Adios Microwave!

Let me start off by saying I love being in my kitchen, cooking and baking. I will love it even more once we start re-doing our kitchen, which is a little lopsided. The cabinet doors are all a little crooked. Some of the drawers require a little encouragement to open and close without sliding off their tracks. The genius who put the kitchen together in the first place opted for white counter tops, which show absolutely everything. Every speck of dust, every drip. Everything. I can't wait for those to go.

We just recently (a few days before Thanksgiving week) got some lovely new appliances, which I have been loving! A new French Door refrigerator (it has a water dispenser in the door! I love it!), new stove (that has a window on the door, AND an oven light! My old stove was really not fancy), and a new dishwasher that is SO quiet that I sometimes wonder if I remembered to turn it on. 

But the one appliance we didn't get? A new microwave. As a matter of fact, we ended up donating our microwave to Goodwill. I never used the darn thing except to make the occasional batch of popcorn or to melt some butter, and you know what? I don't miss it! It freed up a huge amount of counter space, and it prompted me to look up a YouTube video on how to make popcorn on the stove top. 

Let me say, it's totally delicious! I just grab a little saucepan and melt a little butter while the popcorn is popping. You can even get fancy if you want and add some taco seasoning to your popcorn for a little extra flavor. Powdered Ranch dressing mix is pretty tasty, too.

All this to say: I don't miss our microwave at all!

Have you ever considered getting rid of yours? Tell me about it!

Pretty Cheap...

I'm just going to go ahead and tell you the title is totally a pun. This is a post about cheap makeup that's also awesome. Get it? Pretty Cheap. Pretty. Cheap. My co-worker Paul would be laughing right now if he were reading this. He loves a good pun as much as I do.

If you know me, you know I LOVE Target. I think it's great. Maybe it's the fact that I grew up in Canada, where the shopping options are kind of limited, especially if you didn't want to pay a fortune. I love the fact that Target has cute clothes that last a long time, fun home decor stuff, and that their store brand products are pretty darn great.

I had never tried their E.L.F. brand beauty products (eyes, lips, face) until a couple of weeks back when Kevin and I were in Target and this caught my eye:

I love Essie nail polish - they have such cute colors - but at $7 a pop, it's a little pricey. So when I saw this cute little set of 14 nail polishes for $10, I grabbed one. At about 70 cents a bottle, the polish is really nice, the variety of colors is great, and they even have a few glitter polishes in there. 

Anyhow, I was in Target last night picking up a couple things, and popped by the beauty area. I love a nice bright red lipstick, but haven't really been able to find a nice shade that doesn't come off whenever I sip my tea, or eat something, or have it end up on my teeth when I talk (very attractive...). Anyhow, I picked up the E.L.F. Matte Lip Color in Rich Red (below, far right) for $1, and it is fantastic. It goes on smoothly, you don't need a lot, and after a few minutes, it's set! I applied it this morning at around 7:00 and after kissing Kevin on my way out the door, a cup of coffee, two clementines, a few ginger cookies, a bowl of soup, a ginger ale, and a whole lot of talking, it was still in place. The color is awfully pretty, too - just a nice red, not too blue, not too orange. I did apply a few dabs of Smith's Strawberry lip balm mid-morning and mid-afternoon, but it's pretty dry in my office, so you probably won't have that problem. 

So if you're out shopping for Christmas and find yourself at Target, grab a couple of these! So pretty, and so worth the $1 price tag!