Thursday Thoughts

This week has just drug on, it felt like Thursday would never arrive. But arrive it has, so that means I'm linking up with Jen of Ramblings of a Suburban Mom for her weekly Thursday Thoughts link up.

I'm slowly but surely getting back on the blogging bandwagon, I almost got a whole week's worth of posts out. That an improvement, though I still have a lot of work ahead of me to get back to my regular schedule. I'm really wanting to start the New Year on a strong foot so expect things to keep improving here.

My big work event, our annual Fall Tournament went off without a hitch! My little guy won 3rd in breaking and 1st in sparring, I'm so proud of how hard he worked. And I'm so pleased with how the Tournament turned out. I have the best co-workers and co-planners on Earth, which made the process 10x easier. But we're done planning stuff until after Christmas, so I can just focus on regular work stuff and my own projects.

I'm still doing fun makeup looks and special effects, but some of this stuff is hard on your skin. Full on zombie makeup several days in a row will break you out something fierce yo. I should do a post on how I combat a major breakout this month, I have a few days left with nothing planned. But I really need to get a camera set up going so I can film these and share them, they're way to involved for just pictures.

I'll do a full Project Pan post at the end of the month, but I'm super impressed with my progress. I've hit pan or finished all powder products, I have a lipstick almost finished, and come cream/wax products almost finished as well. Will I finish every single item by the end of December? Not a chance, but I'll get pretty dang close I think. And in the end I used up some products I needed to finish and got to stretch my makeup skills a bit, so a win in the end.

Health wise I'm almost done with the Lupron, just one more injection in December. I may throw myself a party to celebrate surviving 6 months of that crap. I would NEVER recommend it, unless I super don't like you. And even then I'd feel like a jerk. Seriously, the stuff is hell in a shot. I meet my new Doctor in December too, hoping I like this one more than the person I got stuck with after my fabulous Doctor quit. My regular Doctor is fantastic but my reproductive system issues are well outside of his scope of expertise so I really need to find a specialist I like, so fingers crossed.

Thursday Thoughts

Hello and welcome to another Thursday Thoughts! I know I've been really sporadic with my blogging lately and I owe everybody an apology. Hopefully things will go a bit smoother on my end and we can get back to daily posts. So let's link up with Jen of Ramblings of a Suburban Mom for her weekly Thursday Thoughts!

Wow, can you believe its already November? Thanksgiving is coming up, which means lots of food and getting together with the family. What's your favorite Thanksgiving goodie? I love pumpkin pie, and this year I'm making a chai spiced pumpkin pie with a maple infused whip cream. Or at least that's the plan. Giving it a test run in the next day or two.

I have made awesome progress on my project pan. I've hit pan on all the eyeshadows and actually finished one up completely. I have less than a week left on the highlighter shade I've been using and the eyebrow wax will be done by the end of the month for sure. I can't believe how much I've actually managed to use up, especially with how many eyeshadows I had going on. Pretty sure I'll have finished another one by the end of the month too.

If you follow me on Instagram you've probably seen all the different makeup and special effects looks I did during the month of October. But did you know I actually got to model for an advertisement? That's me in the poster! As you can see, I was super excited to get my picture taken next to my professional photo. Today Downtown Hillsboro, tomorrow Paris!

Health wise I'm doing better in some regards and worst in others. I've got some tests coming up soon so I'll talk more about what's going on after all of that is done. But I'm almost done with the Lupron, just an injection tomorrow and then another next month. I can say for sure that while it has helped I would never in a million years do it again. I may do a follow up post once I'm completely done and talk about what a nightmare this has all been.

Thursday Thoughts

Today marks the first day of October, and is also the first Thursday of the month. As per my usual I am linking up with Jen of Ramblings of a Suburban Mom for her weekly Thursday Thoughts. Let's jump right in.

You may have noticed my posting schedule has been...lacking lately. Week two after my injections is always the worst and I'm really feeling terrible. I've got a Doctor appointment both today and tomorrow (bring the count up to 6 in the last 3 weeks for those keeping score), hoping everything will check out ok and I'm not developing worsening side effects to the chemo.

Speaking of side effects, after losing a significant amount of hair I finally just shaved it all off (well down to 1/8th of an inch). You can really see how thin my hair had gotten, especially on the sides. I'm bouncing between ok and not ok with the new look, but right now a bald head is the least of my concerns. But this means I won't really be reviewing hair products for a while I suppose.

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, so I think I'll do a few face painting tutorials for the blog this month in addition to the spooky nail art I usually do. I also might have promised some of my students that I'd wear costumes at least once a week to work. And bring candy the week of Halloween. Are there any face looks you'd like me to tackle?

My Project Pan is going very well this time. I finished ALL of the items in the skincare basket, so I've picked a new set out to work on, but I'll talk about that later. Of the picture above I've made significant progress on the eyebrow kit, tossed the bronzer (was REALLY awful), finished the two jars of loose shadow, made decent progress on the revealed quad, and hit pan in the other two shadows. The primer in the jar is getting closer to being finished, maybe mid November? The cream eyeliner is being tossed due to old age, and I've made very little progress on the cream highlighter.

Going from left to right, I finished the eyebrow pencil, ok progress on the red lip crayon, and I'm tossing the ELF concealer since it appears to be going bad. No real progress on the other lipsticks minus the lollibalm, which I did finish. I'm tossing the mascara, almost done with it and it won't survive the rainy season. I did finish the little CC Cream. So not as great of progress in this group, but I'm really going to focus on using up the lippies this month.

Thursday Thoughts

I'm a couple hours late on this week's Thursday Thoughts thanks to a rough night turning into a rough morning. But better late than never I guess. So as per my usual I'm linking up with Jen of Ramblings of a Suburban Mom for her weekly Thursday Thoughts Link Up.

So someone broke into my car last night, smashed the driver's side window to steal my $10 phone charger. Seriously, that's the only thing missing from the car. My theory is my husband (who leaves for work at 3 AM) scared them off before they could steal the whole car. But $165 later we have a non-broken window and no Birthday vacation for my husband. Not a great start to the day for sure.

My big Project Pan has been going really well so far. All but 3 things from the skin and hair care basket is done and I've finished a few items out of the makeup box. I may actually get everything done, which is pretty exciting! I'll do a post at the end of each month detailing my progress and how I'm feeling about stuff, but I know some of you were curious as to how it was going so far. Who else is doing a Project Pan right now? Feel free to put a link in my comments about it so we can check it out and cheer you on.

As you can see I've experienced some significant hair loss so far from the Lupron, to the point where I can't really hide it anymore. I take my next dose next week, so I'll probably shave my head sometime that weekend. No point in keeping half a head of hair. I have pretty mixed feeling about the great shave, on one hand I'll be glad to be done with the hair loss for a bit, but on the other hand my hair means a lot to me and I've been growing it out for 4 years now. The tips go down to my butt, so there's a lot of length going on right now.

On a blog related note, I'm doing some changes to how the actual site looks and functions in an attempt to make everything run smoother and boost my readership. One change you may have noticed already was a pop up box asking for your email. I'd like to start doing a monthly newsletter and I haven't been happy with the post subscription service I was using before. So I'm trying new things and hopefully it will all work out the way I have planned. If you stumble across something that doesn't work or you REALLY hate it, please let me know.

Thursday Thoughts

It's Thursday! I came home and crashed hard last night so I hope you'll excuse the slightly later than usual Thursday blog post. And as per my usual I am linking up with Jen of Ramblings of a Suburban Mom for her weekly Thursday Thoughts Link Up.

First, I know this is the first post this week. I'm not feeling well combined with an extra busy week at work and a whole bunch of bad stuff happening at once has left me burned out and I needed a break from something. Unfortunately I can't take any time of from work right now and obviously I can't a vacation from being a mom and being sick so this blog was the only thing I could step away from. Hopefully things will get back on track and I'll get back up to the page view count I use to have, but I'm going to just call August a wash and make a commitment to September being 10x better. Speaking of my health, I get my next injection tomorrow, which is a bit scary. I've had the worst headache all week which I think is because I'm at the end of my last injection. A little worried about the side effects I've experienced getting worst, but I'll slug through it I guess.

I'm a nail polish addict, I can totally admit to that and I'm ok with it. My bank account may not like it, but I'm ok with it. I sorted my polish into a new storage system the other day and found these three polishes that were so old they had separated and gotten chunky. If I had to guess I'd say those are almost ten years old. Why is makeup and nail polish so hard to throw away? Like, these are obviously bad and I hadn't used them in forever, so why didn't I toss them last time I sorted through my collection? I even did a post on the expiration dates of makeup, and yet I know I have eyeshadow that's way past my recommended toss date. Anybody have a theory?

Speaking of finishing up and throwing makeup away, I'm making pretty decent progress on this month's project pan. I finished the Maybelline BB cream, the cc cream I replaced it with (deluxe sample so don't be to impressed), and I've made some really good progress on that giant ELF palette. It's been crazy hot here lately so I haven't been wearing a ton of makeup, so the progress I've made is great. I don't think I'll finish either of the lipsticks this month or actually use up a full eyeshadow, but the eye brow pencil has lots of use on it and will be tossed at the end of the month. The Eyeko eye liner is still going strong, I'm super impressed. I figured a liquid liner would be dead by now, but nope, still awesome.

I still have my CEW mass appeal and regular Birchbox to review, those will go up tomorrow and Saturday for sure. I should also be getting some goodies in the mail soon so stay posted for those on my Instagram account. And we will be getting back into Mani Mondays and maybe a Tutorial Tuesday (man I miss those) next week as well.

Thursday Thoughts

Another Thursday is upon us! This week has been a whirlwind of emotions and things so I'm just going to dive right in. I'm linking up with Jen of Ramblings of a Suburban Mom for her weekly Thursday Thoughts.

I know I've mentioned that I've been experiencing some health issues and that they've been impacting my ability to put out a new blog post. Finally after a few months of back and forth to my Doctors, testings, and dealing with my insurance company I have been approved to start a form of chemotherapy to treat my stage 4 endometriosis. For those not familiar with endo, basically the inside of my uterus is growing everywhere in my pelvic cavity. I have been in crippling pain for a while now and it finally reached the point where I either tried the Lupron or end up in the hospital. I should be starting it sometime next week, just depending on how slow the pharmacy is to send the stuff to my Doctor. Fingers crossed in two months I will start feeling better and be able to actually function without being heavily medicated. Hopefully I'll be able to put up a blog post every day, but if there are missed days this is why. All I ask is that you please have patience with me while I go through this difficult period.

If you follow me on Instagram you already know this, but I finally got brave and tried that chemical peel I received in my Birchbox the other month. I want to know why nobody told me how gross and full of dead skin my face was. The amount of nasty stuff I scrubbed off, you guys would not believe it. Nasty. Once all the dead me goo was washed off I was left with the nicest looking, softest skin ever. I am seriously impressed with the Real Chemistry peel and YAY my face didn't melt off. So two thumbs up!

You know how most people have a bucket list of things they want to do or places they want to visit? Well I have a bucket list of weird food I want to eat. I finally got to cross frog legs off that list, and let me tell you they were tasty! Like a mix between cod and chicken in both flavor and texture. They were crispy fried with a super good sauce drizzled on them. Now to just find some place local that sells snails. What's the weirdest thing you've ever eaten?

Yeah, my no buy lasted like a week. I got some extra cash and promptly headed to Ulta for some goodies. The nail polishes were $2 a piece and all the NYX products were buy one get one half off so all total this came to under $20 once I used my coupon. The color correcting palette review should be going up sometime this weekend, with the rest being reviewed probably in August once I play with them some more. My will is weak, I couldn't say no.

A Road Trip and a Funeral

Wow, I am really really terrible at getting a whole week's worth of posts queued up. As I mentioned earlier in the week my husband's Grandmother died so we had to go out of state for a few days for the memorial service and whatnot. After a very long trip I am just drained, so instead of writing something witty about blush I'll just tell you guys about our trip.

From where we live to where we were staying was about an 8 hour drive once you factored in food and bathroom breaks. If you've never driven 8 hours with a 4 year old let me tell you it can suck. Especially when you're in a hurry and can't really stop anywhere. Luckily part of our trip followed the Columbia River (in between Oregon and Washington), so it was a gorgeous drive for about 2 hours.

And then the drive became hot, dry, and full of nothing but beige hills and canyons. This went on for about 4 hours. 4 very loooong hours. Eastern Oregon and Washington are not the most exciting areas to drive through, sorry.

We finally made it to Idaho (where we were staying) and I marveled at my packing skills. Seriously guys, if you travel little bags for your items are the best. The pink rectangle is a jewelry organizer, the red/black bag held all shower/hair items, and the peach flower bag was makeup and face stuff. Made it so much easier to find exactly what I was looking for. Bags, they're the best. Especially when packed in my awesome vintage suitcase that I finally got to use. Pro tip, most vintage luggage is heavier than you think, so pack light. No barbells.

The memorial service was the next day, and I'm honestly not going to talk about that here on my blog. It was a deeply personal, private event and I'm just not comfortable talking about it here. That day was spent pretty much with my husband's family, we didn't do any personal (for us) stuff.

On Friday we took our son into Coeur d'Alene Idaho to explore around. If you ever get the chance to I really recommend it. Not only is it a beautiful town around a beautiful lake but there are lots of fun things to do, like the world's longest floating boardwalk. Which if you get seasick on you might want to skip. Or get sick into the lake....again. You'd think I'd learn?

Seriously though, how pretty is that? I'd love to go back and actually rent a boat (and some Dramamine) for an hour or two and just goof around at the lake the whole day. You can even take a trip around the lake in a pontoon, which is that airplane that lands in water for those who don't know.

We did a little bit of window shopping in the fancy mall there and I found the coolest thing ever, a cotton candy vending machine! I wish I had cash on me so I could have tried it out, but alas my cash gets spent on eyeshadow instead. Have you guys ever seem something like this before? Was the cotton candy good?

And finally on Saturday we packed up, said goodbye to everybody, and started wandering home. We stopped here and there so the trip back home was much more enjoyable than the drive up, we even found a fun indoors farmers market to stop at and get some fun jam. I bought some prickly pear jam and 2 jars of cherry preserves there, can't wait to crack them open and enjoy them. If we didn't have a 6 hour drive I would have bought a bunch of Washington cherries, but they would never have survived the drive home in the heat.

I wish the trip out there had been under better circumstances but it was a good trip over all. I love getting to see where my husband grew up and here the family tell stories, and getting to make new memories with our son there really is the best feeling in the world. But I'm exhausted and ready to sleep for 12 hours straight so I will see you guys on Monday with a brand new manicure.

Sometimes the Best Manicure is No Manicure

Monday's are normally my day for a fun and bright manicure, but sometimes they just aren't appropriate at all. I will be leaving this week for an out of state funeral so my usual finger flair is not going to cut it at all. Times like this are when I like to give my nails a vacation and focus on other things like helping my family get through this difficult time.

We will be gone Wednesday through Saturday I believe, so I'll have my posts all queued up but I won't be available to answer comments or respond to emails till Sunday night. July is shaping up to be a difficult month so I ask for your patience while we deal with things on a personal and health level. Hopefully this blog won't suffer to much, but I know there will be missed posts for sure. So this is my "I'm sorry" in advanced.

Thursday Thoughts

It's July everybody! This will be probably the hottest month of the summer in my neck of the woods, and is probably going to be a crazy busy month as well. And since today is Thursday you know that means I'm joining Jen of Ramblings of a Suburban Mom for her weekly Thursday Thoughts link up.

My posting schedule has been a mess lately, and I'm sorry about that. Between the heat, a busy work schedule, and some personal stuff I've just been unmotivated to blog. Which is silly because I love doing this and can't believe I didn't start doing this sooner. I'll sit down tomorrow and queue up a bunch of posts to use on days I'm to sick/busy/melting to write, and hopefully there won't be anymore gaps.

It has been so hot and humid here lately that I actually created a skincare summer travel kit to keep in my bag. I've had it for a few days and I've already used it a ton, so I highly recommend you create one of your own. I basically included different SPF products, lotion and skin balms, face refreshing spray, deodorant, and some stuff to combat acne and oily skin thanks to the humidity. Skin care lines should make pre-made little kits like this, these are seriously a lifesaver right now.

One perk of being a beauty blogger (besides getting sent goodies like the above) is my makeup skills have improves seven fold. So much so that now friends are constantly saying I should do their makeup. In fact I've been told that so often I'm going to start (slowly) building a professional makeup kit and doing makeup as a side job. I'm really excited for this new opportunity and what it means, and some extra income won't hurt obviously. For right now I'll be practicing and building my portfolio on friends and probably after Christmas I'll start doing paying gigs.

I realized the other day that I'm almost done with my face powder, which is one of those things I've never finished before in the past. In the last year I've used up so much makeup, its kind of crazy. But at least I'm using things up instead of them spoiling. And used up makeup means I get to go to Ulta and buy new stuff! NYX is 40% right now (till Saturday) so I'm getting the contour palette I've been going back and forth on for months. It works out to like $14 with the sale and my coupon so I'm comfortable pulling the trigger and getting it. And worst comes to worst I'll return it and get something else. Love when things you want are on sale, did you get anything super awesome this month?

Thursday Thoughts

Last Thursday of the month, whoohoo! End of the months are always my favorite because that means pay day is right around the corner, as well as Birchbox spoilers. But mainly pay day. As per my usual I'm joining Jen of Ramblings of a Suburban Mom for her weekly Thursday Thoughts link up!

Firstly, I have something exciting planned for this Sunday so make sure you pop on over if you aren't a regular reader. Since I moved Tutorial Tuesdays over to my YouTube channel (working on it I promise) I've been working on a new weekly feature to replace it and I've decided to do Small Business Sundays. I'd like to use my blog to help promote woman owned small businesses in the beauty, makeup, and fashion industry. I've got my first one all ready to go up this Sunday and my second one is in the process of working out the details. I'm very excited for this project and I hope you guys are too.

Speaking of my blog, I made some nifty new business cards (and stickers) for it! I've actually been fiddling with these for months and months, so to have them printed and in my hand is a big deal for me. Now to finally decide on a logo and maybe make some spiffy stuff. Would anybody be interested in Best Beauty for my Buck branded stuff?

My giant Birchbox haul arrived on Friday, can you believe I got all of this stuff for just under $15?!?! I'll have reviews of everything up sometime in the next week or so, still testing and playing with things. I love that Birchbox included another set of Mighty Tea as a bonus, they are seriously delicious but a bit expensive for my budget.

Thursday Thoughts

Why hello Thursday, so good to see you. Well, maybe not this week but typically I'm happy to see Thursday. Anywho, you should know the drill by now. Time for my link up with Jen of Ramblings of a Suburban Mom for her weekly Thursday Thoughts Link Up.

So, did you guys like the nice 4 day gap in posts? Basically I'm an idiot and forgot to actually queue up the posts I wrote so they'd publish while I was away on vacation. And when I tried to correct the problem Tuesday night so there'd at least be a post for Wednesday I couldn't get Blogger to work. This is not my week apparently. So I've got a bit of shuffling around of things to go to fix the nice mess I made.

Speaking of my vacation, that was well needed. Several days relaxing on the beach with my family, exactly what the doctor ordered. If you follow me on Instragram you got a behind the scenes peek into my personal life, which I think is a nice change of pace sometimes. For those wondering what's up with the whales in the picture above, those are almost life sized whale kites we saw at the beach. They were too cool not to share with people, when the wind blew they "swam".  I now want one, though I have no idea where I would store a whale sized kite. Interesting fact, I've never ever flown a kite. Is that weird?

Onto beauty stuff. Sometimes my local Dollar Store has some amazing finds and last week I found Blender dupes! For a buck I think they are pretty good, though they for sure have to be used wet. I'm going to go back at some point soon and buy up a whole bunch of them. Anybody else have an amazing Dollar Store find they'd like to share?

My Birchbox arrived right before we headed out, I feel like this was really fast shipping for once. Expect the review to be up sometime this weekend. I also placed an order Friday morning and it had already shipped out by that night. I'm hoping Birchbox has stepped up it's shipping game and this is a permanent change and not just really good luck. I hate waiting a week and a half for something to ship to me. I could literally drive across the country, pick it up, and head home in less time than that. My Birchbox order should be here Friday according to tracking, can't wait to share with you guys what I treated myself to!

The picture is just because I looked extra pretty the other day for work, so I thought I'd share. And because it remind me that I have some exciting news! I'll be doing a collaboration of sorts with Adore Me, a subscription based lingerie company. I'll share more details later but for right now know that I'm crazy excited about it and can't wait to get started on it.

And now for some maybe sad news related to this blog. I'm discontinuing my Tutorial Tuesday posts for the time being. I really want to expand over to YouTube and I'd like to do these tutorials there instead. I know many of you love my tutorials so I'm hoping once I get all my ducks in a row and the channel up you will pop over and see what I'm posting. This may change depending on how it works out, but at least for the rest of May there will be just a regular blog post on Tuesdays. If you have super strong feelings on this please let me know down below in the comments.

This is a Place Holder

Hello, I actually have the Mani Monday post partially done and ready to go but I'm having some major issues with my ear so instead of finishing writing it I'm going to bed then the Doctor's office first thing in the morning. The actual Mani Monday post will be up sometime later today, I promise. But right now I just need to lay down. Sorry guys.

Thursday Thoughts

It's Thursday and I'm still alive (more on that in a minute), so as per my usual I'm linking up with Jen of Ramblings of a Suburban Mom for her weekly Thursday Thoughts link up. Let's get started before I pass back out (only slightly joking).

In case you aren't following me on Facebook (which I highly suggest doing), let me catch you up on why there's been no blog update for two weeks. The Friday after my last post I woke up crazy sick with a sinus infection. Being a responsible adult I immediately ignored it and went about my business. And by business I mean spent the next 3 days so sick I couldn't even get out of bed. By time Tuesday rolled around I had developed a horrible cough and severe ear pain, so I finally made a Wednesday appointment to see my doctor. When the doctor yells "oh my god" when they look in your ear you know you have a horrific ear infection. By that point I was starting to lose my hearing and generally felt like I was dying. Thursday was another so sick I couldn't get out of bed day. By Friday I had lost 90% of my hearing out of both ears and almost half of my face was numb, which meant I spent the day at Urgent Care. I'm currently on 3 different antibiotics and I was on Prednisone for a bit, and as of when I wrote this post I have about half of my hearing. I don't think I need to say how hard these two weeks have, and the waiting game to see if all of my hearing will come back is taking a toll on me. I will be blogging again, so there shouldn't be any more gaps, but they may not be the longest or nicely edited posts ever for a bit. Thank you for your understanding and patience as I wrestle with this.

Now onto less depressing things, like free lipstick! I finally went to my local Sephora and picked up my free birthday gift, which is two Nars lip crayons (one red one pink). I'll do a full review on this and the eyeliner gift from Ulta, but I have to say I'm pretty disappointed in this years birthday freebies. A lot of places switched to "free with purchase" gifts this year, which was a bummer.

I've been playing around with some face painting lately, which has been super fun. This was a cracked face design I did a bit ago. These are super fun to do and I'm wondering if anybody would be interested in tutorials on different looks? They'd have to be blog posts, my YouTube plans are on hold till my hearing is fully returned.

Right before I got sick I had one of the worst things that can happen to a makeup collector happen. I dropped a palette and it shattered. All of that pan minus one is from the palette dropping. Luckily this is a fairly cheap palette, I can't imagine how horrible it would be to drop one of the more expensive palettes out there like the Urban Decay Naked set. What's the worst broken makeup you've ever experienced?

In blog related news, sometime while I was out sick the blog hit 10,000 page views!! I can't even begin to express how grateful I am for every single one of you who read this little blog. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Once I'm better I'll have to plan some sort of event to celebrate.

Project Pan 2015 Update

Greetings and salutations! I thought I'd take a moment to update you guys on my Project Pan and expand on it a little bit, maybe talk about how I use items up. Basically I'm going to talk about my makeup habits for a bit because why not? First a quick refresher if you don't want to read the whole post. I picked 11 items at the start of the year that I wanted to finish up by the first day of Summer. I named this my Project Pan Spring 2015 and declared if I finished everything I'd treat myself to the original Revealed palette.

This is what I originally started with

This is what I currently have left of my Project pan. I've actually made really good progress I think, I've finished 4 items so far and am pretty close to finishing 2 more. I won't talk about the items I've already finished, I did that in various empties posts, so I'll just talk about what's left, how I've been using it, and how I plan to finish it up.

I admittedly haven't been using this eyeshadow as much as I planned to, which is why there isn't a ton more pan showing. I've made decent progress, don't get me wrong, but I thought for sure I'd finish this color up pretty quickly. I like to use this shadow when I'm doing a really dramatic winged eyeliner or a soft neutral eye, but I imagine I could probably use it to highlight as well. I'll try and use it more in April, at least twice a week until May is my commitment to finishing it up.

This is the item that surprised me the most with my progress. I hadn't used very much at all when I decided to pan it, so I figured I'd never finish it by Summer. As you can see I'm slightly over halfway done with it now, which is fast progress for a lip balm. I try and use it every morning and night, so that's been helping quite a bit. I may use it on my cuticles a bit, they need some TLC and that'll help use this up faster. I'm not pretty sure I'll be done with this by Summer.

This is the item I thought I'd have done and now think I won't finish. I had so much pan showing on this blush a few weeks ago that I repressed it. And now I realize I really didn't have as much done as I had thought. The powder goes halfway up the pan, so it will be a while before I hit pan again let alone finish it. I'll keep using it and hopefully I'll make more progress than I think on it. I currently use it almost everyday, so there is still hope of finishing it. Maybe.

Why do pencil liners take so long to use up? I swear this pencil will take me 50 years to use up. I can use it all week and only have to sharpen it once. This is now just shorter than my pinkie, so I've used maybe an inch total. That is some slooooow progress for how much I use it. I may try it as an eyebrow pencil just to get some double duty out of it and wear it down quicker. 

I was so proud of my progress on this lipstick until I compared it to my starting picture. I have used up some, and it was good progress, just not nearly as good as I thought it was. I'm pretty sick of this lipstick so I've only used it once all month, but I'll pick it back up in April. I want to try it as a dewy blush one day just to see how it would look, I've used other lipsticks as blush before. If it looks ok I'll have it pull double duty twice a week for all of April and that should get it down quite a bit. I can't wait till this is done and I can toss it, soooooo sick of this color.

This eyeshadow just keeps trucking along, I'm impressed. I use it in my crease almost everyday it seems and yet there it is, still not finished. I even use it on my whole lid once a week. Impressive. I really want this to be done by the end of April so I'm going to try contouring my nose with it. The shade is a bit darker than I normally use but I think if I blend it well it won't look terrible. Famous last words right? Stay tuned for a hilarious Instagram picture when I actually attempt it.

Another item I've had really good progress on, the paper shows how much I have left (about an inch). I've used up half of what was left when I started this Project Pan, so really good progress. I'm trying to finish this one by the end of April as well, but it will probably take till mid-May in reality. The color is a copper shade, so not something that goes with every look out there. Wish I could think of a way to use it more.

So that's my progress so far, not to shabby huh? I need a new prize though, I already bought the Revealed palette. I'm thinking that Jouer set I really want, or the Smashbox Full Exposure palette. I'm open to suggestions, what should be my carrot? If you are currently doing a Project Pan how is your progress going?