Friday.

Normally I don't get exceptionally "pumped up" for the weekend. I'm currently in the first job I've had where weekends actually exist, and sometimes it feels as if all of the housework that needs to get done on the weekend defeats the entire purpose....
But in all serious, YAY it's Friday!

Spotify is a lifesaver for many of us who are tethered to a desk at work and, on Fridays, it's an important part of my "get through it" ritual (which also includes treating myself to a cappuccino or latte and buying lunch; okay maybe two caffeinated beverages).  While searching for a song on a whim is typically my Spotify style, sometimes it's nice to zone out to a premeditated playlist.

Here's what I've been listening to for the past few Fridays (yes, so kitchy, it's a Friday playlist... but I love it!)

Little things

Sometimes, when we feel a need to achieve our loftiest goals and find them painfully out of reach, it's the little things we forget to appreciate that encourage us to charge onward.

~The beauty in a colorful door, Lincoln Park~

That one time I quit sugar....

A lot has changed since last I posted.  Made it through the worst stinking winter of all time with limbs attached, but can't say I emerged unscathed, or that I am fully recovered.  For all of the fantastic events I've been gifted (moving in with my amazing partner in crime, adopting Meowly, taking a few trips out to Colorado and the Dakotas, buying our new car together, moving to a brand new role created for me at work, having more fantastic times with my family and friends than I probably deserve, etc.), there have been things that I struggle to deal with on a daily basis and that I've come to allow to dictate my feelings and outlook on the whole.  Confirmed spinal damage, setbacks in the office, giving up my beloved little red car, feeling financially strapped and emotionally stretched thin, and the isolation that's grown on me while living in Logan Square have all sort of buried my happiness in last winter's snow storms.

But more on that later - - let's talk solutions.
I've struggled increasingly with fatigue and sluggishness over the past couple of years, particularly after the damage in my spine started interfering with daily life last summer.  Always the internet stalker, I stumbled upon a hopeful dietary alteration that might be a solution for both physical pains: eliminating refined sugars and processed foods.

Functional Art: Crucial Detail's Porthole Infuser

If there is one thing my boyfriend and I have in common, it's an inner mad scientist that often spills over into our eating and drinking lives.  We love a glass of good beer, anything wrapped in bacon, and will most likely never turn down a whiskey.  

A fan of the project/startup funding site, Kickstarter, I stumbled on a project by a local Chicago company, Crucial Detail, titled "The Porthole".  This functional piece of art was designed by Martin Kastner for high profile Chicago restaurant The Aviary and, while I am not always the biggest fan of fussy food and beverages, the simple and beautiful design of this piece had me at first click.  My boyfriend and I talk frequently about infused liquor and one of our favorites is (don't gag) jalapeno infused vodka or tequila, so when I saw it on a friend's Instagram, I remembered my initial awe and hoped it would make a good Valentine's Day gift.  

Floundering in Fitness

Via my instagram

Each spring we find ourselves inundated with a plethora of fitness heavy headlines: "Beach Ready in 4 Weeks!", "Get a Bikini Bod Fast!", "Shed Winter Weight Now!".  Each year I find myself rolling my eyes and getting a little salty when my gaze meet the shelves.

I've never had a beach goddess bod: not when I ran on my high school's cross country and track teams, not even when I worked out for two hours each night for months on end during my sophomore and junior years of college.  No simple five step plyometric inspired Tabata workout is going to melt my thighs in time for summer, so I typically take the cynical "like I give a sh*t, I'm funny!" approach to this workout festive time of year (to preserve my dignity, of course).  With that said, I've always been active, am pretty fit (but not a swimsuit model), and love to move and groove - just not in a competitive fashion.

Get Ready With Me: Valentine's Day

One of my favorite interwebby activities, as you may know/have guessed, is YouTubing.  I love YouTube immensely and one of my favorite videos to watch in the Beauty Guru category is the "Get Ready With Me" video.  FleurDeForce is my fav get readier, but they're all fun to watch.

Another category I love is comedy - check It's Grace (graciehinabox).  In order to satiate our common love for the funny bone, my guy took us to Second City on Saturday for a Valentine's Date before we hopped on the train to Two Brother's Roundhouse in Aurora to meet my family for the brewery's Reggae Festival.

Given that the weather was still crap and our date was relatively casual, I went for a low key, semi smokey eye, and a relatively casual outfit.

Here's how the afternoon went down:

I've been using the Burt's Bees Soap Bark & Chamomile Deep Cleansing Cream for about a month and LOVE it.  In fact, this is the first time I've had a spot since I started using it and, honestly, it's saved my skin from a winter of dry ugliness. I usually start massaging it on my skin sans water, then hold a warm washcloth over my face twice wile massaging the cream in, followed by a cool splash of water.  

Since I had a hot date, I followed it up with the Glam Glow Youthmud mask. This is a bit pricey, but WHOAH baby - does it make a difference.  It definitely makes your skin glow while clearing your pores and helping create a more even texture after just a few uses.  The $20 pot from Sephora will give you about 8-10 uses, depending on how thickly you apply it.

I followed this up with a good scrub with the Lush Sweet Lips scrub - a castor oil based scrub that sloughs off the dead skin and chapped skin, leaving your lips baby soft.  

I then followed up with a layer of the Ole Henriksen Sheer Transformation and, once that dried, topped it off with the their Truth Creme - Advanced Hydration, leaving my skin perfectly primed for makeup.

For a base, I slathered on a bit of the Sugar lip treatment by Fresh, then moved on to use my favorite BB cream, the Dr. Jart Black Label Detox Beauty Balm.  I typically apply it with my fingers or a smaller foundation brush like the one pictured, from Ulta.

I use the Tarte Maracuja Creaseless Concealer to cover my spot, as well as to conceal the redness around my nose and to help erase my under eye circles.  

I then used the NYC Smoothing Skin Bronzer as a contour.  it's a bit orangey, but I'm so pale right now that using a richer bronzer would look ridiculous.  If you are just getting started with contouring, you should definitely check out SineadyCady's tutorial on TheMakeupChair.  She's a genius!

After contouring, I like to highlight the tops of my cheekbones, above my eyebrows, my cupid's bow, and down the center of my nose using the YSL Touch Éclat.  I splurged on this about a year and a half ago - so I definitely would say it's worth it, given that you only need a dab on the back of your hand to dot strategically.  This is a great step that helps give your face definition and glow, especially if you'll be in a dark space like the Second City theater or a dim bar.

Blush and eyebrows are the final steps of my base.  I LOVE Tarte's Amazonian Clay 12-hour blush. Love.  Going for a sweeter, more "Valentinesy" look, I used Charisma.  My eyebrow kit is kind of beat up and ghetto, but I got it because the darker color in the pair is a perfect match for my own brow color (NYX Brunette).  For eyebrows, I'll typically just fill in the sparser bits - nothing too heavy or defined - as my eyebrows are rather close to my lids and heavier brows tends to look too bold.

In preparation for eyes, I used the Urban Decay Primer Potion and then lightened my under eye area with a blend of the Bare Minerals foundation in Fairly Light and the lighter shade in this ancient Too Faced shadow duo called "Teddy".  I just dust my eye area very lightly  - a trick I learned from CutiePieMarzia - to really brighten the eye area.

 I've been doing a lot of winged liner lately so, in an effort to shake things up and to create a softer look, I blended a few of my favorite shadows to create a semi smoky look... But first, I curled my lashes because, well duh....

If you are looking to create a smoky eye, the Urban Decay Naked Palette(s) are a perfect place to start.  With a great range of matte and shimmery shades, you can easily blend out a signature look.  I used the "Naked" shade as a base, then blended in my favorite MAC shade (which I have had for eons - these shadows just don't quit), Woodwinked into the outer corners and crease.  I then finished the look by darkening the crease with the Bare Minerals shadow in Queen Tiffany, a bronzey taupe.  Under my lower lash line, I dotted MAC's Satin Taupe, a cult favorite and another shadow I'm starting to wonder if I'll ever hit pan on.

While I didn't want to go for a winged look, I did define my upper lash line with Urban Decay's 24/7 liner duo in Demolition (similar here).

A lover of big lashes, I was seduced by Revlon's commercial for their new Lash Potion mascara and had to try it.  I like it but, despite the ginormous brush, it doesn't create the "va-va-voom" look I go for, so I layered it with the Bare Minerals Definition mascara and ol' faithful: Maybelline's Full & Soft.

The finished product looked a lil' somethin' like this:
Going for casual, yet nice, I wore a floral blouse by Charlie Jade (TJ Maxx), my trusty Muubaa Lyra jacket, JBrand jeans, and my new Coach boots - which are amazing.  Because it was Valentine's Day, I brought my raspberry Minkoff MAC Mini - the perfect casual evening hold-all.

What did you do and wear for Valentine's Day?  I'm definitely a fan of shaking things up and not taking life too seriously - so comedy was the perfect way to spend the day!

More Deep Steep: Sugar Scrubs

Every so often, an organic product truly shocks you into believing that it must be actually be a luxury brand in disguise.  Deep Steep, a brand I discovered at TJMaxx (shocker), but is widely available online and in some Walgreens stores, keeps delivering this shock each time I try one of their products.  

Comfort Food: Sausage Goulash

It feels like we've been eating "comfort food" consistently all winter....  We haven't, but we did explore our Eastern European sides and made goulash.  It was amazing; and it fed us for about 4 days.  Okay, maybe three days.

Super Bowl Treats

Oh, Peyton Manning.... I would have loved to see you end this amazing season with a win - what happened?  The Broncos looked more like the Bears... maybe the two orange and blue teams had a "Freaky Friday" experience?

Aside from Bruno Mars and a couple (not many) good commercials, the highlight of my Super Bowl was food (duh).  We trekked out to the 'burbs to watch the game with my mom, stopping to visit RJ's parents on the way; my mom's one request? Bears' dip.  If you are going to Google search the dip - please note this is not the actual name... we have no idea where we got the recipe, but our family has made it on Bears game days for as long as my memory has been operational and, thus, my sisters and I just call it Bears' dip.

With such a salty dip, I just knew we'd need something just as intense on the sweets side.... I mean, right?  Around the holidays, I found this recipe by Inside BruCrew Life on Pinterest and had been wanting to try it, but kept forgetting to pick up pudding mix at the store.  We've had a package of Candy Cane flavored Oreos that I've been trying to stay away from.... and I finally grabbed some pudding... so bright and early on Superbowl Sunday I woke up to crank some cookies out.

Michael Todd Blue Green Algae Toner

I'm a big fan of white noise - and YouTubers.  On the dreariest of work days, I sometimes que up some videos by my favorite WebCelebs (FleurdeForce, Tanya Burr, Zoella, Elle and Blair Fowler, Daily Grace....) in the bottom left hand corner of my screen while plugging away.  This has really helped keep me in good spirits on bad days and given me some not-so-necessary reasons to online shop during lunch.
Always in search of a good organic skin care range, I was intrigued by the vast quantity of Beauty Gurus who rave about Michael Todd True Organics and last spring, I figured I should try it out for myself.  A huge fan of sample bags, I snagged a discovery kit that contained the Blue Green Algae Toner everyone covets.

Local Beauty Product Spotlight: Mojo Spa Bath Salts

It's been a pretty rough winter so far here in Chicago - practically no sun, loads of snow nearly weekly (if not more frequently), temperatures in the -40's (F) with the windchill.  Needless to say, this means I've been cooped up in the house avoiding the elements and am starting to get ridiculously depressed because of it.  

It's easy to recommend that someone "get out" and grab a bite to eat with friends, go to a museum, head to a spa, but we've made it our goal in 2014 to save money for a number of big trips we'd love to take in the near future (Morocco, Mt. Kilimanjaro, New Zealand....), and there's only so much staying in I can do.

To try to lift my mood, clear my head, and warm up at the same time I started taking weekly or twice weekly baths.  Having used up my Lush bath bombs, baths weren't as exciting a prospect as they could be.  I remembered my stylist at Fringe Salon mentioned a local store in Wicker Park that pedals goods similar in ideals to Lush, but on a more unique scale - Mojo Spa (1468 N. Milwaukee - right by Wormhole).

Couple on a Mission: Irish Soda Bread and a Sunday Roast

Sundays aren't typically the most eventful of days for us.  If I'm feeling up to driving out to the suburbs, I'll go visit family... If we're a bit hung over, we'll go for a greasy brunch or (better yet) Taco Bell (you aren't allowed to judge - this is basically my favorite food group ever; and yes, I know it's disgusting, but have you tried the new Grilled Stuffed Nacho??).  Given that the weather has been absolutely awful here in Chicago and you can't really get out of the house much, we thought we'd ring in Episode 1 of the 4th season of Downton Abbey with a scalding hot Sunday Roast and some home made bread.  Really - what's better in the middle of winter than that?  (Actually - it's a toss up between a good roast, beef stew, my mom's chili, her spaghetti, and hot dogs with mac&cheese and spinach souffle....)

Addiction Confession and Review: Nyx Lip Butters, Rimmel Show Off Lacquers, and Korres Lip Butter

I have a confession.... I am a bit of a product addict.  This used to be something of a secret I tried to hide from the world by squirreling things away in various drawers and cabinets, baskets and armoirs. This is no longer really possible unless, self admitted organizational freak that I am, I want to break down in fits of sobs over having a huge mess on my hands, so I'm just admitting it.  The category that takes up the most space (two compartments) in my makeup drawer is lip products.

Recipe: Polar Vortex Veg and Lentil "SToup"

If the words "polar vortex" instill just as much desire to fill up on intense quantities of warm foods in you as they do for me, then fear not the swirling winds - and boil up a delicious, thick "sToup".

Review: Love me some Tart(e)s

As you may guess, I'm always on the hunt for fantastic "friendly" makeup.  By friendly, I mean products that skip gross chemicals, like parabens, and at least somehow seek to make the world a little friendlier through a lack of animal testing and an honest use of recycled packaging, etc.

One of the first lines I've found that embodies many of my values in terms of "friendliness" while providing truly fantastic products is Tarte.  This brand, the brain child of Maureen Kelly, boasts impressive color and product ranges that not only make you look fantastic, but contain richly beneficial ingredients such as maracuja oil, natural fatty acids, Vitamin C, and it's signature Amazonian clay.

In 2013 I "updated my collection" (a kind way of saying I spoiled myself by purchasing) the brand's new BB Tinted Treatment and a summer sample collection containing a blush, eye shadow paint pot, finishing powder, primer, full size concealer, shadow brush, and sample of their pure maracuja oil.