On the 25th I will be turning 24 years old and decided to treat myself this year with some luxury makeup purchases. It wasn't intentional from the start but I ended up hauling in all Pat McGrath products. Though I've had the opportunity to use a couple of her eyeshadow palettes before when a client brought them to me to try out on her, up until this point I've only purchased the first Lust 004 Flesh kit, so this haul was particularly exciting.

Truth be told I've been stocking up on a few eyeshadow palettes for the past few weeks that have caught my eye and have been excited to swatch and review them, but I'm somehow only just now getting around to it. I had originally planned on starting with another product, but since I waited for so long to start writing these blogs I figured I'd start out with possibly my favorite palettes I've purchased during this haul of mine. Luck had it that the new Natasha Denona Holiday Eyeshadow 5 Palettes arrived at my store and you know I had to grab them up immediately. What originally caught my eye was the astonishing colors but, to no surprise knowing Natasha Denona, the quality has made me fall further in love.

It's become an annual tradition for me to celebrate Halloween by doing a full week of Halloween makeup looks. I don't mean a spider web wing with an orange accented lower lash line and black lip. I don't mean a dark smoky eye with a vampy red lip. I'm talking full-faced Halloween makeup, the type you could pull off as a costume. This year makes it the third year in a row I've celebrated this way. Unfortunately, this season has been rough for me mentally and emotionally and I couldn't pull through for the whole week, but I was able to pull together three pretty solid looks and I'm proud of each of them for different reasons. With each look I challenged myself in different ways that I haven't before and this year I was able to learn new things and grow artistically.

It's virtually impossible to have a passion for makeup without understanding the importance of skincare. If there's anything I'll shamelessly splurge on in life outside of makeup, it's a new product for my skincare regime. I have my fair share of holy grail and irreplaceable products I use in my skincare routine but that doesn't stop me from occasionally trying new things. I recently tried out the Korres Golden Krocus Ageless Saffron Elixir, and the results I've seen in just a short period of time have had me wondering where this has been my whole life.

We all have a favorite foundation, I happen to have a handful or two of them. Depending on time of the year, state of my skin, desired finish I want from my makeup—I like to switch my foundation up from time to time. Finding your perfect foundation can be a long journey so I'm lucky to have been able to find the ones that I have, though it took extensive trial and error. I happen to consider myself to be a little bit of a foundation junky and like to learn about others favorites, so here are a few of mine!

On September 8th Rihanna launched her very own makeup brand, Fenty Beauty. Her, her team, and any and everyone involved in the creation or launch of this brand kept it top secret and confidential. In my opinion, that was a smart move. Today, a brand can't release anything without having the success or failure of it based solely on whether or not the Youtube beauty gurus with millions of subscriber enjoys the product. This way, everything was kept a mystery and unbiased. If you wanted to find out if you'd like something, you actually had to go out and see for yourself. Being the makeup lover that I am, and having the huge crush on Rihanna that I've had since I was young, I was one of those that jumped out on launch day to get what I could.

I recently picked up another beauty product that I had listed in my spring releases wishlist, the Jeffree Star Cosmetics Androgyny palette. After hearing a lot of mixed reviews on his first eyeshadow palette, Beauty Killer, I didn't think I'd ever be so fixed on getting my hands on one of this brand's palettes. But when I saw the reveal of the shades and swatches, I knew it was something I'd have to add to my collection.