Saturday, April 10, 2010

Simply B

I figured that in order to cross off #25: Become a master makeup artist, I needed to meet with Denver's resident makeup master: Michael Moore, owner of Simply Moore for a lesson on makeup mastery. Michael and his endless knowledge certainly didn't disappoint, and while it ended being a pricey goal it was so totally worth it.

But let me back up for a second and say why this was a goal of mine. When I graduated college I treated myself to a makeup lesson at MAC. It was useful and I learned how to use some colors (like purple) that I would never have picked for myself, but made me look fabulous. But I've had the same look for the past seven years and have never felt like I really knew what I was doing. On top of that, the only time my "look" every looked any different was when I did something extreme like my version of a smoky eye. So I wanted to have another lesson with someone who really knew what they were doing in hopes that I would learn how to accent my best features and how to change up my look based on the event I was at.

My lesson with Michael was phenomenal. I learned that I was using the wrong color foundation (no shock there) and eye liner. And I was doing some techniques wrong that were actually counter intuitive to my goals, like trying to make my eyes bigger but using shadow in the wrong places was actually making them look smaller and deeper set. I won't spill all my secrets because everyone should really have their own custom lesson, but I feel so much more knowledgeable and prettier than I did yesterday. I know how to do an everyday look, a work dinner/event/evening look and a party look. And I have a bag upstairs full of new makeup to use. It's really fun to be a girl!

-B

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Thursday, April 8, 2010

Tired and overworked, but the list must go on

Thankfully one of my goals wasn't become more reliable, because I certainly would have failed meeting that one. I can't believe how insanely busy life has been for me the past couple weeks. I've got more work to get done than hours in the day causing me to be pretty sporadic about blogging of late.

Good news is the massive project that I've been working on is scheduled to go live on April 19, which is also the actual day of my big birthday. Perfect timing for me to complete #12: Climb the corporate ladder. But, today's blog is actually about the completion of #7: Make someone else's day. A week ago, yes it's really taken me an entire week to blog about it, I was able to cross off my 10th goal from my list. Yay!

I've mentioned quite a bit on here how much I adore my girlfriends and while I know how much I love them, I'm not sure I do a great job of letting them know how much their friendship means to me. So as part of being able to cross off #7 I sent a card through the mail to each of my closest girlfriends letting them know just that. I hope that it made their days.

The second part of completing #7 I reserved for my coworkers who put up with me and all my loud sighs day after day. Nothing says thank you better than cash, but I'm on a tight budget these days so I said thank you, and hopefully made their day, by bringing them the second best thing: Santiago's breakfast burritos.

Doing each of these things also made my day, which proves the old adage "It's better to give than receive" completely spot on. And because it gave me such a great buzz, I plan to incorporate more random acts of kindness into my life in hopes of making someone else's day a regular occurrence.

-B

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Thursday, April 1, 2010

10 down... 20 to go

Those of you who follow the blog know this is not my first blog about goal #11 (read 30 books). I knew when I made this goal it was going to be a hard one for me to hit. In December I realized that I needed to read 3.25 books per month to hit this goal before September. I panicked slightly and hit the books!

Since then I have read 10 of my 30 books goal and I am pretty damn proud of that. The thing I have loved the most about this goal is not only feeling like I am really accomplishing something, but I have found out how much I really do enjoy reading. Not that every book I have read has been amazing... because believe me it hasn't been, but it's addicting! Similar to crack but better for your brain. This is one goal I am going to make an honest effort to keep up on after I turn 30.

Using the same math I used in December... with 10 books down I need to read 3.33 books per month or 62 pages per day to hit my goal, which means I am on track to hit this one!