an update/haul

 

i feel like i've been posting hauls too much and not so much product reviews. so today, i'll just list the items i've gotten since i've dismantled everything's packaging last hauled and eventually i'll get around to posting more reviews. ~Lin-chan ^.~
ulta

• tarte smolderEyes eye catchers pencil set
• maybelline eyeshadow quads in green with envy & give me gold
• macadamia natural oil healing oil treatment (free; used my ulta points)
• too faced triple threat set
• 5 for $5: 3 eye pencils, chi silk infusion, and ulta hide & go sequins polish
• zoya aurora
• butter london fairycake

sephora

• urban decay ocho loco pencil set
• nars satellite of love blush/luminizer
• 500pt nars deluxe sample set (eye & face primers, lip pencil in new lover, orgasm blush)
• perfect formula clear gel coat
• lasting impression it kit (free w/code)
• clinique clarifying lotion 3 (16.5 oz)
• too faced
• perfect collection
• hot cocoa collection
• eyeko skinny mini set
• caudalie cleansing & lip duo
• benefit high flyin glosses set

sigma

• p82
• p86
• e05 (free for spending $30)

urban decay

• de slick xl spray
• naked basics palette

elsewhere online or in-stores

• glam-rx touch up palette (order here)
• macadamia natural oil deep repair [hair] masque (8.5 oz)
• skylark by elle and blair ava & sophia lip gloss set (from blush.com)
• theBalm mary lou-minizer & hot mama (from hautelook*)
• bobbi brown black pearl nail polish
• revlon
• colorburst lipstick in pink sugar
• super lustrous lipstick in sassy mauve
• just bitten kissable balm stain in smitten
• photoready concealer in light medium
• covergirl
• intense shadow blast in beige blaze & brown bling
• lashblast clump crusher in very black
• trublend pressed powder in translucent medium
• l'oreal
• color riche quad in snooze addict
• infallible le gloss in blush
• infallible eyeliner in black
• wet n wild blush in pearlescent pink
• real techniques brush sets -- starter kit (purple) & core collection (orange)
• 24-piece brush set (from widget love, via living social coupon)
• white barn "thanksgiving" candle; a 3-wick candle sleeve
• lush: candy mountain bubble bar, melting snowman bath melt, north pole soap, sandy santa scrub, cinders bath bomb

*Affiliate Link.

nail mail/notd! seche smokey & hypnotic

hi all! i haven't seen the seche lacquers locally around here, but i found them on ebay for a pretty decent price ($6 ea w/ship). these babies came in today! i got smokey & hypnotic. they're so pretty! hypnotic almost looks like black in some lights though, so in that respect it's not so cool. and i knew smokey would come out something like this so it's got my approval. these polishes are being marketed as basically one-coat-and-go in opacity. and for the most part, i agree. pending on how much polish you have on the brush, you can go one coat with these polishes. if not one, definintely two; some nails were a bit streaky and needed a little more, but i think it's because i wiped too much off the brush. i used: orly primetime, orly bonder, 1-2 coats seche lacquer, 1 coat seche vite. overall though, i really like them. i hope i can find them locally sometime soon so i can see the other colors in person, rather than relying entirely on online swatches. i tried cleaning up some before taking photos this time and fudged my right ring nail in the process. oops. whatever! ~Lin-chan ^.~

DIY nail polish ornaments!

last year sayanythingbr00ke posted a video on nail polish ornaments! so i decided to give them a try myself! we went over to our local cvs (with a $3 off  $10 nail polish coupon in hand) and, with the help of teh paul, picked out these five polishes. of these three brands, the i really liked the sally hansen the most. it came out the most opaque and it gave me the least trouble. the nyc polishes on the other hand, were ok; they were both extremely watery and very thin. i got the plastic ornaments from the craft section at walmart for $1 each (you can also use glass ones). if you can't find them at walmart, try looking for them at a craft store. my total cost: ~$13.

polishes used:
sally hansen xtreme wear: virtual violet
spoiled: i'm so jaded (green) & tip your waitress (pink)
nyc: chelsea (red) & east village (blue)
materials needed:

1. newspaper
2. cardboard egg carton--not styrofoam!!!!
3. polishes of your choice
4. nail polish thinner if needed
5. nail polish remover if needed for clean up
6. clear glass or plastic ornaments
7. decorative ribbon or stickers if desired
8. ornament hanging hooks

so, pop the tops off the ornaments and pour some nail polish inside. tilt the ornament to coat the inside and add more polish as needed. place them into a *cardboard* egg carton, open-side down so the polish can drip out. so as you can see, this is why you shouldn't use a styrofoam container. nail polish eats styrofoam. lol! overall, these came out awesome and i'd totally do this again. make sure you do this in a well-ventilated room and allow it to dry overnight...also in a well-ventilated room. these took me about half an hour in total to "paint". my favorites of the bunch are the green and purple. ~Lin-chan ^.~

i has a panda phone!

an update on my new phone! (link to previous phone post)

got my new phone cases in time before we went back home for the holiday! they called me on friday afternoon to pick it up! the only problem i have with it is AT&T's service with the new LTE data connection. back home, it's extremely patchy, i guess the suburbs aren't good enough! it's still new technology, so whatever, i guess it's ok. back at the apartment, i haven't really used it that much yet so i'm not sure what it's like. according to said apple store employee, his co-workers say that it's better here in BR and NOLA (i guess more central vs. suburb..). that remains to be seen. anyway, love my new cases! had to get a cute one and a pseudo-normal one. the panda likes sticking to the insides of my pockets >.< and the blingy one is nice and slim, which is what i'm used to anyway...well except for the fact that when the phone is sitting on a table, etc. and vibrates...then it scares the crap out of me, it's so loud!! well later! ~Lin-chan ^.~

on a related note; if you haven't seen it already, watch nigahiga's first world problems. it's hilarious.

more belated notd goodness! china glaze fast track

 

another belated post! i should be getting my new phone this weekend. we shall see.
belated happy turkey day, happy black friday, and early happy cyber monday. don't forget to utilize ebates* when online shopping!

this is from the hunger games collection. it's fairly true to the bottle but it looks weird on my skintone. i think i'm just not huge into nude colors in general; but it's got such a pretty gold shimmer! i think if this polish were paired with a darker color or if it were over another color it'd be better. ~Lin-chan ^.~

*Affiliate link.

how to make yaki udon (favorites)

this was intended to be part of my oct-dec favorites, which will be posted in january, but i wanted to put this up for one of my friends. ~Lin-chan ^.~

 

i'm not sure why, but i've been on a super udon-kick lately. i got the first pack of frozen noodles to try it since it's probably better for you than instant udon (see here) and because, months ago, i bought soba sauce for who knows what reason...well i do have dry udon noodles that i've been neglecting to cook and try. anyway.....and it's getting cold out; it's hot beverage season. so, tea time!

• frozen udon noodles, soba sauce, stir fry; these can be found at your local asian *cough*korean* grocery store; this brand of udon comes with 5 individually wrapped bunches for $6 and this bottle of soba sauce was $3 at the store near our apartment. i've been really liking it either alone with some soba sauce, or as stir fry (yaki udon).

1. boil some water and cook the noodles, drain, and shock them in cold water so they don't stick together and get mushy.
2. either put them in a bowl and pour on some soba sauce (1 serving, left photo--in a cereal bowl)
3. OR 2 servings (right photo--in a 1.5qt bowl): stir fry some vegetables (bite sized), sliced mushrooms, cooked meat (bite sized), crushed red pepper (to taste), and 1 tbsp garlic in sesame oil (enough to coat pan) while the noodles are boiling. add the noodles to the vegetable pan when they're done. then stir fry the noodles and vegetables together for a few minutes until they are evenly mixed. pour in some soba sauce, toss to coat and serve.
• ingredient ideas/alternatives: pre-packaged frozen stir fry mixed vegetables or fresh vegetables of your choice; chinese roast pork, plain or teriyaki chicken (marinate chicken in teriyaki sauce for 20-30 minutes and pan fry/grill--we've been using zea's thai sauce), beef; jar of minced garlic vs. fresh, dry vs. frozen udon
• if you buy too many fresh vegetables, you can always cut them up into bite sized pieces, and put them in a zip-lock to make your own frozen stir fry blend for next time!

• zhena's gypsy tea: vanilla chai herbal red tea (~$10 @ cost plus world market, 22 bags). with several heaping teaspoons of sugar--yes, i'm a sugar fiend, but...we've got dentists in my family so it's ok. =P i'm not sure if all cc's coffee has red tea like the one in lsu's library, but i think this tastes just like it...and the library is really annoying to get to from all my other classes and my apartment and i haven't checked at the other ones around yet......so yeah. ^^;

treme s3 ep7

if you haven't seen it on my instagram: a few days ago, i found myself and a friend on last week's episode of treme. (related post here) ~Lin-chan ^.~

notw! sephora by opi & opi

this is becoming more of nail of the week moreso than "of the day".. so notW! anyway i used 4 polishes this time, two are new, two are old. i do not recommend the sephora glitter blasted polishes, this one (..purple) and opalescent are very sheer and probably best over a dark color. on my ring fingers, i used 2 coats of charge it!, one coat blasted purple glitter, 3 coats seche vite. all else: 2 coats purple with a purpose, 2 coats it's real 18k gold topcoat, one coat seche vite. so as i was saying, i just got two of these; most of sephora's blasted polishes are on clearence for $3, if they haven't sold out of them already, and 18k gold topcoat is also on sale for $15 (orig. $30)! ~Lin-chan ^.~

 

iphone issues/update & another belated notd: essie aruba blue & opi servin' up sparkle

i actually did this on thursday, but things happened, and i wiped and redid my computer this weekend in preparation for my new phone (see more below).

my phone story: basically my original one got a little wet from being in my pocket in the rain (from my car to my mom's which is like 2 minutes) and set off one of the four water sensors; it was pink. (pink: a little wet, red: submerged). so, family that works at the apple store wanted to trade out the phone so that if there were any future problems with the phone, whoever trades it out later wouldn't be rawr rawr rawr about it...and the speaker became wonky (muffled volume) but it seemed like that only lasted until the phone dried out. (march)

• a few days after i got it, my first replacement phone decided that it didn't like my sim card. (march)
• the third phone (replacement #2) had a battery problem. i'm your knowledgeable user that exits out of all the multitasks 99% of the time when i'm finished using the phone at a given period, i have the brightness fairly low, and my emails are not going off every 2 seconds. basically i'd unplug it, may or may not use it, and 20 minutes later, it'd be drained by 20+%. (april)
• then phone number four (replacement #3), didn't have any problems, until about a week after the iphone 5 release (and the iOS 6 release), then it started acting up.
• it would randomly readjust the brightness on it's own, now yes, it did have autobrightness enabled, but between the previous phones and my 3g..yes 3g not s that i had prior to my 4s, i never had the brightness just change itself to brighter than i had it set. i, like i said above, generally keep it low (somewhere around 1/8) and i'd turn the screen on (at night with lights off) and it's blinding me, freaking at 50% brightness. uhh hello, what??? but said apple store friend said nothing was wrong with the sensor..but i still think something was wrong with the software. after the ipad mini came out & iOS 6.0.1 update, i haven't had problems.
• back to why they traded out this phone though... this phone had issues with restarting on its own..well that's what i originally noticed. it restarts itself randomly when it's sitting on my desk, not in use, no apps running. additionally, when i press the buttons, it frequently will not light up the screen, so i hard reset it (hold home & power buttons until it lights up again) and when it comes back, the battery has drained some. so it's like running something in the background, crashes, and just sits there killing the battery. so i got it traded out; and they told me to start it fresh: delete my iCloud backup and create a new one. (october)
• by the way, in the diagnostics menu, this shows up as panic.plist, which is a hardware and not software problem. each one of these is a log of my phone crashing or me hard resetting it, and there's more beyond this on the list...

• replacement #4/phone #5, less than 16 hours after getting it, did exactly the same thing as the last, minus the wonky brightness. so, days later, i went to the apple store in baton rouge and the dude said that springboard (the program that launches apps) was crashing and that it was fairly normal. WRONG-O dude. it was panic.plist and he refused to replace the phone. don't get me wrong, he was helpful to some extent, but he didn't think it was worth trading the phone out. so i told aforementioned apple store employee friend that the guy wouldn't replace it, and eventually i made an appointment to the lakeside store yet again. the verdict was that they can't figure out what my problems are, but the aforementioned problems (between all the previous phones) are obviously not caused by me (i.e. these are legit issues and i'm not trying to scam them) and it's statistically impossible for me to have this many faulty phones if they're "brand new" replacements (manufactured specifically to be replacements). his other idea was that it may not be the phones, but something bizarre occurring in my environment. thus, i redid my laptop to avoid any problems with the new phone when it arrives and i won't connect my current phone to lappy again. anyway, the end-end result is that they decided to do an open-box swap for me, meaning that they will give me a new phone, straight out of a retail box, rather than another replacement. when the guy went to go order me a new one, he found out that they don't manufacture my phone anymore. what...really? the 5 came out a little over a month ago and you stopped manufacturing 4s 32gb's? so the choices were a 4s 16gb (downgrade size, but get it now) or 5 32gb (upgrade to the newest phone, but wait for it like everyone else). well, i think you guys know what i picked. not quite a week has passed, so i'll update you when it comes in! =P ~Lin-chan ^.~

edit: all of these trades were at the lakeside store, because i trust them more than the people in BR.

20% off sales & how to use ebates!!! (updated)

check them out! ~Lin-chan ^.~

click the image for a link to beauty.com, the 20% off will only work through this link. beauty.com's coupon is only for beauty.com products -- not drugstore.com products. also: beauty.com/drugstore.com have free shipping at $25, and there is a rewards program where, every quarter, you will get "cash back" (a credit) to use on either of these sites. in addition, whenever you shop on beauty.com/drugstore.com, you can use ebates and get an additional percentage cash back. when using ebates for either of these two stores, there are individual tracking tickets for the two sites. sometimes, by some weird logic, one site will have a higher percentage cash back than the other...click the higher one and complete your order (on the higher one's website--if you flip back and forth between them), regardless if you have items from the opposite's store or not.

all four stores mentioned in this post use ebates.

as far as i can tell, ebates is free to join and they will give you your cash back quarterly via a mailed check or paypal (so far, i've gotten $2, $5, & $11 checks/paypal). all you have to do, after making an account, is to look on ebates to see if your favorite stores are on there, click the one you would like to shop at (to start the tracking ticket), and once your payment has cleared at said shop, they will tell ebates that you paid them $x and you will get x% cash back that ebates is offering for said store. sometimes, some stores that i have ordered from (small, <$50 purchases) have not gotten to ebates; so i dunno. it kinda sucks, but it's usually a low percentage anyway... to sign up for ebates, you can use my referral link: http://www.ebates.com/rf.do?referrerid=Xptje8DWG9VgsbK2ck%2B1Lg%3D%3D*

i think there's a separate code for bi's with 15% off... but i don't know. sorreh!

(stila cosmetics)

*Affiliate Link.

belated notd! zoya crystal

this is from last week! >.< it's a blue-based polish with gold glitter; or it could quite possibly be just that jam-packed with blue and gold glitter at like a 6:1 ratio. ~L-c ^.~

instagram

hi!!! so instagram rolled out their online profiles and stuff. if you want, you can check mine out/follow me here: http://instagram.com/lindsaydamodel (link also added to my sidebar). i don't/haven't really post(ed) a whole lot, but i do check it frequently throughout the day. later. ~Lin-chan ^.~