In which coupons are hazardous to my wallet's health...

Despite my promises to shop primarily at Shoppers Drug Mart to buy most high-end makeup, I do occasionally purchase things from the Bay (I have 10$ coupons I can use once a month which is a nice incentive) and even more than occasionally, Sephora. There are still brands that only Sephora carries but mostly I still shop there because of Urban Decay and Kat Von D... and because once-in-a-blue-moon Sephora will send out discount coupons.

This is a large part in my failure to NOT SPEND there. Makeup so rarely goes on sale that when I GET Sephora coupons I 'look' for stuff to buy. So bad. So when I got my Congrats-You're-A-VIB-10% off e-mail I immediately began perusing the site, only to realise like always that [1] Canadians aren't allowed to use their coupons online and [2] By the time the stuff online I wanted came IN the coupon would probably have expired. Luckily (or unluckily?) it turned out that the e-mail had been sent out mistakenly, but I was still allowed to use the discount... and got an extra couple of days to do it.

My devotion/addiction to Dior has been well-documented, I think. Since my last post I've purchased 3 quints, and the most recent one was Extase Pinks which I found (you guessed it) at Sephora. As this quint was a new permanent addition to the line I wasn't in a huge rush to get it (in fact I was planning on waiting until SDM had it and had a bonus points event to buy it), but when I went on the last valid date of the coupon it was the only thing I wanted in the store... I caved. Saving 5.80$ is pretty decent, hey? Plus it gave me enough points to redeem a sample on the e-mail the coupon got sent to, so double bonus. :)

I normally don't post single-item-reviews but I did promise Haru so...

Creature of Habit

Excuse the scary picture, this is the only example of my 'work makeup' I have... this was taken at 4AM a few nights ago!

I've been back at work for 3 weeks now, and despite being off for more than a month, it was like I'd never left at all (aside from being sore after the first shift... that doesn't happen anymore). As one of my fellow nurses put it, ICU is generally 'Same stuff, different day...' or more like 'Same sicknesses, different patients'. So I'm back into the swing of things :)

Although I love to play with makeup (hence this blog's existence), the way I do my makeup for work hasn't changed very much in about a year, for several reasons, namely:
1) I wear the same thing every day for work (scrubs)
2) I work long hours and start EARLY (7AM) so my routine is fast thereby allowing me a tad bit more sleep
3) This 'face' is pretty much indestructible in terms of wearing off... I come home with the majority of it intact and that is after running around like a mad-woman at work for 12.5 hours
4) I am seriously trying to hit pan on some things, and these are the most likely to happen as I use them ALL THE time, if not every day
5) This is a pretty natural looking face I think... it doesn't look like I'm obviously wearing a tonne of make-up which is important to me at work :)
6) As long as I'm awake enough, this only takes me 10 minutes, including my hair :)

First off, the skin-care regime...

Loves at the End of a Decade

Even though I spent most of the month of December at home, I still think my 2009 ended on a high note, as I got to celebrate Christmas with my family, and more importantly, I went back to work! The first two days were harder than I thought they would be (mostly my body was not used to running around for 12 hours so my whole body - not my back - was really sore) but it was awesome to just drop back into the flow of things, even if everyone thought I'd gone on vacation (and then was SUPER nice when they found out I'd hurt my back).

This last year has overall been fantastic :) It was the first year after my dad's recovery from open-heart surgery, my first year as a practicing registered nurse, the first time I'd flown outside North America without my family, and the first year I had my car! It was also the second full year I'd been into make-up :) There are so many hilights this year, more than I can mention, but I can only thank everyone in my life and who I've met for making the year amazing <3.

I can however, give you my December hauls...

Just Can't Get Enough

When I become interested in something, I tend to go into OCD-collector's mode and want everything associated to it that I can get my hands on. This has been a long standing personality trait: when I was in elementary school I had to have every single beanie baby EVER (I grew past that, thankfully), in high school I collected all things CLAMP (I only dabble now, not as obsessed), and in university my interests shifted towards Johnny's Entertainment (it's been like 5 years now and I am still into it... ha.)

The picture above is my Tokidoki collection about 6 months ago. I've loved Tokidoki for a long LONG time, but when the brand first came out I was still in high school and had no money. I kick myself now, as a lot of the bags I've acquired since then were much cheaper and easier to find when they were first released, of course! I find the Tokidoki community is similar to the makeup one in a lot of ways... people help each other find their dream items and it is SUPER competitive to get limited editions items... which is pretty much every single Tokidoki bag ever, since the designs and bag styles change every season!

So what does my collection look like now...?

You and Me, We're Meant to Be

So I have been stuck at home because I pulled my back at work and according to my doctor and physiotherapist, the best thing to do is rest - and be patient. Which would be fine, except the last 2 weeks it has also been SNOWING like mad, so I end up stuck in my house as the roads are too bad to try driving on. I think they said on Friday that there were over 200 accidents reported :S.

In any case, in between resting and physio, I am either on my laptop (the first week laying in my bed as sitting hurt, now at my desk) or playing my DS. I am SO happy I got a DS for my birthday or I think I'd be even more stir-crazy. Anyway, with all this extra time on my hands the inevitable happened... I finally tried out G-Market.

All the blogs I read are horrible influences. XD;

I didn't even want to try going through the makeup section, so instead I thought I'd look for accessories. And after one of Yumeko's posts, I knew I wanted headbands. I placed the order a couple of weeks ago, and it finally arrived!

I ordered from this shop: Glam Girl

Caught in a Bad Romance

The times you are most likely to find me cleaning are in the nights leading up to my night shifts; I need to 'switch' myself over so that I sleep all day and am not a zombie at work the following night, so I usually try various methods to keep myself awake until 5 or 6 AM (at which point I flop in bed, cover my windows, and hope to sleep until 2 or 3PM). Usually, this involves a lot of internet surfing. Unfortunately, the last time I had to switch over my router decided to be moody and wouldn't work, and I was not in the mood to call TELUS Help-desk at 3AM, so instead of surfing the internet, I ended up reorganizing my make-up drawer.

Do you ever get those moments where you get overwhelmed by the amount of something? A year ago this happened to me with Johnny's Entertainment stuff a LOT and lately it happens with makeup. Usually when I reorganize my collection, oddly enough. :P When I first got into makeup I had a little tiny train case that everything fit into, then I expanded to a larger black traincase from my sisters around my birthday last year... and then after I came back from Japan and my parents had bought a new desk for me my makeup expanded to a mostly-full drawer and a shelf. And now? Two full drawers, although as I was twittering a few days ago, the one drawer has a lot of lotion and stuff in it since it was half empty.

So what does my current 'stash' look like?

I have something that I love long-long...

I was randomly contemplating re-organizing my makeup again when I heard the doorbell ring today. I do order a LOT of stuff online, so this kind of event is not out of the ordinary, but the only place I have recently ordered from is Imomoko, and since that package did not have tracking, I didn't think that'd be the reason for the mailman ringing the bell (besides, since all I ordered was eyeliner, I am 90% it would have just been left in the mailbox). Assuming it was for my sister, I opened the door (the mailman had already left) and was surprised to find a huge white box from UPS addressed to ME.

And no, I am not that bad a shopper that I forget how much I buy online. You get paranoid when it takes 3-6 weeks for Canada Post to deliver international packages when you're like me, and therefore track things so you know exactly where packages are. ANYWAY, confused but excited, I ran up to my room to open the box with my keys (for some reason, even though I end up taking like at least one pair of hospital scissors home a week, I can never find them when I need to open things), and to my delight, it was my Dior Diva gift!