Hey guys, sorry for the super late post on the April Ipsy bag! I got the bag last weekend, but I had a final exam this week so it took longer than expected to write this post. But I definitely wanted to talk about the bag because this by far is my most favorite Ipsy bag so far! Okay now granted this is only my 3rd Ipsy bag ever, but I got a great selection of products this month. The bag was beautiful and I can see myself using all of the products I received.

First, let me start off with talking about the bag. It's a beautiful straw zippie bag with various colors of thread woven in. It's also a bit bigger than the other Ipsy clutches I've received. I'm loving the bright colors and the artisan look of this bag! It's going to go great for my travel bag or for when I'm taking a tote bag to the park or the pool or something this summer. Next I'll talk about the only skincare item I received this month, the Lather Ultra Light Face Lotion. I'm not a huge fan of face product samples, so I'm going to be skipping this one. But the scent of this product is heavenly. It smells like rosewater. Maybe I'll use this as a hand cream just for the scent, who knows?

Next, my favorites -- the makeup! The full-sized/deluxe sample of the month that everyone received was the theBalm Cosmetics NUDE Dude Eyeshadow Single. Mine was in the shade Fit, which is a really beautiful golden-peach color. It looks copper in the pan, but when I swatched it on my arm it looked more golden. I'll have to see how it wears on my lids. I've never tried theBalm products but I've always wanted to, so I'm super duper excited about this sample! This will definitely be going in my travel makeup bag for my pediatrics rotation next month!

 Next up, the JulieG Nail Color in Damsel. I actually applied this to my nails a few days ago and I absolutely LOVE the color, the texture, and quality of this nail polish. It's a really nice cool-toned hot pink/fuschia shade for the summer. I was amazed to see that it was opaque after only 1 coat! I applied 2 coats and topped it off with the Seche Vite Dry Fast Topcoat. Three days later, the color is still beautiful and no chips yet!

I also received a gorgeous bronzy-nude lipgloss this month. It's the Starlooks Satin Finish Lip Gloss in Cuddle. The color is really pretty and will look great in the summer with a nice tan, but I'm not too crazy about the formula. It's very sticky and the applicator isn't the best. But I'm still going to use it since I don't have any bronze-y lip glosses in my collection. And the last product I got this month was another lip product, the Mullein & Sparrow Mini Lip & Cheek Tint. Not sure if this is a new brand, but I've been seeing it a lot on YouTube recently. Again, the size of this sample is pretty generous! The texture reminds me of the Rosebud & Co Lip Salves, but the color is more of a a rosy-coral. It smells like orange chocolate to me, and I wish I could just eat it whenever I smell it. I like the natural look it gives my lips so I can definitely see myself using it on a no-makeup makeup day or just when I'm out running errands. It can be worn on the cheeks as well, but wearing jelly-like products on my face makes me twitch a little.

So those are all the goodies I received in my Ipsy bag this month. I'm super super super excited about trying all of these products and can see myself using all of the them on a regular basis (except for the face product). I'm also really happy that some of the products I received were brands I had been wanting to try for a while now. Also the bag this month is absolutely stunning and reminds me of summertime! Next month's bag is going to have a lot to look up to.

Oh! And just to update you guys, I have been LOVING the Pixi by Petra eyeshadow and the Crown brush I got last month in my March Ipsy Bag. That duo is the most perfect, gorgeous travel-sized eyeshadow pair I own and the flat shader side of the Crown brush applies shadow all over my lid like a dream. I was even thinking of picking up some Real Techniques larger eyeshadow brushes just to have more of those types of brushes. Maybe I'll do a quick makeup look post with those products in the future? Hmm.

My Spring Makeup Bin

Spring is finally here! I'm so happy that the sun is shining and there's no more snow in the ground. I think this is the first year I realized I may have seasonal affective disorder, or a legit case of the "winter blues". But now that it's sunny and beautiful out, my mood's been so much better. This past weekend, I figured it was time to switch out of my winter makeup bin to more fun, bright makeup. My makeup bin consists of my daily 'reach for' products so it obviously contains some stuff that is standard from season to season like concealers, eyeshadow primer, and finishing powder. It's usually my lip colors and blushes that change. As you can see, spring is full of pinks and corals and oranges, much different compared to the winter taupes and browns! Here is a round-up of all the products I have in my spring makeup bin:

Eye Products
CoverGirl Full Lash Bloom Mascara
Maybelline Instant Age Rewind Eraser in Honey
Milani Secret Cover Concealer Stick in Medium
Urban Decay Naked 3 Palette

Face Products
Hourglass Ambient Lighting Blush in Mood Exposure
L'Oreal True Match Super Blendable Powder in W5
Milani Baked Blush in Berry Amore
ModelCo Blush Cheek Powder in Peach Bellini
Tarte Amazonian Clay Blush in Dollface

Lip Products
Almay Butter Kiss Lipstick in Nude Light-Medium
Cover Girl Smoochies Sizzle Gloss in Make It Sparkle
MAC Lipstick in Creme in Your Coffee
Maybelline Color Elixir Lip Color in Rose Redefined
NYX Butter Gloss in Apple Strudel
Revlon Colorburst Lip Butter in Peach Parfait

March Ipsy Bag

Woo! My second Ipsy bag is finally here :) I subscribed to Ipsy back in December and finally got off the wait list in February. I got my first bag last month but I didn't make a blog post about it given all the crap that was going on around the time. But from now on, I'm hoping to post a monthly Ipsy bag post. For those of you who may not know, Ipsy is a monthly $10 beauty subscription. Each month, they mail you a package with 5 deluxe size beauty samples inside a patterned makeup bag . My favorite part about this subscription is that it's ALL beauty items, which makes it different than Birchbox or Pop Sugar where you get a bunch of different kinds of items. I love discovering new makeup brands and different types of makeup, so the Ipsy bag is perfect for me. There is a similar monthly beauty subscription box called Glossybox, which is a bit pricier at $21 per month but has higher-end beauty samples. I thought about subscribing to that box, but I wanted to first try a cheaper beauty subscription and Ipsy was one of the best, most affordable ones by far. 

This month, I received products that I think I'll get a lot of use out of! I haven't gotten the chance to play with any of them yet so can't speak as to the actual quality of these products. However, watch out for them in my monthly favorites if I like em! So starting things off, I have to say that I'm not a huge fan of this month's makeup bag. I absolutely LOVED the pink February makeup bag, but this one's a bit of a flop for me. The design just looks cheap-ish to me and the quality isn't as nice as the February bag's. For the products, I'll start off with the skincare items I received this month. The first thing I got was two packets of the Skyn Iceland Hydro Cool Firming Eye Gels. This product sounds heeeeavenly! I can definitely see myself popping these babies out during my next spa night or when I need a bit of pampering. Next up, the Coolway Glow Oil Treatment. I don't particularly like putting oils on my hair since they can sometimes weigh it down. I'll give it a shot, but I have a feeling I may not like this product and it's gonna go straight in the garbage can :( 

The rest of my products are all makeeeeeuppp, my fave! I really liked the Crown Brush Infinity Shadow/Crease Duet Brush that I received this month. I'm pretty sure I've heard good things about this brand before. I think this brush will be really nice for my travel makeup bag that I take to work. I'm glad that it's a good sized brush, not a dinky sized one, and it's dual-ended so it's perfect for traveling. I'm hoping this brush gives decent eyeshadow application because it may just become my new on-the-go makeup brush! Next, I got what looks like a full-sized NYX Cosmetics Butter Lipstick in Hunk. In the tube, it looks like a really scary vampy purple but when I swatch it, it comes off as a really nice purply-berry color. I tried it on in front of my mom and she said it looked pretty good on me. Plus the formula goes on smooth and is very hydrating. She tried a bit of it too and it looked stunning on her, so if I don't get much use out of this one, then it's definitely going straight to her! Lastly, my favorite product this month, the Pixi by Petra Mesmerizing Mineral Duo. Ohhhhh my god. It's a tiny tiny eyeshadow palette, but the colors are absolutely stunning, everyday shimmery browns. Right up my alley. I swatched these bad boys on my hand and they're quite buttery, pigmented eyeshadows. Not as good as Urban Decay or Makeup Geek of course, but definitely up there. Again, I'm loving how perfect this will be for my work makeup bag since it's so compact. You guys have no idea how excited I am to try this duo!

So that is it for this month's Ipsy bag. Overall, I'm loving the nice mix of products I got and can see myself definitely using 4 out of the 5 products. The sizes of the products are pretty generous (although I wish my eyeshadow duo was a big bigger!), and I think well worth the $10. I'm hoping Ipsy keeps it up with the amazing round of products they've been sending!

Target Spring Beauty & Accessory Haul

Hey everybody. Sorry for the lack of posts! I know I'm done with surgery but things have still been a tad crazy. I've been feeling mega mega tired lately even though I've been getting a full night sleep, relaxing when I can, and drinking coffee. I have a hypo-functioning thyroid gland but I know that's not the problem since I've been taking my medicine religiously. I think my recent lethargy has been coming from my recent weight gain. I've been meaning to take charge of my body and start shedding some pounds, but it's very very frustrating when you're tired all day, work all day, and then come back and are tired. I know something's got to change and I will double my efforts starting tomorrow.

But anyway, this Sunday instead of a $10 sunday post as usual, I figured I'd do a post from my recent Target shopping trip. I went there to pick up a few things I needed like eye makeup remover and a new mascara, but came out with a bit more. Now most of the beauty products above came from Target's clearance section, believe it or not! For those of you who may not know, Target occasionally cleans out their beauty section and starts off by putting discontinued items on 30% off, then 50% off, and finally 70% off. When my shopping trip occurred, everything had been on 70% off. Of course most of the good stuff had been picked over, but I still managed to nag some goodies.

First things first, what I actually went into the store for -- the all-new CoverGirl Full Lash Bloom Mascara. My old mascara is now 4 months old and is getting mega dry, so it was time to get a new one. I love CoverGirl's Original Lash Blast, so I decided I'd give their new formula a shot. The packaging is beautiful and I cannot wait to try it out!

Next, I needed some of my trustworthy Neutrogena Oil-Free Eye Makeup Remover. It's what I've always used to get my eye makeup off and it does it beautifully. On the same note, I also picked up a pack of my favorite Simple Cleansing Wipes. If I haven't already mentioned this in a blog post before, these babies are the secret to my recently-breakout free skin. Ever since I started using these at night to get rid of my makeup, my breakouts have gone down by I'd say at least 70%. It dutifully removes all traces of makeup and dirt from your face at night and I usually don't even need to wash my face afterwards (even though you should I guess...).

Next, I picked up the ELF Eye Shadow Brush. I've been using the heck out of my other flat eyeshadow brush lately, so I wanted to add another one to my collection. The other one I use I believe is the Up & Up Smudge Brush, but I couldn't find it in the store so I thought I'd give the ELF brush a shot since all the ELF brushes I've tried so far have been amazing.

Now I'll get to my lovely clearance goodies from Target! On the top left, you'll see some of the KISS Nail Dress kits. I don't know the name of the particular design I got, but it has a ton of silver and gold sparkle. I don't like to wear nail stickers too often, but at the price of $1.50 I really couldn't say no. I think it's going to be a fun little bling bling for the summer. Another nail product I picked up was the Sally Hansen Triple Shine Nail Color in Dream Sequins which was also about $2 after sale. It's a beautiful rose gold sparkle finish and I cannot wait to use this upcoming spring season! I hope it can be worn on its own, but I think it would look really nice on top of a baby pink or an opaque pink nail color as well. And lastly, I saw one of my favorite products in this haul -- the CoverGirl LipSlicks Smoochies Sizzle Gloss in Make It Sparkle on sale. Reduced from $6 all the way to $1.50! I love love love these glosses. They're very kiddish, but they are super gorgeous, sparkly, and smell like fruit. They are my favorite lip glosses to wear in the summer, especially on vacation or just a fun day outing. Their scent is what gets me every time -- they smell like watermelons and just scream summer to me. Cannot wait to bust it out this coming season! :)

And very very lastly, as I was getting ready to check out I figured I would get check out the jewelry section since I needed a new pair of studs. Luckily I was able to find one with both diamond studs and pearl studs, two of my favorite everyday earring types.

Well there you go that is it for my lovely Target Spring haul.

Setbacks

I hate to keep making depressing posts frequently on this blog, as it wasn't my intention for this blog to become a "rants" sort of blog.

Just when I thought the haunting experience of my surgery rotation was behind me, I got an email on Tuesday afternoon informing me that I had failed the anesthesia portion of the examination. Now, naturally being that all of us in medical school are overachievers and have never failed anything in our lives before, I was stunned and traumatized.

Luckily I have managed to get a few answers about the prognosis of this grade and so far have been reassured. The course director informed me that whether or not this will be in my narrative evaluation will be determined by my retake score and my clinical evaluations; if they are above average, they won't be reported. While they will be always a part of my academic record (blah...) they won't necessarily find their way into my Dean's Letter.

I could write pages about why this happened and how I could've done better but the fact that is that we're all human and we all fuck up sometime. Some students fail a tiny exam, some students fail an important one, and some students fail a whole academic year. I'm lucky that the latter didn't happen to me but being that this is a 3rd year clerkship exam, it is a pretty big deal. I was a huge mess when I first found the news out but talking to a few people in the academics department reassures me that things may work out fine. Anesthesia isn't a core core rotation, but it's still a required clerkship so it still looks not good that I failed the exam. It was a rough exam and surgery left me traumatized. The exam was a huge blur, but I remember it being quite difficult, nitpicky, and all the answer choices seemed correct to me.

But I'm going to be the bigger person and try to look past all of this. We all have setbacks and this rotation and exam was mine. I hope it doesn't bode an ominous future for my residency applications given that my Step 1 score was subpar to begin with and this adds another (hopefully tiny) red flag. I'm going to choose to forget this happened, study my butt off for the retake, and put this all behind me. I won't let it affect my drive to study for my current rotation's  shelf exam which is next Friday. Let's hope this works out well. Hopefully have some beauty posts soon, I'm sorry I've been such a slacker! Life's just been crazy crazy crazy these past few months....

Crafting Fridays: Spring Cleaning

I haven't done a Crafting Friday in a while! Adjusting back to school has been quite difficult and I honestly haven't had time for too many craft projects. Next to time, I think one of the biggest obstacles that prevented me from starting a craft project was the fact that my room has been so cluttered. I had bags of crafting hauls that I hadn't put away, and the art stuff on my bookshelf was a huge, disorganized mess. So this weekend, I decided to deep clean my apartment a little and get things more organized. I know it's not exactly an 'art project' but having an organized life and space is very important and sets the foundation for having a happy, healthy, productive life which is my biggest goal for 2015.

I took some snapshots and here are some of my triumphs over the weekend.

My new and improved crafting shelf! In my huge pink box, I have a bunch of random bits and bobs including construction paper, wooden crafts, felt projects, a small blank canvas, etc. I went through the whole box and did end up distributing out some stuff, so it's much much much cleaner than before! Right next to it, I have a pretty little wooden pink box containing some of my most used acrylic paints as well as a vase for my paintbrushes. I haven't painted in quite a while, but I'm hoping to get back into it sometime soon! Right next to my 'paint station', I have a couple photo albums and then also a small snapware box containing some random jewelry pieces. And then finally on the right is my scrapbooking station. The sparkling silver box contains photos, memorabilia, letters, stickers, gems, etc for scrapbook designing. The three-tiered snapware box contains extra gluesticks, more paint tubes, pom pons, glitters, etc. And on the very right I have scrapbooking paper and my scrapbook album.

I finally cleaned my kitchen as well, which needed some serious deep cleaning! I re-organized my fridge, shelves, pantries and also cleaned the surfaces. The countertops do look a bit cluttered but that is because we have a very very small space and a lot of appliances, so we have very minimal space for other things. But this is much much better than before, and I'm overall very happy with it.

Our new dish closet! The plates and bowls are on the left (most of them are still in the dishwasher) whilst the cups and mugs are layered alongside it. Needless to say, we have a lot of mugs and drink ware at our place. And then the second shelf has our bigger bowls for cooking and baking, as well as some tupperware and travel mugs.

Our much-loved tea & coffee section. Lots of herbal tea, some green tea, hot chocolate packets, random coffee sachets, K-cups, etc.

My new and improved closet! Again, lots of stuff in a small space but much more organized than before. I've arranged them according to type of clothing. It progresses from tanks to t-shirts to long tees to cardigans to chunkier sweaters to hoodies. And amongst each type of clothing, they are arranged by color. I also went ahead and threw away any old, ragged pieces of clothing I had that I knew I would never wear (turns out I had a lot!).

And lastly, my shoes. I obviously photoshopped this picture to maximize the brightness so you can see clearly. I threw away a lot of worn out shoes and arranged my new shoes according to ones I would wear most. I also have some boots and flip flops that wouldn't fit in my shoe rack.

So there you go, my big spring cleaning! I still have some more things to clean out, but this was a good start. It feels great to start the new year off with a clean, organized house. Now that my things are cleaner and more organized, it makes starting a crafting project a lot easier since I know where things are and I have space to do it. Having an organized home is much much less stressful than coming home to a disorganized mess every day.

Hope to have more crafting projects up in the next few weeks! My next project I think is going to be my inspiration board. Stay tuned!