I know a couple of you were curious about the Walgreens Rebates program when I mentioned it in the Jane Be Pure Mineral Free After Rebate at Walgreens post.

Bibi left a great comment about the program that said:

“Jeannie, I take advantage of the Walgreens Easysaver catalog all the time, it’s great. If you have them mail you a gift card ONCE (not sure how long that will take, as I got mine ages ago), then you can have them just add the following rebates to your card. There are 2 advantages to this:
A) They give you an extra 10% bonus, so not only do you get products for free, but you even make money for trying them (just a few cents, but still), and
B) You can submit your rebates online and it will only take 5-10 business days to process and credit to your gift card.

Of course the downside is you can only use the gift card at Walgreens, but you could always use it just to buy toilet paper and tooth paste!

Hope this helps.”

I’d heard that Walgreens was offering online rebates in some test locations, but I wasn’t aware that it was available everywhere yet.

Thanks to Bibi I submitted my rebate online (and saved myself a stamp so my FAR items only cost me what I paid in taxes on them). If I’d used the gift card option, I would have gotten an extra 10% back.

Anyways, I wanted to let you know my rebate check came last week - so I’m very happy.

Now if only my Walgreens will get the revlon nailpolishes that are free after rebate this month back in stock I’ll be even happier.

I’ve got a Candles By Victoria Candle and Tart Review up on Sarah’s Surprises.

The candle and tart I tested were great, with a really strong scent throw.

Enjoy.

I finally got the About Face Cosmetics Cinderella Dumped Her Fella Collection in the mail yesterday.

I placed my order on 8/7, and I got a shipping notice on 8/29, so it took a little over 3 weeks to get to me, but I knew that there would be a long wait when I ordered.

In addition to the Cinderella Dumped Her Fella Collection I ordered samples of Acidic Reign (Vivid metallic blue green) eye pigment, and Recoil (Cool raspberry pink) and Steam Burn (Vivid pink matte) Blushes - these are the bags at the very bottom of the picture - you can click on it if you’d like to enlarge it.

There was a huge variety in the amount of products in the different sample bags - of course most of the sample bags contain way more than the 5 uses the site says you’ll get from the shadow samples, but a handful contained significantly lass pigment than the other bags. I still think it will be enough for 4-5 uses, so it’s not that big a deal for me.

The Recoil and Steam Burn blushes are both barbie pink in the baggies - and they are very similar in color, so I think I’m going to have to play with them a little to see how they work on me. I did use Steam Burn this morning, and I had to wipe a little off to tone it down, but that’s to be expected because I used more than I should have. Other than that it was really pretty, although it was very pink!

I haven’t had much time to play with the shadows, although I did wear some of them today.

I used Be Who You Are (This shade begins with a base of sheer pearl taupe but then morphs into sheer icy pink and gold with flashed of golden twinkle) all over the lid, You Cheat I Win (Multiple layers of stormy grey coupled with iridescent berry and finished off with crystal twinkle) in the inner corner, Keys to The Castle (Delicious combination of midnight navy and iridescent aquatic turquoise finished with twinkling aqua iridescent light) on the outer V and crease, and Three Evil Chicks (Deepest blackened charcoal with turquoise, lavender and crystal twinkle) wet as a liner.

The shadows applied smoothly and sheerly, and were very pretty. Since I applied most of them dry they weren’t overly shimmery, although I could have added more pigment, or foiled them if I was looking for sparkles.

Here are some swatches for you - Foreclosed on the Castle (Blackened emerald with iridescent layers of cocoa, turquoise and lime) and Rotten Apples (Deepest midnight green with crystal flashes of lime green, and golden twinkle) looked so similar in the sample baggies that I had to swatch them and see what the difference was. I also did Acidic Reign and Recoil and Steam since they’re the only pigments I ordered that weren’t in the Cinderella Dumped Her Fella Collection.

It’s amazing how different they look even though they both look like the same midnight green color in the bag. Of course that means that I have to try every color to see what it looks like on me, but I think I can manage to do that.

So what do you think - is buying samples of 39 colors of eye pigments crazy?

Would you rather have lots of different colors in small amounts, or fewer colors with larger amounts of pigments per color?

Leave a comment and let me know.

I know tons of people who love the Sonia Kashuk blender sponge, but I don’t.

I hesitated to try this until I heard someone say that they loved the way their mineral makeup looked when they used the Sonia Kashuk beauty blender sponge damp to apply it.

I went out and bought one for $9.99 from Target, and I tried using it dry, I tried using it damp - and I just didn’t like it.

I seemed to get less coverage with this sponge than I did with my kabuki brush, and it took me longer to apply my mineral powder with the sponge.

I’d also heard that the beauty blender sponge was great for applying blush, so I tried it with Redpoint’s cream blush and Milani Luminious powder blush and I didn’t have much luck with either of them.

Even the narrower tip of the sponge was a little too big for me to use to apply blush, so it didn’t work for me.

Although this sponge didn’t work for me I know tons of people who love it - so don’t let my bad experience keep you from giving it a try.

If you’ve used the Sonia Kashuk Beauty Blender Sponge leave a comment and let me know what you think about it.

I’d especially love to know if you have any tips to make using it easier, or to get a better makeup application with the beauty blender sponge!

Thanks!

I haven’t bought anything online at Ulta, but I love the stores in Atlanta - there are a few around Minneapolis, so I’m going to have to check them out one day.

Ulta - the coupon code is on the home page.

There are some exclusions, but I didn’t read what they are :-).

Enjoy - let me know what you buy!

Jeff took out the dogs this morning and found everything in the back yard, except for the hot tub and trampoline piled in front of the back door.

The trampoline had been drug across the back yard and the legs were bent, there were lighters and aerosol cans in the grill, a solar light was stolen - and the single, perfect apple from my Snowsweet Apple tree is half eaten on top my hot tub.

I cried when I saw the apple. We just planted the tree this year, and I’ve been waiting since June to see what the apple tastes like, so I was really disappointed.

I think seeing me cry is why Jeff called the police.

The cops can’t do anything unless there is a witness to a crime - which I guess makes sense, but it’s frustrating that they won’t even try to find out who committed a crime unless there was a witness to it.

Jeff was a MP so he knows what he would be doing in that situation, and the cops here don’t do that, so he’s getting frustrated too.

It’s hard to know that people can keep harrassing you, and unless you see them the only thing the cops can do is tell you to put in lights in the back yard.

Of course by some strange stroke of fate there is an actual street light in my backyard, that stays on all night - so it isn’t like the vandals were doing this in the dark.

The stupid streetlight probably helped them find all the stuff so they could move it around.

The cop was getting mad - and he yelled at me!

I can’t believe it.

All I did was say “So basically we could commit any crime we wanted to as long as no one saw it?”, and then ask if it was standard operating procedure to send the home owners into the house to make sure there wasn’t anyone who supposed to be in it before the cops went in.

That wasn’t this cop - that was the cop that responded when we came home and found a computer monitor on the ground in the snow.

Yup - he made us go in the house first to make sure no one was in the house while he followed the footprints to see where they led, and told us to give him a call if someone was still in the house.

Seriously - I thought you were always supposed to call the cops and have them check it out since they are supposed to be trained at dealing with intruders, but I guess I was wrong - at least here in Moorhead.

This cop said he didn’t know what standard procedures were for that kind of situation, so I’m guessing he’s not a great cop.

You’d think they’d at least be able to tell you that much if they were, or am I asking too much?

They police didn’t even want to come - but when stuff keeps happening you have to do something to make it stop.

I don’t want to be scared of what I’ll see everytime I open the back door, and I don’t want to worry that my dogs will find something in the yard that will hurt them.

So far in the two years we’ve lived here we’ve had someone shoot out the windows of all the cars parked on our street (fortunately ours were in the driveway), someone vandalized the house 3 times, and then we had the aforementioned computer monitor incident.

It really sucks.

A couple of the times we’ve seen other people vandalized too, but this was the first time that it was just us.

The scary part is that these things started right after our renter who couldn’t pay the rent because he was bipolar (according to his dad) and couldn’t keep a job moved out.

The dad said he had been having serious mental problems and was going to get treatment - but Jeff saw him a few days later so I don’t think he did.

We still have to go over the yard to make sure that the vandals didn’t put anything down that will hurt the dogs, and we are going to drain the hot tub before we use it.

There’s no way I’m taking a chance that they didn’t do something to it.

I hope you haven’t dealt with this, but if you know anyone who has leave me a comment and let me know what they did.

Jeff is looking at security stuff for the back yard - but if we do get more lights they’ll have to be electric - I don’t think the solar lights work when it’s -40F outside.

That will suck - us spending more money to keep the vandals away.

But I guess that’s life in Moorhead.

I don’t think extra lights will help anyway - if they aren’t scared of the streetlights in the front or back yard why would they be scared of other lights?

And if they know that we slept through all of this this time, will they try more the next time?

Ok, I’ll admit it - I’ve been having trouble deciding which of my Lumiere Blushes to use because they look very similar in the pots, so I decided to swatch them so I could see the difference in color for myself.

Of course I decided that you might be interested in seeing them too - so here you go.

The swatches were applied with my fingers - so they are a little more intense than they would be if they were applied with a brush. You can also click on the picture to make it bigger, and easier to see.

I have three blushes from Lumiere Mineral Cosmetics - Wild Rose Veena Blush(at the top of the picture), the Poppy Veena Blush (middle), and the Neutral Pink Mineral Blush (bottom).

The Veena Blush has “just enough color to bring out your natural blush,” so it only seems right that it’s a little lighter than the mineral blushes - of course the intensity of the color can be easily adjusted while you’re applying blush.

All three colors are pretty, and seem to last, but it is nice to see them side by side :-).

Of course, now I think that all three colors are pretty interchangeable with most of my makeup looks so I’ll still have the same trouble deciding which one to wear.

If you’ve tried Lumiere blushes I’d appreciate it if you’d leave a comment and let me know which one is your favorite.

Or you could let me know how you decide which blush to wear.

Thanks!