Summer Beauty Essentails

Hello dolls!
Summer is such an amazing time.  For those of you who get to experience the wonderful weather right now, I hope you are enjoying the cookouts, pool days, sand bars, tan lines, bright colors, and bonfires.  There are SO many great things about this season, but in order to enjoy it to the fullest there are some things every fabulous lady must have.  I hope you love my list!

I've said it before, and I'll say it again.  I LOVE Estee Lauder's Bronze Goddess for summer.  It's my favorite and no one can convince me otherwise.  It smells exactly how you would imagine all the best things about summer (think coconut-like) combined into a smell.  It it so sexy and beach-like.  

With summer comes lots of sun, but no one wants dried-out, leathery skin from spending too much time  outdoors. Something to soothe your skin is a must-have, and I always opt for a drug-store brand of aloe-vera and coat myself in it after a long day in the sun.  Not only does it help repair any damaged cells, but it also helps your tan last MUCH longer.  Win.  

I'm from Wisconsin, and around these parts it gets humid and sticky.  Unless you have some miracle foundation that I don't know about, it's more than likely that your makeup will start looking a bit.... slick by the end of a 9 hour work day.  It's gross and no one wants that.  My recommendation?  The M.A.C. MSF Powder.  It's light-weight, incredibly smooth, and if you choose the correct color it can really brighten your whole look!  As you can see, mine is VERY well-loved and I've hit bottom.  

These babies have gotten me SO spoiled this summer.  I splurged on some Burberry sunglasses this spring and I fell in love.  I literally cannot be outside without them anymore.  My peepers are so used to having polarized protection at all times that they can't survive without them.  If you have the chance to get some good polarized sunglasses, I highly recommend it.  Your eyes will thank you.

Going back to the whole humidity thing--it also effects hair.  When you have obnoxious, baby fine hair like I do, it tends to "fly away".  And frizz.  And tangle.  And all other things that would drive you bonkers.  "After Party" by Bed Head is my hair savior.  The tiniest little pump of product works great to tame unruly hair and give it amazing shine.  It's meant to be used at the end of the day to work it's magic but I use it in the morning also on dry hair.

If you get a little bit of redness in your T-Zone, especially in the summer like I do, then you'll want to check out Clinique's Redness Solutions.  I apply this after my moisturizer and before my primer when I've been out in the sun too long and have a bit of a red tint to my cheeks.  The color of the product is the same as the color of the bottle.  It's a little scary at first but have no fear, the green-ness is the key.  Green is the opposite of red on the color spectrum and therefore works against it.  That's exactly what we want :)

Stash your neutrals and bring out your bright colors!  Part of the fun of summer is being a little more daring with your look.  I love to throw on a bright lip color to really make my whole outfit pop.  I have a bunch of different ones, but I chose M.A.C. Impassioned to feature in this post because I think it is beautiful.  Check out this post HERE to see a full review of this product, and THIS POST to see me wearing it!

Water is not nice to our makeup.  It takes it right off- unless it's waterproof, of course.  To avoid raccoon eyes, apply some waterproof mascara.  A good one that I've tried is Maybelline's The Falsies.  You can get it at any drug-store for less than $8 USD.  That's a deal.

And that's also a wrap!  I hope you're loving summer so far!  I've been SUPER busy, so keep a look out for some exciting new posts about my brand new condo/job/life.

For now, I'll leave you with a nice little summer photo of a few of my favorite people.

xx.