A five-pan, matte, pigmented, warm-toned eyeshadow palette courtesy of BECCA! Take a look at the gorgeous Ombre Rouge palette!
Smooth, buttery and matte, this palette is an absolute dream to use! If you want to see the whole palette in action, check out my recent YouTube video!
The BECCA Ombre Rouge Eye Palette can be purchased on sephora.ca for $48 CAD or one sephora.com for $40 USD.
The product featured in this post was sent to me for consideration.
SABON is not a company I see spoken about often. Heck, I didn’t even know they existed myself until I stumbled upon them one fateful day in New York City many years ago…
That sounds dramatic, but I really just want to tell you a story about how I discovered this brand. I was visiting my university roommate in New York City a long time ago and I was left to my own devices one afternoon. I made my way over to Magnolia Bakery (of Sex and the City fame) for my first ever taste of their much loved cupcakes. I got myself a cupcake and started wandering around the area.
After devouring my cupcake, my hands were covered in icing and I was feeling sticky and kind of gross. I couldn’t touch anything without leaving a sticky smear on my clothing! Suddenly, some woman came out of nowhere as I was wandering down a street and asked me if I wanted to come into her shop and have my hands washed. I looked around slightly confused… I hadn’t been complaining about having dirty hands and I wasn’t wiping my hands off on myself in disgust, so why on earth would she ask me that question? Hell if I cared, I needed to clean my hands!
So this woman invited me in to SABON and did a whole ritual on my hands. She first scrubbed them with a hand polisher, then lathered them up with hand soap, rinsed them and followed it up with a butter hand cream. I was smitten. Not only had this lady helped me in my time of need (seriously, my hands felt so gross) but the products were not only nice smelling, but the packaging was gorgeous. My hands were left feeling clean and silky soft!
And like… just look at this hand washing station:
Gorgeous! The whole place just has this old world apothecary type feel that I just love. So that’s the story of how I discovered SABON! Their luxurious bath products are all excellent (I’ve tried a lot of them) although a bit on the pricier side (I don’t care, I’ll gladly pay it!). Sadly, their locations are pretty scarce. There used to be one in Toronto (which I found out when I was in New York) but it’s long since shut down. 🙁
My absolute favourite product by SABON is this Body Scrub in Lemon Mint ($35 USD). The product itself is a wonderfully abrasive scrub that has fine particles in it that help to slough off dead skin. But the scent… the scent is what gets me every time. It smells refreshingly aquatic and clean. It’s so delightful that this is probably my fifth tub of this scrub.
I kind of love how I discovered this brand by accident in such a wonderful way. It was such a random incident and one I’ve thought about a lot over the years. If you ever spot a SABON, go in and get your hands washed. 🙂
If you’re a runner who takes part in races, you’ll often see in the race rules that wearing earphones is either forbidden or not recommended because they want you to be able to hear the race officials in case of an emergency. People almost always disregard this “rule”, but what if there was a better option? One that could let you listen to your music AND keep you safe because you can hear the surrounding area?
There IS an option! Trekz Titanium is a wireless headset that uses Bluetooth to connect to your listening device of choice. (In my case, I had to use my phone, because my incredibly old iPod Nano does not have Bluetooth capabilities.) It also has a built in microphone so you can actually take calls on your phone while out for a run (I get a few alerts regarding e-mails I have received when I use this!).
The way these work is that the headphones wrap around the back of your neck and over the tops of your ears. What looks like the “earpiece” is actually bone conducting transducers that sit on the backs of your cheekbones and conduct the sound via vibrations through your cheeks into your inner ear. Mind = blown.
The headphones sit solidly on my ears, although if you’re not used to them, you will notice the weight of them a little bit (they aren’t heavy though – don’t mistake me for saying that. It’s just a different sensation than what I’m used to with my earbuds). The pinching mechanism used to keep them attached to your head is not painful and I noticed no discomfort through a 5K run.
The headset has an on/off button located on one side as well as a port for charging (a full charge will let you listen for six hours) and buttons to turn the music up and down. Not pictured is the other side of the headset that has a single button that, depending on how it’s clicked, can either pause your music or skip a song, as well as a whole host of options related to your phone (i.e., receiving, dialing, etc.). I highly appreciate the fact that the buttons rely on a tactile response as opposed to a heat option, because when I’m running outside in the winter, the last thing I want to do is take off my gloves to push a button (like on my freaking iPod. UGH.).
As a bonus, you do get a carrying case for the headset. This is beneficial because the headset is rather awkwardly shaped and there’s really no good way to carry it around without this case.
It also comes with some earplugs and some adjustment clips that can be used to help fit smaller heads.
So how did these FEEL? Well, my initial reaction was that they were really, really weird. I was so unused to hearing music without something crammed in my ears. It was kind of like the first time you heard music come from a discman or a walkman – maybe not something all that impressive today, but I remember being quite young and stunned by hearing music on a walkman for the first time ever. It’s a little jawdropping! For people who find earbuds are especially uncomfortable to wear, this may be a really good option for you.
It’s worth noting that these are not especially private headphones. If you’re running beside someone who doesn’t have loud music playing, they will be able to hear your music. It’s not a problem really, especially not in an outdoor race, but it’s not something I would personally feel comfortable wearing to the gym since I don’t want my music to interfere with other people.
As far as the sound quality goes, I’m a very average music listener with very little demands. I found the sound quality to be completely on parr with my regular headphones and noticed no significant drop in quality (I am not a musician and don’t tend to notice many differences in music across multiple headphones/speakers/etc.). The quality is good enough that I can hear my music while I’m running and that’s all I really want!
My biggest complaint about the Trekz Titanium is that the audio doesn’t go to a level that I consider loud enough for *me*. It hits max sound level right around what I would consider “medium volume”. That being said, it’s loud enough to cover the sound of my breathing (something that is really, REALLY important to me, I hate listening to myself breathing while running), so many users may find the volume perfectly loud enough.
So what do you think? Is this something you would use? Are you intrigued by the idea of music that conducts through your cheekbones and not through your ear canal??
Trekz Titanium headphones by AfterShokz can be purchased on their web site for $129.99 USD.
This post features a product that was sent to me for review.
Hi!! Here’s a makeup tutorial using a ton of new (to me) BECCA products. Enjoy!
New in the foundation department by Maybelline is their Dream Velvet formula and it promises:
The Maybelline Dream Velvet foundation comes in 12 shades ranging from 05 Warm Porcelain to 95 Coconut – although the shades definitely skew more to the paler side of things. You get the usual fluid ounce of product in a squeeze tube that comes with a nozzle tip (and there’s even a little foil seal on it when you first purchase it so you know it’s not been tampered with). The packaging is slim, compact and sleek. The tube is easy to squeeze and it’s easy to get product out of this tube since the plastic is soft and pliable (something I highly appreciate). The product itself is like a thick, whipped mousse but it spreads and blends easily on the face.
The one thing that really set me back in trying this foundation though was the colours. If you take a look at the swatches above, you’ll notice that 15 Ivory is really quite dark and is more attuned to my skin tone in the summer. However, even the shade 10 Porcelain Ivory is still quite dark and VERY warm compared to my skin tone. In fact, it looks downright peachy. I put off trying this foundation for a week because I was scared it would not match my face and I’d be left looking like a fool at work.
I was TOTALLY wrong:
That’s how 10 Porcelain Ivory looks on my skin! It’s a FLAWLESS match in my book *and* it even matches my neck! I have no idea what the heck is in this foundation to cause it to colour match like that, but the shade is bang on and I couldn’t be happier. Given how odd the original swatch looked on the underside of my arm… I’m kind of astounded. I don’t know how you did it Maybelline – but you did, and it’s awesome!
I’m in LOVE with this new Dream Velvet foundation! Aside from my initial scare with the colour matching, this product has seriously zero faults. (For reference, my skin is fairly dry right now.) I get a full day’s wear out of it (around 10 hours). I have no creasing or sinking into fine lines (usually an issue on my forehead because I raise my eyebrows a lot). It feels soft and velvety to the touch. It doesn’t make my face itchy. It doesn’t go patchy or peel anywhere. The coverage is truly flawless and it was a breeze applying it to my face since it requires very little blending to get it to sink in (I use a Real Techniques sponge). I love the squeeze tube and the compact size. In short, I cannot believe how amazing this foundation is! I really don’t have any faults for how this foundation wore on my skin or looked. /bows down before Maybelline
The Maybelline Dream Velvet foundation can be purchased for ~$16.99 CAD in stores, or at Ulta.com for $10.99 USD.
I received an extra tube of Maybelline‘s Dream Velvet foundation in the shade 15 Ivory, and was told to go ahead and host a giveaway! Please note that there is only the one shade available and I cannot exchange the colour I received for a colour that would better suit your skin tone. So please keep that in mind when submitting giveaway entries.
This post features a product that sent to me for consideration.