Well, hello dolls!  Ready for your monthly installment of what I’ve been buying vs tossing?  I’m pretty chatty in this post, so sit down, get comfy, and let’s jump right in!

Used Up (Mar. 20-Apr. 19):

Aveeno Skin Relief Fragrance Free Body Wash  and Moisturizing Body Lotion

As boring as these two products are, I’m fairly certain that I’ll be using this duo for the rest of my natural born life – the body wash is the only one that doesn’t irritate my skin and keeps it soft and smooth, and the Aveeno lotions and creams work miracles at keeping my eczema at bay.  Since I’ve finally committed to using these continously, I’d had a lot less (body) skin issues, so dull and boring it is!

Hawaiian Tropic Sheer Touch Sunscreen Lotion SPF15

I’ve been using Hawaiian Tropic sunscreen for years, and I love it (even though it IS a chemical sunscreen, which I try to avoid as they can cause irritation in sensitive skin).  They changed the scent when they changed the bottle a year or two ago, which I was disappointed in at first, but now I’ve come to like the new scent as it’s less overwhelming and it doesn’t compete as much with any fragrances you wear (though its still beachy-smelling).  I can’t comment on if this causes any breakouts anywhere (it doesn’t say oil-free or non-comedogenic anywhere) – I didn’t experience any, but I didn’t use it on my face and my body doesn’t usually have that issue.  I used up the rest of this bottle when I was in Jamaica, and was bummed when I had to switch to the other sunscreen we had, Coppertone.  When that runs out, I’ll likely pick up another bottle of this!

BedHead TIGI Foxy Curls Contour Cream

This is my second bottle of this stuff…the last time I bought one was back in May 2011 – so this lasted almost a full year!!  Holy moley.  I love the smell of this – like Skittles – but sadly that’s why I won’t be repurchasing in my effort to go as fragrance-free as possible.  It works well though, and you only need a tiny bit (clearly!) to do the trick

Clinique Turnaround Concentrate Radiance Renewer

I’m sure I’ve mentioned this loads of times before.  Great exfoliating product that doesn’t irritate the skin whatsoever.  Makes my face feel nearly like a baby’s bottom!  This bottle seemed to go faster than normal – I only got about two months out of it and I was only using it at night.  I’m glad it’s done though, because I’m eager to start using my new Kate Somerville Quench Serum (more on that later)!

Alpha Hydrox Enhanced Cream 10% Glycolic AHA Anti-Wrinkle

I got this in a swap ages ago, as I read in the MUA reviews that it was awesome.  Interestingly enough, the glycolic acid in this didn’t mess my skin up – it definitely tingles to the point of almost burning upon application, but the sensation dissipates within a minute and there’s no residual irritation afterward or the next morning.  To be safe, I only used it every few days or so (and not in conjunction with the Clinique Concentrate, but it did make my skin feel lovely!

Ole Henriksen Truth Revealed Super Creme with SPF15

I reviewed this product previously, and my thoughts still hold – it was thick and hard to spread, and generally just didn’t feel very nice on my skin (though it felt lovely).  I used this on my neck until it was gone so as to not waste it.  I’m SO glad to toss this!

The Body Shop Pink Grapefruit Lip Butter / Nova Scotia French Vanilla Lip Balm

I bought The Body Shop lip butter back when I had a boyfriend who really liked grapefruit (how silly!) – except the taste of this is like ASS (well…not really, but you know…).  GAH, it’s horrible!  Somehow I managed to make a big dent in this but I haven’t touched it in years so it’s really pointless to keep it.

The Nova Scotia balm, well, I got this at our Pride Parade several years ago and I guess they just slapped a Nova Scotia label on it.  It’s nothing special.  It had SPF in it which has since expired, and I have other lip balms, so it’s time this kicked the bucket.

CND Cuticle Eraser AHA Cuticle Treatment

I think I read on All Lacquered Up that this was Michelle’s cuticle treatment of choice, so I picked it up to try it out about a year ago.  I found that while it might have kept my cuticles smoother, it irritated my skin (but the AHA cream above didn’t – go figure), so I used it very sporadically.  It caused little bumps on the skin just under my nails – whether that was an eczema reaction or not, I’m unsure, so I can’t say if this would happen to anyone else.  I love my Burts Bees butter so I think I’ll just stick to that

Sally Hansen Insta-Dry Anti-Chip Top Coat

I plan on doing a round-up of a few base and top coats in the future, so I won’t get into too much detail about this – just suffice to say, it was like Seche Vite in the fact that once it got half finished, it got majorly goopy and hard to use.  I can’t deal with screwing up my manicures, so out this goes!

Here are just some samples I finished up – nothing too stand-out.  Bioderma’s Sebium AKN, which is supposed to ‘restore the skin’s natural clear aspect’ – I used this as a spot treatment, but didn’t find it did much in that capacity.  It might be much more effective if used as an all-over face lotion.  Clinique’s 7-Day Scrub, which is too creamy for my oily skin and leaves a slight filmy feeling, which would be nice for dry skin but just feels unclean on mine.  However, it DOES exfoliate well, and gently!  I used Korres Yogurt Cooling Gel down South, and it was OK, but it was such a small sample that I can’t really give a fair evaluation.  I mainly used Clinique’s After Sun, which was admittedly AWESOME, so that doesn’t help.  Lastly, I used the sample of Ojon’s Instant Restorative Hair Serum while in Jamaica as well, and it left my hair feeling lovely and hydrated after penetrating in the sun all day.  It wasn’t too heavy or greasy-feeling either, or too strong-smelling as some Ojon products have been in the past. I’d consider buying this for the Summer to protect my hair from the sun and add a bit of shine.

…..Wow, right?  This is just pitiful.  Two products!?  Oh man.  I sincerely apologize for my miserable turnout this month!  What’s worse, I didn’t realize I did so crappy until RIGHT NOW.  I almost scammed you guys by accident and included three ‘tossed’ beauty products that I had already accounted for last month.  I guess I felt bad about throwing them out when there was so much product left, and kept them in the empties bag.  Oops!  Double-oops too because I thought I wasn’t doing THAT bad getting rid of makeup…shoot.  Oh well – maybe next month

ANYWAY, what’ve we got?  NYC’s Color Wheel Mosaic Face Powder in All-Over Bronze Glow, which I mentioned last week, for one.  I tried to make it work in Jamaica and it just didn’t do much.  I’m done trying to make it work; no matter if I’m tanned or not, it just doesn’t seem to do it for me.  Second, we have Stila’s Smudge Pot in Black, a surprize toss.  I happened to open it up to use it last week and realized that it was pretty dried out and had pulled majorly from the sides (like a few millimeters!).  Er, yea, time to go!

So that’s what we have for this month downsizing efforts – 11 full-size skincare products, 4 samples, and 2 makeup items.  Not too shabby, though I’m a little let down with the meager makeup empties.  Hopefully that’ll mean next month will be quite respectable!

Moving on to the scary portion of the post, lets take a look at what I purchased in the past month.  In fact, aside from two items, everything I picked up I bought in the span of a week.  Ah snap.

Purchased (Mar. 20-Apr. 19):

Yea.  All of these items I bought in one week.  Oh dear.  Oh, well the three items in the front right were part of a deluxe sample set I got for free from Sephora.  But the rest…no excuse.  Here’s the list:

- Hugo Naturals Shower Gel in Vanilla & Sweet Orange $9.99
- (ANOTHER) Aveeno Skin Relief Fragrance Free Body Wash $8.99
- TRESemme Flawless Curls Curl Hydration Conditioner $3.99 (on sale)
- Kate Somerville Quench Oil-Free Hydrating Serum approx. $66 (15% off reg. price  – $78)
- YSL Glossy Stain in #12 Corail Aquatique approx. $29 (15% off reg. price, $34)
- MUFE #17 Eyeshadow (matte brown) approx. $19 (15% of reg. price – $22)
- MAC Crosswires Lipstick $17.50

I know that I just preached a bunch about going fragrance-free, and that the Aveeno Body Wash is my HG…but it doesn’t mean I LIKE it, so I picked up the Hugo body wash in the ‘green’ aisle at the grocery store, as the fragrance is all-natural – so I’m hoping I’ll find a loophole in my own rule

To add to the above, I also picked up:

- a-England Nail Polish in Princess Sabra (Tristam Eyes) approx. $10 (30% off reg. price, approx. $14)
- Revlon Lip Butter in Peach Parfait $7.99 (on sale)

And to round it all out, I also bought two blushes from Illamasqua, Lover & Hussy (approx. $13 each [half off reg. price - approx. $26]). *I have yet to receive these in the mail

BAM.

So yea…I had a busy month.  As you can see, I got some pretty excellent deals on almost all of my purchases, which is partially why I went a little crazy.  Sephora definitely reeled me in with the 15% off, and when I received the email about the Easter Egg Hunt sale from Illamasqua, I had to check it out (the day we were leaving for Jamaica, I got the one about certain blushes being half off, so I thought I’d take a look – I totally expected it to be unpopular shades, but each of the 5 shades were some of their top sellers!  How could I NOT buy Lover and Hussy!?  It would have cost me $65CAD to buy them full price (incl. shipping) and instead it came to $40 (with shipping).  Sa-weet!!).  So yea.  A bad month according to my guidelines, but kind of a great month too!  And it gives me LOTS of material for upcoming posts

However.  In light of my spectacular failure to adhere to ANY restrictions regarding my purchasing, I have decided to restructure my guidelines.  It just doesn’t make sense to me to pretend to follow a low-buy when in fact I seem to be on a ‘grab all you can’ buy.  I still need some structure, but I need to tweak it a bit.  So here’s the new rule for makeup (all other guidelines remain unchanged):

- 10 makeup purchases per season (previous: max of 3 LE purchases per season; non-LE items on a use two, buy one system)

Now, before you go and think that I’m being entirely too easy on myself (if I wasn’t already before!), let me explain why I’m making these changes.  First of all, to be clear: while part of this low-buy is to weed through my stash, over the past couple months I realized that it’s not necessarily to scale it back, but to eliminate items that just don’t really ‘do’ it for me.  I’ve come to grips with the fact that in being a beauty blogger, and being as obsessed as I am with beauty, the plain truth is that my makeup collection is going to continue to grow – there’s just no way I’m going to be able to use everything (c’mon, blushes last for YEARS) and I’m certainly not going to stop shopping until I do.  What I really want to do is make sure that everything I own I love, and I’m really making headway in that area, so I think that’s an achievement!

I have to be honest with you as well, that the other part of the low-buy is definitely related to cash flow.  While I’m managing my addiction fairly well, I do think that maintaining some sort of guideline is a smart thing to do, so that I don’t get too crazy or wrapped up in wanting everything – I find since blogging I want to be able to review every product that comes on the market, but I just can’t afford to!  This way I can make sure that I have ‘controls’ in place so I know when I’m nearing a reasonable limit.  AND it helps to ensure that whatever I’m purchasing, I absolutely love – which relates back to the first point!  It’s a win-win in my books   (ALSO…with Jamaica behind me, I have to get my butt in gear to save more $$ for New Zealand – definitely a huge priority!)

Fiordland, New Zealand *Photo courtesy of PacificIslands.com

You may think that it’s almost pointless to have any guidelines at all, since many others who are on a no- or low-buy are quite restricted in their purchasing.  However, I do find it difficult not to just buy every single thing I’d like, so I think the above restructure of the guidelines allows me to have some fun while still keeping me in check.  When I initially created the ‘Limited Edition’ rule, I had actually done so to make sure that I indulged in some of the great LE items, as I often missed out on them in the past.  Well, I think I’m definitely over that behavior (LOL!), and a purchase is a purchase, so I just lumped all makeup spending together and made it a number that seemed reasonable.  Again, if I get the urge to shop just for shopping’s sake, and buy something I don’t really love, that still counts as one – so I’ll be more likely to avoid doing that if I know my purchasing power has a limit.

Oh the silly things we do!  I’m sure some of you find these kinds of rambles terribly boring, and I don’t fault you for it   I just know that if I don’t have anyone to hold me accountable, I could go all sorts of crazy and buy everything I laid my hands on (I feel that urge more often than not!).  And since I know some of you are going through similar bans of your own, I hope that on some level you can relate.

I hope it doesn’t seem like I’m bailing on my original terms or that I’m making things too easy on myself.  This plan IS easier in the fact that I don’t have to bust my balls trying to find products I can use up or toss, which just started to feel ridiculous to me, but it is more in line with my true feelings about makeup.  While I still get overwhelmed at how much I have and the impossible notion of how to use it all, I am actually developing a collection of products that I simply adore, and I can only get rid of so much before I am just basically throwing away money for no good reason.  The low-buy has really opened my eyes and I feel SO much more at peace with my stash and all the connotations that come with it!  That in itself to me is the best achievement I could ask for

I will continue to do monthly updates on my progress, as I still plan on challenging myself on holding back from making any ‘unnecessary’ purchases, and also because it’s a great way to give you an overall picture of my beauty world – what I’m using (up) and what new items I’ve been enjoying.  I can’t wait to read about everyone else’s progress as we continue to push forward – I support each of you in your own reasons for your no/low-buy, and hope it’s going well.  For you and anyone else engaging in a beauty challenge, I wish you good luck and hope you stay strong!!

END RANT.
(So sorry if you stuck with me through the whole thing!  I try not to do too many of these lengthy posts :S)