its 2010 - wash yo face!

my name is pamela and i am *terrible* about washing my face.

there. i said it.

in high school, my friends lamented about how i never cleaned off my makeup and still had flawless skin. in college, i landed many a nights in my bed and woke up with my face still relatively intact.

some days were rough, and i woke up looking like the joker. but hey, it was college.

so i started keeping facewipes next to my bed in hopes of encouraging myself to remove my makeup at night. i preferred the olay sensitive skin wipes but would use anything...target, cvs, whatever as long as it was cheap.

recently i've found my old staple, olay wipes, to be just a little to harsh for my skin. maybe its because i've actually started taking care of my skin!

we all know tonight is going to be one of those nights: no one is going to go home and carefully wash their faces and moisturize. its okay - this is a place to be honest.

so instead, i'm going to recommend to you my new best friends: almay's makeup remover wipes and almay oil free eye makeup remover pads.




i've had my fair share of dances with eye makeup removers and wipes and i have to say, these are the best (and most affordable!) that i've come by. don't get me wrong, i love korres' pomegrante wipes, but i don't love the smell so for half the price and no smell, almay can't be beat! the eye pads get at the toughest of creations (they removed my gaga face in one fell swoop!) and the wipes clean up strayed kohl and dried foundation.

i'm hibernating tonight, but believe me, these will be on my nightstand all weekend!

stay safe and have a happy new year!

ms. behavin as a twilight vamp

first of all, sorry i've been so dark here recently! school + business things + finals + holidays have been a bit much to handle all at once, so something had to give :(

but the good news is that it ends tomorrow!

i think i might celebrate by spending my afternoon quietly in the dark and see new moon again...

when my girlfriends and i dutifully went on november 21, i figured it was the perfect opportunity to try out a sample of benefit's ms. behavin lipstick, which is the official lipcolor of all twilight vampires (applied more heavily to the ladies)



here's ms. behavin, worn randomly to school one day to test it out



i didn't love ms. behavin alone - it a silky finish, so without anything under it, it seemed to smear and be less than the creamy opaque i wanted it to be - so for our new moon adventure, i decided to create a rosalie look, centered around ms. behavin and golden eyes!



i kept my face simple with tarte dark circle defense, some light powder and tarte's cheek stain in brilliant from the three carats collection, described as a "shimmering champagne" for a dash of vampire sparkle.

for eyes, i tried to keep it neutral and shimmery but with added drama, just like rosalie!

i started with stila's kitten smudgepot all over and followed up with tarte's glistening powder in sugar daddy.

NOTE: i received a .07 oz sample of sugar daddy with my last tartepro order. from what i've gathered, sugar daddy was a body powder that was available in a much larger size, but it showed up at my door it and it was perfect for this look! any rose-goldy type powder will suffice!

i then tightlined the top of my lids with urban decay's ink for eyes in demolition (my *favorite* creamy brown liner, its gorgeous!) to keep the look defined but still soft. i filled in demolition on my bottom lashline with a pencil brush and applied urban decay's 24/7 pencil in stash to my waterline.

stash is a great muddy green/gold color and functions to make my hazel eyes look more amber. you could also substitute baked or el dorado pencils if you wanted a more obvious gold tone. i finished it all off with one coat of diorshow iconic mascara for length and one coat of diorshow blackout for drama.

for lips, i was desparate to mitigate the sheerness of ms. behavin because though i love the color, i just wanted more!

the perfect solution: MAC lip liner in vino. i first lined my lips precisely with vino and then filled in with the pencil and smudged it to stain my lips, applying ms. behavin with a flocked lipgloss brush for that just bitten smile!

the law school manicure

so one of my favorite college luxuries were bi-monthly manis and pedis at the fabulous east bay nail spa in the beautiful charleston, south carolina.

with the dawning of my law school era, i neither have time nor money for regular manis and pedis :( cue my broken heart!

however, i believe i have discovered the perfect way to fake it on your own!

i like to call it: the law school manicure.

step 1: lush's lemony flutter cuticle butter. i try to apply this every other day to my cuticles and sometimes to the rest of my hands as well to fight back against my constant purell-ing.











step 2: orly's bonder basecoat. it's rubberized and i really have found that it holds polish on longer/prevents chipping. which is fabulous, because there is nothing i hate more than a chipped fingernail! i'd rater be polish-free!









step 3: a fabulous nail color! this week, i'm rocking china glaze's let's groove but i think i'm about to switch it up to OPI by sephora super-limited glam bronze, 212 sephora.
























students and recessionistas, rejoice!

to grandmother's house we go!

after screaming FREEDOM and fleeing the law school in approximately 44 minutes, i'm flying to chicago for thanksgiving because basically my entire family lives there, although i am a bona fide debutante from the heart of dixie.










i'm already prone to dry skin and flying does NOT help the situation. i'm going makeup free until i arrive so i can moisturize before *and* after my flight.











i don't believe in checking bags, so here's where the handy little trial sizes of my skin favorites, korres quercetin and oak moisturizers come in! i'm also planning to rely on the packets of trial cleansers that korres has included with my orders.

obvi lip butter will be a part of my thanksgiving defense kit!





the windy city and 35,000 feet will not ruin my complexion!

writing essentials

so i've been feverishly writing all weekend and i've found there are two things that keep me going whilst chained to my desk: MUSIC and korres lip butter.

my poor lips have been going through a lot recently thanks to lengthy dental visits, the mercurial dc weather and a recent cold sore, so i found myself not only needing to moisturize but exfoliate as well.

luckily, i recently picked up korres's lemon lip scrub during one of their many wonderful sales. i like that its packaged like a lipstick (avoids germy messes in pots) and only smells slightly lemony. apply to lips, rub, blot with a tissue and then follow with lip butter.

mmmm...lip butter...

for those of you that don't know, korres lip butter and i are in a deeply committed relationship (though that doesn't stop me from whoring it out to my friends!) my favorite is guava for standard hydrating purposes, but it does cast white, so i reach for quince, a pink tinted version for school days.

i also just picked up the lip saver roll (3 lip butters!) to try and get myself to branch out into the other colors.

one lip butter usually runs $9, but the lip saver roll is $19! that's like, two lip butters and a bonus free one!

and for those of you who aren't familiar with korres, they always offer tons of amazing discounts on their website - the current ones are 30% + free shipping on orders over $35 with code TEMPTALIA (valid until 12/31) or spend $50 and get a 4 piece wild rose skincare set with code WILDROSE - the site says limited time offer, so i don't know how long it runs for. i love the quercetin and oak skincare line and am sure that wild rose is equally amazing so either promo is a great deal!




















































and now for something completely different!


here's the newest video for keeping on without you from one of my all-time favorite bands, this providence. its heartbreaking - i actually cried the first time i watched it! TP has been keeping me company during finals seasons since 2004 so i have to give them love - pick up their new album, who are you now? i promise you will not be disappointed!

lumberjack chic

since this is a blog about my double life, i felt that everyone needed to know that i've spent the past 30 hours of my life in this flannel nightie, and i like it that way. rocked with my ll bean moccasins, its so very mainer. wicked.






i've been writing up a storm. its FUN. ha.




oh and hero managed to dig a nest amidst the sea of makeup. i admire her dedication.

i <3 stila

as if that's news!






through sunday, enter code RUNWAY at checkout on purchases over $20 to get this runway palette and kajal liner free!

my word, i love a good deal!

i used mine to stock up on my FAVORITE lip set EVER, the enameled lips collection, which contains the barbie loves stila enameled lips set + a FANTASTIC lip liner for the same price as just the set alone! its a must have ladies!

stila has many great value sets available right now, so you may as well take advantage and get a fabulous smoky eye bonus!

i'm being attacked!

....by holiday sets and sales! i swear, they're ALIVE!

and i don't even have time to play in them :( blarg, law school.

i can't tell my drugs from my makeup....?

in honor of urban decay's friends and family sale ending tomorrow - 30% off with code FNFW1, i'm reviving a summer post from my close friend and fellow beauty maven, rheana's blog, words by rhe.






anyone want to get baked or smoke out with me?



I can’t be the only one noticing this.

My friend Pam uses one of Urban Decay’s chubby eye pencils in a white metallic shade. It’s called yeyo. “I wish all my makeup had blow references,” she said.

She doesn’t have to go far.

From their “Big Fatty” mascaras to their “Get Baked” palettes, Urban Decay might be the most blunt, but they’re certainly not alone in their drug innuendos.

M.A.C makes eye shadows in shades of “purple haze” and “shroom,” among others. Fragrances play the game, too, from Carol’s Daughter’s “Ecstacy” to Fresh’s “Cannabis Rose.”

Still, I could have given all those brands the benefit of the doubt, but as soon as I did (having chalked it up to a mild case of schizophrenia belately triggered by inhaling too much face powder in the beauty closet), I would found this (which I took to as proof of the trend, of course.)

It’s a candle, designed to fill your home with the scent of marijuana, when lit. (Perfect, right? I know that’s exactly what you were looking for!) The Cannabis Candle comes from Malin+Goetz, and sells for $48 (and that’s without the guarantee of getting high.) Well, it’s cheaper than those delivery guys, anyway.

i'll pull your crooked teeth so you'll be perfect just like me

after class today i had my semi-annual date with the dental hygienist. yikes. why i decide to submit myself to hygiene based torture during pre-finals season is unbeknownst to me. maybe i'm just a masochist...but those medieval metal torture devices? the noises are enough to make me break down into tears.

in addition to my cleaning, i planned to have a porcelain front on one of my teeth replaced. its been there since i was eight, no one in my family can remember why its even there at all, but after fifteen years, it needs some love. plus i've been trying to whiten my teeth recently and guess what? crest whitestrips do no good for dental prosthetics. so then i ended up looking like this.



note the subtle discoloration? let me tell you, it is a total DON'T for bold lip looks, which just so happen to be my current obsession.

turns out i can't just get a new "front" - i need a whole new tooth (ok, a veneer, but to me, that means fake teeth). AND thanks to some sweet wave surfing in hawaii at age 8, my two front teeth are chipped to the point they're nearly transparent so turns out i need new teeth for those too. and to top it all off, can't just replace those three, gotta get the fourth - and if i had listened to the dentist, just go for the whole top row.

i'm currently pleased with my four temporary fake teeth and think that only the greatest streak of vanity would lead me to correct the rest of my otherwise mildly-imperfect mouth, especially at $1,800 per tooth. here's hoping insurance covers some of that exorbitant price!

although it turns out that stila creator jeanine lobell and i share the same dentist. how's that for a six-degrees-of-great-women-in-beauty?

but my four hours at the dentist leads me to the great existential question - cosmetic dentistry: do or don't?

dry shampoo, a love story

so its that time of year in law school - pre-finals. i'm trying to put out a little extra effort in my outfits to combat the rampant sweatpants and leggings-as-pants (i have seen more camel toe in the library this week than the sahara has) but sometimes, washing my hair falls to the wayside.

i discovered dry shampoo last finals season and went with Pssssssst!, a drugstore brand, until i realized its primary ingredient is butane. using a blowtorch on my gentle strands just didn't seem a good idea, so i've looked for other options.

currently, i love finley dry shampoo - a color-matched powder that cleanses and volumizes all in one! you can find finley at www.studiobeautymix.com



however, i was looking for a spray option as well and found myself picking up klorane extra gentle dry shampoo with oat extract with my sephora VIB discount this weekend. somehow i went for the "pump" as opposed to spray option.

friend or foe?



now, i'm a bright girl - i made it through college (say what you will about south carolina public universities) and am now pursuing my JD but i swear, it took me at least five minutes to figure this "spray" out! apparently you shake it and powder flies through a spray-like nozzle.

intriguing.

but my hair is "clean" and i feel sassy in evidence class!