Life and Makeup.

Sorry, no pictures today kids.  Life is just one big clusterfuck lately, and I’m just barely holding it together.  Wait! Who am I kidding, I’m not holding it together at all.  Everything is falling apart around me and it’s a pretty scary feeling. I’m usually so in control and so on top of everything but that’s just not the case anymore.  My health has gone from average to shit, our bank accounts went from full to empty to pay for medical bills, my husband has gone from wonderful and amazing to angry and miserable (but still wonderful) due to the terrible conditions at his job, and my life’s plan has gone from one direction to another. That’s just life, I suppose. We’ll get through it all, we always do. Until then, I am just taking it day by day. Some days, the only things keeping me sane are the times I can sit down and do my nails or organize my perfume stash. Everyone’s gotta have something, right?

I’m sure you are all laughing at me as I tell you that cosmetics keep me sane. How could such a seemingly superficial aspect of life bring me such joy, and even serenity in times of clusterfuck-ness? I don’t know, but what I do know that is that it has been that way my entire life. The world of beauty is something that has always fascinated me. At the age of three I was caught playing with my mom’s Avon makeup. My favorite things were those little teeny, tiny lipstick samples. I figured they were meant for little kids…they were the perfect size!  My favorite shade was the Soft Shell Pink, a hideous coral-pink frosty disaster. By the time I was four, I was sampling any perfume I could get my grubby little hands on. The first perfume I ever fell in love with was my mom’s Samba perfume. The packaging was as deliciously 80’s as one could get, bright and tacky. The scent was undoubtedly a heavy oriental headache, but at the time, it was heaven.

A few short years later, I discovered Bath and Body Works. Oh, Bath and Body Works, how many fond memories I have of you. My first ever scent from BBW was the elusive Iced Pineapple. It was only around for a short time, but was it seriously one of the best scents to ever come out of that place. Most pineapple scents have the tendency to have a bit of a tart, musty smell – but not this bad boy. It was the perfect juicy scent of fresh-cut pineapple. From then on, I have been hunting for the perfect pineapple scent. While some have come close, nothing will ever replace the glorious Iced Pineapple in my book.  Bath and Body Works was always a “must stop” mall location for me, as I always enjoyed seeing what they would come up with next. This is when my obsession with all things yummy smelling really took off.

Really, I have just always loved shopping. One of my favorite shopping locales as a young child was the little historic downtown shopping center in Chagrin Falls, Ohio.  In the 90’s, it had everything I could ever desire. There was a toy store, a candy store, a store with fairy dust on the floor and tropical fish lining the walls, a bookstore with a superb kid’s section, a Bath and Body Works (of course), and most importantly, Plymouth Candle Company. It was there that I was introduced to Yankee Candles. The first Yankee I ever bought was a French Vanilla tart. I never burned it, since I had no idea what a tart was, but hey, it was little and cute and it smelled like vanilla cake and I was all over it. I have tried many, many candles over the years but I always will have some Yankees hanging out with the rest of my stash.

And then came the Lip Smacker collection. When I first discovered Lip Smackers at the age of 7, my mom gave me the Bonne Bell rundown: she had them when she was a kid, her favorite flavor was Dr. Pepper (isn’t everyone’s?) and they were made right here in Cleveland. Say no more mom, you had me at Dr. Pepper! From then on, I would scour every drugstore, Marc’s, Wal-Mart and K-Mart in the area for new Lip Smackers. I had them all.  I had all the necklaces with 7 different flavors each, I had the special edition holiday ones, I had the giant ones, I had the lipglosses, the perfumes…EVERYTHING. I probably stopped a few years later with the craziness, but to this day, whenever I see new Lipsmackers at Target I have to pick them up. They’re not the best lip balms by any means, but they definitely bring back some fond memories. I’m partial to anything jelly bean or marshmallow flavored anyways.

Nail polish probably came next. When the weather would get nice, my friends and I would save up our pennies and make a hike to Revco to pick up some Wet and Wild nail polishes. This is the time when nail polishes were still mostly all pink and red, so Wet and Wild’s colors seemed so crazy! They had orange, blue, black, purple, even GLITTER. It was a dream come true for a young beauty junkie like myself.  And then a few years later, Hard Candy was born. I saw those ads for it in YM and Seventeen Magazines and I was obsessed with finding it; I had to have that Sky blue nail polish! I had heard rumblings about it being sold in a place called Sephora, so I checked it out. My first step into Sephora, and it was all over. It had EVERYTHING: perfume, nail polish, bath and body products, skincare, and of course, makeup.

I can’t talk about Hard Candy without talking about Urban Decay! Before those two brands were around, makeup was kind of a boring market. Everything was mauve, peach, rose…but with Hard Candy and Urban Decay, we now had Mildew green, Trailer Trash silver, Roach brown, Gash blood red, Toxin blue, and Oil Slick black. As an angtsy pre-teen, these brands were just what the doctor ordered. I had a friend named Elizabeth in middle school, a beautiful and sassy diva of beauty products. I always admired her massive makeup stash, her shower full of shampoo, and her Philosophy shower gel collection.  She actually won an Urban Decay contest and got to name a lipstick. I forgot what it was, and I’m not sure if the color is still around, but at the time, it was one of the coolest things ever. She even got a t-shirt out of the deal. Man, was I jealous of that t-shirt!

Into high school, I began experimenting with other mid-to-high end makeup brands such as Stila, Clinique, Prescriptives (may you RIP), Bobbi Brown and MAC. I was never really great at actually applying the makeup, but did I sure love trying! High school was also when I started dying my hair. Red was usually a favorite, but I seemed to often end up with tinges of orange or purple in there. However it turned out, I generally didn’t care. The fun part was getting together with my girlfriends and ruining the bathroom sink with hair dye. This is when the acrylic nails started as well. OH THE HORRORS! Those terrible FRENCH TIP ACRYLICS. *gag* I always have had such nice nails, I’m not sure what ever possessed me to go with acrylics. Ugh, and how they would get yellow after tanning. Sick. Hey, I never said my beauty journey was a pretty one.

After high school began my career in retail beauty stores. My first real job was at the Body Shop. My manager was amazing and coming to work every day was a blast. I loved playing with all the body butters, doing makeovers on customers and coming up with fragrance oil combinations. Sadly, the Body Shop was later bought out by L’Oreal and they just haven’t been the same since. After the Body Shop, I worked at Trade Secret. True,  Trade Secret is a salon but the main source of revenue is the retail section. Hair products and nail polish galore! The best part was having first pick of the 75% off nail polish markdowns. After Trade Secret was Bath and Body Works. To this day, that was my favorite job ever. After years and years of shopping there, I was finally behind the scenes.  When I worked there, BBW was at the height of its innovation. There was the regular Pleasures line and the Anti-Bac line of course, but there was also Breathe, Aromatherapy, True Blue Spa, Tutti Dolci, C.O. Bigelow, Savannah Bee Company, Le Couvent des Minimes, Temptations, and White Barn Candle Company. Those were the days for sure. After that, there was a short stint at Yankee Candle and later a run at Perfumania. I just couldn’t stay away from beauty products!

During that time, I experimented with making my own bath and products as well. I soon realized that it was just more fun buying what other people had made. And so I discovered bath and body e-tailers. These are companies that hand make their own products, and they often have over 500 different scents available to purchase! I loved slathering myself in the Blueberry Pancake, Strawberry Margarita, Raspberry Cheesecake, and Pineapple Buttercream Cupcake fragrances that e-tailers would offer. It became a very expensive habit, since every fragrance these companies had sounded so flipping delicious! The orders were made from scratch, so once you placed the order, it would be a good month or so wait before receiving the products. Once that package came, it was like Christmas all over again.

And here I am today, an equal opportunity offender.  My current love is nail polish, but I still have a wonderful makeup, perfume and body and body stash as well.  Now with beauty blogs, communities like Makeup Alley and the YouTube beauty community, I am able to share my love for products with people from all over the world! It’s wonderful talking to people who are as obsessed, and often times MUCH MORE obsessed with the beauty world as I am. I’m sure most of you stopped reading about 20 paragraphs ago, but I really enjoyed sharing this with you all and I encourage you to share your beauty story with the world as well!! I tag EVERYONE, beauty nut or not, to do the same!!

My Favorite Discontinued Beauty Products

Perhaps one of the most frustrating things about being a consumer in today’s beauty world is the constant discontinuation of products. Companies are always striving to stay on top of the trends, and it almost seems that sometimes they are trying to discourage people from becoming loyal to one specific product. Sure, part of the reason why we love beauty products is that there is always something new and exciting popping up on the shelves. But for those of us that have had a favorite product discontinued, we realize that the new and shiny stuff comes with a price. The whole “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mantra just doesn’t seem to ring true in the cosmetics industry these days.

I am one of the lucky ones that always seem to fall in love with products that are doomed from the start. If it’s limited edition, hard to find or extremely unique, I will develop a need for that specific item. Luckily, the exception for me seems to be makeup; any makeup products that I have fallen in love with seem to stick around for awhile. However, I swear to all that is holy, if MAC discontinues the Painterly Paint Pot or Shale eyeshadow, I will boycott them for the rest of my life. Anyways, it is seriously heartbreaking when I go into a store and find that the object of my desire doesn’t even exist anymore! When I recently discovered that my all-time favorite conditioner was discontinued (I will discuss this in a bit), I almost cried. It took me so long to find a conditioner that was the perfect combination of moisture and protein, had the perfect scent that would linger in my hair forever and left me tangle free. Of course, I scoured every store in the area and ended up with about 15 bottles of it. I just used up my last bit a few weeks ago, and it was the end of an era.

So what can you do if your favorite product is discontinued? Unfortunately, not much. I have written to companies (nice letters at first, becoming more indignant with time), made endless calls to customer service, joined “bring back my product” campaigns on Facebook, and even scoured eBay for perhaps the last existing bottles of the product on earth. I once paid $100 for a discontinued candle on eBay. Yes, one hundred crisp American dollars. This was in my teen years before I knew the true value of money, of course.  These days I just don’t have that luxury anymore. So the best I can do is whine about it and write blogs like this, so that  these products will stay alive in the hearts of beauty lovers and perhaps one day, we will see them again. Yeah, right.

Here are some of my favorite products that have bitten the dust.

Bath and Body Works Tutti Dolci Line
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This stuff first came out a few months before I started working at BBW after high school. I had always been a huge fan of anything foody-smelling, but those types of products were quite hard to come across in the mainstream brands. And then came Tutti Dolci! The scents were: Angel Food Cake (as shown above), Pineapple Chiffon,  Lemon Meringue (my personal favorite), Creme Brulee, Cinnamon Frosting, Tiramisu Veneziano, Chocolate Fondue, Fantasia di Cioccolata, Apple Torta, Amaretti, Mango Sorbetto, Sugar Wafer, and Rasberry Granita. I was in heaven with this line! The moisturizing souffles were the perfect, fluffy amount of moisture and the scent would last all day, the body washes were creamy and gorgeously scented and the EDT's were beautifully packaged and always stayed true to the scents. When I found out this line was being discontinued, I really stocked up. Of course, everything got used up eventually and all I have left is a tiny bit of Tiramisu body souffle. BBW, if you are listening, PLEASE BRING THIS LINE BACK! I haven't seen anything this luxurious and wonderfully scented since. 

Bath and Body Works Temptations Line
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Bath and Body works in definitely the absolute WORST offender in my book for committing crimes of discontinuation. The Temptations line has another sad story of being absolutely amazing and then disappearing out of the blue. Apparently, some customers were complaining about this line disappearing and BBW put out a half-assed attempt to revive the line in Christmas of 2009. The scents were absolutely horrid (including a scary attempt at a red licorice scent), and BBW apparently took the fact that the line didn't sell as a sign that customers weren't interested in delicious fragrances. UH, WRONG! The one exception is Twisted Peppermint, which was so popular that they decided to include it in their Holiday Traditions Signature Collection line every year.

Anyways, the scents from the Temptations line were: Frozen Daquiri, Tropical Colada, Pomegranate Martini, Cinnamon Bun Heaven, Spiced Apple Rapture, Pecan Passion, Pumpkin Pie Paradise, Twisted Peppermint, Wickedly Hot Chocolate, Crazy Caramel Corn, Spicy Gingerbread, Island Coconut, Beyond Berry, Mango Colada, Orange Freeze, Frosting Forever, Iced Tea Twist, Melon Cooler, Simply Divine Cherry Pie (my favorite, shown above), Glittery Gumdrop, and several others. I would give anything to be able to buy these scents again!  

Bath and Body Works Pleasures in Fresh Vanilla
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This is the best vanilla scent ever. 'Nough said.  

Bath and Body Works Pure Simplicity Aloe Vera Body Butter
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Okay, I swear this is the last BBW product! I really could have done an entire blog post about all my favorite products that they have discontinued, but I couldn't even find visual evidence that several of the items even existed, such as the Le Couvent des Minimes Orange Cinnamon candle. I am convinced that there is not even one picture of this item in existence! Anyways, this Aloe body butter was amazing! It wasn't greasy or heavy like most body butter can be; it was light, whipped and cooling. The aloe in it made a PERFECT after sun lotion, and really helped with sunburn when I didn't want to cover myself in sticky aloe gel. I have yet to find a product that even comes close to this one in texture and performance. 

The Body Shop Invent Your Scent Altaro Eau de Toilette
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This is the single most amazing perfume I have ever smelled in my entire life. If it was still in production, I don't think I would even need to buy anything else, ever. This Invent Your Scent line came out in 2004 when I was working at The Body Shop (can you tell I have worked for a lot of cosmetics/body products/fragrance companies?) and I was immediately drawn to this scent. It was an incredible mix of cinnamon, clove, sandalwood, and vanilla that was spicy enough to linger on the skin all day, but not too spicy that it gave you a headache. I have actually tried to replicate this fragrance myself on several occasions, mixing different oils at different concentrations, but to no avail. If anyone out there has a suitable replacement, let me know!! The bottle I have been keeping tucked away has finally turned bad, and I just can't wear it anymore. I don't think I'll ever stop looking for something similar.

The Body Shop Melonseed Body Butter
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For a very long time, the particular fragrance of TBS' famous body butter was only available in the UK.  I had heard from my fellow employees that it was outstanding and I was missing out having not experienced it. Sooner or later, the Body Shop smarted up and brought Melonseed to the US during their semi-annual sale. It was love at first sniff. I have always had a melon-fragrance obsession, and this was one of the best I had ever come across. It was a fresh honeydew scent, not overly sweet but just sweet enough. The butter itself was lighter than most and sunk into my skin beautifully. They soon introduced a shower gel in this fragrance as well after realizing the popularity of the Melonseed. But of course, nothing lasts forever and this went into the gutter. Still haven't found a melon scent that was as fresh and true as this one was. 

Yankee Candle Halloween
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Best. Candle. Ever. You will come to know that Halloween is my all-time favorite holiday and I am a sucker for anything Halloween or fall related. In fact, my wedding was Halloween themed! I know what you're thinking, but I can assure you it wasn't one of those creepy zombie-themed weddings where everyone dresses up as the dead and the bride ascends from a coffin at the altar. Think pumpkins, barns, bonfires, and apple cider. Anyways, this candle was the absolute epitome of Halloween: an intoxicating blend of black licorice, cloves, pumpkin and smoke. Every time I would smell it, I would be transported back to the autumns of my childhood, the Halloween parties, the hayrides, the scary movie marathons, pumpkin carving, and most importantly, brisk autumn evenings spent trick-or-treating. For a while, there was one of these up for sale on eBay for $250, but I recently checked and it was gone. To say that this is one of Yankee's most coveted candle is an understatement: if someone paid $250 for it, it has to be the best damned candle in existence. I, for one, believe that it is. 

Escada Ibiza Hippie Perfume
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This limited edition fragrance from 2003 is a wonderful fruity floral mix. Escada comes out with limited edition scents every year along the same lines, but this one is definitely the best. I wore this all of my junior year of high school, and one whiff can send me back to my first car, my first prom, my first SAT test, my first love and my first heartbreak. I even remember the first time I smelled it; I was shopping at Beachwood Mall Nordie's with a friend of mine and I spotted the colorful bottle amongst the boring Ralph Lauren and Estee Lauder fragrances. I, of course, bought the largest bottle of it right one the spot. I have a little mini bottle that I will save for nostalgia, but now that a regular sized bottle is now going for around $100 on eBay, it is safe to say that I will probably never get a brand new bottle of this ever again.

Sexy Hair Concepts Healthy Sexy Hair Pumpkin Conditioner
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My precioussssssssssssssssssssssssss. This came out a few years back when I was working at Trade Secret Salon (see, if a store has anything to do with beauty products, I have probably worked there) and I had to give it a try. I am a huge pumpkin fan in general, and this one has the most delightful pumpkin spice scent ever. The ingredients were great as well: no silicones, no parabens and best of all, it made my hair feel amazing!! When it was discontinued last year, I cleaned out my local Ultas and ended up with about 15 bottles of it. I really hit the jackpot though when I found 2 half-gallon-sized bottles of it at TJ Maxx. Those 2 huge bottles and the 15 regular sized ones lasted me a good year. I did have super long hair so I probably went through it faster than the average person. Anyways, I have found a semi-suitable replacement but I will always, always check TJ Maxx for the off chance that they may have a bottle of this stuff on the shelves!

John Frieda Beach Blonde Ocean Waves Texturizing Spray
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I first started using this stuff in middle school! It was the perfect product to give you that sexy, beach-touseled waves. You would shake the bottle so the two layers would mix together, and you would get a salty, sparkly spray of delicious coconut goodness. I would spray this stuff on wet hair, give it a few scrunches and I would be good to go. It was especially helpful during the dog days of summer when I had nothing to do but lounge by the pool. It was perfect: it had great hold, a great scent and was never sticky or crunchy (unless you used too much, of course).  I have tried several similar products, including Bumble and Bumble's Surf Spray, and they all suck compared to this one. Please John Frieda, bring this product back!!!!

Hard Candy Nail Polish
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Yes, I am aware that Walmart now carries the Hard Candy cosmetics line. But I am talking about the original Hard Candy, circa 1996, when these coveted nail polishes were only sold at Sephora and they came with rubber rings. The colors were so innovative at the time, and the print ads were outstanding! The recent reincarnation of Hard Candy just doesn't cut it for me. Sure, there are some good products in the bunch (namely the Glamoflage concealer), but I miss the old-school stuff! My old Hard Candy nail polishes have long dried up and been tossed in the trash, but I will never forget the giddy excitement as a teenager when I would get a new bottle of Hard Candy polish. Hard Candy really set the nail polish world on fire.

I had to write two papers for school today, so I'm sorry if this blog entry was a bit bland, as I am all worded out for today. Anyways, hope you guys enjoyed that, and helped you reminisce about some of your favorite defunct items. Would love to hear what your favorite discontinued products are! Leave me a comment =)