I recently had a wedding to go to which prompted this little Mecca haul.

A few more Use It Or Lose It products gone which I’m quite happy about. Here’s what I finished up in July...

A small collective haul from my last few shopping trips. Some of these I’ve been eyeing off for a while now and others were opportunity buys, i.e. a sale was on that I couldn’t pass up or it was finally back in stock so I grabbed it while I could.

A bit of hair, a bit of skin - quite Garnier heavy for June. Here's my most recent empties and what I thought of them...

 

A bit of a boring empties for last month – just a few regulars and not much else.

Quiet month this month with only 14 products so lets get on with it.
 

Nice quiet month in empties for March. I concentrated on finishing the many mostly empty deodorant cans I had taking up room in my bathroom cabinet and crossed a couple of things off my 'Use It Or Lose It' list.

Priceline had a 40% off cosmetics sale recently and I tend to use these bigger sales to test out products I can’t justify paying full price for… usually because I don’t really need them. I was pretty good and only bought a few things.

I've been using the Anastasia Brow Wiz for about 9 months and have been really enjoying it but when it comes to brow products I have quite the wandering eye so when I finally remembered to swatch the Urban Decay brow pencil in store at Mecca earlier this year, it came home with me and I've been meaning to do this swatch n compare ever since.

A few months back I noticed that I might be developing a slight problem when it comes to purple eyeliners. It’s always the first colour liner I check out within a brand and I always seem to have at least one on my wishlist (currently its two from MAC - Permaplum and Prunela). I love pairing mauvy, plumy, smoky and taupy purples with my brown eyes and dark lashes so my purple liners get quite a workout, much more than any browns or black/greys I own. With the addition of my most recent eyeliners a few months ago (Stila Black Amethyst and Bobbi Brown Black Plum), I thought it was time to put them all together in a Swatch n Compare including how they performed over a typical day.

A few weeks ago I was digging into my Use It Or Lose It basket and found the Revlon Colorstay Moisture Stain I received in my last Marie Claire Parcel which I still hadn't tried. With nowhere important to go I put together a fairly neutral look (my standard MO) and gave it a whirl.

I bought my first NARS Radiant Concealer in Custard about 18 months ago and I love it for my undereye area as once its set, it doesn't move or fade. And I thought 18 months was pretty good mileage for a product so when it appeared to finally run out  a week ago I did what any overly curious person does and had at it with a pair of pliers and this is what I discovered...

Its been ages since my last update. I didn't do much in October or November other than try to eat healthier in general. Along with two of my sisters, we joined a Facebook fitness challenge for the 24 days of Christmas in December which was set out like an advent calendar - on the 1st with 24 days til Christmas we had to do 24 squats, on the 2nd we did 24 squats plus 23 sit ups, on the 3rd we did 24 squats, 23 sit ups plus 22 lunges, etc. By the 20th I was struggling and I think I gave up with 2 days to go because I was plain worn out. I loved the idea but there were no rest days which meant any strains I had accumulated went ignored until I couldn't ignore them anymore and I just had to stop.

 

The Christmas/New Year period was as expected - full of delicious food and drink in copious amounts and no exercise. I didn't do too much damage thankfully and January saw me get back on track diet wise. I was diligently using my MyFitnessPal app to track everything I was eating and with a few youtube videos of cardio workouts I saw a 2kg drop for the month which continued into February as I traded the cardio videos for walking with my sister a couple times a week and I lost a further 2kg.

 

So now the kids are 7 weeks into the school term and I've slacked off on tracking my eating but I've been so busy that its only resulted in a half kilo increase so I'm happy with that. I can definitely see it in the fit of my clothes and I've had to make extra holes in my belt which I'm also quite happy with. My back has been giving me problems so I haven't been exercising other than walking but I'd really like to get back into my cardio videos... once I sort out my back issues.

 

I don't know if I'll hit my target by my birthday (less than a month away!) but I think I'll be satisfied if I can lose a couple more kilos and more importantly KEEP THEM OFF!

Feb is a bad bill month for me and as luck would have it I ran out of a lot of my staples (plus I still haven’t replaced my night cream) so I dug into my samples box to get me through making it a big one for empties last month which I've divided into hair and body, skin care and makeup.

I completely forgot I had this sitting in my drafts waiting for me to finish labelling the photo. So without further ado...

OK, getting down to the nitty gritty. So I’ve got my Bamboo Beige samples – you can check out how my Swatch n Compare of some of the shades in the middle of the range went here. As I have normal skin the lovely sales assistant at Sephora Melbourne Central gave me a generous sample of both the Moisturizing and the Oil Free formulations since the foundation stand listed the Moisturizing as ‘Normal to Dry’ and the Oil Free as ‘Normal to Oily’. I road tested them over the space of a fairly warm week (still summer here) with a minimum of 10 hours wear time each day to see how it would hold up.

I love the Laura Mercier Caviar Sticks but haven’t really tried anything else from the line until now. I’ve read some great reviews about the reformulated Silk Creme Foundation which were all over the blogospere back in April of last year so figured I’d give them a go.

The new formulations come in Moisturising or Oil Free and having had oily skin for most of my life, I decided to start with the Oil Free formula. The first thing as usual is to find a colour match. Looking online I worked out that my NC20-25 skin would probably be one of the ‘Beige’s’ so I managed to get a hold of a sample of each of them and swatched them against other foundations in my collection that match my skin tone at some point throughout the year.

 

Laura Mercier Silk Crème Oil Free Photo Finish Foundation.
Each foundation was swatched heavily then blended to the right and allowed to set for a few minutes. Photo taken in natural light.

This year I’m going to try posting my empties monthly so they aren’t so big. January usually finds me cleaning out and tidying my bathroom cabinets and vanity so this month’s empties include some things that just needed to go.

January

 

I had acne in my late teens and early 20’s until my sister’s wedding prompted me to finally sort out my acne situation with a course of Roaccutane. But until I was 35 my entire skin care regime consisted of using St Ives Apricot Scrub on my face in the shower, the occasional clay mask and a basic moisturiser with SPF during the day which did nothing for my acne scarring or textural/tonal issues. With so much beauty blogger/vlogger coverage of what Retinol can do to help renew your skin, it was a given that eventually I’d start looking for a product that would address these issues.

I tend to be fairly brand loyal. When I find a product that really works for me, I am compelled to try out the rest of the range that the brand offers. Peter Thomas Roth is one such brand.
 

After researching dark circle treatments and reading heaps of reviews, I worked out that PTR Power K Rescue Eye Treatment might be the thing for me. The very generous Rachael at Kit Cosmetics Doncaster (now Mecca Maxima I think) was so lovely and gave me a HUGE scoop to try as a sample which gave me enough product to try properly for a full 2 weeks and in that time I saw a remarkable improvement in my dark circles. After that first successful trial I earmarked a bunch more products to try and buy within the PTR range and have slowly collected the following which have become core items in my beauty arsenal.

Start of a new year and I’ve decided to do a bit of a clean out of my makeup draw. It’s not so much of a project pan as it is a list of items that I want to concentrate on otherwise they’re most likely going to be thrown out at the end of the year, finished or not.

The end of the year is usually fairly productive for me when it comes to finishing products. Here’s my round-up of empties for the last quarter of 2016 and a little of what I thought of them...

October