Friday, December 26, 2014

My mommy makeover: Christmas, FrostyVoxBox, and it's been almost 18 months!!

My mommy makeover: Christmas, FrostyVoxBox, and it's been almost 18 months!!

Christmas, FrostyVoxBox, and it's been almost 18 months!!

First off, wow! It's been a long time and I'm sooo busy with three kids at home, I barely have time to pee alone! But it's almost been 18 months since my surgery and everything is going amazingly well.  I look and feel great, I still get a little bit of swelling over my stomach scar if I go a little too crazy on the exercise but nothing severe anymore.  I actually just ran my first 5k just a few weeks ago!
So, pretty proud of that!  Christmas and Chanukah for us pretty much revolved around karate.  Amazingly both my husband and 10 year old tested and received their certified 1st degree black belts, and my 8 year old received her conditional black belt.  Needless to say that kept us crazy busy for a while!  
Just in time for things to settle down a bit I received my second VoxBox form Influenster!  I love getting a VoxBox, it's fun to get to sit down and review things for free (meaning I don't pay them to receive the products and they don't pay me to review them, got it?).  
Fist off I got this e o hairstyles brush in my box.  Now, it looks and seems very cool.  It's made of eco friendly products and is supposed to give me a "full volume" look.  Problem is, I already have really thick curly hair, so if I even tried to use this on myself it would give me a very frizzy full volume look that I rally song want!  So I have chosen to register this to my sister in law, we'll see how much she likes it. For her long straight hair instead!
  Next up I received some Thyme!  A bit of a strange thing to review I think, but hey, I'll take it! So I used this puppy all over the place yesterday in my Christmas dinner...
I used it with a little salt and sage and mixed it with a LOT of butter and rubbed it all over my turkey.  That alone received rave reviews from my family, and it also added a nice flavor to my drippings for gravy.  I also added the Thyme and some garlic and avocado oil on a mixture of butternut squash, mushrooms, red pepper, red onion, and and asparagus that I roasted for veggies... So yummy!  I could eat it all day!
After all that Christmas goodness I got to try out Celestial seasonings Candy Cane lane tea.  A great end to a heavy holiday meal.  A nice, light pepperminty green tea. With a little side of red vines bites to share with the kids, hahaha.  I'm a fan of red vines anyway, but I liked the small pieces and cherry flavor.
Sorry it's sideways, it's the only photo I took before it was inhaled by kids!
 And finally the big combo!  Makeup!  What girl doesn't like to have a little fun playing with makeup? And free is even better.  So yesterday I broke out the makeup and tested Rimmel Landon's Scandal eyes...  I like the look of eyeliner, I really do.  But I have had such issues with the stuff that I hate wearing it.  Every pencil I've tried has been almost impossible to mark on my eye lids, either I can't make a mark without a lot of painful pressure or the line is really inconsistent.  I've tried liquid liner but it's just too harsh of a line for me... But this stuff, the "scandal eyes" was Ah-Maze-Ing!  It went right on, smooth as could be!  I was practically jumping up and down I was so happy and excited.  I will definitely be buying another one of these babies in the future!
Then comes the lipstick.  NYC Expert Last Lipcolor in Sugarplum.  Now although I'm not 100% sold on the color, it's a teeny bit pink for what I usually go for
It was a very nice lipstick.  Both my mom and I tried it and we agreed.  It goes on nice and feels super creamy, which is good.  The coloring is nice and shiny and overall very pretty, and it did last a decent amount of time.  No, it wasn't one of those lip stains that last forever and stains everything, but it did last several hours of eating and drinking and surprisingly did not leave bit lipsticks marks on cups or other people's faces after beeping kissed.  I definitely give this two big thumbs up!
Sorry for the bad photo quality, front camera on my old 4s isn't great!
Now, I hate to do this, but I absolutely have to give a bad review, major thumbs down to one product in my box.  This...
Um, yeah... Gentle makeup remover my foot.  This may as well been water for all of the makeup it removed, which is to say none!  All it did was smudge and near my eye makeup all over, forcing me to rub my eyes repeatedly and I finally had to resort to cocnut oil (which worked wonderfully by the way) to get my eye makeup off since I was out of my usual remover.  It's been almost 9 hours since I used this stuff and my eyes still feel irritated and raw.  A definitely do not buy!
But on the plus side I got a nice creamy serum from Boots No7 to try on my irritated skin this am and it really felt nice.
Now, I've gotten Boots face creams before at Walgreens and I will say I'm a fan.  Everything ice tried from them has been great.  Now with such a small samplei can't really speak to the two week wrinkle reduction claims on this serum, but I can say it smelled nice, not too perfumy and it felt really good going on and my face is soft after.

So, overall my Christmas and Chanukah season has been great!  Writing review has been fun, but I'm definitely looking forward to a few days to relax before New Years!!