Mod Cloth & Pac Sun Dresses

Hi everyone! If you know me in real life then you are aware of my love for dresses. I have a lot of dresses! My favorite stores to buy dresses from are Mod Cloth, Pac Sun, and Urban Outfitters. Those stores are a definite reflection of my personal style. Also, I love Zooey Deschanel's style! It seems like she lives in dresses. I can totally see why...I mean, dresses are just so easy and effortless. I recently purchased a couple of dresses; one from Mod Cloth and one from Pac Sun.
This is the first dress I got. It's from Mod Cloth and it's called The Dream Vacation Dress. I love the ruffley top and the print is so pretty! It was cold so I wore black tights and black flats. If it were spring or summer I would totally opt for like strappy sandals and gold hoop earrings.

Mod Cloth Dream Vacation Dress

The second dress I ordered is from Pac Sun and it's by the brand Billabong. I actually own a lot of Billabong clothes. They have really cute things for girls! You can remove the straps on the dress and then it will just leave a sweetheart cut, which I find to be very flattering. I wore it with the straps in this pic and some brown Seychelles wedges. Oh and...I'm not really a jewelry person. I know that's kind of weird, but I like to keep it simple with pearl earrings and sometimes I'll wear a necklace.

Billabong Scripted Dress

Now for the dresses on my wish list. Who knows, I may have one of them soon since my birthday is coming up!

Dress #1: Mod Cloth Confetti Falls Dress

Mod Cloth Confetti Falls Dress

 Dress #2: Mod Cloth Tropical Impressions Dress

Mod Cloth Tropical Impressions Dress

Dress #3: Mod Cloth Memphis Style Dress

Mod Cloth Memphis Style Dress

Dress #4: Mod Cloth Night and the Kitty Dress

Mod Cloth Night and the Kitty Dress

Dress #5: Kimchi Blue Baby Doll Dress

Kimchi Blue Baby Doll Dress

So, how about you? Are you a dress person? What are your favorite stores to buy dresses from?

Statement-Making Mani

Hi! I got bored tonight and was flipping through February's Cosmo and found a picture showing Vanessa Hudgens with minty colored nails and her ring finger nail painted gold. I thought it looked pretty neat and decided to try it out on myself!

 I dug through all of my polishes and I found a mint color, but it looked weird with my only gold polish. So instead I went with a turquoise color, which I personally think looks great with the gold polish I used. This is just my take on the picture above and I wanted to use the colors I already own. 

Let me know if you try it out and what polishes you ended up using! :)

OPI "Rising Star"

L.A. Girl Flare "Tropical"

Rimmel Lash Accelerator

Hello again! I felt compelled to write a post about the Rimmel Lash Accelerator mascara. It's been available in stores now for a couple of months and after seeing Zooey Deschanel on the display I had to try it. Zooey Deschanel is a style icon to me. I pretty much want to be her....hahah. She's gorgeous. Rimmel did a smart thing by making her their spokesperson. CoverGirl is doing a similar thing by featuring Taylor Swift in their ads/displays. Man...their products will probably sell like crazy now. A lot of people love Taylor Swift.

New Rimmel display featuring Zooey

Another display with Zooey :)

Anyway, let's get on to the review. First off, the packaging is really nice. My favorite color is green so the neon green on top of the black really stood out to me. The brush is great because it has actual bristles...not the weird plastic-y applicators that I see so much of. I find that the natural bristles really grab my lashes better. On the Rimmel website they claim your lashes will "look up to 80% longer, but then after 30 days of continued use, they’ll appear up to 117% longer!" I will definitely agree with the first part of that claim! This mascara lengthens your lashes like crazy. As far as volume goes...not so much. However, it really grabs onto every little lash making them look fanned out and full. The formula was a little wet for my liking though, but after about a month of use it was less wet and I liked it a lot better. The next part of Rimmel's Lash Accelorator claim is that after 30 days your lashes are 117% longer. Well, me and boyfriend have a long standing joke with this because how can something be more than 100%? Isn't 100% complete? I guess they are trying to say if your lashes were completely as long as they could possibly be they will now be 17% longer than that...? I don't know!? But anyway, so after about 4 to 6 weeks of continued use I could tell me lashes were stronger. I noticed less lash loss and some of the smaller lashes towards my inner eye were growing in. I think it was most noticeable on the bottom lash line. I personally don't think it "grows" your lashes, but rather strengthens them...thus allowing them to grow. I would definitely purchase this mascara again, but I'm also curious to try the L'oreal Million Lashes mascara. If anyone has tried that let me know what you think of it!

Rimmel Lash Accelerator packaging

Rimmel Lash Accelerator mascara wand

Revlon Top Speed Nail Polish

Hi again! I can't stay away from blogspot! It's just too addictive. This time I want to talk about a Revlon nail polish I bought at Walgreens the other day. As you know, I work at Walgreens so I actually put together the Revlon Top Speed nail color display. I get first dibs on all of the colors! hah...Well, a little side note, I'm in the process of applying for jobs and interviewing with companies so I'm trying to stay away from crazy nail colors. I normally wear a lot of purple, hot pink and coral. This time I had to pick a nice neutral color that I could wear to interviews. It's time for me to be practical! I picked the color Sheer Cotton, but I was soooo close to buying Lily or Jaded. I have to admit, Revlon makes some of the best drugstore products. I have a lot of their nail polishes and I was curious to try out the Top Speed nail polish line. I think this is a line that's been around for a while, but they may have revamped it with new colors. The Top Speed nail polishes are about a dollar more than the regular Revlon polishes. I think the price difference is due to the fact that the Top Speed polishes dry extremely fast and supposedly have a built in top coat. I painted two coats of Sheer Cotton the other day without a top coat and they were already beginning to chip by the end of the day. This time I painted three coats and did an additional top coat using an OPI top coat. We'll see how that holds up!

***Update: I worked all day long and was really rough on my nails...yet not a single chip! Good polish, but use a top coat.

Revlon's Top Speed Sheer Cotton. A very pretty neutral color

Revlon Top Speed display

My Revlon nail polish collection

From left to right: Revlon Liquid Quick Dry, Revlon Top Speed Sheer Cotton, Revlon Grey Suede, Revlon Power Walk Pink, Revlon Bubble Gum, Revlon Passionate Fruit, Revlon Rock (purple, not blue) Revlon Plum Night
As I mentioned I love Revlon products and their nail polishes may be the main reason why. My Revlon polish collection mainly consists of limited edition colors so I don't know if you can find all of those colors, but I figured I'd share anyway. I love how Revlon always keeps up with nail color trends and I love the size of their brushes. The colors all go on so smoothly and dry without bubbling.
So, because I am going on job interviews and trying to look more professional I went through my nail polish collection to try and find some wearable work polish. This is what I came up with:

Work Appropriate Nail Polish

From left to right: Sephora by OPI Dear Diary..., Revlon Sheer Cotton, Revlon Grey Suede (I actually wore this on an interview last week), Rimmel Steel Grey, Rimmel Sweet Heart, Rimmel Promiscuous, Maybelline Timeless Pink, and Maybelline Timely Rose.
I personally think nudes, mauves, greys, and light pinks are great for work...but let me know if you all agree that those are work appropriate colors.

Dry Shampoo

There are many reasons why you should consider adding dry shampoo to your hair routine. For starters, if you're like me, washing and styling your hair can be very time consuming. Also, My hair is long so I use a lot of products and dry shampoo helps those products last longer because I'm not using them everyday. Another important reason to only wash your hair a couple of times a week is to cut back on heat damage. Of course this doesn't apply to you if you let your hair air dry and if you don't style it with heat. Personally I always blow dry my hair and either straighten it or curl it. Also, I have side bangs and I touch them a lot so they tend to get oily very easily. Dry shampoo instantly absorbs the oil and makes my hair look fresh. Some of the dry shampoo brands that I like are Pssst and Batiste. I've also tried Tresemme's Fresh Start dry shampoo and I absolutely hated it. When I would spray it in my hair it seemed to just make my hair damp feeling. It didn't absorb oil...but rather made my hair look even oilier. I prefer the powdery feeling dry shampoo. The down side to that though is if you have dark hair like me it can sometimes leave a white residue behind. I recommend massaging it into your scalp or combing it through really well to avoid the white powdery look.
Hope this was helpful! Let me know if you use dry shampoo and if so what's your favorite?

A lazy girl's hair must-haves

Hair Routine Featuring Redken

Hey everyone! I'm an avid follower of the YouTube beauty community and I've always wanted to make YouTube videos, but in the mean time I will stick to this blog. A popular trend in the YouTube beauty community is the "Daily Hair Routine" video. This will be the same thing, but in blog form. So let's get started!

For starters, my hair type is a medium thickness, it's dry, colored, highlighted, long(ish) and naturally straight with some wave to it. 

First, I shampoo my hair using the Redken Color Extend shampoo.
Next, I condition my hair using the Redken All Soft conditioner. One of my best friends works at a Redken exclusive salon and I suppose that's why I have so many Redken products. Anyway, she told me that all of the Redken products are safe for colored hair so using the All Soft conditioner rather than just the Color Extend conditioner is fine and I prefer it because it makes my hair slightly softer.

Also, I will use a deep conditioner at least once a week. I love the Redken All Soft Heavy Cream and the Aussie 3 Minute Miracle is a Drug Store favorite.

As far as styling goes I always treat my ends. I am obsessed with Redken Anti-Snap. It is a miracle worker! It allows me to go way longer in between haircuts and that's important because I'm trying to grow my hair longer.

Then I will always use some type of cream or gel all over my hair. The Redken Blown Away 09 and the Redken Velvet Gelatine 07 are very similar because they are both blow dry gels. The difference arises in the number system Redken uses. The higher the number the more control/hold the product gives. I actually prefer the Blown Away 09 because it gives more control while the Velvet Gelatine simply makes my hair softer. As for the Redken Align 12, I think it's great to use if you want to blow dry your hair straight. I can use this and a round brush and not need to straighten my hair after blow drying. Then again, I have fairly straight hair to begin with, but cutting out a step in my hair routine (straightening) can help lessen the heat damage.

Ah and another favorite, Redken Guts! This stuff is awesome. I've been using this for a couple of years now and I think it's the best mousse ever. I use it only at my roots and then blow dry the roots of my hair with a round brush and it really helps with flyaways and gives so much volume. However, this is meant to be used when blow drying...it's not the mousse that you spray on and let air dry because it will get crunchy!

A good heat protector before straightening, curling, or even blow drying is the Redken Iron Silk. I also want to try the Tresemme Heat Tamer Spray. 

Last but not least, my go to hairspray is the John Frieda Luxurious Volume. You probably were expecting a Redken hairspray, but I go through hairspray way too fast to spend so much on a Redken hairspray when this John Frieda hairspray is only like $6 and works just as amazingly. It literally holds my styles in all day without making my hair crunchy feeling or stiff. It's also not sticky or wet like most hairsprays tend to be. Another plus is that it doesn't have an obnoxious smell or any noticeable scent at all. I don't want my hairspray competing with my perfume! 

So yeh, I hope you all got some ideas on how you might tweak your own hair routine. I used to use a lot of cheap products or not any products at all and in the past couple of years of using Redken products my hair has been the best it has ever been. I truly think it's worth investing in some nice hair products.

Let me know your opinions on Redken and maybe some alternative products! : )