Monday, August 8, 2016

BH Cosmetics: Galaxy Chic Palette

I recently watched a Carli Bybel (she is so awesome) tutorial on YouTube called "Orange & Copper Spring Makeup Tutorial." She used the BH Cosmetics Galaxy Chic palette for the look. As soon as I saw the palette and gorgeously, unique colors I knew I had to have it. I love BH Cosmetics products; I have purchased brushes from them before. They have a large variety of high quality products; the Galaxy Chic palette is no different. When I bought this palette, it cost about $12 (so affordable)! This palette includes 18 baked, shimmery eyeshadows; each one is so gorgeous. Each shadow is pigmented and beautiful; they only one that is not as pigmented as the others is Electra. Some of the darker colors are a bit powdery but who cares! Just do your eyes before face! :) You can def do some dramatic, colorful looks with the palette but also some VERY pretty, subtle daytime looks. If you get this palette and need some inspiration, check out YouTube, there are tons of tutorials. Also, if you get it, let me know how you like it and show me some of your looks! 
XOXO, Katie :)






Friday, August 5, 2016

Fall Friday: 2016 Fall Bucket List

My absolute favorite season is Fall! I love the weather, the warm drinks, the cozy clothes, the cozy decorations, Halloween, and of course it is football season! (There is just so much to love about fall) Guess what?! Fall is just around the corner!! In honor of the upcoming Fall season, I will be posting Fall themed posted every Friday until the first day of Fall, September 22nd; I am calling it Fall Fridays! So, if you love Fall as much as I do than stay tuned because there will be a bunch of  Fall content coming soon! Here is the first one!!

This Fall season, for the first time in a long time, I will be living in an actually house, in the country no less, which means I get to amp up my decorating game by like 100%!! I am so excited for Fall on the new acreage (pictures to come)! Every year I pin the Fall bucket lists on Pinterest because they are always so adorable. This year I decided to make my own. Here it is!! Let me know if you participate in this bucket list! Print it out, save it on your phone or whatever you need to do! Enjoy your Fall! XOXO, Katie :) P.S. There is a typo... It's Go Apple picking not go apply picking whatever that is!


Thursday, August 4, 2016

The Carli Bybel Palette!

I have been watching Carli Bybel on YouTube for a while. When she announced that she was collaborating with BH Cosmetics to make an eyeshadow palette I was super pumped for multiple reasons. Reason one: BH is super affordable and sells great quality products. Reason two: I knew that Carli was going to include some super pretty bronzy-gold colors because those are her ride or die tones. Reason three: I knew the packaging was going to be so cute and fab because Carli is cute and fab!
The first batch that went on sale sold out before I could get my unmanicured hands on them but I did get one when the next round was in stock. I think the price was $12.88, so super affordable!!



In the palette, there are ten eyeshadow colors and four highlighting shades. As I suspected, many of the eyeshadows were in the gold/bronzy family and the rest were neutrals with one pop of rich cranberry. Four of them are a matte finish, four are beautiful shimmers and one, I think, is a matte/shimmer mix. The highlights are all a beautiful glowy/shimmery finish in a variety of shades for different skin tones. The consistency of the powders are good; the shimmery colors, including the highlighters, are super creamy and pigmented. However, I found that the matte shades were a little less pigmented and more powdery, especially the dark cranberry color. (Swatches below)




Overall, this is a fab palette! The packaging is super chic and adorable; Carli included a little penguin on one side of the packaging (if you watch her videos, she is obsessed with penguins).



The colors that Carli chose are on point and should be staples in anyone eyeshadow and highlighting collection. With this palette you can create any look from simple daytime to dramatic nighttime glam! It is a wonderful palette for an excellent price! 


Here is a look I did using the palette!

The palette is now available at Ulta and the Bh Cosmetic website



XOXO,
Katie :)


Disclaimer: This was written in January of 2016 for my old blog... just so you know :)

Wednesday, August 3, 2016

TV Club August 2016: Mindy Project, Stranger Things, New Girl... oh my!

So, I do a monthly book club because I love reading books and I spend a lot of time doing so. Another thing I do that I love and I do a lot is watch TV a.k.a Netflix and Hulu! So, I decided since I love watching TV shows just as much as I love reading books, I decided to start a monthly TV club as well!

This month’s TV shows include Mindy Project, Stranger Things, and New Girl.

Mindy Project is an awesome show! If you love shows with really strong female characters, you will LOVE this one. I started watching Mindy Project when it premiered on Fox in 2012. It is a charming show about a female OBGYN, Mindy, who lives with her hilarious heart on her sleeve. Basically, Mindy and her fellow doctors and nurses have crazy relationship issues and life issues that get played out on the show in a fantastically, hilarious way. I fell in love right away with the witty humor and the crazy characters. After about two seasons, I either forgot about it or I no longer had cable after I moved out of the dorms at college so I stopped watching. Just this past month I started watching it again on Hulu; I binged watched season three and season four (which was the first Hulu original season.) Season three and four had so many twists and turns; I loved how they portrayed Mindy as an extremely, strong independent women in season four (I don’t want to give anything away.) Season 5 premieres on Hulu on October fourth! Yay!

Stranger Things is an amazing new Netflix original; it reminds me of American Horror Story a bit but with a little less horror. The Netflix original, Stranger Things, is a remake of the 1980’s series Stranger Things. It is based in 1983 Hawkins, Indiana where shit basically hits the fan. A young boy, Will, goes missing and his mom, Joyce, launched an investigation with the local sheriff. Will’s three best friends also launch their own investigation and end up discovering a very strange little girl with supernatural abilities. They all go on a journey to find Will and the story unravels with many unexpected mysteries. The whole season plays out the entire story; you must binge watch this if you decided it, so plan a whole day where you just watch it (just kidding…… but no seriously, do that.) I am not sure if Netflix will make a second season of the show but if they do I hope they make it like American Horror Story where the new season is a whole new storyline and set of characters but has a similar feel.

The last show of the month is NEW GIRL!! This is my favorite show of all time and not to mention Zoey Deschanel is my role model and she plays the lead in this show, Jess! I started watching this on Fox when it came out in 2011. It is about a rag-tag group of roommates who are hilarious and loveable. Jess, Nick, Winston, and Schmidt are all roommates in L.A. who are trying to adult just like the rest of us. Each episode has a new hilarious adventure which leads
to crazy happenings in the loft. There are beautiful love stories, funny situations from trying to adult, and heartfelt stories about realistic lives. It is all I want in a sitcom! This month I binged watched all of the seasons on Netflix and Hulu again! I absolutely LOVE this show and I cannot wait for the new season which comes out on Fox on September 20th!

Let me know if you have any suggestion for next month TV club!

XOXO,

Katie J

Book Club August 2016: Drama, Powerful Women and Egyptian Magic!

For some reason, I become obsessed with certain topics for small pockets of time. This month I have been OBSESSED with ancient Egyptian times, gods and goddesses. I have been reading books about them, watching movies about them, and of course, binge watching docs on Netflix about them. I also  love books about magic, especially when the main character is a strong girl and some kind of ancient Egyptian myths are involved. So… The Adventures of a Midwest Girl book club brings you…. Drama, Powerful Women and Egyptian Magic!




The first book(s) of the month are the Theodosia series by R.L. LaFevers.
The Theodosia series is awesome! If you liked the Harry Potter series or the Mysterious Benedict Society series you will love the Theodosia series. The series consists of four books: Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos, Theodosia and the Staff of Osiris, Theodosia and the Eyes of Horus, and Theodosia and the Last Pharaoh. The books play off of each other so you definitely have to start with the first book.


The series is about a brave British girl named Theodosia Throckmorton; she basically lives at the Museum of Legends and Antiquities in London where her parents work. Through Theodosia’s time at the museum, she has learned a great deal about Ancient Egyptian magic, gods, and myths. She can actually see the black magic that is still attached to some of the artifacts in the museum. With her knowledge of Egyptian magic, she must remove the curses from the artifacts in order to protect people. Some of the artifacts cannot simply have the magic removed from them because they are much too powerful. These really powerful objects get Theodosia mixed up with some really bad guys. Theodosia must save the world from these evil doers. Each book has its own amazing adventure that Theodosia goes on in order to save the world and discover who she really is. Check out the author’s website for this series: http://www.rllafevers.com/Theodosia.html


 
The next book is A Thousand Nights by E.K. Johnston.
A Thousand Nights was so amazing and inspiring. This is one of my favorite books of all time. The story of the nameless girl in the book is beautiful, magical, and wonderful.

A Thousand Nights is about a strong girl who sacrifices herself to save her sister and all of the other girls in her village from a ruler who takes girls from villages to be his wife but none of them survive. She vows that she will be the last one taken. The ruler takes her to his court which is beautiful and dangerous. She discovers that the ruler was not always cruel but something happened that changed him forever. The powerful mourning from her villages creates an unseen magic within her making her strong enough to stop the cruel ruler of the land.



              The last (but not least) book for the month is The Chaos of Stars by Kiersten White.

This book is nothing like I have ready before. The main character, Isadora, is just a human girl but her life is anything but normal because her parents and family are Egyptian gods. Let me clarify…. Her mother is Isis, goddess of marriage, magic, and healing, her father is Osiris, god of the underworld and one of her brothers is Horus, god of war. This is a very powerful and magical family. Being a sixteen year old human in the midst of a family of gods and goddesses is tough for Isadora. After she discovered some interesting news from her mother, they both decided it would be best if Isadora moves to San Diego to live with her brother. She wants to make a clean break from her family by moving to California however, her new life seems to be just as complicated and messy. This book is full of twists, turns, and adventures. I absolutely love that this is a story based in modern times but includes ancient Egyptian gods.


If you are looking for a little magic and girl-power in your life, I recommend all of these books. J

If you have any suggestions for books for next month, let me know!
XOXO,

Katie J

Stationary Madness!

Every now and then I feel the need to buy a bunch of new stationary products. For example, I recently got a new job and moved to a new house, therefore I had to buy a new planner, notebook, and sticky notes! Another example: I wanted a notebook to write a few notes in and I found one in my desk; a few pages had been used in it so clearly I had to get a new one! See there are many times to buy new stationary!


Recently, I went to the good ole’ local Walmart to pick up some new stationary. I saw all the new school supplies for the season were out and I got super pumped. First of all, Five Star has pumped up their cuteness and have created really cute notebooks; before they only had the plain colored notebooks (see pic) so, I was excited to see cute prints on the new notebooks. I saw that they had really cute planners from the brand mintgreen. They had so many cute planners from this brand; I was SUPER in love with like five of them (disclaimer: I only bought one). Mintgreen products are made from recycled materials, so that’s awesome too! Then, we have my favorite pen/ markers of all time: Paper Mate Flair. Paper Mate Flair’s are markery pens that I use for everything. They are more on the side of markers so they aren’t very good for writing checks and stuff like that but just writing with them are awesome. Also, the come in a huge variety of colors so I love to use them to color code my planners. I saw that they had a new pack of colors called Tropical Vacation, so I had to get them!
If you have any suggestions on where to get amazing stationary, let me know!


All of these products can be found at Target, Walmart, and other office supply stores.


XOXO,

Katie J