Desiree Gets Creative

So here we are just about one month into my reboot of my no spend year and I'm doing really well. Last week I took some time to just focus on spending time with the babies and getting back into my fitness routine (I do LES MILLS workouts at home through their On Demand platform, it is amazing.) I only made about $80 last week, which is definitely below my weekly income goal, and you know what? I'm okay with that. Typically this would've been a cause of anxiety for me. How am I going to pay my Sezzle or After Pay bills? I won't have enough to buy that fabric, book, makeup, or article of clothing I've been coveting all week. This week I didn't care. I think this is probably the first week in a long time where money wasn't at the forefront of my thoughts all week. You know what else? my daughter's finally starting to call me Mommy, sometimes she comes to me for play time instead of my husband, and she loves snuggling with me in the morning af...

Hi all! As I promised earlier this week I'm going to talk about counterfeit makeup in this blog post partly because I'm pretty sure I accidentally bought some on Mercari. Now I know you've seen in my makeup Monday posts that I own some dupe palettes from Bad Habit. So the main difference between dupes and counterfeits is that dupes, while considered problematic by some, are completely legitimate, legal products. Bad Habit is/was (Again, I'm not sure. They still have a website but there aren't any products listed on it and I'm pretty sure the "away" message has been the same since Shop Hush closed last year.) a registered brand and their products have to go through all the quality tests and have all legal ingredients listed on their packaging just like any other product you can buy at a legitimate retail store. Their product can be similar in color and packaging as the original product but they can't be the same, no logos, no claiming to be the br...

I think one of the hardest parts of my no buy is not buying fast food. I made this decision both for my health and for my wallet. When you're out running errands and you get hungry it's easy to just pull into a drive through and get some lunch. I always think, "Well, it's fast and it's cheap." But all those cheap meals really add up over time and so does that cholesterol. Since I tend to plan out my week it's easy for me to know which days I'll be running errands and plan accordingly. I try to do most of my errand running between the hours of 9 AM and 12 PM so that way I leave after breakfast and get back home in time for lunch. This tends to work really well with the kids too because they tend to be at their most agreeable in the morning. Well, my daughter is a grump before breakfast but once she's fed she's fine. If I can't do my errands during that time period, like I have a doctors appointment or something that got scheduled during lu...

Hi all!  I just wanted to drop a quick post to apologize for missing this week's Makeup Monday. My Just My Luck palette seems to have gone missing. I had hoped it would turn up, because I haven't taken it anywhere so it should be in the house somewhere, but it hasn't. I'm not sure if my daughter decided to play with it and I just haven't located it yet, or what happened to it. Hopefully it turns up soon because I really liked it and I can't buy a new one until my no buy is over. Anyway, I rolled the dice for this week and came up with the Bad Habit Retro Love palette. This one was a dupe for the ABH Subculture palette. I really like the colors in this but I haven't really used it much since I got it. I've noticed that some of my palettes just don't get used as often as they should because I tend to stick to my favorites (Sweet Peach is my most used, it's just really versatile.) Here's a picture: Stay tuned for my Friday declutter, I...

Hi all! Since restarting my no spend I've been doing very good with sticking to my rules. I'm looking forward to doing it for the rest of the year. I really think this is going to be beneficial to me and help me to think about shopping in terms of things I need, not just things I think I need. I'm also having a good time decluttering my house and I can tell you the weight that has lifted alone has been incredible. I'm finding that something about clutter just causes stress and not having all the clutter is pretty freeing. Today I'm going to talk a bit about how I make my money. I'm a stay at home mommy with two kids so I don't have a lot of time to work, I normally do so when my little girl is taking her nap. The baby naps sporadically and not for as long but he's usually pretty content to lay beside me on the couch or on a blanket on the floor and chew on his toys while I work. Right now I have two steady revenue streams. My main "job" is ...

Welcome back! It's makeup Monday again and last week I used my Bad Habit Luna palette all week. Here's a photo of the product that used to be on the Bad Habit site: If I remember correctly, Bad Habit was operated by ShopHush which is now closed. I tried looking on Bad Habit's website but they just have an image stating that they're off working on new things and they'll be back soon. I'm not sure if they're going to be putting out new product at some point, or if this palette will ever be available again but it was a dupe palette for the Anastasia Beverly Hills Norvina palette. I really liked the colors, but I didn't know if I'd use them enough to justify the price tag for the ABH palette so I was happy when this more affordable alternative popped up. for a $10 palette the quality is not bad. Here's what I came up with this week: I feel like these always come out looking muddy, the eye makeup definitely looked better in person than it doe...

Hello out there! This week I've decided to declutter something that isn't an article of clothing. I have lots more clothing items that I can get rid of but I think I'll save some of them for weeks when I can't think of something to declutter. I've decided to get rid of a powder foundation instead. Pictured: the driest powder foundation of them all I don't know why the description on the Ulta website says that this blends effortlessly for a flawless airbrushed finish but it made my face look dry as a desert. It also says that it has medium to full coverage but I couldn't get it to cover anything. If I tried to build it up it just started looking more and more dry. I really wanted to like this because I thought that it would be something easy I could just swipe on when I didn't feel like doing anything else but that isn't happening. I've tried this over primer, on my bare face, over moisturizer, with a hydrating setting spray, you name it a...

So I have to admit I fell off the wagon just a little bit over the holidays. Steam was having a sale and I ended up buying the whole set of Witcher games (they had them on sale for like $15!) and I also bought a notebook to help me track my workouts and a notebook to help me track dinners and groceries. I'm on a new healthy eating kick and I wanted something I could keep notes in regarding the new recipes I've been making. Pictured: Me being disappointed with Me BUT! there were also some victories. My new favorite lipstick is part of the Safiya Nygaard and Colour Pop collab (Berry Me in Lipsticks, it's the best berry color ever invented. I'm sure of it.) I wear it just about every time I wear makeup right now. They announced their last restock a couple of weeks ago. Old me would have bought four of them and kept them around forever just to look at because I'd be afraid of running out of them. New me did not buy any and instead researched some possible dupes f...

So I know I've said this before but I have a lot of makeup. I have 20 eye shadow palettes, at least five different foundations, tons of little samples that came with the Ipsy bag and Boxycharm subscriptions I used to get, five blushes, four mascaras, blah, blah, blah. I've decided that I want to wear makeup at least three days a week so that I can use up the products I have, find out if there's anything I don't like and discard those items, see if there's anything that's expired that I can get rid of, generally just to know my collection and eventually get it down to a more reasonable size. Again, this is one of my major areas of overspending and I'd like to have a more reasonable amount of makeup for a woman who barely has time to wear it. I've made a list of the eye shadow palettes I own and every Monday I'm going to roll my D20 (because I have exactly 20 palettes, how fortuitous!) and use whatever palette the fates choose for me for the whole we...

It's time to do my first Friday Destash post! As I mentioned in my previous blog post a couple of my friends and I have decided to declutter one item per week in 2020. We started last week so this week I actually have two items to talk about, but they're a bit similar. So a couple of years ago maxi dresses were really comfortable and I bought a couple from an online boutique. I can't remember if it was Kiki Larue or Magnolia Boutique but either way I was pretty disappointed when I got them because they were not the quality I paid for at all. They are cheaply constructed with ridiculously thin fabric that you can see straight through if you try to wear it outside on a sunny day, which is pretty much what they're meant for. I tried to make them work for a while by wearing a slip under them but it seemed to defeat the purpose of a maxi dress since they were meant to be comfortable and easy, a sort of no thought needed wardrobe item. They were also extremely clingy and u...