Ipsy Glam Bag: January 2018

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The Ipsy Glam Bag is a monthly beauty subscription box that gives you a personalized bag of full-size and sample size beauty and make-up products for $10 a month. All of their products also come in a cute, handy little make-up bag!

The Balm: Mary-Lou Manizer Highlighter | Full-Size $24

This little highlight is so cutely packaged (I appreciate the fact the The Balm still makes an effort in packaging their samples!) and the highlight itself is a beautifully subtle shade. I’ve been using it to highlight both the cheekbones and brow bone and love its versatility! 

Dermelect: Microfacial Exfoliating Masque | Full-Size $38

Another item that I was thrilled to receive - especially since I’ve noted in my ipsy profile that I love receiving skincare products! I’ve been a huge fan of exfoliating products lately and this one is no different - it leaves the skin feeling so smooth! 

Lue by Jean Seo: Balance Hydrating and Calm Serum

Always love receiving a good skincare product in my subscription boxes! This serum feels so nice and gentle on the skin and has one of my all-time favorite skincare ingredients - hyaluronic acid! Although I've never heard of the brand, I tend to be pretty clueless when it comes to skincare brands so part of the reason I love beauty boxes is the opportunity to discover new brands! 

Seraphine Botanicals: Raisin + Cream Long-Lasting Lip Stain | Full-Size $24

I love experimenting with lip colors so this product was a perfect fit, plus, the rich mauve-y shade is perfect for winter. Although this product’s staying power was not quite as good as the liquid lipsticks I tend to favor, it has an extremely light-weight, moisturizing formula! 

SLMISSGLAM: L36 Tapered Highlight Brush 

I love how unique this brush’s design is! I’m 100% a girly girl and I think a pink, sparkly brush is every girly girls dream. I’ve specified in my ipsy profile that I enjoy receiving make-up tools and brushes, so I love that Ipsy has actually listened and now sends me more brushes! I’ve been using this brush as a highlight brush but love the fact that it’s a versatile size and could easily be used for eyeshadow or blush as well. 

Overall, I’m really happy with this month’s ipsy bag! I love that they are truly sending me products that I enjoy testing out. Although no subscription box will necessarily be perfect at predicting each person’s preferences, I think my ipsy bags have continuously improved over time and I definitely appreciate that about them! What did you think of your first ipsy bag of the new year?

My Twenty Eighteen Word of the Year

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Hello everyone! Sorry this post might be a little on the late side, but I really wanted to take time to think about what my focus for the 2018 year would be. I think we’re often pressured to make these crazy, outlandish, completely unachievable goals for the new year that just end up making us feel like failures when we don’t accomplish them! I’ve had enough unachieved new years resolutions to know that huge goals set at the beginning of the year almost never work for me! 

Instead, I like to set smaller, more frequent goals on a monthly basis that work towards achieving a greater goal overall. There’s really nothing special about January - and if we feel like we’ve already failed our new years resolutions just weeks into the new year, it can be really hard to get back on the wagon. So, it’s worth remembering that January is just another month, new years is just another day, and tomorrow is another opportunity at being better than you were yesterday 😃 

This past year, I’ve really struggled to find a healthy balance between the different parts of my life. Work, family, friends, self-care, fitness, blogging, volunteering, and even boring things like keeping my house clean started to overwhelm me, leaving my very little downtime to just sit back and relax. I tend to put a lot of pressure on myself to do everything. I want to have a clean house and also be able to spend lots of time with family. I want to go above and beyond at my job and also try to keep contributing to my blog - but as one person with a limited number of hours in a day, frankly, it’s impossible to do it all! 

So, this year, I’m choosing to focus on BALANCE as my word of the year. Yes, I still want to be better at everything, but instead of trying to do everything perfectly all at once, I’m hoping to be a little bit more patient with myself. As long as I’m getting a good balance between all of the different parts of my life that are important to me, I won’t give myself too hard of a time. 😃

What is your focus for the upcoming year?

I’d love to hear about your goals and resolutions for 2018!

My 2018 Planner Crew!

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Happy 2018!!! A new year always means new goals and new planners! I am a huge nerd when it comes to planners and I love trying out all kinds of goal setting sheets and planner formats to figure out what system is best for helping me kick butt at achieving my goals 😃 

The past two years, I have been a hardcore Day Designer fan. The daily sheets have allowed me to plan each hour of my day so I can clearly see what needs to be accomplished! Around fall of this year, however, I found that having the day sheets every single day was actually a little overwhelming. There’s a part of me that always wants to fill the space in planners and when each day sheet includes 10+ spots for to-do items, the crazy person in me felt like I needed to fill every single spot - even if I didn’t have the time for it! Although I still love the Day Designer’s daily sheets for those jam packed days where I can’t keep track of anything, I knew that I needed something different for this upcoming year. So, instead, I went for a mix-and-match approach to my planner instead of being tied down to one option! 

Dated Weekly Planner (Marshall's)

Even though I tend to prefer planners that have daily pages, when I have long-term deadlines, I find that a weekly or even monthly page is the best approach for me. Although I might not use my dated weekly planner on a daily basis, it’s easiest for me to see long-term deadlines on a weekly page rather than a daily page. 

Cultivate What Matters: Powersheets

This is my second year using the Cultivate What Matters Powersheets and I could not recommend them more highly. If you’re someone who loves to journal/plan and you want to work on breaking down goals so that they are actually achievable, then the Powersheets are for you! My favorite part about the Powersheets are all of the little reminders tucked away in its pages on being imperfect and not comparing to others. On top of being an amazing set of goal worksheets and a thoughtful journal, I feel like my Powersheets are also my biggest cheerleader with all of the sweet motivational bits tucked throughout the pages! 

Undated Day Designer A5 Inserts + Filofax

As much as I love the idea of bullet journaling, I have to admit, I’m too lazy to commit to it! I love being artsy and creative with my pages but I just don’t have the motivation to set up and decorate each page of a bullet journal! I received this beautiful Filofax as a gift and purchased a set of undated Day Designer sheets to fill it - Although I’ll be moving away from the Day Designer planner this year, I won’t be moving away from Day Designer entirely! I still love their daily sheets and will be using them on those days where I’m so busy I don’t know which way is up! 

Simple Notebook (TJ Maxx)

As I’ve gotten older and have more commitments in different areas of my life, I’ve found that one planner is often too limiting - especially when I have a random list of house chores sitting on my kitchen counter or a list of groceries sitting in my bedroom! I’ve started collecting all of my random to-do lists in this notebook and have found it so helpful to have all that chaos in one place! Although it’s definitely still chaotic in the notebook, at least now all of the chaos is in the same notebook!  

Looking back on what I’ve written, I realize that having five different planners/notebooks to keep track of my to-do list might seem a little excessive. For me, however, being tie down to one planner actually gives me more stress than being able to switch between different options depending on what is best fit for that specific day! What planners are you using for the 2018 year? I’d love to know!