Drugstore Deals!

I was recently gifted with a $50 Walgreens gift card, today after work I went and bought some goodies. They had some really good deals this week!



Top row:
Noxema bikini shavers, a 3-pack  with a free 3-pack attached. 2.99!

Sinful Nail Polish in 'This is it' #832 (yellow gold). I'll wear a layer of Rimmel 'Dazzle' #606 (a sort of sheer, cooler toned gold) over it. 1.99!

Cool Water Summer Fizz, 3.4oz EDT. Nice and summery orange-ish fragrance. I don't really like Cool Water for women, but this is nice. $29.99.

Almay Oil-Free eye make up removal pads, about 5.89 each but they were buy one get one free, so I stocked up. About $12 for the four of them.

Middle row:
Rembrandt Toothpaste (wintergreen), on sale for $6, plus a $3 off coupon attached to the package. $3.00!

Neutrogena Age Shield Face Sunblock SPF 70, regularly $10.99 but 25% off this week, plus a $2 off coupon from my Walgreens Beauty Advisor- about $6.25!

Walgreen's brand container of 75 dual-tipped applicators, I MUST have these on hand to fix eye makeup and nail polish mistakes! About $1.30.

Bottom row:
All Almay was BOGO, so I got a Clear Complexion Concealer (which I needed- I can't use my regular under-eye concealer on the occasional breakout or it makes it worse), and Smart Shade Blush in Berry #030. I cracked open the blush, it comes out of the tube as a
sort of specked grey-purple-pink cream, and blends to a light berry stain, very natural-looking.
I tried a second layer for more color, and that looks pretty good, too. About $8.59 for the two.

Two pots of Ice Cream Dreams lip balm, one in Peach, one in Bubblegum. These are little containers of lip balm  shaped like ice cream cartons, I mostly bought them because the packaging is so freaking cute. About $4.00 for the two.

Kiss Nail files, LE ones printed with names of different cities. I got Tokyo, London, and New York.
 They also had Milan, Los Angeles, and Paris. 
These are cute! So much more fun than a regular pink or black file. And they are only .99 each!
About $3 for the three of them.


I went about $25 over my gift card. I didn't need that fragrance, but I wanted something summery. If I skipped that, I would've had a bit left over on the card, but I did pretty good otherwise. Those BOGO deals are great! There are certain beauty supplies I'm willing to spend more on, but certain products that are available at drugstores are not only really good prices- they also are great quality products.
I've been using Neutrogena sunblock for a while now, and it is really gentle on my skin. Aveeno is another good drugstore sunblock, but there is less of a selection.
Almay eye make up removal pads work really well for me, the oil-free ones at least.

Sephora Nail Polishes, Philosophy Cinnamon Buns, and Too Faced Extreme Lip Injection

I got my order from Sephora in today- just some bodywash, nail polish, and an eyeshadow.
(that's my  little Tortie , O'llie, up in the top of the picture. She likes to hang out while I'm experimenting with makeup, and never laughs if I try something really out there)


The bodywash is philosophy Cinnamon Buns, my absolute favorite. Using it is like rolling around naked on top of a giant cinnamon bun. Philosophy says it can be used as a shampoo also, but I don't think it makes a very good shampoo. :/

The nail polishes are Sephora brand. Lacquer polish L21 Mangue & nail polish #60 are the same exact orange. 
Their turquoise blues in the lacquer and the polishes are the same, also. 
Since some of the nail polishes are only $2 compared to $4 for the lacquer,
if there is a color in the cheaper one I get that, since I always use a base coat and a top coat anyway. The orange is nice, sort of pumpkiny, and bright without getting too bright.
The other polishes are nail polish #57 (lavender purple) and lacquer L23 Myrtille (what I'd call a deep periwinkle blue). All of the polishes are solid cream-types, no glitter or shimmer to them.
Sephora's polishes are great, and I like that they come in smaller, less expensive bottles- especially for the odder colors I probably won't wear often.

The eye shadow is from Make Up For Ever- I'd never tried their products but have heard good things about them. I bought a khaki brown color, it went on smoothly, has a lot of pigment, and blends very well. I'm waiting to see how it is on my lids after about six hours or so before I start raving about it and buying more.

OKAY. One of the samples included in my order was for Too Faced Extreme Lip Injection. I'm always looking for a better lip plumper... my lips are pretty full on their own, but I like a really full look. I dabbed on a bit from the sample packet- it is a thick clear gel- and right away my lips were a deeper pink color. In fact, all around the edges of my lips, where I got a bit messy with the gel, were also pinkish. I got suspicious and wondered if this was going to be like Smashbox's O-Glow, where they make claims about micro-circulatory effects but in reality the clear gel turns pink once it is exposed to air. 
The Lip Injection remained clear when I dabbed it on my hand, however. "How odd", I thought, "if my lips are turning pink from the effects of the plumper you'd think I'd feel somethingGAAARRRRHHH!!!!". The stinging that I felt didn't hit until about a minute after I had  put it on. it is unlike any lip plumper- tingling/ burning sensation I've felt. It was really like lots of tiny tiny needles stabbing my lips. I LIKE a bit of a burn, but for a few minutes until the stinging stopped, I wanted to run away from my own lips.
I wish I'd had thought to take a before picture. I really didn't think this stuff would have much effect, especially since it says on the back of the packet, "for maximum long term results, use for a minimum of 30 days- am and pm". That made me think it was more of a hydrating sort of treatment, to reduce lines and increase the volume a bit over time.



My top lip is usually quite a bit thinner than the bottom, as you can see in the above picture the Lip Injection evened things out a lot. The bottom is a bit plumper than usual, but the top lip nearly exploded. I LOVE this. This is so not the lip plumper for anyone with sensitive lips, but it has worked better than anything I've tried in the past.
My lips are still very full and it has been nearly three hours since I applied it. The only thing I don't like is how my lips are still an irritated-pink color at the edges, I will have to be careful applying this in the future.

*trots off to Sephora's site to buy a tube*

Lemon Yellow

I'm very into citrus-y, tangy, lemon yellow right now. It puts me in a summery mood, and the scent is just very refreshing now that it is starting to get unpleasantly hot out.

I love a good lemon scented lotion, any lemon-y skincare product actually.  
My favorite that I'm using right now is Booth's 3-in-1 Multi-Action Body Lotion in Lemon Sugar.



I got it at my local Walgreens, it was a new item they were just setting out, a 32oz bottle for 9.99.
It has alpha hydroxy acids and caffeine to firm the skin. The scent is wonderful, like a buttery lemon cookie. This seems like a hard-to-find product. Usually I can find something online before I see it on store shelves, but the only place I've seen this is at Walgreens. Their site doesn't have it, but they do have a coconut-fig version of the same product.
Walgreens also has a good lemon lotion in their Apothecary line. The scent is a bit more tart, less sugary and buttery than the Booth's lotion, and the price isn't as good, it is about 7.99 for an 8oz bottle.
They also have a lemon cuticle balm that is almost an exact copy of Burt's Bees. Burt's Bees calls theirs a "lemon cuticle creme", but it is more like a wax or balm than a cream.




Even though I have an open tin of the Burt's Bee's brand stuff, when I got a gift set containing the Walgreens lemon balm last holiday season, I had to open it to do a side by side comparison. I couldn't see or smell any difference, so I looked up their ingredients lists, and they are both the same: Sweet Almond Oil , Beeswax , Lemon Oil , Tocopheryl Acetate , Tocopherol - Vitamin E , Cocoa Butter , Candelilla Wax , Rosemary Extract , Beta Carotene. Exactly the same on both!
So, I might just start buying Walgreen's version in the future, it costs $3.99 compared to about $5.99 for BB's.

Another yummy lemon-scented body product- philosophy's Frozen Lemon Custard.
It doesn't have a strong lemon scent, more sweet and... custard-y. It has that good-enough-to-eat scent a lot of philosophy's products have. And like their other 3-in-1s, it makes a great body wash/ bath gel, but kind of sucks as a shampoo. :(



Makeup-wise, the only yellow product I own is in a L'Oreal HIP shadow duo, #538 Flamboyant. I've used it, 
and it isn't terrible, but it really is hard for me to use yellow without looking sickly.
Yellow nail polish just makes me cringe. I don't want people to wear yellow nail polish around me. And I see yellow polish on the toenails as a good indicator of poor taste. *EEEWWWWW*
 

Moving along. For candy, because you have to have candy, two great lemon candies:
Ferrara Pan Lemonheads. You can visit their site and take a mini-virtual-tour to see how they are made! Pretty fascinating, no? It involves a lot of machines that look like you could lose an arm in them, and a lot of swirling around to get that nice shiny yellow exterior.




For a more sophisticated candy that it less likely to leave hard candy deposits in your teeth after chewing, Frey chocolate in Citron & Poivre is excellent. I try a different flavor from the brand whenever I visit Target, this flavor is described on Frey's site as, "Extra fine dark chocolate with a refreshing dash of lemon and black pepper". I know this may make me weird, but I wish I could taste more black pepper in it,the citrus taste was more obvious to me.  But, the whole combination worked out quite well.