Daily, Photos, Reviews

Make Up For Ever Rouge Artist Natural Lipstick

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My all time favorite mascara is the Make Up For Ever smoky lash. Sometimes I pair it up with the Bare Essentuals Buxom lash to make my lashes even crazy longer than they already are, naturally. I know, be jealous. But now my favorite mascara company ever: Make Up For Ever, recently launched their summer collection which included new items called Rouge Artist Natural Lipsticks.

I’ve been playing around with a lot of lip products with actual color to them, for a couple of months now. I don’t know why I never used any lip products before. But I think it’s because I never really focused my makeup to my lips. Sure they’re not as gargantuan as I would like them to be. But I do like them, and would never want to be as mouthy as Angelina Jolie’s lippies.

I was always a lip balm kind of girl until I was first introduced by all of the lip stains and glosses found in my beauty sample boxes that I subscribe to each month. What a great marketing ploy on their part. So because of that, I’ve now gotten into putting a dash of color on my lips on a regular basis and quite liking it! I’m branching out of my makeup routine and even layering stuff on my lips to see what kind of effects I can get out of it. It’s fun! Why did I wait so long?

Rouge Artist Natural Lipsticks.Make Up For Ever Rouge Artist Natural Lipstick in shade N5 and N10.

I’m so glad I got pinky nude colors to work with. Though, I’m sure with the formulation that these are made out of, that the bold colors wouldn’t be that hard to work with. They glide on so easily, almost like lip butters or lip balms do on the lips.On the left is N5 Nude Beige, on the right N10 is called Iridescent Copper Pink.

Here they are swatched in natural light outdoors, I was a little goose-bumpy. On the left is N5 Nude Beige, on the right N10 Iridescent Copper Pink.

I know this a bit weird to just show my lips but I didn’t’ want anything else distracting from it. So here are the colors on my lips: On the left is N5 Nude Beige, on the right N10 Iridescent Copper Pink.

I’ve been sportin’ these bad babies a number of days of the week and bringing them to work with me to re-apply. People have been comparing these Make Up For Ever Rouge Artist Natural Lipsticks to Revlon’s Lip Butters but better. I haven’t purchased any of the Revlon lip products but what I can say for sure about these  Rouge Artist Natural Lipsticks, is that they’re not drying on my lips at all. It was something I was a little worried about at first, because I tend to think that all lipsticks dry out lips. Not these ones. You can either apply them sheer, or add more layers to give a deeper color.

N5 Nude Beige. So natural looking right? It’s a lighter, more peachier toned than my lips.

N10 Iridescent Copper Pink, is just like I had eaten a pink popsicle. That’s what kind of color I would describe it as. It’s a great color if you don’t want to wear nude.

They have a great shine but sometimes I also put a gloss over top to make my lips look extra shiny. The colors themselves aren’t super sheer, as they may seem when swatched on my arm.

Check them out on my lippies for yourselves! I think these lipsticks are great for newbie lipstick wearers such as myself. Not too out of the box, but right smack in my comfort zone. I have lip color on, but it’s a nice natural color. However, there are some pretty bold colors in the collection.

Check out the 50 shades available on Make Up For Ever‘s site.

The Rouge Artist Natural Lipstick retails for $22 CDN or $19 USD and are now available at your local Sephora. They are part of the Make Up For Ever Spring/Summer launch but they’re not limited edition so it will continue to be available in store after the summer!

Which color do you think you’d pick, out of the two that I’ve shown? Did you know, you can win 3 of them on my Birthday giveaway? :)

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Contests, Daily

Win some brownies!

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Morning all!

What a great way to start the weekend — with a bit of chocolate no less. I have a very sweet giveaway for a few of you lucky readers today. I decided to share this one, even though it is for USA residents only. I know there are a ton of you out there who crave chocolate like myself. So let’s get started on how you can enter to win a lucky sampler from Gourmet Gift Baskets.

Gourmet Gift Baskets.com has a delicious selection of baked goods and they, as did I, thought it was a great idea to send my readers a package with each of the flavors in the Brownie Sampler. Mind you, you will not be receiving the Brownie Sampler from the website which contains two Brownies of each flavor. This is one Brownie of each flavor. So still a good contest, right? Here are all of the flavors you’ll be getting. One of each:

  • Belgian Chocolate Chunk
  • White Chocolate Macadamia Blonde
  • Butterscotch Blonde
  • Cheesecake
  • Peanut Butter
  • Fudge Walnut

Unfortunately, because Brownies are perishable goods, I can only have this contest open to anyone in the lower 48 states.

Alright folks! Enter away on the rafflecopter form below. Good luck!

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Climbing, CrossFit, Daily, FitFluential, Fitness, Photos, Reviews, Soccer

Let’s talk boobs

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That’s right folks. This blog post is going to be all about boobies — more specifically taming them.

For me, it’s difficult to make the time to do all the exercising activities I want to in the run of the week, and since I’m not willing to do it in the morning I’m left with working out after work, or on the weekends. I find that most people stick to what they love, whether it be running or going to the gym. Not a lot of people cross train, which I think is important to prevent injury. I learned that the hard way two summer’s ago when I busted up my ankle at soccer.

My battle as I said, is trying to find the time to do all of the sports I enjoy. I received an e-mail recently from my former soccer team mate asking me if I was going to jump on board and sign up for outdoor this season. After a weeks thought, I declined. The primary reason that I decided not to go into it this year was I felt like I wasn’t bringing anything to the team last year. I wasn’t pushing it hard on the field, I generally wasn’t happy even being on the field whatsoever. Legs (my favorite nick name ever) lost her mojo.

Soccer used to be “my” sport, until I discovered CrossFit that is. Climbing is still hovering in a close second place, but since I’ve been climbing since 1994 I feel like it will always be there and it doesn’t need to be a front runner. I’m juggling between getting in enough days at the CrossFit box, and climbing. Some days I’m sore from CF, and can’t climb. Oh, it’s a vicious cycle.

All three of these sporting events have something in common. No, not indecent exposure, in fact it’s the opposite. If you’re female, you’re probably going to want to wear a bra while working out, right? Tank top, optional. At least at the places that I seem to frequent. Don’t worry Mom, I wear clothes over top of my bra’s.

Or bra’s over top of my clothes. Because you know, that’s normal. It was for a Breast Cancer cause I organized. Most women nowadays wear bras, unless … you don’t need/want to. That’s cool. But I like to wear them all the time, especially when exercising. Let’s take running for example. We do a lot of sprints and 1km loops around the block at CrossFit. Wearing a supportive bra when you’re going all out trying to catch the person ahead of you, you’re going to not want to have any bouncing issues. Not like it happens to me with the size I am.

A few weeks ago I was in contact with a representative from Under Armour and got the chance to review a brand spanking new bra from them, the Armour Bra.

The most expensive bra I now own. It better be good! It retails for $69.99.

I can’t believe I’m modeling a bra on my website. But hey, it’s pretty full coverage and you’re not seeing much. I cropped it because you know, you don’t want to see too much sexiness going on here. Ya know what I mean? Uh huh. That’s what I’ll keep telling myself. This is a family safe blog after all.

All of the Armour Bra’s are color coordinated to the cup size. B cup’s are blue. C’s are pink (I kinda want the pink!!).

So, what do I think of the Armour Bra? The compression bra was something I thought I had to get used to but it wasn’t bad at all. I have a few sports bras which are difficult to get off over my shoulders but this one isn’t thanks to the adjusting band on the back like a regular bra. While I felt secure in the bra I didn’t feel like it had an exact fit, and I can’t exactly pinpoint why. Under Armour has amazing potential and already works for so many people. I’m an in between size and it’s difficult to get things to fit me properly. I measure at 33 inches around, so I went with my safe bet at a 34B. Apparently (and I believe so because I own both sizes) 32C and 34B are the same bra cup/size as one Victoria’s Secret consultant once told me. So I’m not sure if I would’ve done better with the 32 or not.

Inside the bra there are modesty cups, which are removable for quick drying if you had a hard workout session. I definitely took advantage of that feature after a few CrossFit WOD’s and had swoob (sweaty boob) happening. Doesn’t everyone? Too much information? Sorry. I’m like that.

I ended up wearing it to CrossFit a handful of times and I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m not a 100% on this $69.99 bra. The most irritating thing about it is the height of the back straps. I’m pointing to them in the second photo of where I had the issue.

I was doing a workout which consisted of a lot of push-presses, toes to bar, and box jumps. Any time I jumped up to the bar and started doing T2B’s I had to step down and readjust the bra to pull the straps back almost like I was re-adjusting my shirt so the seams would sit in place. I’m not sure if it’s because I got a size that didn’t fit me perfectly (but I’m pretty sure I know my bra size). The back strap around the base of my neck rose up making me feel like I was hunched. It was a strange feeling and I tried wearing different tank tops with it, and I still had that same issue.

That doesn’t mean that I’m not going to ever wear this bra again. I loved the coverage, and it stayed in place when I was jumping on and off the 20 inch boxes when doing the box jumps at CrossFit, the tata’s felt secured that way. The bra is seamless so no irritation or rubbing on your skin when moving about and sweating. It didn’t give me mono-boob. You know that typical sports bra look where your boobs look smooshed together? They didn’t look that way with the Under Armour bra. They separated and looked as if I was wearing a regular bra. It’s the little things that matter. It had me feeling assured, except for that riding up issue. But those exercises don’t happen very often at CrossFit, so maybe on the days I know we’re doing more strength or cardio and not doing pullups or toes to bar exercises, I can sport it.

Thanks again to Under Armour letting me have this opportunity to review the new Armour Bra!

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