Beauty Alert!!

Okay, this is pretty exciting: I just got my first Blog Swag!!!

To start at the beginning:

Since I had been in my house for so long with bunion surgery, I thought it was the perfect time to grow out my overplucked brows. Since I was starting to get out in public more and more, I decided that it was the perfect time to visit Stacya Silverman to get my brows done. She not only gave me lower-maintenance brows, but told me just where to pluck them to keep them looking thicker and natural. Check out my amazing After photo. Well, I don't look so awesome, but my brows do...

I was trying to get Paris into the photo so that she would distract people from my house-wear and funky hair.

Yaaay! Stacya was so quick and pleasant to talk to. She also has an awesome dog who was in her office. He was like a giant version of my dog, Paris:

Paris enjoys collecting squeaker toys

Awwww, isn't she so cute???? Stacya's dog is just as cute and sweet, but eight-times bigger than Paris. Or twenty times bigger, when you count his thick fur.

Anyway, I mentioned my humble little blog to Stacya and told her it was about pretty things (and ugly bunion surgery), and gave me some of these pretty things:

image from the Beauty Alert online store

They are called Beauty Alert!® and they are sets of stickers that help you to keep track of the "age" of your makeup and skin care products. You probably know that your cosmetics have a limited shelf life due to bacteria buildup, and products like sunscreen decrease in effectivity over time. Savvy users will keep track of this. I am ashamed to say that I never have kept great track, and I used to just change out my mascara out every month so I wouldn't lose track of how old they were.

Stacya and her friend Alissa heard about women sticking ugly pieces of tape on their beautiful cosmetics to record the date of their opening. While they knew this was a good idea for the sake of having clean and effective beauty products, they were appalled at the idea of marring their beauty products with pieces of tape. As they say, necessity is the mother of invention, and the pair created Beauty Alert! labels. They are a pretty way of knowing the birthdate of your products.

Since I have had to become more budget-conscious lately, I can't replace my Mary Kay mascara every month, and I am not sure of the birth date of my current tube of mascara. I think that tomorrow I'll start a new tube, and I am sure you know what I'll be using to keep track of its age this time!