As a VIB member at Sephora, the annual 20% off VIB sale was open to me on Friday, November 10, and I’ve since placed two orders, even though I was trying to limit myself to just the first. This always happens, and I blame November being my birthday month so usually I give myself a little more license to splurge.
(Look at that fine print! I never realized this but we “clients” are limited to 1 Dyson item and 5 Pat McGrath eyeshadow palettes per transaction; Canadians are also limited to 3 Fresh, Yves Saint Laurent, and Dior items per transaction.)
Of course, for the last couple of months, I’ve been anticipating this sale. I’ve been chucking things in and out of my shopping cart (it helps that I don’t bother to consider brands I can get at Shoppers Drug Mart / beautyBOUTIQUE, like Urban Decay, Dior, Estée Lauder, Smashbox, and Clarins).
Here’s the list of stuff I hauled, the freebies, and the stuff I wanted to haul but didn’t!
Once again, I bought more lipstick (granted, they were all marked down before the 20% discount) even though I need ’em like I need a hole in the head.
Stuff I Hauled
Too Faced Sweet Peach Eyeshadow Palette [C$59]I’ve loved the Too Faced Semi-Sweet Chocolate Bar Eyeshadow Palette that I got during last November’s VIB sale! It was a no-brainer to get the Sweet Peach palette this year.
Nails Inc. Sparkle Like a Unicorn Set: Illuminating Sheet Mask, Mini Nail Polishes (2 × 5 mL) in Unicorn Vibes & Unicorn Dot Com, Lip Trippin’ Iridescent Strobe Lipstick in Unicorn Tribe [C$21]I already picked up the previous Sparkle Like a Unicorn set, so obviously I had to get this one, too. It comes with a lipstick and a sheet mask! I’ve never tried any non-nail polish things from Nails Inc., so this will be interesting.
I doubt anyone will recall, but I’ve mentioned on my blog that since I moved over five years ago, I misplaced what I thought was a few eyeshadow palettes, including my old, custom MAC eyeshadow palette with Club, Cranberry, Trax, and Vex. I also knew a few other palettes from Stila (my less-used ones), mark. by Avon, and some cheapies were missing, but the MAC palette was the one I wanted most.
As time went by, I lost hope of finding them, and thought that perhaps they went missing during the move. I even gave up and finally repurchased those four MAC eyeshadows last year (helps that MAC dropped the price of refill pans, so that it was cheaper to buy them now than when I did around ten years ago!).
Weeeeell. Over the weekend, I threw myself into a frenzy cleaning out the kids’ bedroom. Now, we actually use this bedroom as a guest/storage room, since we still have both kids sleeping with us (in separate cribs) in our master bedroom. We all love it this way for now!
Anyway, guests are coming soon for the winter, so I need to get that guest bedroom organized. I decided to do a top-to-bottom overhaul instead of the half-assery I usually do, and ended up donating about half of my old shoes to charity, etc. (After having two kids, most of my old shoes no longer fit my ever-so-slightly wider feet, not to mention I have more weight to lose and I think my feet are currently fatter than they used to be. My right foot has always been larger than my left, and while my left still fits into many of these pairs, the right simply cannot.) So long, my Elizabeth & James heels, comfy Converse, and leopard print flats! Sniff. I am saving some of the niftier pairs for Olive, though. Heh. She’ll have awesome/horrible vintage shoes by the time she’s twelve.
I never did get around to posting my beautyBOUTIQUE hauls (gotta love those Shoppers Drug Mart coupons and Optimum Points events!), so I’m combining five of them into one post.
Perhaps these will provide some inspiration for Mother’s Day gifts? Speaking of which, today was a special day for me because I received my first ever Mother’s Day gift from our little peanut!
Behold (the peanut clip art is covering his name):
I am totally wearing that necklace on Sunday.
Anyway, here’s my fairly reasonable damage! All prices are in CA$.
Orders 1–2
First up, I received two $10 off coupons for beautyBOUTIQUE.ca when I was buying stuff at Shoppers Drug Mart. Cool. Of course, I had to use them on two orders:
eBates Canada (referral link) is running a spring sale in which a whole lotta stores get a whopping 15% cash back. This deal is for today (May 10, 2017) only.
The beauty-related sites are:
Ahava
Aveda
Barneys New York
Biotherm
The Body Shop
Carol’s Daughter
Clarisonic
Forever 21
Kiehl’s
Lancôme
Macy’s
Murad
philosophy
Shopbop
Urban Decay
Yves Rocher
Yves Saint Laurent Beauté
Other fun sites:
Alex and Ani
Baublebar
Club Monaco
Cole Haan
Columbia Sportswear
eBags
Figleaves
Joe Fresh (they don’t have their makeup online, AFAIK)
I have a lot of points accumulated, and decided I don’t want to hang on to too many at once (should Loblaw decide to change the Optimum Points system). I redeemed twice for $200! Whee! Optimum Points get racked up a lot faster if you load the personalized coupons every week.
Here’s my haul. I was good and didn’t get any lipstick! But I did get nail polish (of course), eyeshadow, lipgloss (doesn’t count!), and foundation. I only had to pay the excess beyond $200 ($1 on the first order, $2 on the second!) and 13% HST (sales tax) on the full amounts—and of course I redeemed 2 x 95k Optimum Points. I also received a bonus 10k points for spending $100 on Clinique skincare. I think it’s nice that they let you get the bonuses even when you’re just redeeming points and not “really” spending money.
For Throwback Thursday today, I have quite an oldie! Urban Decay got their start with unusual shades of eyeshadow, lipstick, and nail polish. This particular polish is from their second revamp (c. early 2000s, maybe?) of their nail polish line, and it was simply called Nail Enamel, like the original.
The bottle was pretty similar to the first style, except the cap was changed to look a little less industrial and a little more luxe.
Urban Decay nail polish history: Curfew, Sin, Gash
I was glad for the change, even though the new polishes contained 50% less product, because the original bottle caps were plain awful. They were awkwardly small to hold while polishing, and they never screwed on tightly enough so all of my original polishes dried out long ago (as you can see with my bottle of Curfew, above).
(Note how the bottles look progressively bigger, but the volume actually decreases! Ah, marketing.)
The new bottle was discontinued some time ago, though Urban Decay have occasionally reintroduced nail polish here and there as special editions. More recently, they’ve introduced more polish in nude (“Naked”) shades to go with their immensely popular Naked eyeshadow palettes, and they reissued some of their original colors, too. Despite the stupidly high Canadian price (C$18, the hell?!) I had to pick up Gash when UD ran a sale, since it’s one of my favorite red shimmers from back in the day! My original bottle, of course, dried out.
Sin is a pretty nude beige with a lot of silvery shimmer. Definitely one of the more conservative Urban Decay shades! It’s also one of UD’s most popular, as it still exists in eyeshadow form.
Time for annual Sephora haulage! It’s hard to pass up 20% off, even when I haven’t been shopping much at Sephora all year.
Ugh, you know it’s winter when everyone starts getting sick! My husband started feeling a little under the weather yesterday, and this morning poor Peanut started feeling badly, too. A couple of barf-ups later, he’s much better—I have a sinking feeling it’s a norovirus-kind of bug. We all got hit with it around December last year, and I hate it. I remember hugging the toilet half the night, yet not actually barfing. I hope I don’t come down with it again (if I do, it’ll probably be tonight! Joy!) and especially that our little infant Olive doesn’t get affected.
Anyway, on to the fun stuff. (Cleaning up barf? Not fun.) I posted my first order here; also, just before the sale ended, I snuck in one extra order! Here are all the goodies from both orders:
Deborah Lippmann Her Majesty Gel Lab Pro Set (8 color polishes + Hard Rock base & top coat)
Kat Von D Lock-It Setting Powder in Translucent
Kevyn Aucoin The Expert Lip Color in Bloodroses Noir
Make Up For Ever Artist Rouge Lipstick in C406
Marc Jacobs Enamored Hi-Shine Lacquer in Sally
Nails Inc. Superfood Nail Fuel Collection (4 color polishes + NailKale Superfood Base Coat)
NARS Audacious Lipstick in Audrey
Too Faced Semi Sweet Chocolate Bar Eyeshadow Palette
Urban Decay Pro Essential Brush Stash
Freebies:
Fresh Soy Face Cleanser & Rose Face Mask (Sephora Birthday 2016 deluxe samples)
Versace Bright Crystal EDT (sample) — they didn’t send this! 😦
Versace Eros Pour Femme EDP (sample)
And with this haul, I am VIB for 2017, as well.
Haulage Photos
Deborah Lippmann Her Majesty Gel Lab Pro Set: Emperor’s New Clothes, Ever After, King of the Road, Blue Blood, Crown Velvet, If I Ruled the World, Hard Rock Nail Strengthening Base & Top Coat, Reign of Love, Queen of the Night (all Deluxe Sizes).
I actually still have a couple Deborah Lippmann sets to go through from previous years (yes, not one but two). I promise to go through them SOON! Aaaack. Also, super excited to try the new Gel Lab Pro line in this set.
