Review of Rimmel Lasting Finish Foundation

Rimmel sent me and the other Rimmel 10 girls a package recently with their Lasting Finish 25 Hour Foundation. My shade is of course the palest of all the shades, Ivory. Rimmel challenged the Rimmel 10 girls this time to just test the foundation out and report back. Well I can do that, no problemo!

So, I present to you my foundation review, split into to two test videos (one just wearing it for long amounts of time at work, the other wearing it through my very sweaty workout session) and a sort of summary of my feelings on the foundation video.

And you guys better appreciate the working out video especially, I sweat for you!

Summary of Foundation

Pros:

Nice creamy texture, very easy to blend in

Doesn’t cause dryness or breakout my skin

Medium coverage

Ivory matches my skin tone

Doesn’t transfer to my clothing when changing

Removed easily with my face wash

Stands up to my super sweaty workout!

Stands up well to my long, stressful work nights. Very little transfer when I dabbed my face with a napkin

Available at most stores and drugstores where you buy makeup

Cons:

Gushes out of bottle if stores upright

‘Window” on bottle makes color look darker than it is

Rubbed off onto my hot phone screen after talking on phone for an hour

Only 11 shades available

And now for a music video that is not only cute, but is one of my favorite songs and has an on theme title, “Foundations” by Kate Nash! Enjoy her adorableness and British accent, which is soooo Rimmel London appropriate.

J. Crew Crush

J. Crew Fall Lookbook 2010

Whoever makes the J. Crew lookbooks is the DEVIL because they’re tempting me something awful. Seriously, I love every single look in their Fall  2010 Lookbook. And J. Crew is kind of out of my price range. Well, maybe I could buy one shirt or something on clearance, but everything else is pretty much out of my price range. Also, I’d probably need a stylist to help me dress in J. Crew to get the look right, I feel like I’m not very good at putting their pieces together. I guess I need to print out their lookbook as a map or something, but every time I go in there I feel a little boggled and poor. And also stared at by their predominantly older staff. Thus I own no J. Crew. I would like to, oh I would like to, it just hasn’t happened for me.  Anyway…

J. Crew Fall 2010 Lookbook

J Crew Fall 2010 Lookbook

As you can see, the styling in the lookbook is impeccable, not to mention the model’s hair is awesome! I love the pale, pale blonde with the one barely there pastel stripe (you can see it in her bangs in the top picture). I want pastel hair! So badly…but I’m trying to resist right now since my hair is already damaged enough from all the bad I put it through. Hush hair, hush. Go back to sleep, I wasn’t talking about you…yes there, there, tuck behind my ear, there’s a good hair…

Now that is dapper.

J. Crew is also one of the best choices for a modern fitting men’s suits. Sure, most of the suits are in the bridal section of the J. Crew site, but that shouldn’t stop guys from buying a sharp-looking suit from there whether they’re heading down the aisle or just down to the (slightly fancy) office.

Unlike Rent-A-Tux places, who measure men and then seem to plot how to make them look as unattractive as possible for whatever event they’re attending that requires copious picture-taking, J. Crew’s suits don’t billow around the body and legs like sails on a stormy sea. J. Crew suits have a fashion forward slim cut to the jackets, and oh-so-importantly, slim cut pants to match.

Notice the straight cut thigh and tapered leg. That, sir, is flattering. No fattening, hideous pleats here.

Actually, everything J. Crew makes for weddings is adorable and elegant. Especially the brides and bridesmaid dress. Honestly, if anyone is getting married they definitely should check out the wedding section of the Website. Your bridesmaids will thank you.

Note: In no way am I affiliated with J. Crew. This is just my own opinion, they didn’t give me money to gush over them. I wish they did though, because it would still be sincere and then maybe I could actually afford to shop there!

Target Partners With Justin Timberlake

Yes, it’s true, Justin Timberlake’s and long-time friend Trace Ayala’s William Rast clothing line will be hitting Target this December with a limited time collection. The collection should be debuting online and in-stores on December 19th and by all accounts will include men’s and women’s clothing consisting of denim, outerwear and sportswear.

No offense to JT and his cronies, but I don’t have too high of hopes for this collection. It may be because I associate Justin too strongly with his *NSYNC days, my childhood best friend had three walls of her room devoted to pictures of the band (the fourth wall was “Dawson’s Creek”) and I found their staring eyes rather off-putting, as well as their taste questionable.

Do these look like men you want to take fashion advice from?

Hopefully we’ll get a look book released soon as well as some price points so we can all make a more informed decisions as to whether this will be a knocking-down-the-doors-of-Target kind of collection or a wait-till-it’s-all-on-clearance-in-a-month/never mind collection.

More like Charlie St. Kill Me Now

Worst.Tagline.EVER.

Before going to this movie I knew three things:
1. My friend wanted to see it
2. Someone died in it
And, most importantly, 3. Zac Efron, sweet, sweet, hottie pants Zac Efron, was in it.

Clearly the last factor is what they’re counting on to get people in the theater. The poster might as well just say “Hai guys! ZAC EFRON IS IN THIS! Oh and there’s also a dock and a sunset, and wouldn’t YOU like to see Zac Efron at sunset?”

So, what I’m getting at here is don’t go see “Charlie St. Cloud.” It is awful, unbelievably awful. Terrible acting (though Zac was probably the best of the whole bunch), terrible dialogue ( Zac’s character is constantly saying the name of whoever he’s speaking to in every sentence, which becomes hilarious in its absurdness after a while) and a really, really terrible story.

Gahhhhzing! You have officially been hottened and bothered. Picture courtesy of JustJared.com

Basically a hot teenager, Charlie, has an eleven-year-old brother who he’s really tight with named Sam. Oh and he has a little boat, there’s loads of sailing and sailing related stuff in this movie, Charlie even has a sailing scholarship to Stanford. To cut to the chase, Sam dies in a car accident and Charlie was the one driving, though it’s not really Charlie’s fault. Then Charlie starts to see the ghost of Sam. Charlie’s life then kind of goes to crap because he can’t leave town because he has to meet his dead brother every night at sundown (per an agreement from when he was alive), and for some reason Charlie decides to work at the graveyard. Because that certainly will cheer up a grieving boy.

Ah yes, quality time with your dead brother. Because that isn't kind of creepy at all. Picture courtesy of disneydreaming.com

I don’t even want to go into the rest of this awful movie, but suffice to say Charlie sees more ghosts than just his brother and starts to like a girl, which causes tension between him and the dead brother. This movie is insane in its complete disregard for a sensical plotline or any kind of believability and is unintentionally hilarious much of the time. But, most damning of all, it features far too little Zac Efron without a shirt! How dare they reel me in with that pretty boy face of his and give me so little shirtless time! But I’m not as cruel (or as stupid) as that movie dear reader, so here, my gift to you. May you enjoy it for many years to come.

The movie would have been vastly improved if he had just looked like this the whole time. And no one spoke. Yeah, it would've been way better. Picture courtesy of GossipBeast.com

Keeping Your Blonde Bright Not Brassy

As a on-again-off-again blonde, I know all about the difficulties of keeping your hair looking salon (or at home color) fresh.

Blonde hair tends to get brassy the longer you go between dye jobs/refreshing your color, which is really annoying when you’re fair-skinned like me and look horrible in brassy tones or just happen to want icy, platinum blonde hair. So here’s my tip on staying brassless on the cheap and easy:

Born Blonde Semi-Permanent Toner by Clairol. It’s available at Sally’s Beauty Supply, costs $10.99 and will last you quite a long time. It’s available in eight different shades, so you can choose what subtle shade of blonde you would like. I personally use Innocent Ivory, for very light cool toned blonde hair and if you are close to a white blonde color I would recommend you use that shade as well.

The first thing I like about this toner is that it actually works! I see definite results in my hair whenever I use it and I like those results. I looks less brassy every time I use it. My hair has been put through torture by all my dyeing and bleaching at this point, and for it to look as nice as it does is largely due to the toner.

Draco most definitely is using a toner on the regular. I mean, look at that hair, it is icy perfection!

Secondly, I just combine some of the toner, which has a nice slightly creamy consistency, with my conditioner whenever I wash my hair, leave it and the conditioner on for a few minutes, and rinse it out. This makes for an incredibly easy process as well as I can combine it with which ever conditioner I happen to be using that day. And, if you feel you need a more intense tone up, than you can put it in your hair all by itself and leave it on up to about 30 minutes. Be careful how long you leave the toner on though, do spot checks to see how it’s turning out after it’s been on longer than ten minutes because depending on your hair condition and color if you leave the toner on too long your hair can take a little too much of the toner’s color and you might get a slightly violet cast to your hair until you’ve washed it out a few times.

Ad for John Frieda's Color Renew shampoo and conditioner. Picture courtesy of John Frieda.

Now, you could of course buy a shampoo and conditioner that will keep the brass away, John Frieda offers a drug store version of this called Color Renew and there are a few brands at Sally’s Beauty Supply that do this as well, but from my experience I’ve found just using the toner itself works better. Not to mention I don’t have to ditch my favorite shampoos and conditioners just because it wasn’t made specifically for blondes every time I go back to the hair color Motherland.

Do you have any tips on keeping your blonde hair looking fresh?