June Favorites

June 29, 2018

June Favorites

How is June already over?? Does this mean we’re halfway through the Summer? I refuse to believe so! Thankfully, Summer in Florida lasts until at least October so I don’t have much to worry about just yet. This month was pretty busy, personally, and my favorites will definitely reflect that. We have a new addition to our family and I’ve been enjoying a lot of good food! This is definitely one of my more random-based favorites posts, although I did also end up with my fair share of beauty favorites...of course!

Let’s start with the most exciting part from last month, our new baby!! We got (kinda rescued) this Australian Shepherd puppy in the beginning of June. We found him on Craigslist, drove an hour and a half to get him and brought him home. He was seven (almost eight) weeks old at the time and eight pounds. Now he’s ten weeks old and best friends with his German Shepherd sister.

Our German Shepherd just turn four and we’ve known for a long time that she needed a playmate. She’s not getting any younger and we’ve waited long enough, so now was finally the time. Within a week, they were already completely inseparable. It’s the cutest thing!

I say that we “kinda” rescued him because although we bought him from the breeders, we realized after we got him home that he was completely covered in fleas. He had never been to the vet! We probably took more than 100 fleas off of his little body and were finally able to get him in to see the vet three days after he had been with us. Within those three days, we gave him a total of six baths! He’s quite the trooper. Thankfully, the vet said he’s completely healthy and now that we’ve got him on flea medicine there hasn’t been any more problems. He’s been such a great little addition to our family and we love him so much!

I love having flowers in our yard and my husband loves gardening. We do some sort of flower every year. Normally it’s hibiscus because those are my favorite, but this year we tried sunflowers. We started them from seeds back in mid-April and we’re just now getting our first two blooms. They are so beautiful and I love waking up to see them out my window every morning. Thankfully, the blooms last a lot longer than hibiscus also so I get to enjoy them more!

Smoothies have always been a huge part of our relationship (as you might remember from our engagement story) and recently, they’ve become a daily treat. Instead of getting our weekly $5 medium smoothies at Smoothie King on Fridays, we’ve been making them at home for a lot less. We quickly realized we needed to upgrade our blender, so we decided to jump on the Ninja train. It took a little getting used to, but now we love this new blender. I’m planning on a post to go up shortly explaining the money we’ve saved and some of our favorite smoothie combos, so keep an eye out for that!

This might seem a little silly, but this whisk is amazing. We’ve actually had this for a while now and I just thought to include it in case anyone might know what type of whisk it is and where I can find another one. We randomly picked this up at Tuesday Morning and haven’t been able to find it again. It’s all completely plastic, there is no rubber coating around it. The best part, though, is that the ends don’t come together. That makes it so much easier because nothing gets stuck on the inside of the whisk, it’s great!

Now onto some delicious food! You might have seen my recent recipe post for how I make classic bruschetta. Let me go ahead and tell you the obsession that was mentioned in that post is 100% real. We’ve been making bruschetta a few times a week for an entire month now. We just can’t get enough of it! It’s the perfect snack food.

When I was younger, I used to hate macaroni and cheese. Like, I hated it so much I didn’t want it anywhere near my plate. My sister was the complete opposite, she would eat macaroni and cheese for every meal and be on cloud nine. The older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve grown to like mac and cheese. And of course, my sister is the person I go to for the best recommendations. She brought this Kraft Macaroni & Cheese Three Cheese with Mini-Shell Pasta over to my house and I fell in love. I’ve tried so many different options at the store and they all sucked. But this one, I could eat the entire box myself!

Another obsession are these eclairs from Publix. My husband randomly brought them home one day and we’ve repurchased them at least three times since then. I mean, we know Publix has one of the best bakeries around and we knew these would be good, we just didn’t know how good. The icing is really what makes it! Publix has the best chocolate fudge icing.

For those of you who don’t live in the Southern states and have no idea what I’m talking about, Publix is a grocery store that Southerners are obsessed with. They have amazing BOGO deals and have the best bakery/deli ever. If you ever find yourself near one, you have to go see what I’m talking about! And fun little story: when we moved back to Florida from California, I grinned from ear to ear walking back into Publix for the first time just because I missed the smell. It sounds so weird, but it’s one of those things where you don’t realize what you have until it’s gone.

The last food obsession is Foosackly’s. This is another Southern thing, but mainly in the Mobile, Al area. They just recently started expanding into Pensacola, Fl and now they just opened a new location ten minutes away from my house. Like, literally ten minutes -- I timed it! Believe me when I tell you, they have the best chicken tenders ever. I’m still a child and order chicken tenders almost everywhere we go and I can tell you I’ve never had chicken tenders as good as the ones at Foosackly’s. They have an amazing business model and the best customer service. Again, if you ever find yourself near one you have to go!!

Okay. Now that I’m completely starving and drooling all over myself, let’s move onto beauty. The two base face products that I’ve been using the most this past month are the Cover FX Blurring Primer and the Elf Acne Fighting Foundation. The primer came in my May Boxycharm and it’s been wonderful for blurring my pores and extending the wear of my makeup. It reminds me a lot of the Benefit POREfessional primer, I’m convinced they’re the same exact thing.

The Elf foundation has been a huge favorite of mine for years, but I can only use the shade Buff when I have a fresh self tan. I’ve been trying to get a lighter shade of this for what seems like forever and they’ve always been out of stock. I just recently picked up the next shade down, Porcelain, when I was at Target because I didn’t know when I’d see it again. But since I finally started self tanning again, I’ve had the opportunity to bring this foundation back into my routine. I love how much it covers without feeling or looking heavy on the skin.

Another Elf product I’ve been loving is their cream eyeliner in the shade Coffee. I believe I’ve included this in a favorites post before and I’m still loving it. It’s great for these hot Summer days because it’s so easy to apply, but it doesn’t budge throughout the day. Brown eyeliner is my favorite because it’s still deep enough in color without looking too harsh.

My favorite brush to apply it with is the BrowGal eyebrow brush. I don’t mind that it has a spoolie on one side of it because the brush side is all I really care about. It’s the thinnest angled eyeliner brush I’ve ever used, making application a total breeze.

No surprise here! My favorite blush and bronzer are from Makeup Geek. The bronzer shade is called Bad Habit and the blush is Heart Throb. I’ve used up an entire pan of Bad Habit and had this one waiting as a backup. It’s a good thing too because I can’t find this shade on their website anymore and I’m very worried about that.

I love all of their blushes and Heart Throb is my current favorite. I’ve been wearing it constantly because I just love how flattering it is. It’s the perfect matte salmon shade that provides enough pigmentation to actually be seen on the cheeks. Hopefully they don’t get rid of this one too or I’ll really be in trouble!

This Ofra highlighter in the shade Rodeo Drive has made it onto my blog quite a few times already, but I typically tend to use it more in the Summer and I’ve finally brought it back out. I mainly use this as eyeshadow. I’ll just put this all over my eyelid, add a matte crease shade, and some mascara. So easy! Every now and then I’ll use it as highlight also.

Continuing on with eyeshadow, I have three palettes that I’ve been switching between the most this month. I have full reviews posted of all of them, so I’ll only touch on them quickly. The first is the It Cosmetics Naturally Pretty palette. I love that the majority of the shades in this palette are matte and that the formula is incredibly easy to work with. As you might have seen in my Sunset Eyeshadow Tutorial, my favorite shades lately are the warmer-tones like Warmth, Soulful, Sunrise, and Sunset.

Another completely matte palette is the Kat Von D Shade + Light eyeshadow palette. The formula on these is a little more powdery than in the Naturally Pretty palette, so it does take a little more patience. You can’t be as carefree with these during application. And again, the warmer shades are my current favorites that I come to this palette for. That side of the palette used to scare me because I thought there was too much red, but now I love it!

My last favorite is this Pür Cosmetics Soirée Diaries eyeshadow palette. I’ve included this in its own tutorial, as well as my Wedding Day makeup post. I was so surprised with this palette when I got it and I think that might be why I love it so much, aside from the shade selection and amazing quality that it offers. Every time I use this, I almost always use my favorite shades: Gala, Splurge, and Stunner.

I can’t believe I don’t have any lip products to mention, probably because I just listed them all in last week’s top 5 post. I also can’t believe how many food options I had to include. There was enough that I could have done two parts to this month’s favorites! Can you tell Summer is an exciting time or what? But seriously, if you have any recommendations on where I can find one of those whisks please let me know! ;)