My May 2016 Birchbox arrived late last week and I was excited to crack into it and see what goodies they sent me. This month’s box design, while not my favorite, is still cute and very spring-y with a pastel modern art motif:
Birchbox: May 2016
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Friday (the 13th) Five
1. Broad City: I know, I’m late to the party as usual (which is ironic, because IRL I’m literally—in the proper, non-millennial use of the term—always early) because this show is now in season three. I was in need of some laughs this week so I started watching this show on Hulu Plus and blew through the first season in two days, then started season two. I can’t find a clip online of this hilarious scene from the season two premiere so an image will have to do, but it cracked me up so much when Abbi (Abbi Jacobson) and Male Stacy (Seth Rogen) scream at a kitten who found its way into Abbi’s room. That kitten has some mad acting skills.
#tbt to Tenth Grade
This week’s Throwback Thursday is my tenth grade school photo, circa 1993.
Looks like I still hadn’t moved on from mostly wearing plain ol’ t-shirts on school photo day, though at least I accessorized with my gold tennis racquet necklace. And the braces are off! If I remember correctly, I discovered tweezers sometime in tenth grade and it looks like I had begun plucking my brows a little around this time. I have pretty pale skin as an adult, so I’m always amazed at how tan high school me was compared to present-day me. I guess it’s not that surprising, considering I was on the tennis team so in the late summer and fall I’d spend hours outdoors playing tennis almost every day (I had a good farmer’s tan going on back then, too).
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Rent the Runway: 20th High School Reunion
This past weekend was my much-anticipated 20th high school reunion in St. Louis. I’m still very close with many of my friends from high school and could not wait to catch up with everyone in person!
Let me say this: I was NOT popular in high school. I was very shy and pretty much only spoke to my own little group of nerdy friends. 😛 But I joined the class volunteer reunion planning committee and ended up becoming very involved, so there was an extra layer of anticipation and excitement because I was so wrapped up in the event planning details. My husband and I went to a cocktail reception and dinner at my school on Friday night, and then Saturday night was the main event for my class: a cocktail party at a beautiful venue in downtown St. Louis called Death in the Afternoon.
So of course I rented a dress from Rent the Runway for the occasion! In case you’re not familiar with Rent the Runway, you can read about how it works in the first review I wrote about the designer dress rental service. I probably looked at every damn dress on the website before settling on the Winding Road Dress from RTR house brand Slate & Willow.
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Friday Five
This week’s Friday Five will be brief because I’m currently in St. Louis for my 20th high school reunion weekend!
1. Spring Caribbean Friday Night Dinner: last week we went to our third FND at the Natural Gourmet Institute, and it was so delicious (and beautiful) yet again!
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#tbt to Ninth Grade
I totally did not plan this week’s Throwback Thursday to coincide with my 20th (YIKES) high school reunion this weekend—it’s a happy accident. This week’s #tbt is my ninth grade school photo, circa 1992.
Wow…I LOVED that shirt, though I can’t for the life of me remember where it was from. I must have thought I was so clever for matching the t-shirt underneath to the subtle coral-colored embroidery detail on the collared shirt. Ninth grade was the first year I started wearing contacts, but I still had my braces until the spring of that school year. It appears that I might actually be wearing a touch of lipstick; if I had to hazard a guess as to what it was I’d say it was from a Clinique free gift with purchase. And I definitely hadn’t discovered eyebrow tweezing just yet.
Onward…to my reunion weekend!
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A Green Beauty Look
Because I’ve recently acquired some organic makeup goodies, including Vapour Organic Beauty samples and Birchbox’s Limited Edition New Naturals box, I decided to challenge myself to do a green beauty look for date night with my husband this past Saturday. I did actually turn out to have just about everything I needed to create a full face using natural makeup!
Here are the products I used:
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Friday Five
1. Zoo Cat Real Mask: yep, it’s time for another edition of “my husband hates these so much!” (For the record, my Resting Sheet Mask FaceTM is what disturbs him more than the masks themselves.) This is my first foray into sheet masks that look like things other than straight up Hannibal Lecter, and because I’m a Certified Cat Lady I started with this cat mask. This one is from my Memebox sheet mask haul a couple months back and it cost me just $1.95 because of a sale the site was running. So creepy/fun!
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#tbt to Eighth Grade
This week’s Throwback Thursday? My eighth grade school photo from 1991.
I don’t look substantially different than I did in my seventh grade school pic, nor do my fashion choices appear to have changed much within the year. The biggest differences are that I got my braces and that I apparently gave up on trying to make my hair do anything special.
I don’t remember wearing so many plain ol’ t-shirts to school! My school (a Midwestern prep school) had a pretty stringent dress code, but I guess as long as t-shirts were free of logos or slogans they were fine. That gold chain necklace I’m wearing has my baby ring dangling from it—a tiny ring with an even tinier diamond chip in it that my parents got when I was born. I of course never wore it as a baby or even as a child, but I guess a baby ring was some kind of tradition back then. I still have it on a chain, too! I think I’ll pull the necklace out and wear it today, for nostalgia’s sake. 🙂
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Birchbox: Limited Edition New Naturals Box
Over the past year I’ve been making a concerted effort to clean up my beauty and skin care routine. While I’m not even close to phasing out all products containing potentially toxic ingredients, I’m now much more conscious about researching prior to buying. The Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep database is essential to my own research. I highly recommend you download their free Healthy Living app on your phone—it allows you to scan bar codes while shopping to find out how the products are rated.
When I learned that Birchbox had released a limited edition New Naturals box containing mostly full sized ingredient conscious products, I just had to have it in my hot little hands.
