Month: January 2014
The Bath & Body Works Golden Ratio
Bath & Body Works is the ubiquitous center of my beauty routine. Shower gel, body spray and body cream is the holy trinity of my morning and evening ritual. At any given time in the past 20-25 years, I’d have between 3 and 15 different scents going through a rotation, with 90% of those coming from Bath & Body Works. Why?
Sadly, it boils down to quantity over quality. Sure, Bath & Body Works provides good quality product, but its quality would only be mediocre if we were paying full price for it. Has anyone reading this ever paid full price for a product from Bath & Body Works? I may have bought one bottle of lotion as a gift at full price within the last decade. Like many retailers, Bath & Body Works is built upon a model in which the sale price (usually ‘Buy 3, Get 3 Free’) is the putative price. Once a quarter, the store has a big blow-out sale to clear inventory, which is how we hoarders get hooked, often on discontinued scents, the heartbreak of which I’ll discuss in a later post.
After decades of filling my vanity table, drawers and cabinets with as many Bath & Body Works products as I can fit, I’ve discovered the Golden Ratio. 1 Body Spray = 2 Lotions or Body Creams = 4 Shower Gels. It’s that simple. If you are as OCD as I am and want your body products to run out at about the same time, it’s 1 – 2 – 4. The tricky part is price. If you’re trying a new scent, it doesn’t make sense to buy all 6 products in the same scent. (I almost bought 6 Forever Red products until I had the foresight to spray myself first – I had a headache before I could get the bottles in my bag.) I like to buy a spray, body cream and shower gel in a new scent and “stockpile” proven scents for the other 3 products. This can sometimes be annoying when you find a discontinued scent that you like – Paris in Bloom for example. The scent is no longer available and I’m almost out of shower gel…but I have plenty of body spray.
The Golden Ratio also works for Victoria’s Secret products, but I don’t buy those as often. The scents are over-ripe and the product quality is lower.
Future posts will cover some of my favorite scents…leave YOUR favorite scents in the comments!
Glinda’s Bubble
Since I will probably be repainting my fingernails within a day or so (Maven Box!!!), I took a quick pic of my paint job from last Friday. Yup, this paint job is 4 days old and still looks good.
I used Julep “Brenda” – 2 coats. In the bottle it looks like white opalescent shimmer, but it looks like opalescent rose gold on my nails. It reminds me of Glinda’s bubble from The Wizard of Oz, just slightly less pink. I love how it gives the appearance of a french manicure. This may become my favorite “don’t have time to repaint for 2 weeks” paint job.
Did I just invent the “Petticure”?
Yes, I totally just invented the “petticure”.
Dottie is a very docile rat terrier, so I decided to start with her instead of tackling the Boxer. I figured speed is important when it comes to pet nails, so I used Revlon Top Speed in “Currant.”
My son, Logan, helped keep her calm and held the bottle of polish for me…and then he went into my room and grabbed the nail dryer. I thought the noise would freak Dottie out, but she was okay with it. I wish I had been able to get a picture, but my husband was on the phone…maybe next time.
No Rules for Lily
Like most 5 year olds, my daughter Lily doesn’t follow “rules” – she has her own style. She chose Revlon’s Break-up (their version of Crackle) as the basecoats. Half her fingernails used the basecoat “Fatal”, but she wanted the crackle topcoat “Attraction” as a basecoat. It actually worked okay and didn’t crackle. She then picked two of her own glitters as a second coat. (Santa brought her a cheapo Color Concepts set, so they have no names. I’ll call them fuchsia glitter and turquoise glitter.)
Again, they turned out very cute…is it the fuchsia?
Next project…figuring out how to paint the dog’s nails…
Of Fuchsia and Gnomes
I’m sharing this old Instagram picture of a garden gnome on my car for no reason.
Carry on…
Vegas Nails
This is one of my favorite paint jobs since I started painting my fingernails again recently. (I had always kept my nails painted…until I had kids. I spent so much time with my fingers in mouths that I stopped painting my nails and just concentrated on toenails…until I discovered Julep.)
We took the kids on their first trip to Vegas over Xmas break and I decided that I needed something snazzy, so I started with a base coat of Julep “Nellie” and topped with Julep “Aviva.” No top coat! For just a two coat application, this paint job went without chips far longer than I expected – a full week. That’s what I love about Julep – it is absolutely the longest lasting polish I have encountered.
Those who know me in person have learned to expect a lot of fuchsia. Ever since I bought my “Furious Fuchsia” Challenger, I go to great lengths to get stuff that matches my car. Yes, I have been called RIDICULOUS on more than one occasion…but I LOVE fuchsia.
Lily’s Choice
Since I only have 20 nails of my own to paint, I have co-opted my daughter Lily’s digits for my experiments. I recently picked up a couple of new Sally Hansen glitter dots at Target for 68 cents, so I had Lily pick out colors to go underneath. She chose Sally Hansen “Hot Magenta” and Hard Candy “Scam” to go underneath Sally Hansen “Green Rocket.” The results are nice…for a five year old, she’s got great color instincts.
I know many nail purists roll their eyes at any product that can be bought at mega-stores like Target, but I have always had good results with Sally Hansen…and it’s relatively cheap.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that I now finish all of Lily’s paint jobs with Ta-Da Quick Dry Drops by Julep. A must have, unless you like fingernail polish all over your carpet…
Welcome to Beauty Hoard!
My name is Lara and I’m a hoarder.
My obsession isn’t dead cats or bottles of piss or used diapers…nothing good enough to get me on TV. I hoard beauty products. Nail polish, body products, antibacterial handsoap, eye shadow and more. (I also have a problem with buddhas, garden gnomes, Barbies and flamingos, but we’ll get to that later.)
Instead of hiding my shame, I decided to share it with the world. Okay, that’s a lie…I am not the least bit ashamed of my “habit.” I just want to legitimize the amount of money I spend on all this junk by plastering it all over the internet. Also, I’ve been experiencing writing block when it comes to my other website – knobbyverse.com – and I figure the best way to get past it is to make a detour and write about something else for awhile.
I’m not really sure what I am going to end up doing with this site…maybe pictures of my fingernails? Stupid shit I buy on clearance at Target? Or maybe I’ll get bored after a few posts and let it die…unless of course, I figure out a way for this site to make me some money…