beauty + fashion

Oh man, it’s been a whirlwind few weeks! After working really hard to create a productive routine in our little studio apartment, we got a call one Wednesday asking us if we’d be interested in moving back into our spacious one bedroom apartment across the hall that weekend. We quickly packed up and carried everything down the hall and started making an empty room our home again… for the second time in two months.

Man, that’s emotionally exhausting! Especially because we’d just sold our couch(es). The couches took up almost ALL of the space in our apartment, so we suddenly had TONS OF SPACE to deal with. It’s almost all together and I’ll share a new little apartment tour.

But until then, I’m working really hard at getting everything organized and in its place ASAP so we feel at home and rest in our apartment. Sharing my little pile of empties from the past month!

Rosewater Argan facial cream

I’m actually REALLY CONFUSED about why I can’t find this listed in a previous empty post, because I’ve definitely used this up before. Kristen got me this face cream from Soap & Sunshine a few years ago (for my birthday, I think?) and I FELL IN LOVE. It’s so soft smelling, lightweight and moisturizing without being greasy. I love this stuff so much that I literally swiped EVERY LAST BIT out of the jar while I waited for my new one in the mail! (ps I did find a previous post where I wrote about this product, but it wasn’t an empties post!)

Benefit the Porefessional balm

This is my favorite pore-minimizing primer of all time! I’ve written about it before, here and here and here. 🙂 It’s great on its own or under makeup, matte and does a great job filling in pores.

Kiehl’s midnight recovery eye

Birchbox sample. It was okay, though I already have eye creams I love. It was nice to have a night time eye care routine, but probably unnecessary. Plus it’s pretty expensive, but Kiehl’s is a pretty fancy brand. I have no desire to buy this.

L’Oreal Voluminous Base Lash Primer

I first wrote about this over a year ago – I’d been looking for a lash primer and was so excited to find this one! I realized it’d been like… A YEAR since I’d replaced it, and in one of the greatest acts of adulting I’ve exercised lately, I went to Walgreens and bought a new one to throw away my old probably nasty one.

Michael Kors perfume…?

Yeah IDK. Small perfume samples are real hard for me. 😀

Garnier Whole Blend Honey Treasures Repairing Conditioner 

I first discovered the Garnier Whole Blend line when I did a sponsored post for them a few years ago. I found this conditioner at Goodwill for dirt cheap (I have no shame and didn’t even take the GW sticker off, haha) and decided to try it because I LOVED the coconut line. This was really good – I liked that the conditioner was thick and lasted a long time!

Suave Professional Almond + Shea Butter Shampoo

Here’s the thing. I have this terrible habit of going places and forgetting things like shampoo, so last fall when I was in Nashville I grabbed this on clearance because I don’t want my mistakes to have a high price tag. It’s alright, nothing great, thank u, next.

Glamglow Supermud clearing treatment

This mask was pretty great! I bought it from Birchbox and really loved it. My face always feels really clean and tight(?) after using this. I think all masks are the same, so I won’t be replacing it.

Catch up on my past Empties here.

Well there is nothing like downsizing to get you to throw away garbage you’ve been keeping for months so you could one day blog about it! If you’re new around here, my Empties series is where I just post pictures of the empty products I’ve used and give a quick review of what I thought of them (if I can remember, because the last time I did this was in freaking March).

Just a tiny lil’ empties this time around! I think a few months ago I threw out a bunch of empties on accident and then I set aside a basket for empty products… which strangely hasn’t happened in awhile! I threw away a bunch of old/replaced products the other day when we moved into our new apartment, so one of these posts might be awhile away again.

Pink Warm & Cozy shimmer body butter
Warm & Cozy is my favorite scent. Here’s the thing. I know these things are bad for us, but seriously they just smell so good. I love essential oils but essential oils don’t smell like Warm & Cozy amiright?! My plan of action is to use up the stuff I have but not replace it, so soon these empties will look way different!

St. Ives Energizing Coconut and Coffee Scrub
In July when I was in Nashville, I forgot basically all of my toiletries at home so we made a trip to Target. Coffee + coconut, two of my great loves. I really liked this scrub! It was scrubby and smelled great, but alas… that dirty little fragrance ingredient, so this is the end of the road for us.

Beauty Protect & Detangle Spray
I love this smell. I love this product. I have a bigger one I received from Birchbox as a sample. I’ll be going through that and then… freaking fragrance. Fragrance is in EVERYTHING and fragrance (as an ingredient) is SO BAD! Aye aye aye.

Coola Dawn Patrol Primer
Confession: I never tried this, I just decided I didn’t need it.

Benefit Roller Lash
I LOVED this mascara! It was a dream to apply and in staying power, but when I thought I was buying the full size version of it, I was wrong. I’d replaced it with a different Benefit mascara. Goodbye old friend, you were so good to me.

If you want your world rocked, go ahead and look up “fragrance” and “toxic” and then welcome to the club. :]

Check the rest of my empties posts here.

Spring cleaning has sprung and I’ve recently found myself staring at cabinets and things and going “what IS all of this stuff?” and I realized that one pile of stuff were bottles of empty products to blog about so I’m just gonna need to blog about this to get these the f out of our apartment.

There are all of my empties for the past few months in all their glory. I’ll break it down a few items at a time.

dōTerra Protecting Shampoo
I wrote about the conditioner in my last empties post and everything I said about that can apply to this shampoo 😀

Bath & Body Works Marshmallow Pumpkin Latte Body Wash
I love this smell, y’all. I debated keeping it for another year to use it at the correct season and then I realized that it’s kinda fun to buy it when it’s pumpkin season, so I finished it off. Plus I was way too cheap to buy new shower gel when I was running out, LOL. I love this smell!

Yes to Coconut & Argan Oil Conditioner
I got this at Bargain Hunt in Nashville and I really love it! Coconut is my fave scent and I loved that this conditioner was really lightweight and smelled absolutely delicious

Pantene Shampoo
Y’all IDK it’s just a small bottle of shampoo.

Olay Body Wash
I don’t like Olay body wash, I guess. IDK it was good to use up when I ran out of body wash and was so cheap.

IDK what that cream blush is in the upper left. I found it and didn’t like it so bye.

Manna Kadar Eye Candy Priming Shadow Stick in Honey
Got this in a Birchbox and I’ve already replaced it because I LOVED it. It’s really easy to apply – I like to quickly put it on for a subtle, shimmery eyeshadow. It’s my new favorite forever.

MAC Cleansing Oil
Already ordered the full sized oil of this! If y’all have followed my empties posts for awhile you’ll know that I was OBSESSED with the discontinued Garnier cleansing oil and have been desperately trying to find something to replace it and DING DING DING this MAC cleansing oil is IT. It’s foamy and smells fresh and I love it. Winner winner.

Two ELF eye shadows
These were okay – they’re creamy and tend to crease. I’ve had these for years and wasn’t using them up, so I figured it was time to just get rid of them ESPECIALLY since I’ve been finding eyeshadows I love even more.

Two random lip colors – one Revlon (left) and one Wet n’ Wild (right)

I don’t even know why I bother with actual lipsticks or lip colors, I just need to stick with lip gloss because I feel SO INSECURE when I wear lip colors, especially hot pink ones (pass! It looked so much softer than it was) and dark nude colors.

Three Times Sublime Blackhead Wash + Scrub +Mask
I actually bought this when I thought it was a scrubby face wash, but it’s actually a mask. I liked it because it went on like a mask, but then after letting it dry, you’d scrub it off like a scrubby wash. It’s one of my favorite masks I’ve ever purchased!

ACURE Purifying Face Peel
This smelled like butt and burned my face. I recently had a similar bad experience with an ACURE product – I’m not sure if the products were old because I’ve had a great experience with their products before, but I got rid of this ASAP, easy peasy.

PINK Warm & Cozy Hand Cream
The PINK Warm & Cozy scent is one of my all-time favorite scents. It’s… well, it’s warm and cozy. I really love the Victoria’s Secret lotion/creams because they’re thick but not greasy. This is one of my all-time favorites.

VERB Hydrating Mask
I don’t really remember this. Which means it’s probably not that great. Masks are all the same unless they’re phenomenal, so there you go.

St. Ives Exfoliate & Nourish Apricot Oil Scrub
Okay, so funny story. I tried this and HATED IT until one day when I was brushing my teeth, I was reading the instruction label and saw that I’D BEEN USING IT WRONG. After that, I tried using it correctly and it was pretty great! If I hadn’t immediately discovered the MAC cleansing oil.

Bath & Body Works French Lavender & Honey Body Lotion
So this whole Empties thing started because I had SO MANY smelly things from SO MANY trips to the Bath & Body Works Outlet so it’s funny when they happen to appear in here. This was a great post-shower lotion. I loved the simple scent and that the lotion wasn’t greasy.

Okay y’all I’m SO EXCITED to dispose of these empties that I’m going to do that right now. Y’all should do some Empties posts and share the links with me.

This is a big massive empties post that I’ve been putting off because it’s SO. OVERWHELMING.

My goal had been to post an empties post every month and I was doing alright at it and then December hit me and I just got thrown for a loop. and then I had this big box of bottles and empty stuff that I needed to empty out but kept getting overwhelmed at the idea.

So I’m just going to tackle it.

I had them separated by month and then I’m a dummy and put them all together and couldn’t remember what went where, so they’re all going together.

See ALLLLL the things?! I also decided to get rid of items I’d collected and was trying to force myself to use even though I didn’t like them. Hypothetically, if I was KonMari-ing, if that makeup item didn’t spark joy I got it out of there. There weren’t many, but it was a great start.

Pores Be Pure Skin-Clarifying Mud Mask
This mask was a huge deal in my life. I saw it on Pinterest and I immediately drove to Ulta to buy it. It was one of the first times I can recall being very driven by social media to make a purchase. I have two more masks from this line that I’m trying to work through, but this was the first one I got because pink + strawberry + me = duh 😀 I like this mask a lot, but like I literally ALWAYS say… all masks are kind of the same at a certain point.

Wonderstruck Taylor Swift Lotion
Oh my word, I LOVE this stuff. First of all, Enchanted is like the BEST Taylor Swift song. I’ve had this lotion for YEARS and only used it when I felt ultra fancy because I literally LOVE this scent. I’ve started to keep my eyes open for the perfume or any other products in this scent at like TJ Maxx/Marshalls, since that’s where I got this, but no luck so far. Anyway. LOVE.

Dreamy Amour Cherry Blossom Body Wash
My friend Adriana got me this body wash for my bridal shower, and I have LOVED using it. <3

dōTerra Salon Essentials Conditioner
I’ve been using dōTerra oils for about a year but at the end of the summer, I started branching into their other products. I went for the shampoo and conditioner. My hair is long and since I use shampoo on the roots and conditioner on the ends (and there’s a LOT of “ends”) I use conditioner a lot faster than shampoo. I liked this conditioner, but it wasn’t my favorite. My hair has been going through a lot of changes, so it might be that. I’d definitely buy it again but probably just because I make monthly dōTerra orders. It’s definitely nice having it sent to me.

Dr Jart+ BB Cream
Y’all should know by now that this is straight up one of my ALL TIME FAVORITE products. I’ve been slowly trying to shift my products over to more natural/organic products, so I’ve slowly replaced this with the Root Pretty Pretty Booster, but I still LOVE this stuff. I started using half this + half Root Pretty, and I really liked that combo. I cannot recommend this enough if you’re wanting an easy BB Cream.

The Body Shop Almond Hand + Nail Butter
I LOVE this stuff, but this little tub of it was SO OLD it smelled plasticy and nasty. It’s the curse of buying something I love and never using it because I want it to last forever, haha. It’s really thick and has a really subtle warm, almond smell. It’s perfect for the winter when your hands get dry.

Cover Girl Tru Blend Minerals Blush
I was in desperate need of new blush and I bought this because it was on sale, but I really didn’t love it. The pink was too red for me and it had little dustings of gold that were a little too harsh for me. I didn’t finish it but gave myself permission to get rid of it.

Almay Smart Shade Blush
I (clearly) loved this blush. It was a pale pink that was mixed with slightly darker spots to make a really subtle blush. I’m not a fan of dark/warm colors on my face, so this was perfect for me. I’ve decided that I do want to invest in something that’s more suited for my face (I liked it but I don’t think it was the best). It was good for what it was and was fairly inexpensive.

Laura Geller Baked Blush
I received this in a Birchbox and I REALLY wanted to love it because I obviously need blush and it was free, but it was way too pink for me. I felt like a clown every time I tried to wear it.

The Beauty Crop Glamazon Stick Highlight Crayon
I was excited to try this, but it was damaged upon arrival in my Birchbox. They weren’t able to replace it but they gave me points to spend in the shop. So IDK!

DermaE Purifying 2-in-1 Charcoal Mask
LOVE. I love Derma E and I love masks so yeah. Birchbox sample… probably won’t purchase because I doubt with Birchbox that I’ll ever actually be in need of buying face masks, but I highly recommend.

Root Pretty Fresh Lavender Cleanser
I LOVED this! It had a little bit of unexpected scrub (and I’m ALL ABOUT that scrub life!) and it smelled wonderful AND it’s Root Pretty so I know and trust it’s full of great quality ingredients. Like I’m always saying, you can use this link and get 10% off your purchase of $25+.

Michael Todd Charcoal Detox Cleanser
I used this stuff with my Clarisonic Mia Cleanser and I really liked it. The gel cleanser I’ve been using with the brush is what Clarisonic sent me to try out and it’s great but by using another cleanser I was able to really appreciate the brush itself. I never tried it without the cleanser so I’m not sure how it is on its own, but I really loved it.

Benefit The Porefessional Primer
This one always shows up on my Empties lists because it’s a must-have item. Slightly tinted and matte so you can wear it under makeup or even just on its own to fill in pores. HIGHLY recommend.

Covergirl Plumpify Mascara
I feel like I may have received this as a sample, perhaps from Influenster. but I LOVE it. I use my L’Oreal Primer and then put this on top. I only am getting rid of it because I’ve had it for a VERY LONG time, and I need to start getting rid of things. Great drugstore mascara that offers length and volume.

Sand & Sky Brilliant Skin Pink Clay Mask
Reviewed in my December Birchbox Review post.

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