Huge haul alert.  Just a warning, in case you have something important to do within the next 15 hours.  Otherwise, get comfy; we gonna be here for a bit.  I’ll try to make it short and sassy, but sometimes (i.e., every time) my eyes sort of glass over when talking about makeup and skin care.  I’m so addicted, I can’t focus on anything else anymore.  Seriously, my husband could be standing in the middle of Ulta completely naked and I’d never notice.

So let’s get started.  You know how I am about wanting to own all the things.  Pretty sure that will never end, although I’m giving my best effort.  Every time I am on YouTube, one of my gurus starts talking about some brand I don’t own, and that gives me the hives like no other.  I need to have something, anything, from every brand or I can’t function properly.  OCD sucks so bad sometimes.  It manifests in many different ways, one-track-mindedness being one of them.

Here is an eyeshadow palette from Lime Crime:

I chose the Alchemy palette because it is new and all the shadows are duochrome.  They are absolutely gorgeous shadows, and surprisingly wearable, especially the purple in the middle.  Very very pigmented as well, which is nice.  I think my favorite of the five colors is the green.  It’s vibrant and bold, looks beautiful on the outer V and lower lash line.  Reminds me of spring, not Easter spring, but green grass spring.  It evokes a feeling of warmth and sunshine in me, and effectively cures my Seasonal Affective Disorder.  In other words, this palette is a medical necessity and therefore justified.

Next!

I used the Carol’s Daughter Monoi Repairing Hair Mask yesterday, and I’m so in love.  This is some amazing stuff.  But in order to get a bigger picture, let me describe my hair to you.  Naturally wavy.  Dries frizzy and poufy (the bad poufy, not volumized poufy).  Fine texture.  Oily scalp but dry ends (I know; I told you I was my own oxymoron).  In simpler terms, I just don’t like.  I wish I could let my hair dry naturally and love the results.  But no, that would be too simple, and my life is all about the complicated.  Wavy hair is not the same as curly; it’s can’t-commit hair, the worst kind.  Be curly if you wanna be curly.  Don’t look as if you thought about it and changed your mind in the middle.  Cuz what I’m left with is straight and fine in the scalp region, lumpy in the middle section, and frizzed out at the ends.

I use a hair dryer and a flat iron or curling iron, so there’s heat damage to add to all that other mess.  It’s not color-treated, or at least not since 2011.  But it does break easily, and even after I get a haircut or trim, my ends still look like they’re split.  As if my hair is not committed to being curly or straight, but dadgummit it has no problem being broken.  And you should just see how much hair swirls around in my bath water.  I spend more time picking errant strands off my body or untwining them from around my fingers.  What am I supposed to be doing in the tub?  Nothing.  What am I really doing?  Trying to save myself from being attacked by my own hair.  No. Bueno.

Enter the Carol’s Daughter mask.  First off, this stuff smells like the Garden of Eden.  Use this mask for that sake alone; it’s heavenly.  In fact, I’m sitting here typing this blog with a swatch of hair strewn across my upper lip like a makeshift mustache.  You literally can’t stop smelling it.  It’s made with monoi oil, which is apparently derived from 15 gardenias and coconut oil combined over a 15 day sacred ritual.  That’s quite specific, and I wish I could tell you I was kidding, but I’m not.  And it comes from Tahiti.  Tahiti.  Are you convinced yet?

The result?  Glorious.  My hair was less poufy and so extremely smooth and silky.  The silkiest it’s ever, never been.  And my ends look very healthy, even though it’s been 3 months since my last haircut.  I will never be without this mask now.  I’m so happy I could cry.

As for the tiny jar of Tarte eye treatment, I haven’t used it yet.  But of course I needed it right this second.  Bought a sample off eBay because I didn’t want to commit to a $38 full-size.  I’ve heard great things about it, so I’m excited to use it.  After I finish this horrendously large tube of Glytone that seems to replicate itself after every use.  I’ll never be done.

More good stuff.  See below:

Cutie pies!  All of it, just adorable little cutie pies.  I work as a buyer, and one of the departments I buy for is a spa.  This is a relatively new job responsibility, and it’s proving to be quite dangerous because now I know exactly what products they’re ordering and I need to own every last one of them.  These three things are from the Farmhouse Fresh line, and I barely walked away with the small shopping bag as opposed to the industrial sized platform truck I really wanted.  Everything was simply precious.  I swear, if there’s an idiot CEO out there that claims packaging isn’t that big of a deal, I will karate chop them in the throat.  Because honestly, it gets me lured in every single time.

What I bought was a jar of Honeysuckle Orange Custard body cream, a tube of Front Porch Punch hand cream, and a Sundae Best chocolate face mask.  All food scents, so delicious and summery.  I’ve mentioned before how boring body lotion or hand lotion is, how I never ever buy it, unless it is in cute packing or it smells like fruit.  This stuff’s got both.

I’ve brought the hand cream to work, so now I’m using it all day long.  It’s a mixture of strawberry, mango, melon and grapefruit.  So good.  If my hair isn’t stuck up underneath my nose, it’s my fingers.  Yummy and delicious.  I haven’t used the body cream, as I’m trying to finish my Ahava sample, and then I have the Josie Maran sweet citrus body butter next in line.  In other words, it’s gonna be a while.  But just having it in my bathroom, owning it and claiming it as mine, satisfies me to no end.  Plus it has a wooden spoon applicator.  A wooden spoon applicator!  You need this in your life, at the very least so you can own your own tiny wooden spoon.  As for the face mask, it smells and looks like chocolate pudding.  It’s divine.  I may eat it if I don’t use it soon.

Last bit of goodies is this small haul from Ulta:

I actually finished my Urban Decay pressed powder, so thought I’d give the loose powder a try.  Someone on YouTube said it gave them flawless skin, and well, you don’t have to tell me twice.  Flawless is a magic, evil little word, isn’t it?  You tell me something is going to make me flawless, and I’m buying it about 2.5 seconds later.

The tube of Too Faced LashGasm mascara is a really good one.  I actually owned this not too long ago, and it made my lashes look amazing – or as amazing as my lashes have the capability to be.  Then one day I dropped the tube on my tile floor, and ruined my life just like that.  The tube cracked at the top, and all the mascara oozed out of it.  I tried to salvage it for a few days, but it was just too messy, and then I started having OCD panic attacks about all the poo germs getting into it because it’s stored on the counter right next to the toilet.  Needless to say, I had to give it a sad little goodbye.  But now that I’ve replaced it, my heart has healed.

I own a lot of the NYX butter glosses.  They are some of the best lip glosses that ever lived.  Not sticky one bit, smells amazing, colors actually show up even though they are sheer.  Thought I’d try the purple because I live on the edge, and also the name of it is Raspberry Tart, which makes me think of pie.  I love pie.  And cake.  Cake and pie.  With whipped cream on top. And chocolate shavings.

What are we talking about?  I dunno.

I actually have a Sephora order delivering to my house today, and I was thisclose to calling in sick so I could sit home and wait for it.  You know how it is.  The excitement becomes almost too much to bear sometimes.  I’ll do another haul on that later this week.  Still got 6 beauty boxes to review and only 7 days left in the month.  Pressure’s on, people.  It’s hard being a blogger sometimes.  So. Hard.

Toodles!