of looks. I would highly recommend this to anybody just getting into makeup and you want to stick to more neutral colors. 

Next thing I want to talk about is this Maybelline color tattoo:

This is in the color "too cool" and it makes a perfect eye shadow base. I think that when you apply a white base before your eye shadow goes on the colors are a lot more vibrant on your skin. This is a perfect one for me because it helps my eye shadows stay on all day long. 

Next I want to talk about this eye correction concealer from Pixi cosmetics:

This acts as a brightening cream for the under eye area and its perfect for me. I get really dark circles under my eyes and this helps make them really blend in more so they aren't as noticeable. I love this and use it along with my maybelline anti age eye concealer:

This stuff is awesome. I use it everyday as my under eye concealer and it really helps hide my dark circles. I got the color in light and I think it could also work as a highlighter as well. 

Next up my first ever MAC product:

Its a blush and the color is called peaches. I love this blush. It looks really good on my skin tone and almost matches my already naturally pink cheeks that I have going for me. This is a great blush that really stands out and I just recently ordered another blush from MAC so I am excited about that. I don't own many MAC products but I can see why people like there stuff. This blush is really pigmented and lasts a long time. I was really impressed. 

My second blush to mention is Hot Mama by The Balm:

I love this color too. Its got a little more shimmer to it then MACs peaches blush has but I find the colors of these two blushes to be very similar. I love products by The Balm and highly recommend them to everyone. 

And last but not least MASCARA:

This is the Tarte Lights, Camera, Lashes mascara and I love it. It really helps add volume to my lashes and they stand out a lot when I wear this. Its a great mascara, a little pricey but I really like it a lot. 

So there you have it my June Favorites. What are yours?

Also I got my hair highlighted. I basically went back to blonde for the summer so I am excited about that. Well thanks for stopping by, stay tuned for a tutorial coming up. 

XO

Caitlin