September… you were a painful month for my wallet. Not only did ALL of the makeup brands decide to launch ALL of their freaking holiday palettes (like actually – they totally all did), but it was also a month I traveled to New York City (so obviously I had to take advantage of brands that did free shipping within the USA) AND Toronto IMATS happened. I’m actually physically removing my credit card from my wallet as of today because that poor thing has been rung up so many times I’m worried it’s going to burst into flames shortly. So despite my money flying out the window, this haul is actually a lot of fun because there’s a LOT of fun things in here.

As always, the haul is in chronological order, so there’s a lot more interesting things halfway down the page!

The least interesting thing I bought this month is Johnson’s Baby Shampoo so that I can finally clean my brushes again. I ran out at some point last month and waited till it was on sale to pick up the large bottle.

The next whack of items are marked as swap, which some of them are, and some are just overflows from other beauty bloggers who want to pass on some of the love (de-stashing, as it were). I really like the Jealous Body scrubs, so I snagged this Grapeseed and Macadamia one. I’ve reviewed their latest scents right over here.

I grabbed these two L’Occitane products simply because of the name. Verveine (French) is actually Verbena in English, and I’ve somehow found myself sucked into The Vampire Diaries recently and they use verveine to ward off vampires. It made me giggle, plus I liked the scent… soooo… mine!

I’ll never ever turn down free body care, so I looted the mark Crazy for Cranberry body scrub, the Soap & Glory Peaches and Clean Deep Cleansing Milk and the Live Clean Hydrating Creamy Cleanser. Because I don’t have sensitive skin, I am afforded the luxury of trying whatever skincare products happen to cross my path. Lucky me when someone else doesn’t want them!

Random assortment of makeup in here:

• Rimmel Provocalips in Make a Move: THIS IS INCREDIBLE! It has unbelievable staying power and it’s not super drying like most liquid lipsticks. The colour is “fall appropriate” and I absolutely MUST have more in my collection. LOVE.
• Rimmel Stay Blushed in Pop of Pink: These cream blushes intrigued me but aside from the texture and tube, there’s nothing particularly unique about the shade. Quite pretty on the cheeks though.
• Maybelline Rebel Bloom lipstick in Coral Burst: OH MAN. I wanted this shade so badly from the Rebel Bloom collection but told myself I didn’t need it because I’m sure I have a near dupe in my collection somewhere. So I was mighty happy that someone had a duplicate of the shade and was more than happy to toss it my way! (And yes, it’s fairly similar to a lot of other lipsticks I own.)
• Shawna pressed me a pigment (using my own tutorial!) from NYX. I think the shade is Rustic Copper… and it’s GORGEOUS.

Soap Stories soap… because who doesn’t want free soap?

The Sonia Kashuk Jewel of an Eye palette. I wanted it for SO LONG, but Target Canada never had it as far as I ever saw and I kind of figured it just wasn’t meant to be. Until a blogger destashed it and I was like OH YESSSSSS!

The Lise Watier Expression palette is full of pastel shades that I probably won’t get around to playing with for a while, but they looked super pretty so I thought I’d give them a shot. Plus I don’t tend to have muted versions of my bright shadows, so this’ll help with blending.

And now we come to the New York City portion of this haul. While visiting some friends out in New York, we went over to the Bite Beauty Lip Lab to get some custom lipsticks made. (You can read about that experience here if you like!) In the week I’ve been back I’ve already worn this shade three times. I’m amazed with just how much I love it!

Of course, what’s a visit to the US without placing a Colour Pop order? I ordered several of the Ultra Matte liquid lipsticks because EVERYONE is raving about them. The colour range I ended up with is a little strange for me, but I did manage to cut it down from 10 shades….

I also grabbed one of the Lippie Stix (Toucan) because the smell of these is intoxicating and I didn’t own any. And, lastly, the Super Shock Shadow in Coconut because I’ve seen it on two bloggers in person now and it’s STUNNING.

I recently went through a false lash meltdown: I was going out one night and I was trying different lash brands on… and nothing was working. The bands were too inflexible, they looked too plastic, etc. etc. Seriously, I tried on four different brands and I got so annoyed I ended up throwing everything out that wasn’t House of Lashes (which have never failed me). So I had an order placed and shipped to my friend in New York where I picked it up. The Bombshell ones are my favourite so far so I got a three pack. I’m also eager to try out the Iconic lashes because a lot of people seem to like those.

I also picked up a Milani eyeshadow primer at a Duane Reed while on vacation because I just don’t have access to it in Canada and lately it’s the only primer that’s been working for me.

Sabon is a bodycare brand that I first fell in love with in New York about a decade or so ago. I was happy to stop in and pick up some stuff but I kept it to a single item because the USD to CAD version is absolute BALLS right now. This is my absolute favourite product by Sabon: their Body Scrub in Lemon Mint. Between the scent and the feel of the product, I’m in absolute heaven!

And the last item I had shipped to a friend was the Too Faced Star Dust palette by Vegas Nay. I wasn’t originally sure I wanted this palette, but the price tag along with the extras (primer,  glamour dust and mascara) were enough to win me over based on value.

And I am so very glad I picked it up. The Too Faced holiday palettes aren’t really doing it for me this year so I’m considering this my “Too Faced holiday palette”. It’s phenomenal. The pigmentation is incredible and the shades are wonderful. While it could be considered a neutral palette, there’s still a lot of fun ways to play with the colours. Oddly, the two warm brown shades (Millenial and Girl’s Night) are my absolute favourites – those colours work MAGIC in the crease!

And now we come to the holiday palette debacle. WHY MUST BRANDS RELEASE THEIR HOLIDAY PALETTES IN SEPTEMBER??!?!? This is Urban Decay‘s Urban Spectrum palette. It’s available on the brand’s web site or on Sephora’s site for VIB and VIB Rouge members.

Shade-wise, I prefer this a lot more than the Vice 4 palette (that’s coming below), but it’s definitely not a standalone palette. Every single shade in this palette has shimmer of some sort. They’re gorgeous, there’s no doubt about that, but you’re going to need some mattes if you don’t want to look all shiny all the time. I didn’t pick up the Anniversary palette a few years back, and this has the shades I wanted from that  so I’m really glad to own this one now.

I can admit it, it’s the packaging that sucked me into this one. Urban Decay‘s Vice series always has a wonderfully large mirror, a well layed out palette and gorgeous packaging. I love how all Vice 4s will have a slightly different colour pattern on the top too – feels very unique.

But the shades themselves… are weird. Last year, the Vice 3 felt very cohesive. The shades were layed out nicely, there were colour gradients and complimentary colours… but this year I can’t figure out what the hell I’m looking at. There’s no brow bone shade (not for me anyway – that top left shade is more of a grey-pink pearl colour) so that’s awkward. I love the two oranges in the bottom left hand corner but that’s kind of it… There’s three oddly similar greens/aquas/seafoams in the middle row that kind of make me feel like they could’ve aimed for a bit more variety. I don’t know man… it’s a WEIRD palette. And I really only got it for the outer packaging. What a doofus.

https://instagram.com/p/7qqhzsRayI/

Argh, I forgot to take a picture of the Kat Von D Mi Vida Loca Remix palette ($71 CAD). This is the palette I was most excited about for Holiday 2015. The shades in this palette are to die for and I cannot wait to swatch them all and create a bunch of makeup looks. It’s a bit on backlog though as I work through the other palettes first! The only thing I’m not keen on is the packaging. It pulls out like a record, which sounded cool and all… until you tried to use it and then it was just annoying. Ah well, you can’t beat those shades!

The remainder of this haul are items I got from IMATS! When I found out that Viseart was going to be available via Frends, it became my number one place to stop. When I got there, they didn’t even have the palettes available to swatch yet (or even out of their crates), but I knew exactly which one I wanted – the Editorial Brights. It’s a spendy item, but it’s still cheaper than buying it at Sephora! Looking at this one just makes me so, so happy.

A bit of a random assortment of glitters from Lit Cosmetics. I originally bought three, but ended up going back later in the day for more. I’d like all their colours, frankly, but I’ll have to deal with building up my collection relatively slowly. In hind sight, I wish I’d gone for more of the neons, but hey, I gotta start building up this collection somewhere.

Grabbed a Z-palette because I’m running out of space for my Makeup Geek shadows!

And finally, a tiny metal spatula to help me get products out of containers when I’m getting down to the bottom.

/covers face with hands

That was… a lot. A LOT. I’m happy with what I bought and got, but damn son, I need to chill out cuz this kind of spending is not sustainable! How about you? Are you happy with all of the holiday releases? Or do you feel like they’re being released far too soon like I do? I feel like we kind of got dumped on this year and no one was prepared for it!