has money, will buy makeup

I am happy to announce that I earned my first $5 gift card from Swagbucks after only about 5 days of...what do you call it? Swagging? Whatever. After 5 days of using Swagbucks. And when I finally earned enough 'bucks' to get a gift card, you would have thought I'd just won the lottery by the amount of excitement I was letting loose in our living room. Matt was all scornful, like 'it's only $5, you know...you do realize you have an actual JOB where you get paid a lot more than $5 a week, don't you?? You don't even get this excited about REAL paydays...' and I'm like...whatever. This was thrilling. I can't even decide if I should go for the Amazon gift card or the Starbucks one!!! 

Whichever one I choose, I definitely informed Matt that I would be spending it on ME ONLY ME. Please. He didn't put in the hard (haha) after-hours work of like...filling out surveys...and searching stuff...and stalking Facebook to find extra 'codes'...this is some hard-earned money, and I fully intend on blowing it as I please at Starbucks or Amazon. BOOM! Anyway. If you're easily as amused and willing to do stupid stuff for approximately 10 cents per hour, you should sign up too. BE RICH LIKE ME.

Speaking of being rich (I'm not), yesterday I happened upon a message board thread (who knew those still existed?) of ladies discussing the best splurge-worthy and cheap-o beauty products. Naturally I had to waste a few hours reading the whole thing, because I am all about beauty products. Lately, due to my unhealthy obsession with Ulta and Sephora, most of my beauty purchases have been tending towards the 'splurge' side of things...but now I have a serious mind to head to Target and try a few apparently tried-and-true cheapie products that people are swearing do even better than their upper-class counterparts. And also, I thought I'd share a few of my personal picks for both sides.

SPLURGE:
-I've already talked at length about my most favorite concealer and my beloved Naked Palette, so I'll skip out on rehashing those again and share something different.

source

This purminerals 4-in-1 tinted moisturizer is amaaaaazing. It has the perfect amount of coverage and goes on really well. It also doesn't sweat off (although I do put a powder over it, so maybe that helps). I love that it makes my getting ready 10x faster (than applying 5 different products)...my only complaint is that I can never decide if the color I have (medium) is exactly right for my coloring. In a lot of lighting and in pictures, I think it looks great. But for some reason, in my car vanity mirror it looks TERRIBLE and then I fear that I have the dreaded mis-matching face/neck situation going on...so I don't know. Since they only have 4 shades, there aren't a lot of options if I decide this is actually too dark. So I don't know. But other than that, I totally love this. BUT-- tinted moisturizers were frequently showing up on the 'best cheapies' list, so I may have to try a drugstore brand just for the sake of fairness.

CHEAPIE:

These e.l.f. oil blotting sheets are fantastic. I just grabbed the pack out of my purse and took a photo, can you tell? Ha. Anyway, I am slightly addicted to oil blotting sheets. I don't know if I'm just oilier than the average person or if it's a wicked cycle between bangs making my forehead greasy/ greasy forehead making my bangs greasy/repeat repeat repeat, but if I don't intervene early, bangs can look BAD quickly. And I guess my forehead does too, but since it's hidden...you will only notice the disgusting bangs. But I've loved blotting sheets since high school, when I ordered them from Mary Kay for like $10 a package or something. And then when I stopped ordering Mary Kay, I found some on Amazon that I would order. And then there's a Sephora brand, but still for like $5 a package or something. And then I found these at Target for ONE DOLLAR and don'tcha know, they're exactly the same as all the other ones??!! So I can use like 20 a day and not feel the slightest bit guilty! And I can buy back-up packs and keep them all over my house/car/purse/office! In other words, I really love these and I will never go back to buying expensive ones again.

So there are your beauty recommendations for today from me. But now you owe me: what's your favorite splurge/cheapie products? I mean, Matt can attest...I have just hardly a THING in my makeup cabinet, I am really in dire need of buying a bunch of new stuff....hahahaha, that's a lie. He's going to be so mad when he reads this, especially when I tell him I plan on trying everything yall recommend! Wooo!!

Oh, and now that I've written all of this, it seems obvious that I should use my Swagbucks to get a gift card for Amazon or Target instead of Starbucks so that I can use my 'free money' to purchase all the great new things I want. Look how smart I am! It all comes full circle!