p e a c h y ♡ k e e n

Let me start out this review by saying I detest lip glosses. I hate the sticky feeling, and the super shiny look that most lip glosses have. I haven't purchased a lip gloss on my own since maybe.... middle school? It's never been worth the fuss for me, I'm 100% a chapstick girl, so I would never would have walked through the aisles at Ulta and picked this product out on my own to purchase, especially not when it comes with a somewhat hefty (for me) price tag of $18.

That being said... I like this stuff! I got it as a free gift because it's currently my birthday month (I'm 24 now.... yuck!), and because I'm an Ulta member, I get a free gift every year for my birthday through their rewards program. I was not super excited when I opened my email and saw the coupon this year was for a free lip gloss given my overall "ehhhh" feeling towards lip glosses. I actually only got this because I went with my mom to go pick up her eyebrow pencil, and figured since I was going to Ulta I might as well pick this up, because even if I didn't like it, it was free!

When I saw the packaging, I went, "Awww," out loud. It's so cute! I loved that it was birthday themed, and the little foil bow on the front of the box (which the normal Moxie lip glosses don't have) is super cute. The bottle itself is really pretty and classy, and it comes with a long doe-foot applicator and screw top. My mom laughed when I told her but it feels sleek and a bit expensive. I also like that the bottle is clear because you can see how much product you have left.

As soon as I unscrewed the cap, I was prepared to hate this when it came to actually wearing it. When It unscrewed, the applicator made this squelch sound as I took it out of the bottle that made my face wrinkle up, because it sounded so gross and sticky already. The consistency unfortunately is exactly what I was afraid it would be, thick, goopy, and once on the lips, it is quite sticky. Bummer. But luckily there are some major plusses for this lip gloss, so I didn't throw it out or give it away.

One saving grace is the color is surprisingly pretty. It looks super glittery in the tube and I was worried it'd look like the pretty tacky lip glosses I bought in middle school, but when it's on you can't see the glitter nearly as much as I expected. Also, a lot of lip glosses are really sheer or overly glossy or kind of patchy and difficult to work with, but this isn't like that. One swipe of the applicator and I could see the color on my lips, and it doesn't feather. It looks like a really soft nice pink color on me. It's similar to my natural lip color, so I can't really take lip swatches, it's very hard to get the color to show up true to life in pictures on me, but trust me it's beautiful in person. You can see it but it's not overwhelming at all, and not too shiny or wet looking. It honestly makes my lips look sooo nice, I was super surprised. The color is buildable to an extent but I never would wear more than one coat, just because it already feels a bit heavy on my lips after just one application and the color looks so nice on me already. Those with darker lips may need additional applications, depending on the look you're going for.

I'm pretty sure you can only get this color through Ulta's member birthday promotion this year, I don't think bareMinerals offers it online, even. But if you like the swatch and are interested in checking this lip gloss out, which, if you like lip glosses, I highly recommend you do, I did a quick check and a lot of people sell theirs unopened on eBay, so check there if you're interested. Usually this color is cheaper on eBay than the permanent Moxie lip gloss colors, too (I saw a bunch for around $10-13), probably because this was free to whoever is selling it and they didn't get to choose the color.

Another thing I like about this gloss is the smell and taste. It's a bit minty, a tiny bit cinnamon-y, but it's not bad at all and not anything close to some of the horrible plastic tastes of lip glosses I've tried in the past. It doesn't bother me once it's on my lips, it reminds me of Burt's Bees a bit, honestly. It tingles a bit, but doesn't irritate me at all, I even wore this while I had a healing cut on my lip and it still didn't burn or sting.

Although, one notable problem I had with this besides the stickiness is it doesn't last long. You absolutely need to carry this with you if you wear it out. Don't even try to eat or drink (or kiss!) with this on, it's going to be really gross and the gloss will be gone or a sticky mess all over your face after (both have happened to me). I've found it's not enough of a problem to where I will never wear this, I just have to remember to wipe it off quickly with a napkin if I'm eating a meal or drinking without a straw then reapply afterwards. It's not hard to remember to wipe it off since there's a minty taste, and it's so thick and sticky, but I didn't take it off a few times to test how this would wear through a meal, which is not great.

If I'm not eating or drinking, this lip gloss lasts between 2-4 hours on me, depending on how much talking and lip rubbing I do, and how often my hair gets stuck in it due to the Chicago wind (a very common, very annoying occurrence).

♡Pros:

cute packaging!
surprisingly pretty color
nice smell and taste for a lipgloss

♡Cons:

super sticky
not very long lasting at all
a bit expensive for the average person

♡Repurchase?

I'm surprised but... possibly! I'm more of a chapstick girl and chapsticks are definitely more functional and practical so maybe not, especially since this lip gloss line is way more money than I usually like to spend on lip products and I won't use this super often, but maybe if I'm feeling fancy and want to treat myself or I run out of ideas for Christmas I will try out one of the other colors!

Hi, guys!

I'm stuck at my parents' house in the suburbs until Sunday, so I thought I might as well post another review while I'm out here at their house in the woods doing nothing!

This review is for a product that I've come to absolutely love, Missha's Time Revolution The First Treatment Essence Intensive. That mouthful of a product name has become very important to me over time, because this is one of my current holy grail products. As time passes and I try out more things, that might change, but for now, I hear a choir of angels start to sing every time I reach for this in my skincare routine.

Missha advertises this as an "essence," but it's not. It's a toner! So you should use this immediately after cleansing your face. The reason this product is so special to me is I have the HARDEST time finding toners that don't burn, irritate, or dry out my super sensitive skin. Not only is this super gentle and calming to put on, but my skin afterwards feels more hydrated and super soft. Granted, the hydrated feeling doesn't last long, if I sit around and forget to finish my skincare routine I can feel my face start to dry out and get the usual dry/stinging feeling I get with every other toner. But the fact that that takes so long to happen really shows how gentle this toner is. I have never had my rosacea flare up after applying this toner, which is a miracle.

The box that my toner came in got a little smushed in the mail, but it's still a really pretty holographic print, and it comes in handy (which I'll get more into in a second) so I kept it even though it's kinda dented. The ingredients are the important part of this product. If you are into Korean skincare, you've probably heard of the SK-II Facial Treatment Essence. If you haven't, then SK-II Facial Treatment Essence is a $100 toner that claims to, "...help[s] to improve the appearance of 5 dimensions of beautiful, crystal clear skin: spots are less visible, appearance of wrinkles is reduced, skin texture is more refined, firmness is improved, and radiance is beautifully elevated. Skin becomes breathtakingly crystal clear."

That's a lot to expect from a toner, yet the reviews are usually positive, tons of celebrities use the SK-II essence, and many people in the beauty world have dubbed this product "miracle water." Why is this important? The Missha Time Revolution The First Treatment Essence Intensive is a dupe!

The bottles look the same, they are both heavy frosted glass with a shiny silver screw-top; the product looks the same, both have a clear, watery consistency; the application nozzle is the same, so you have to shake both to get the product out. And then there's the important part: they have super similar ingredients. SK-II uses 90% Pitera, which is a type of yeast from the family Saccharomyces, that they own the patent for. Missha uses 80% Fissione, which is a yeast that belongs to the same family that Pitera does. In short they are very similar in formula, Missha's just has a few additional additives that makes the ingredients list slightly longer, but they are all great additions for your skin, like camomile and licorice root. And for less than a third the price ($30 on Amazon), the MIssha toner has better reviews almost across the board than the SK-II. So if you want to try the product that a lot of people have been raving about, this is a good option if you aren't able to afford the mind-blowing price of $100 for a toner.

The Missha's Time Revolution The First Treatment Essence Intensive comes in a (beautiful) heavy glass bottle (which is annoyingly hard to photograph because it's transparent, but trust me this packing is reeeally pretty). You should be very careful handling this because it can get really slippery, especially when your hands are wet, like after cleansing your face. I keep mine in the box despite it being a bit dented because sometimes I forget to dry my hands between rinsing my foaming net after cleansing and toning, and I've dropped this bottle twice before. The sound it made made my heart jump out of my body and every time I had happily used this toner in the past flash before my eyes. It didn't smash like I thought it would, but I'm not risking it.

The cap screws on, and doesn't click but it does lock in place, so it shouldn't come unscrewed when you don't want it to. The bottle contains 150ml of product, which doesn't sound like a lot when it comes with a $30 price tag, but I put a picture of the bottle in my hand for reference down below, and you can see that you get a lot of product. Granted, I have small hands, but the bottle itself was much bigger than I was expecting. I don't know if you can tell from the pictures since the bottle was horizontal for all of them, but I'm a little less than halfway through this bottle and I've been using it for about three months now. So this should last me 6+ months, and to pay $5/month for this toner is well worth it.

Especially when I'm not being dramatic when I say that this toner has changed my skin game forever. I have rosacea, as I mentioned earlier, and if you don't know what that is, it's a hereditary skin condition (thanks, mom!) that makes your skin extremely sensitive, gives your skin a very red tint, and causes acne that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with hormones, so it can last your entire life. In short, my skin was constantly brightly flushed, like actually neon red/pink, all the time. Until I tried this toner.

I'm not positive if it's either this toner alone or in combination with the Skinfood Tomato Whitening line, which I will review later this week, but once I replaced the Skinfood toner with this bad boy, it boosted the effect the Tomato line was having, and now my redness is not only diminished.... IT'S GONE.

G O N E.

If someone had told me that that was possible just four months ago, I would have laughed. I've suffered from horrible rosacea since I was a kid, and it literally makes me emotional to think about the changes this product has made to my skin. Granted, I'm using whitening products across the board, and have noticed that the Skinfood Tomato line was helping. I am just positive this took that process from maybe 30mph to 60mph in a very short amount of time. I mean, I still get rosacea flare-ups and some of them are pretty bad! But it's always a reaction to makeup or stress, I never wake up to my skin a bright pink shade (like I had used an entire container of blush on my face) for no reason anymore.

If I'm being honest, one thing I do dislike about the toner is the application. The nozzle for the bottle is kinda weird, you have to shake it to get the product out into your hand. Because it's a heavy bottle and the toner is a thin liquid, this makes it a bit hard to control how much product you're pouring out of the bottle. I've tried using the same number of shakes several times and will get way more product some times than I do others. I refuse to waste a drop of this, though, and usually just spread the excess down my neck and over my shoulders.

Also, some people like to apply this using a cotton pad, but I'm going to warn you NOT to do that. Cotton pads are great for a lot of things, I use them at night with my oil cleanser to remove my makeup when I wear it, but since this toner is such a thin, watery consistency, it'll absorb all of the product into the pad, you'll need to saturate it a ton, and you'll end up wasting a lot of it. I've also heard of people pouring this into a spray bottle, which seems like an interesting idea but I'd be too scared of the bottle leaking or of the spray being too wide and wasting product. What I do, and what I recommend you do, too, if you have somewhat steady hands and can clench your fingers together in a bowl shape really tight, is just shake some of this out into your palm, dip the fingers of your other hand into the little puddle, and wipe it all over your face! If you're not careful some of it can leak out between your fingers, but I usually just use a finger to wipe the leaks up off my hand and wipe them back on my face. It takes a bit of practice but it uses 100% of the product that you get out of the bottle, and ensures you can apply it where you need to.

♡Ingredients list :
Saccharomyces Ferment Filtrate (80%), Propanediol,Glycyrrhiza Glabra ( Licorice Root Extract ), Niacinamide, Polyquaternium-51, Bifida Ferment Lysate, Ulmus Davidiana Root Extract, Raffinose, Amaranthus Caudatus Seed, Piper Methysticum Leaf/Root Extract, Centella Asiatica Extract, Beta Vulgaris (Beet) Root, Portulaca Oleracea Extract, Rosmarinus Officinalis, Chamomile Extract, Phellodendron Amurense Bark, Cassia Alata Leaf Extract, Sodium Hyaluronate, Hydrogenated Lecithin, Glycerin, Pentylene Glycol, Hydrolyzed Corn Starch, Tromethamine, Water, Adenosine, Ethylhexylglycerin, Lactic Acid, Phenoxyethanol

♡Pros:

it comes in a really nice glass bottle
it's great for sensitive skin
it nearly completely eliminated my rosacea redness
it isn't drying or harsh
it's dupe for SK-II
the price isn't bad for what you get!

♡Cons:

it doesn't have super efficient application

♡Repurchase?

Definitely. Until I find a better toner, you will have to pry this from my cold dead hands before I give it up

Hi guys!!

This time I'm reviewing a couple TonyMoly products. I bought these a while ago as a sort of treating myself gift. I had been eyeing a few TonyMoly products online because they're adorable and all have pretty good reviews, and I decided on these two to start: the Petite Bunny Gloss Bar and the Peach Lip Balm.

I ordered these from Amazon and totally forgot to take pictures of the packaging they were sent in. From my memory it was pretty standard, bubble wrapped and in a yellow mailer. They got to me safe, anyway, and there was nothing super memorable in their delivery. I ordered them ahead of finals knowing they would take a while to ship from Korea and they would come in time to be a nice surprise after my semester ended. They ended up coming a bit faster than I expected, which was nice.

I'll start with the lip balm!!!

It's so cute I can't stand it. I fell in love with the packaging immediately. It looks just like a tiny peach and I love the shape and color of peaches (I actually hate how real peaches taste, though!).

The lip balm came with two lids, the main lid is the top of the peach which unscrews like a lot of pot lip balms. There was also a flat stamped lid inside the pot to protect the balm. I ended up throwing it out because I didn't think it was necessary to keep, but it was still cute and nice that it was there. I read online that one way to tell if your lip balm you ordered is fake if it's missing the stamped lid inside the pot.

The inside is pretty much what you'd expect from a lip balm. The balm itself is the same color as the bottom of the pot, a peachy yellow/pink color. It goes on your lips completely sheer, though.

♡Pros:

The packaging!! It's so cute and I get so many compliments on it! Strangers have come up to me in restaurants and at parties more than once asking me where I got this
The price is definitely not bad, I got mine for around $5 plus free shipping, which is a similar price to a lot of way more boring American brands of pot lip balms.
Pretty moisturizing!! The winters here in Chicago are brutal and it's saved me from really chapped lips more than once.
The fragrance is nice. It's a sort of mellow peachy smell. That being said, this can become way overwhelming and more of a con when paired with the taste.

♡Cons:

I wanted to love absolutely everything about this but..... I couldn't. It honestly has a weird taste, it's sort of a mix between peachy and the plastic-y chapstick taste, and it's kind of gross which bugs me. I try and use exactly what I need and don't spread it around on my lips a lot, to avoid getting it in my mouth, and I try and avoid accidentally eating or licking any.
It can take a while to be absorbed into your lips, and it's a little too glossy for me.
It's a little smaller than I expected. The product is only in the very bottom of the pot, the lid is what accounts for most of the space this takes up.
I don't really like pot lip balms because they're so unsanitary! You're constantly sticking your fingers in them then running them all over your mouth! And as someone who gets sick a lot, I'm weary of germs. But that's not exclusive to this lip balm.

♡Repurchase?

Honestly, probably yes. It's too cute, and I'm a sucker for cute things!!
Also despite the cons, it's a really nice thing to have in your purse or backpack for really bitterly cold days where you want a longer lasting chapstick. I take this with me to university every day and even though it tastes gross, I love using it at school because my classes are all very long (~3 hours) and I don't have to disturb the class by reaching in my bag to reapply my lip balm.

Now for the Petite Bunny Gloss Bar!!!!!

I have the gloss bar in #3, which is Juicy Apple. The packaging is adorable and the stick itself is a kind of raspberry red. It's not bright red, like #4, which is Juicy Cherry, and it's cool toned. It twists up and down from the bottom, which is nice.

This Gloss Bar is really hard to swatch. It doesn't come out in pictures looking the same as it does in real life, and it looks more red or more pink or more raspberry colored in different lighting. In real life, it's a super glossy, bright raspberry color. The only way I thought I could show the correct color was by swatching on my hand, but that even was hard to take a picture of. The above swatch was the one I got closest to the actual color of application.

The color is buildable to an extent so the more swipes you make with this Gloss Bar, the darker it'll show up on your lips.

♡Pros:

Again, the packaging!! I love it so much, it's adorable
Feels really light on your lips. I'm not a huge fan of heavy, thick lipsticks so this was nice to wear.
Has a buildable color

♡Cons:

This isn't a great color for me! It looks a bit too dark on my lips and a bit more intense than what I wanted from something I can just throw on without worrying about it
It's really, really glossy, much glossier than I was expecting (which is my fault, it's labeled a Gloss Bar, so I should have known, but it resembles a tinted chapstick which is what I thought it was) and it's a bit sticky

♡Repurchase?

Probably not (╯︵╰,) The packaging was super cute and I'm glad I ordered this but I can't see myself wanting to buy this again when it's done.
I would, however, be more interested in trying one of the paler shades, so it would be less of a lip color and more like a chapstick/lipgloss

I was really excited to make this post, because fall is my favorite season and now that we are right in the middle of it, it's my time to thrive!

I love fall because I always use the time to clean up my room, my wardrobe, and my life and spend time feeling really refreshed before winter starts.

I'm really pumped that this year Chicago actually had some type of fall weather. Last year, it was super hot and then suddenly super cold and snowy, so we didn't get as much sweater weather as I would have liked and had to go right into wearing my super bulky winter coat (╥﹏╥) Thankfully this year, though, I had a lot more time to be outside and enjoy the chilly weather!

And fall isn't my favorite season just because the sticky heat of summer starts to wear off, I'm also really excited because.......

Halloween is right around the corner!

I love all the things that come with the Halloween season! And not just the cheap candy at the grocery store..... although that's a Halloween privilege I do love dearly.

I'm not sure if I'm going to dress up and go out or not on Halloween this year, I haven't for the past few years just because Halloween unfortunately falls right before my French midterm every semester, and I usually end up swamped with work. This semester, I have to give a 15 minute memorized presentation in French on November 2nd, which is going to take tons of work to plan for. Hopefully I have enough time to throw a last minute costume together and go to at least one party. Cross your fingers for me!

If I do end up being able to go out to a party or something on Halloween, I want to try and bake something this year, which is something I've never done before! There are tons of cute holiday ideas for baking on YouTube, but I think this one might be my favorite!

It's so cute and easily adaptable for my vegan and gluten-free diet.

Surprisingly, I have to miss out on one of the biggest parts of Halloween culture, because I'm a weenie and can't usually watch horror movies. But I love to read horror novels (Stephen King is one of my favorite authors!) and I usually pick up a good scary book to read as Halloween approaches, instead of tormenting myself with scary movies. This year, I think I'm going to reread The Shining, it's been forever since I've read it, and the movie adaption (although not nearly as good as the book) is just a bit cheesy enough to where it is one of the few horror movies I can watch without getting nightmares.

And even though I just told you that I can't watch horror movies and so this should make absolutely no sense, I've also been really into the Walking Dead since it came out, and the sixth season just started up!

One of my favorite things about fall is that the Walking Dead comes back, and I just watched the second episode of the new season on Sunday and I can tell I am already going to love where it goes this season! The episode was really great, there weren't too many jump-scares which can give me panic attacks, but it was still really full of plot development and showed a lot of the characters who don't usually get screen time being super badass, which I loved! I'm really excited for next week's episode.

I'm going to leave you with this new music video by the kpop group Twice who just debuted this week! I really love the way they have a funny and unique (yet very Halloween-y) concept with zombies but kept the music video really cute as well. The song is catchy and I hope you love it as much as I do!

What's your favorite thing about October?

p e a c h y ♡ k e e n

[Review] bareMinerals Marvelous Moxie Lipgloss!

[Review] MISSHA Time Revolution The First Treatment Essence Intensive!

[Review] TonyMoly Petite Bunny Gloss Bar and Peach Lip Balm!!

It's October!!

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