Simply Sarah

Makeup Monday | My wedding makeup 

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wedding-day-makeupI was honoured to marry my best friend on July 31st, 2016…

🙄 blegh too much sap…

I’m not very “romantic” and roll my eyes at the ends of Disney princess movies BUT in all seriousness, I did marry someone amazing & it was one of the best days of my life.

If you’re interested in that whole story CLICK HERE (link to come)

Now, let’s get to the real reason why you are here… my makeup!!

I got my hair done by a hairdresser on my wedding day but I did do my own makeup.
I wanted something soft and simple. I already knew most of the colours and shades I was going for but had the most difficult time finding a foundation.

I went to Sephora 3x and each time it was a nightmare. I wanted a full coverage foundation to hide my acne scars and redness. I didn’t care so much about the texture, if you have acne & scarring you understand, no amount of makeup can smooth it out. The last time I went to Sephora the sales person helping me decided no other foundation would work and would not accept otherwise.
Instead she used the CoverFX cream concealer only in the lightest of shades possible. I was with one of my Husbands Aunts and we both knew I needed to give up on Sephora and go elsewhere. We thanked the salesperson for her time and left.
Luckily there was a MAC two stores over and we went immideatly inside. Looking at me like I was some crazy person inept at makeup they kindly asked “how can we help you today” immediatly without pause I blurted “please help me, Sephora just this this to me…”
With a sigh of relief from the MAC Salesperson, He took me to a chair and listened to me. We tried out two diffirent types of foundation and settled on the MAC Pro Longwear Foundation in NC20 which seemed to be almost 3 shades darker than the Cover FX one.
Theres no doubt the CoverFX has its use and Im certainly not bashing it but it was not used correctly on me. I really loved my experience at the MAC store in Calgary and would highly reccomend the staff there.

After that mild rant here is everything I used on my face:

Face

Primer
– Smashbox photo ready primer

Foundation
–MAC Pro Longwear Foundation in NC20
–Mineralize Skinfinish pressed powder in Medium plus

Contour & Highlighter
–Kat Von D Shade + Light Countour Palette

Shimmer 
–Mary-Lou Manizer 

Blush
–Rimmel Lasting Finish Colour Blush in 90 Coral 

Eyes

Lash extensions
-Apex New Westminster BC

Shadow
-Naked Basics Palette 

Liner
-e.l.f Precision liquid liner

Brows
-e.l.f Eyebrow kit

Lips
-NARS Satin Lip Pencil in Rikugien

Take all of that mix it all together and you have this… click the picture to send you off to the Video tutorial.
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Taylor Swift Inspired Hair Routine + Bad Salon experience

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Taylor and Sarah
For my birthday I decided to treat myself for a haircut. I originally went to this new place by my house. Price was good and it was so convenient for me so I went in. I’m a trained hairdresser and have not had the ‘real’ salon experience in over 7 years. Going in I decided not to share this detail about myself in case it made her nervous. [Read more…]

Homemade Hot Chocolate Mix & Peppermint Marshmallows

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I absolutely love making things from scratch. When My boyfriend, Matt, and I were living our year without plastic (single use disposables & packaging) we had to make a lot of things from scratch. It’s such an adventure trying to figure out ways to do things. Sometimes you’d be surprised at how easy most things are to do from scratch.
That being said, Matt and I had to create all these christmas gifts for our family and friends sans plastic. This hot chocolate & Marshmallow duo quickly became popular as it was fairly easy and very impressive.

Hot Chocolate Mix
by Alton Brown
Click here for the original recipe
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49Ik_rnrcu0
Peppermint Marshmallows
by Martha Stewart
Click here for original  recipe

Belated Halloween bash

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Feeling a little rough this morning but my Halloween bash was successful!
I was impressed with myself that I put together the four Pinterest items I had set out to do.

Item one: The floating ghost

20131103-153121.jpg my ghost on the left and Pinterest on the right

This one was very time consuming. I used spray starch I picked up from Walmart and two packages of cheesecloth I found at the grocery store.
Being a hairdresser I had a mannequin head lying around. I used the mannequin as the head form and my camera tripod and the arms. I overlapped the cheesecloth on the head and draped one side over the tripod to act as an arm. I sprayed the crap out of the fabric on the head and arm area. I rigged a fan to help it dry while I did other things. Flipping this four times total and about six hours later it was done.
Doesn’t look the greatest but it worked.
Would I do it again?
Hell no!

Item 2: Spooky witch fingers

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I’m not exactly sure how I feel about these cookies in general. Aside from my “fingers” looking like ill deformed toes they tasted alright. The recipe itself was dry and crumbly. It suggested I roll them out and cut them. I should have rolled them like a finger.
Will I make them again? Sure with a few changes and use my own sugar cookie recipe.

Item 3: Hot Dog Mummies

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How cute are these! Not too much to be said about these. I just cut the dough into strips and started wrapping. Turned out delish!

Item 4: Swamp Water

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Apologies for the horrible picture of my version. This here was my drink of the night. The recipe was a virgin one but I added some raspberry vodka which tasted so good… Too good in fact.
Would I make this again? Hell yes!

Boo!

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I cannot believe Halloween is in a week!
Halloween is on a bit of an awkward day this year for anyone older than 14. Thursday is far enough from the weekend before and obviously before the weekend following.
When are we supposed to celebrate dressing up and eating our weight in candy?
My friend had suggested doing a get together on Nov 2nd and her logic makes perfect sense. EVERYTHING that has anything to do with Halloween is at least 50% off on the 1st.
I have taken on the task of hosting this post Halloween extravaganza and hoping to nail some of these Pinterest gems.

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Meghan from Domestic Sugar made these witch fingers look real and creepy using cinnamon. I will be recreating these Halloween sugar cookie staples

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originally from FamilyFun Magazine this swamp juice looks interesting to say the least. Who wouldn’t want fish eggs on Halloween!?

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how cute are these ghosts? I’m not sure who to credit this for. I pinned this item but it just brought me to a single image. None the less, I will be making these “floating ghosts”

Follow my holiday Pinterest board to see what I’m up to CLICK ME: HOLIDAY FUN

What are you spooky plans??

Grape Gorgeous

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I’m going a little out of order with my summer series. Instead of doing all of one fruit inspiration, like I did with just peachy, I’m going to upload out if order.
A little confession, I film a lot of my videos a week in advance. I work like 4 jobs and am crazy busy.
I filmed this grape inspired look on Friday and I had a lot of fun putting colours together. As usual I used my 120 Color Eyeshadow Palette 2nd Edition. They have so many beautiful and vibrant colours. I tend to go natural looking but with purple I wanted to go a bit more dramatic. Out of all the colours I decided to do these colours, seen swatched on my hand

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Now that I have the colours I need to figure out my base. I’m all out of primer but I’ve got a few alternatives. I wanted to have a nice base to make the colours stand out and bring out their vibrancy.
I used NYX jumbo eye pencil in both black bean and milk then the third is a purple cream shadow by Mark.

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I decided to use BOTH of the NYX pencils as my base. I really like the consistency and wearability they provide. I use the milk one a lot and am always pleased. I decided to use black bean on my lid and milk on the brow bone to the edge of the black.

Since this look is dark I opted out of liner and opted in for falsies. Putting on the falsies did not make the final edit of the video because I epically failed and had to do them twice. Usually I’m pretty good at applying them but that day was not my day.

Of course, with a dramatic eye, I went more neutral and subdued with the lips and cheeks. I went with my go to matte Mark blush in Cameo and a nice pinky lip.
This look would be great for a special night out or for a fun night event.
Here is the video on exactly how to do it

Just Peachy!

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Summer! I love summer. The heat, the sun, the colours…I love it all.
Sitting in the park behind our apartment one day I was thinking of what videos I should do over the summer. All I could think of was the usual makeup looks or DIY projects but I wanted to put together a cohesive collection so to speak. As I’m eating my freshly cut homemade fruit salad it dawned on me…Fruit Salad!! AH!
My summer series will be inspired by fruit salad! At this point thoughts and ideas came rushing to me. I decided to narrow it down to my favorite fruits. (just) Peachy, Strawberry (fields), Grape (gorgeous), and to throw a spin-Pink Lemonade.

Ive already filmed and uploaded my Just Peachy portion of my fruit salad summer series. It was fun coming up with different looks and tutorials inspired by peaches.
My first video was DIY Kool-Aid lip gloss. I had seen this on pinterest a number of times and thought the idea was so cool. unfortunately I could not find peach kool-aid brand so I used the generic walmart brand. I found it worked very well 🙂
Check out the video to see for yourself…

The next video was my makeup tutorial. I pulled out my BH Cosmetics palette and went to town swatching and choosing. I really love  this palette and I find I can always rely on it for any colour I could possibly want.Click here to read more about it:120 Color Eyeshadow Palette 2nd Edition
As for the Peachy make up look check out the video. I used peach, brown and yellow to bring the look together and emulate all the colours on a perfectly ripe peach

With this series I decided to challenge myself with easy nail art. I’m not the best with nails but really wanted to test out some ideas I had floating in my brain. With this nail tutorial I tried a duo colour ombre technique with orange and yellow. I then used a sharpie, again I’m a lazy newbie, to try and emulate the shape that a peach gets. I found it was a stretch, what do you think?

So I have left only enough vidspace for 3 videos per fruit so the nail + OOTD was my last Just Peachy! inspired.
I am in the process of working on my Strawberry fields and Grape Gorgeous videos now. I’ll keep you posted on all of that fun once I get it all uploaded.

What are your favorite summer fruits?

Ways to make your hair last days!

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We all know its not good to wash your hair everyday so what are we supposed to do with limp hair when day 2 or 3 roll around??
I usually have 2-3 day cycles of washing my hair. My hair is pretty wavy naturally and the ends get really dry and frizzy. By not washing my hair everyday really helps bring the natural oils to the ends. The ends feel great on day 3 but the roots on the other hand are not looking the greatest. For years Ive usually done day 1 being down, day 2 being half up and day 3 all the way up.
Ive put together a video on some options to get you through the 3 day hair cycle. They are easy and fun!!

I was excited to have some extra time Monday morning and evening to do some Taylor Swift inspired waves and film a tutorial. The first video is all about that. The next one is where the goodies are. I have done a super cute half updo with some cute pink flowers on day 2 and a cute braided hairstyle on day3. I had fun filming this…even though it was at 6 in the morning and before work.

Now not washing your hair for 3 days does not mean to skip the shower or bath for 3 days. Protect your dry hair with a cute shower Cap 🙂

Golden Neutral Date Night Makeup Tutorial

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photoMatt (My Boyfriend) and I decided to have a date night on Friday night. One of my birthday presents was a gift certificate to Earls so we decided to go a little fancier and try it out. It was a really nice night. I had the chicken brie sandwich with fig jam and Matt had the kung pow chicken rice bowl.
Since it was a little bit fancier than we usually go I decided to try out a golden neutral eye using my fave BH cosmetics palette.
Here is my tutorial on how to do it 🙂 I’m proud I got it all in in under 5 minutes.

Click The picture for more information on the products used in the video

DIY Painted Wall Art

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My Pinterest vision turned reality when I found these two blank canvasses in the apartment. I used tape and three colours to make a geometrical pattern. I posted on instagram (@SimplySarahxoxo) and everyone loved it and wanted to know how. I decided to add two small canvasses to make the ‘L’ shaped canvas into a square and film a DIY how to video.
Here it is 🙂
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYDM7iXOVps&feature=youtu.be

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