9 Tips to Banish Cake Face!

After a very rough month or so health wise and sleep wise, my face is in rough shape.  I did not wash and moisturize twice a day like I should have while I was sick and my skin shows it.  When your skin is dry, uneven, and full of dead skin layers, cake face is so hard to avoid!
Luckily I found a scrub and a face oil that really help! I can now actually salvage my poor skin and have my foundation apply smoothly without the dreaded cake face look.
Since I have been struggling with this and researching tips and tricks I thought I would make a post with all of the useful tips and tricks out there.  There are so many things you can do to help avoid cake face:
1. exfoliate (2-3 x's a week) 2. moisturize (2-3 x's a day) 3. add some oil to your foundation before applying (see demonstration here) bonus tip: if you have dry skin or lots of texture to your skin avoid watery, or very thin liquid foundations. You can even put your skin type into Sephora's website and see recommendations for foundation based on your skin type) 4. apply foundation with a beauty blender or soft foundation brush 5. try to stipple (push foundation straight into your skin) instead of rubbing the foundation around your face 6. use downward strokes when applying foundation (peach fuzz generally grows downwards on your face and you want it to lay smooth and flat not stand it up) 7. make sure your foundation is completely dry before adding any finishing powder 8. press instead of rubbing powder in 9. use a glycerin, moisturizing setting spray
Thanks for reading!!  Sorry there are no pictures in this post, my camera lens is not able to pick up cakey vs. smooth makeup difference :(

Shop Miss A!! A bargain hunter's dream?

What if there was a dollar store that had amazing makeup, jewelery, and accessories and you could shop for all of it from your couch?  What if they offered free shipping on orders over $30 and had good customer service too? I found this amazing site called ShopMissA.com and I love it!!  I have placed 3 orders so far and I have been able to get a wide variety of their products and feel like I can tell you what to look for and give you tips on it all. The biggest thing to watch out for is lead in their jewelry.  This is my only disappointment with this store.  I love the jewelry that I got from them, but several of the pieces had warning labels that stated "not intended for children," "for ages 14 and older," etc.  I believe one even had the "this product contains a chemical known to the state of California to cause.." label.  Some of their jewelry items do say "lead free" on the website but not all do.  In the future I will only be ordering items that state "lead free" on the website. My only other warning is that you need to check your package and everything in it thoroughly right when you get it.  If anything is broken or defective or you just want to return or exchange something, you only have 3 business days from when your package arrived to you.  I had 3 out of my 40 something items that were broken/defective in my first order and 1 in my second order and 3 in the third. With the 1st order I contacted them about 2 weeks later and at first they just told me their policy and that I had missed their cutoff.  They did give me store credit when I complained that their cutoff date was not a normal amount of days for a return and that it was only listed on the site under the returns tab (which you wouldn't check until you were already trying to do a return and you might already be too late without even knowing it at that point).  The only other con is that stuff sells out quickly.  They get some really amazing things for $1 but usually the best colors and options are sold out when I look at the site.  They have an email subscription that alerts you when they add inventory and I would highly recommend joining it if you love the site. Thanks for reading!!  Have you ever tried this site?  Leave me a comment below with your thoughts!

Gibson's Green Acres Dairy Farm, Pumpkin Patch and Corn Maze!!

Last week when I was writing about our corn maze experience I knew we wanted to also go to Gibson's Green Acres Dairy's corn maze.  I contacted Andrea Gibson to ask for their Facebook page to include in my last post's link and she was so sweet and gave us free tickets even though I told her we were already planning on coming out to her corn maze anyways.  So we had an amazing night and we are planning on going back again because we had so much fun!!
Gibson's Green Acres is a family dairy farm and Andrea talked about how they decided to diversify and do the corn maze and pumpkin patch in order to adapt to growth in the community and to benefit both the farm and the community.  They had a tractor tour of the whole farm where Andrea taught us all about the cows and the milk and the farm.  It was so fun!
They had so much stuff for kids to do with Spool Racing, Duck Racing, the Huge Corn Pit, the Big Slide and the Little Slide, a Petting Zoo, the Hay Maze and the Pumpkin Patch.  They also had a fire pit to warm up by!  The corn maze was also unique because the corn was soooo tall and they had different options once you got in the maze.  We did the quick maze because we had Jackson and it was getting cold.  It was perfect!  We got to wander around and find our way out pretty easily but it was still fun.  
The corn maze was actually planted by GPS and is the first precision planted maze in Utah.  Andrea designed the maze and was able to program it into their corn planter so the maze grew exactly where they wanted it to!  Their corn is so tall that you feel like you are in your own isolated world in the maze and it is so nice to not be tripping over broken off corn stalks or stubble from removed corn stalks like in some other mazes.

The pumpkin patch was another amazing part of the farm that I could do a whole post on.  They planted several varities so there are huge orange pumpkins, rounder deep orange pumpkins, super warty pumpkins, and even teal pumpkins.  Did I mention they are as cheap or cheaper than grocery store pumpkins!?  That's right you can take your kids out to the best pumpkin patch I have ever seen, let them wander around and pick the pumpkin they want and it is an amazing deal too!  We are definitely getting our pumpkins from them!!
They have extended hours for UEA weekend this weekend so if you haven't made it out yet you should definitely go. :)
Thanks for reading!!

3 Places to Buy Amazing Makeup Brushes Affordably

Do you need expensive brushes??  My answer is a definite, "No!"  I mean if you want beautiful, spendy brushes then go get 'em!  But if you are wanting to improve your makeup application by adding brushes or you need to replace old brushes, etc.  You can find some A-mazing brushes that are super affordable.
Personally I love e.l.f. studio brushes and EcoTools brushes but I have also recently ventured into buying cheap brushes from Amazon after researching reviews and I have been quite happy with those purchases too.
Brushes I recommend: e.l.f. studio line, e.l.f. professional eye shadow brushes (these are super cheap and are also good as long as you just stick with the eyeshadow brushes, the face brushes in this line are not good), any EcoTools brushes, and Amazon brushes with great reviews.  Link to my black set here and similar to my gold set here (the set I purchased is no longer available but this is from the same seller and looks identical).
I could make this a humongous post with a review of all of my brushes and which brushes I think are most essential, but I am trying not to do crazy, long, and hard to organize posts anymore. Trust me, this is so much easier to read!

Here's a link to a great post/infographic that has basic brush types/uses.

Thanks for reading!

It's Fall Y'all!!

Temperatures have dropped, leaves are turning, pumpkin spice everything is everywhere and Halloween is just around the corner!  
We were able to go to this amazing corn maze and pumpkin patch this year and last year.  I absolutely love all of the fun things there for our whole family!  Jackson has loved playing in the big tub of corn both years and of course riding the barrel train and wandering through the pumpkin patch.
I love just being there and seeing all of the fun things!!  They have lots of little fall photo opp set-ups all around and have a light show after dark and all sorts of fun things and yet it has a small, homemade feel to all of it.
Here's a list with some other fun corn mazes and pumpkin patches here in Utah.  Happy Fall!

Unbiased Jamberry Nail Wraps Review

 My wraps after 2 weeks 

I have such a hard time with nail polish lasting and not chipping.  Plus, I rarely have time to let it dry before I have to start doing something, so my nails usually start out a little smudged or damaged right from the get go.  Not to mention I am a very sloppy nail painter and have to wait a day or two for it to wear off of my cuticles and actually look good.  So even though I love the look of a cute manicure, it is next to impossible for me to do for myself!

Then I heard of Jamberry.  This product promises to solve all of those problems for me!  Cute patterns and colors, check; no drying time, check; won't chip off, check!  But do they actually work? Do they really stick and stay on?  How hard are they to apply?

I am so excited to report that yes, they do work and do stick and stay on!!  Do they have Pro's and Con's?  Yes, they definitely do.  I am going to walk you through my personal experience and also touch a bit on my mom's experience with them.

I have been accumulating these wraps for a while whenever I could find a deal on them.  They are always buy 3 sheets get 1 free and most consultants will give you samples if you want to try it first before making that kind of a commitment.  The sheets are $15 each and provide 2-3 manicures according to Jamberry's site but they can be used for even more manis and pedis with these tricks.

They are definitely cheaper than a salon manicure or pedicure but you have to apply them yourself.  The application process is a little tricky and has more steps than slapping on nail polish but it does get quicker and easier with practice.  Each nail needs to be very clean, needs to have the cuticle pushed back off of the nail and each wrap needs to be sized so that none of it touches the cuticle or skin.  Each wrap needs to be warmed before applying and then applying the wrap where you want it can be tricky too.  I really struggled with this!

The nice thing is that I was able to stop a few times during the application for interruptions from my son and I did not have to worry about ruining wet polish.  This mani was time consuming but no more time consuming than the DIY gel nail mani I have been trying to do recently to keep my nails from chipping.

These lasted on me for over 2 weeks on all but 2 of my nails (those 2 lasted just over a week).  These 2 I had painted over with clear polish because they didn't seal as well as the others.  I don't know if they peeled off sooner because of the polish or because they didn't seal as well.  They did sometimes catch in my hair when I was washing it at the beginning and this got worse as time went on.  Also these may not work for everyone.  My mom tried them a while ago and couldn't get them to seal well at the top and she wasn't able to make them work for her.

Biggest Pro's: super cute and lasted a long time.

Biggest Con's: tricky to apply (some weren't centered and none were as close to my cuticle as I would have wanted them to be which was super noticeable as time went on and they grew out).

Overall I really liked having these on my fingers and I am excited to keep using them and hopefully I will get much better at applying them exactly where I want them and at doing it a little quicker.

Have you tried these nail wraps or a similar product?  Let me know how it worked for you in the comments below :)

Thanks for reading!!