I was in Bed, Bath & Beyond buying a blender and in my new city their B, B & B has a huge cosmetics section, what? They had an even larger display calling my name-Volume, length and on sale mascara? Done and done. I bought both the blender and The Rocket mascara. I had high hopes for this mascara, I have enjoyed the Falsies Flared Mascara by Maybelline so I was sure that The Rocket would trump it. I was wrong. Whenever I buy a new mascara I always wipe off the wand on a tissue prior to use to remove excess product, I tried this and found my wand littered with tissue pieces. You see The Rocket wand has stiff, non-flexible bristles. I wasn’t sure if that was going to be a deal breaker, it could have been the key to mascara perfection but alas it deposited the mascara unevenly and gloppy, if I brushed through the lashes I could get some length, but volume looked like it was created via clumping, not a pretty look. Not one to give up, I was willing to go the extra mile for a mascara if the formula delivered so I tried the Flared brush with the formula but it was equally awkward and clumpy. I allowed the lashes to dry and I combed them out with my mascara comb, it just made my lashes look long and spindly.  It’s safe to say this is not something I will ever be purchasing again and won’t be recommending.

Have you tried this mascara before?  Is there a drug store brand mascara that you currently adore? My friend Rachel is loving the L’Oreal Voluminous Power 24 Hour mascara, she claims you can even work out in it!

I am fanatical when it comes to photographer Alice Gao.  She is such an outrageously talented individual that it seems unfair for one person to be in possession of such skill.  Aren’t convinced?  Check out her rockstar Instagram feed, it will blow.your.mind. Alice’s pinterest boards don’t disappoint either, she has a love for blooms and you will find them throughout all her boards in beautiful unexpected ways like that gorgeous wallpaper on the bottom right, I don’t even like wallpaper and this just sends me. Her love for food is obvious and I could be wrong but it looks like she may be working on opening a culinary inspired shop with her Provisions board. I hope you visit her boards and fall in love with her as much as I have.

P.S. Alice also has a great blog that is a visual pleasure and you can live vicariously through all her stunning images.

Admittedly,  I am a teensy bit envious by how clever the concept is, this is yet another story of someone doing what they love and having success and I am grateful for the inspiration (and the challenge to try harder). I hope today is a day that you are able to do something closer to achieving your dreams and that you remember to show kindness to others. I’m going to start by apologizing to the Kardashian’s for not being nice, but in my defense I did say they were pretty.

P.S. I think this would make a great gift for any little girl!

Now that I have some time away from the country, albeit a mere few weeks, I think it’s time to answer many questions that have come my way and also discuss what I would have done differently. I had been dreaming about a country move for many moons; I imagined I’d be clipping wild flowers daily, growing my own vegetables, raising chickens and maybe have some goats or a mini cow to tend to. Originally we had discussed Napa, California and I still stand by that it would have been a more successful venture than North Carolina and I shall explain my thought on this for any other urbanite considering taking the plunge into a rural life.

So let me discuss some things that went awry with my adventure.  My husband and I had drove out to North Carolina and started looking for a place that we could call home. After seeing nearly 50+ properties we found a beautiful house on 3 acres of land in a very rural area. It was less expensive then our former 1 bedroom apartment in Los Angeles and I was beyond thrilled.  I started mentally planning my little farm in my head.  My husband had a job lined up before we got there so he went to work and I went to sign the lease. While I was signing the lease the owner of the property dropped the bombshell on me that we could not have any other animals on our property other than our dogs, ‘but my chickens’, I thought and my mini cow and goats? Poof, dream one killed.  I swallowed and tried not to cry when the second bombshell came out that our 3 acres of land was zoned as National forest or park or something, we could not plant anything on our 3 acres we could only keep plants on our small deck.  I knew that my husband was expecting keys so I couldn’t run out screaming, we were tired, wanted a place to live and so I signed the lease, regretfully. I had signed a lease to live in the middle of nowhere for a year and the most I could do was grow herbs on our small deck something I could have done at our tiny apartment in L.A.

So here’s my advice to urbanites wanting to go country. I had 12 months to ponder this whilst I looked outside at the same expanse of green every.day. for nearly 365 long days. If you want to move to a rural area and you are from the city, consider moving to a place where a major city is accessible by car within an hour or two. The Hudson Valley in New York is ideal as there is a train that runs 14 times a day to take you from your farm to the most bustling city in the world. Napa is  a good choice as it’s a little over an hour drive to beautiful San Francisco. My best friend from highschool moved to a small farm in Maryland which is an hour drive to Washington D.C. which she frequents regularly. Parts of Virginia are also easily accessible to D.C. and you can find beautiful homes to have a mini farm. This advice is strictly for those that have grown up in a city environment as you may think you are tired of it, but you will find that an infusion of city life will be welcome and in my case needed.

One of the things my husband and I missed the most was being able to walk to places, even if we drove we weren’t in an area that had a lot of charming places to say have breakfast (I Hop was our only choice for breakfast, no thank you). Not all of North Carolina is like this of course, Asheville which is an adorable little city would be a great choice if you are considering NC, you can find rural and be able to drive into Asheville and have a ton of great places to eat and lot’s of window shopping abound.

Before moving to the country consider urban homesteading. Lot’s of places in the city allow chickens now (you don’t don’t need a rooster to have chickens that lay eggs so forgo the rooster, your neighbors will be very grateful). See if you can join a community garden, they are tough to get into but if you can you will learn a ton. Even on the smallest windowsill, fire escape and balcony you can start an edible garden. You Grow Girl is an addictive site for novice gardeners. There are tons of great books about growing edible gardens in limited spaces these are some to look into-Small Space Container Gardens, The Edible Balcony.

I have more to add, but this is a lot for a Monday so I shall leave you with the above nuggets of experience. Feel free to ask me any specific questions in the comments. I love your emails, but it’s hard to answer the same questions over and over again so I figured I would write these thoughts out for you here and if you had more questions lay them on me.

Have any of you tried urban homesteading?  Small container gardening? Raising chickens in the city? I’d love to know!

P.S. I got the cool vintage seed artwork from this fun resource. I think they would make great prints.

I have mentioned many times that I deal with hyper pigmentation on my cheeks. I wish it were freckles but it honestly looks like dirt. I have tried many products and I have liked this Neutrogena product the best, but it’s still there and I rely on great concealer and avoiding the sun at all costs, thus my complexion is a bit on the off-green side as I am pale with yellow/green undertones, seriously without make-up I am a vision. When I was in Los Angeles last I was out with a make-up artist friend and I was asking/grilling her about color correctors when she suggested something out of left field, she suggested I use bronzer. I wasn’t sure if she understood what I was trying to do, but I persisted that I needed to camouflage the brown spots and she again suggested bronzer. “Use your concealer, your blush and then add the bronzer where the sun would hit you naturally, it will look like you are glowing and you won’t notice the hyper pigmentation.”  Since you don’t really need to twist my arm to get me to try a new beauty trick, I got her recommendation for a good bronzer (this one seems to work nicely for more pale complexions) and tried it in the shop. I realize now what I had been doing wrong with the bronzer prior which looked terrible and was why I never wore it.  I was first of all using the wrong colors, you want to get one that is less on the shimmer and more on the matte side. The Nars Laguna seems to be a nice universally loved color and it lasts forever (on Sephora it has nearly 2,000 five star reviews!).  Secondly, I would previously either use it like it was a blush or put it over my entire face, which both ways seemed to create a dullness and not that glow I thought I would get.  She had me put it on on from the top of my cheek bones to the temple, around the hairline, down my nose and under the chin/jawline. This has to be done with a light touch so you look sun-kissed and not like you need a wash cloth.  I was pleasantly (and happily) surprised by the results. You don’t need to be hiding hyper pigmentation to use it, but it’s always fun to learn beauty tricks from the pros.  You can also use it for contouring, which I don’t have the full hang of but if you want to know what makes the celebs so darn good looking (besides genetics and good plastic surgery) it’s knowing how to contour properly. This is one of the best tutorials around for it.

RESOURCES:

How-to apply bronzer by Scott Barnes (he’s the genius behind J.Lo’s glow)

How-to apply bronzer for fair skin

Did any of you already know this trick? Do you have a bronzer that you love? Have you tried the contouring?  Any tips on how to perfect it?

P.S. I’m doing my first Besotted Brand giveaway since the move and it’s a big one! Enter to win here.

It’s Thursday already?  I wanted to hold off on my other AMAZING lettering artist interview (it should blow your socks off or actually since it’s warming up here, it will blow your sandals off) and decided I would do a screen cast tutorial on how I clean up my lettering work in Photoshop. The problem?  I hate the sound of my voice, gosh if that’s what I sound like I can’t believe I have made it this far in life–just grating.  Be happy you just read this blog and don’t have to hear me read it, yikes. I will be working on my enunciating this weekend and trying not to sound like a bored teenager and will try to re-record the tutorial for you because I know that it is very requested.

In the interim, I hope you will be happy with my latest find the launch of The Gilded Lobster site. I have been following this brand from its branding inception at Stitch Design Co. and just knew that it was one to watch.  I am still not exactly sure what TGL does (besides be awesome) but I what I do know is the mastermind behind the brand Deanna Amorello has impeccable taste, truly. They have launched the site with a shoppe called get this-‘The Captain’s Catch’, clever right?  The blog,–‘Around the Pound’ it’s all so darn cheeky I am head over heels. If you haven’t been following Deanna’s pet project I hope you do now, I just know the future of The Gilded Lobster is golden and I will be happy to say I knew them when…

P.S. Susan is celebrating her 3 year blog anniversary and giving away some amazing prizes of some of her favorite things, perhaps you would like to help her celebrate and see if lady luck is on your side?

P.P.S. Thank you for all your feedback on the paint. I am so lucky to have such smart + clever individuals visit me!

I have been spending a little too much time researching green/eco paint options, but I have learned that they aren’t all created equal. Even beloved Benjamin Moore’s eco line isn’t as eco as it could be–It’s no milk paint. Milk paint?  Made from milk (but you figured that one out, right?) It’s the only paint I have found that is completely natural, safe, and no VOC’s.  It also seems a lot more complicated than just rolling up to Home Depot and having them shake a couple gallons for you. It comes in a powder form that you mix with water to achieve consistency. In the past I have only seen it used on smaller projects such as furniture but lately several entries into the interior painting category have appeared and I am duly intrigued. It is a pricey paint, but we moved into a green building, in a green city (did I mention that?) and one of the caveats of all this green living is a smaller footprint/blueprint for our new living space. Much smaller. So I think the investment wouldn’t be too bad if I went this route. Have any of you tried this for your walls? Do you have another eco paint that you have tried that you liked? I honestly thought we were pretty eco-friendly before we moved here but it seems we were just silly novices; this city takes it to a whole new level and I am buying what they are selling, I think it’s pretty flippin’ fantastic.

MILK PAINT FOR WALLS RESOURCES:

Safepaint by the Old Fashioned Milkpaint Co.

Unearthed Paints

The Real Milk Paint Co.

MILK PAINT FOR FURNITURE RESOURCES:

The Old Fashioned Milk Paint Co.

Miss Mustard Seed Milk paint

P.S. A non-milk paint that is also zero VOC is made by Bioshield.

P.P.S. Any of you ever try renting or buying a sprayer for painting interior walls?  I am thinking with the bumpy walls I may get uneven coverage with a roller and get white walls with horrid “yellow” specs.  Thoughts?

I have had a serious case of the uglies with all this cross country moving, stress, motion sickness and sleepless nights going on. I decided that I needed some serious help and surgery was not an option so I went to Sephora instead.  I had such success with the Make Up Forever HD Invisible foundation, that I decided to try their highly rated concealer. My usual favorite concealer was not cutting my new set of complexion disasters and I needed help stat.  I have to say this concealer is better than this one (which make-up artist and beauty editors adore and is very hard on the budget). I think Make Up Forever has created maybe one of the world’s most perfect concealers. It doesn’t crease, a little goes a long way; it covers blemishes, dark circles and even my hyper-pigmentation without being noticeable that you are wearing concealer. I have dry skin but my best friend has oily skin and has loved it as much as I have. I know having a great attitude helps with the way one is perceived but having a secret weapon concealer is just as good (maybe better).

P.S. I am out of my mind excited that Smashbox has a new CC cream!  I still have some BB creams to use up, but this new CC cream shall be my next purchase (I have been very happy with their BB creams and have bought three tubes since it launched, it’s a great product). Have you tried it yet?