Pressed Pigments = Super easy to use eyeshadows.

Home pressed pigments

Top one to press is a pink shimmer mica, I have been dragging this around since my last bout of makeup creation. Beautiful shade, light with a purple shimmer finish. I got it as a mica tester back when I was formulating my own colors and I loved it.

Second pigment to press was an indie cosmetic creator from Fairfield from a consignment shop called The Rose, called TigerEye. It is a beautiful deep copper brown with a duochrome green effect. It reminds me of MAC Club and of a pigment I pressed earlier in my pigment adventures.

Third is called Lavender Dream. which has a beautiful silvery pearl effect and fourth is a highlighter/eye shadow called Swedish winter from yourMinerals Sweden. Gorgeous finishes.

The fifth is Nyx Ultra Pearl Mania in Oro,  a gorgeous coppery brown that is simply divine. Opaque coverage,

The sixth is from The Rose, as well. A shimmery pink brown called Nude that swatches a bit more sheer than Oro. I misplaced it while photographing it and you can see it's next to the number 5 swatch. Meep!

Why press my pigments? I find loose minerals do not adhere to the skin well, and they are messy. I don't have time for that.  Adding the binder to the also powder acts as an adhering agent, much like a very expensive primer. The one I use has 3 different silicones, lending a buttery texture to the pigments.

I use a 1 to 1 ratio with drops of binder and 91% alcohol to liquefy the pigments. I mix them up using a sanitized mini spatula and then I press into a godot (also known as an empty makeup tin), using tissue and a pressing tile or coin. I let it sit overnight so the alcohol evaporates. Voila! Gorgeous eyeshadows in the morning!

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Meal/Menu Plan Service - Green Chef

The first meal we tried with Green Chef was the Paprika Chicken. This was amazing, too. Green Chef is an organic meal service. There is less selection than with Plated (previous post) but they are have a lot of gluten free options. There is a special on Facebook for a code that gives you a weeks worth of meals for 9 dollar shipping. I don't have the link but if you can find it, it's a great deal to see if it's up your alley. 

The choosing is more finicky, they have 4 different meal plans with gluten free, omnivore, carnivore and herbivore with different pricing for each of them. It's harder to find ones without tree nuts or peanuts, so that's something to think about. But the meals we have gotten seem very well thought out. It's possible to recreate the menu but the printed intruction cards do not have set amounts on them. All in all, it's a great service, if your set amounts for your grocery budget aren't fluctuating.           

The link is Green Chef - Menu/Meal Service

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So, yeah, these DIY meal services- Plated

So I am trying out some of the various food service/prep delivery service. Since Mark is working so much during the day and I can't really be on my own while shopping, we've had to get creative with meal planning.

Okay, both Green Chef and Plated are both PHENOMENAL services. But I am just going to talk about Plated now. We haven't had a bad meal yet and it's expanding our culinary expertise. Instead of just eating in a restaurant, we are learning how to make gourmet for less than a trip to Applebee's and 10 times more delicious. Plated includes amounts rather than just the instructions. We add them to our kitchen recipe binder so we can reproduce it time and again. 

The first meal from Plated we opened was the Vietnamese Caramel Fish. To be frank, I am not the biggest fish fan and I loved this meal. The sauce and marinade was divine, and the flavor melded together beautifully. The bok choy and vermicelli gave it a delightful texture. It will be a repeat.


I'll let Mark take it from here: 

"You pan-sear the fish for a bit and that makes up for the non-breaded issue. I used a couple splashes of rice wine for extra caramelization. Then with the red pepper & ginger sauce, along with the lime juice, made for a really good flavor combination. All I know is I now have a way to make tilapia taste pretty damn good."

 Me again! <3 I think you'll love it, if you really love food. There are veggie, land and sea options, and you can select your menus when you want them. And with the first few meals paid for, it's a pretty safe thing to see if it's up your alley. I like the ability to personalize them and skip weeks if I so choose. I can click and pay and they'll send it out the next shipping date.

Here's a link to some meals free with the purchase of 2 of them, I think. It might be something else, but it's still a great deal to try it out.

Plated Meal Delivery Service up $30 dollars off referral link

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Feel the Burn- Beauty Without Cruelty - Aromatherapy Skin Care AHA Facial Cleanser

Ow, ow.. ow ow ow. OWWIE! 

I wish I could say that this cleanser was good for my sensitive skin, but that would be a gravely misguided.  My skin turns bright red and I now have irritant dermatitis forming around my mouth and chin area and my skin feels tight. Very depressing.

I was hoping that it would be an AHA product that I could use. Not happening. I discovered the warning on the website that I should perform a patch test before using it on my skin, and I KNOW that I should do that with my rosacea, but I wasn't thinking. I was hoping for a cleanser to use as a chemical exfoliant. Big.fudging.fail. I think I may have mixed up Beauty Without Cruelty and Juice Beauty in my head. Not my best moment.

AND IT HAS LAVENDER in it for the love of pete!  I must give this to someone else or bury it in the backyard. :( Please learn from my mistakes and toss this out if you get it or someone gifts you this in an attempt to help your skin 'clear up'. It will not help you.

Ingredients that were too tiny to read on the package:
Purified water, Aloe barbadensis (aloe vera) leaf juice*, sodium C14-16 olefin
sulfonate,
cocamidopropyl betaine, sodium lauryl glucosides hydroxypropyl sulfonate,
Lavandula
hybrida (lavandin) oil*, Pelargonium roseum (geranium rose) oil, Citrus sinensis
(sweet orange) oil*, Cananga odorata (ylang ylang) oil*, Lavandula angustifolia
(lavender) extract*, Calendula officinalis (calendula)
extract*, Anthemis nobilis (chamomile) extract*, Lonicera fragrantissima
(honeysuckle) extract*, Cucumis sativus (cucumber) extract*, panthenol,
allantoin, magnesium ascorbyl phosphate,
glycerin, glycolic acid, malic acid, citric acid, tocopherol, sodium benzoate,
potassium sorbate
*Organic
10% Organic Content

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