January haul time! Here’s everything I bought or was gifted this past month!

For anyone new here: these posts include things I have either purchase myself, been given by friends or family (as gifts or sometimes PR samples they did not need/want/did not match skintone-wise) – these posts will never include something I was sent directly by a PR company.

I finally ran out of all of my holographic silver glitter polishes, and was trying to hunt down some in the drug store. I don’t know what’s happened, but they don’t seem to exist anymore! I ended up buying a bunch of the Color Club Magic Attraction polishes on NailPolishCanada.com and I have to say… I’m not a fan. I had spent a lot of hours online trying to find out if it was the right kind of silver holo glitter for my toes (which is all I wear on them) and as it turns out it’s got silver holo glitter… but there’s also red glitter in it? It’s kind of weird, it adds a pink tinge to the product. I could get over that, except that the polish has horrendous staying power. It’ll last maybe a day or two on my toe nails before half a nail will chip off (whereas most brands last at least five days – the better ones will last 8). Sadly, I’ve now got four bottles of the stuff and no desire to use it. UGH.

This was SUCH a random item. I was scouring the Bunz Makeup Facebook Group (are you in Toronto??? If so, LOOK IT UP!) one evening and someone was saying they wanted something like eight bucks for this brand new pair of Huda Beauty lashes. I messaged them and we agreed to meet up, etc. But upon further discussion we actually learned WE LIVED IN THE SAME BUILDING and she actually lived in MY OLD UNIT. (We moved to a larger unit in the same building a few years ago.) So I ran down to her apartment at like midnight that evening and gave her some cash and scored my lashes. What a bizarre coincidence!

I’ve run through multiple bottles of MAC‘s Turquatic perfume over the years and my mom picked me up a new bottle of it (I was out of it yet again) for my birthday this past month! Love, love, LOVE this scent!

Grabbed another bottle of QUO‘s nail polish remover since I also ran out of the last bottle.

Since my birthday is in January, I snatched up the tarte 2017 birthday gift from Sephora. It has the blush “Party” and the lip paint in “Birthday Suit”.

All said and, supposedly, done, I was going to resist the Urban Decay Afterdark palette. But But I kept playing around with my Electric palette and I feel like they’re kind of brother and sister, so I decided to pick up this one after all. Plus, Rebekah is the devil and kept showing me her awesome looks with this palette!

In the end, it may have the same kind of packaging that the Electric palette has, but the Afterdark palette is not similar at all in my opinion. The Electric palette has matte shades in it which really help to make the palette more versatile. This Afterdark palette is ONLY shimmery shades which I think is just a bit too much overkill. I do love the shades, and I’m happy to have a backup of Fringe (such an amazing colour), but I really wish they had made the textures somewhat different. There will be a Challenge Week coming up for this palette as well!

The next few items are a bunch of items that my friend (and YouTuber) Samantha didn’t want, so I was happily shopping her stash for these! First up is the Marcelle Hydra C Daily Radiance Scrub. I have a bunch of facial scrubs sitting in my closet waiting to be used, but I am always happy to add more to the back of the line! (There’s something about skincare I have hoarding tendencies for…)

Another one from Sam! I love my Bioderma so, so much, but I’m always curious to try other brands out as well. We’ll see how the Garnier Micellar Water works out!

The Body Shop always puts out amazing products for the holiday season, and I’m happy Sam passed on the Frosted Berries Foaming Bath to me. Shower gel never quite gets as many bubbles going as a proper bubble bath product can, so I’m always ecstatic to have more of this kind of product!

Sam doesn’t have blonde brows, so I was the easy option for this Revlon Brow Pencil. And so far, I’ve been quite pleased with it!  The tone isn’t too warm and although it’s a bit of an odd shape (larger than the micro pencils I’m accustomed to) I still find it works out pretty well!

And finally, the last item I snagged from Sam is this Konjac Sponge. I’ve heard people mention this off and on for use with their facial cleanser. I’ve always use only my hands to wash my face so I’m not sure I really want to add in an extra step with a sponge… BUT, I will say that this sponge feels WONDERFUL on my face as I’m using it to scrub my face wash in. I don’t always love the added step, but it does feel good!

My brother-in-law thoughtfully sent me a few green tea face masks for Christmas! There’s five in the pack which is nice since with face masks you generally just get… like… what? A single item?

This was soooo random! Mel from I’m Not A Beauty Guru and I had done a swap for some items (she gave me some wine for my IT Cosmetics CC cream) and she ALSO showed up with these MAC items she’s gotten at the warehouse sale in one of their charity bags! I was so surprised! I mean… that’s a heck of a lot of MAC items! There’s the patentpolish in Tumbleweed, the huggable lip colour in Cantonese Carnation, and, the item I’m most excited about… the matte lipstick in Ablaze! I’ve been wanting Ablaze for a while and just never got around to picking it up! Yay!

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And there we have all of the new beauty goodies I’ve amassed throughout January! Have you bought anything in January that you’re super excited about? Let me know!