Come Monday...weekly newsletter

Happy 2012 to all of you! I hope everyone has a wonderful year filled with good health, happiness, and lots of sparkly, colorful beauty products! I'm still recovering from all of the Holiday festivities and have spent this long weekend getting reorganized and recharged. Everything but the tree has been put away for another year, and hopefully I'll get that taken care of later today. Many thanks to all of you for spending time on my blog this past year, and I hope you'll join me again this year. My personal resolution with regard to beauty products is to read reviews before purchasing cosmetics items. I often get so caught up in the hype of a product or the pretty packaging, that I don't take the time to learn anything about it before I purchase it, so I'm going to try to be a more savvy shopper this year. Do you have any beauty resolutions?

One of my most recent disappointments was just yesterday with the launch of Beauty Army, a monthly subscription service similar to the Julep Maven or Birchbox service. They've been flodding my Twitter and Facebook with promo information, so I signed up several weeks ago. When they launched yesterday, their servers basically crashed under all of traffic trying to get in on their service. By the time I was finally able to get in to their site, they had already sold out of their initial 300 boxes or kits. This was actually a blessing to me, because I wasn't impressed by any of the products they were offering.


I am excited though about signing up for MyGlam, yet another monthly subscription beauty service. My first Glam Bog is set to be sent this month, and after viewing some of the items in their December Glam Bog, I have set my hopes high that I'll enjoy this service. My Glam was started by Michelle Phan, a YouTube Guru and Lancome make up artist. The service runs $10.00 a month, and each month you receive a make up bag filled with 4-5 deluxe samples from brands such as Urban Dacay, Tarte, and NYX. I do have the Julep Maven subscription also, and I'm going to try not to fall victim to any other subscription services this year. We shall see how that goes!

In nail news, I haven't heard much about Barielle after they were purchased by Fisk Industries about a year ago, and they seem to have fallen behind releasing collections. I just checked their web site to see if there was anything new available, and I saw their Gem Stone Earth Collection, which is new to me. Lancome is set to launch their Rogue in Love and Vernis in Love line mid-February, which contains 24 new nail polish shades. Scroll down in this post from BeautyAlmanac.com to view the shades. Lancome also has a beautiful collection coming out for Spring 2012 that contains 3 delicate polish shades, including the one that caught my eye called Green Almond. Scroll through this post from Beauty-Boks.com for a preview. For those of you looking all over the internet for swatches and information on Lynnderella's gorgeous polishes, one of the the blogs I follow has done a fantastic job of putting together a page that is All Lynnderella All The Time! Check out SparklyVernis.com here for a virtual Lynnderella encyclopedia.

A little off-topic, but a good reason to stay indoors and swatch for me! We live on Lake Michigan, and we always have long cold winters with lots and lots of snow. The older I get, the less I enjoy it, and it was extremely unusual for us to have a green Christmas this year. Not that I minded, because even though it's pretty and festive, I don't enjoy it at all anymore! We've had no measurable snow fall yet this season, but that will all change today. The red dot is my location and I am not looking forward to it.

I've started a little beauty topic discussion on my Facebook page for 2012 called the Sunday Beauty Cafe. Each Sunday I'll post a topic for discussion, and my hope is that we can learn a little more about beauty products and style from each other. Every Monday night, I'll randomly select someone who joined in and left a comment to receive a free beauty product(s). If you'd like to join us, please do. We'd love to have you! If you're not already a Facebook fan, just click the FB logo in the upper right corner.


That's all I've got for you this week! My daughter is still off the rest of the week for Winter Break, but I'm trying to get some swatching done today with my husband home, so I can post a little more frequently over the next several days. Last week I didn't do so well in that department, but she and I did have fun. Have a great week, and if you're in the same snow band we are, stay warm!