- Posts for Makeup Monday category
September Glam Bag | Our Prairie Nes
My September Ipsy Glam Bag

I love receiving my Ipsy Glam Bag every month. It’s kind of addictive, especially when you’re frugal and want to enjoy little luxuries. 😉 Every Glam Bag comes with items that are supposed to work best for your skin or complexion. They can be hit or miss, but I don’t mind. I’ve found products I love enough to buy and products I’ve actually thrown away because they were too far off the mark for me. Here’s a look at what came in my September Glam Bag.

THE CRÈME SHOP 2-in-1 Facial Foam Cleanser

I wanted to like this cleanser, because foam generally works well for cleaning my oily skin. Unfortunately, this product left a filmy residue. Not a product for me, or people with oily skin in general, but maybe for someone else!

ELIZABETH MOTT Face Primer

This product works perfectly to prepare, prime, and smooth skin for make-up. I smoothed it on, waited a few moments, and then on went the makeup. It lasted throughout an event I attended and kept my skin surprisingly matte, which I LOVE. Especially considering I was walking around in 90-degree heat and have oily skin, keeping it from going shiny is a feat few other products have achieved. This product is a keeper.

LXMI CrĂ©me Du Nil

Looks, feels, and smells like your grandmother’s moisturizer. This stuff is far too rich for oily skin like mine. I really wanted to like it, but it’s thick and heavy. Just ‘too much moisturizer’ for what I need, but probably better for someone with skin that needs this kind of hydration.

KATHERINE COSMETICS Eyeshadow in Espresso

Love, love, love this shade! It’s the perfect brown – a medium brown that you can blend to be a bit more sheer or make darker. Gives a nice, subtle crease shadow as well as color along the lid. Works for both day or night. Nice if you want the smokey eye look, but don’t like to use gray or go too dark.

LUXIE BEAUTY Wonder Woman Detail Tapered Blender 140

What a fabulous brush. It’s perfect for blending concealer under the eyes. The bristles are soft, yet firm thanks to the tapered texture. Also great for blending in other smaller areas.

September Glam Bag | Our Prairie Nest

*Note: if you click the links to Ipsy, I don’t get paid or anything like that (how cool would that be, though?). But I do receive points for referring people who sign up to get a Glam Bag, and those points translate into free products here and there.

Confetti Cake Batter Cookies | Our Prairie Nest
Cookies This Week

While the pretzels I tried to do two weeks ago turned out to be far more work than I’d anticipated, this week’s baking was a breeze. We tried these super easy Confetti Cake Batter Cookies. This is an easy recipe that you can knock out quickly. Since you’re using a box of cake mix instead of flour, sugar, and all that jazz, it’s not messy, either.

It took 3 cookie sheets to do all the cookies and the recipe is correct that the yield is about 30. They’re soft and fluffy, like grocery store bakery cookies. This was my first time using cake mix for a cookie recipe and I’ll do it again.

These cookies are from last Monday, because yesterday we went to the zoo with a friend. And, yes, that was fun, too! Though I think the cookies lasted longer than the zoo trip. 😉

Tasty Tuesday - Not Pretzels | Our Prairie Nest
Pretzel Fail

Since I’ve implemented this baking-every-Monday idea, I’ve had approximately one success and one failure. For fans of baseball in Boston in the mid-90s, this is about the time we’d accept that the Red Sox had hit that mid-season slump from which there was no return. In fact, when we went to games, I’d sit there and say, “Look – Stonehenge!” from an old joke that goes like this:

Defensively the Red Sox are a lot like Stonehenge. They are old, they don’t move, and no one is certain why they are positioned the way they are. — Dan Shaughnessy

Where was I? Oh yeah pretzels.

I decided to try baking them and let me tell you – it’s hard! I kneaded the heck out of the dough (we don’t own a mixer) and it rose really well. But when it came to rolling it out into long ropes, the dough kept pulling back. It didn’t want to stay ropey and tying the actual shape was tricky. So I gave up, rolled all the dough back together, and made peasant bread.

On the upside, the bread came out great and went perfectly with some homemade creamy tomato soup my husband made for dinner.

Do I recommend making pretzels? Maybe.  The dough might come out less springy if you knead or longer or have a mixer to do the work. Will I try it again? No. The kids weren’t jazzed enough about them, anyway. But they’re excited about the idea of making cookies next week…

Tie-Dying

This weekend, my daughter played with one of her classmates and liked the tie-dye shirt he was wearing. She asked if she could buy one and I explained that it’s even better to make your own, so guess what we ended up doing on Sunday morning?

The stores here don’t carry Rit Dye, which was the one brand I remember using as a teenager. But we did find a Tulip Tie Dye kit – one in the entire store! – and bought that, along with a pack of 5 boys white t-shirts. Rowan chose the patterns, so I did the rolling, bunching, and rubber banding, and she applied the dye. Here are the results:

Tie Dye | Our Prairie Nest

Tie Dye | Our Prairie Nest

Tie Dye | Our Prairie Nest

Her favorite color is blue, so she went pretty crazy with it. In fact, we ran out of that color before we ran out of the green and pink. She had a lot of fun doing this, so I’m sure this is a project we’ll repeat in the future, once she outgrows these shirts.