Accomplishment: beauty backlog

I have managed to spend most of this year regularly posting swatch-photos and reviews of my makeup. I've gotten my backlog down to eyeshadows for half of next year, blushes for all of next year, eyeliners for most of next year, and lip stuff...well, I just don't own as many lip products, so it's a good thing that they're on a less frequent posting schedule! I really truly did make huge strides in my beauty backlog this year, and I'm happy about that.

Accomplishment: SWATCH ALL THE SAMPLES

For a few years now, I've had several bags of eyeshadow samples from Meow Cosmetics. Many bags. BIG bags. Me being the completist that I am, I really wanted to have swatches of all of their collections, even swatches of the shadows that I didn't own fullsize. This meant figuring out which shadows I didn't own, waiting for the seasonal collections to come available so that I could buy the samples from there...and then putting all of these bags of samples aside, because "I'd swatch all the samples later." As it turns out, "later" was two, sometimes three years later. I finally reprioritized the sample-swatching, and now out of nearly 60 Meow collections (including blush and glow-powder collections, but excluding the foundations and brow powders), I have swatch-photos for all but 15 of them.

(I also have a rather large back of "spare samples" which happened because I'd buy samples of a seasonal collection or five, forgetting that I'd done the exact same thing the previous year. Um.)

Opened applications for the Beauty Blog Advent Calendar

I've been doing this for three years - it started small, just me and some friends. I was manually adding in the links daily, there was no easy way for people to pre-submit their scheduled links if they wanted to...it was a prime example of Not Working Smarter. I experimented with some things, figured out a good way to keep things organized and minimize scrambling on my end...and now I've got next year's all ready to go. This year, I've opened applications to any beauty-, fashion-, or nail-blogger who wants to participate. I wont accept advert-heavy blogs, or blogs that just started last month; but I don't care if people are nailbloggers, eyeshadow artists, beauty/fashion/lifestyle bloggers, Just The OOTD Please...if someone's put some effort into creating content that's more than a recital of the manufacturer's marketing copy, they're welcome to apply. I may get one sign-up, I may get three dozen. But I'm a huge organization-fan, and I'm proud of myself for getting this together and streamlining the back-end process.

I'm also not doing giveaways. I tried that last year, and the two years before that. And while I did have some fun...it was more work than fun. People would come and post during December only. I don't have content that everyone wants to read, no worries. But I'm done throwing out giveaways just because lots of other bloggers do it, so It's A Thing. (That opinion was lurking for a while, but after a big package from last year went AWOL...meh. That's the Universe telling me to Just Stop.)

The weather today

This was to be my last day before starting my new contract, and instead of the cold and rain that we've had all week, we have clear skies and bright sun! It's still cold-ish - it -=is=- autumn in the Pacific Northwest - but the sun is nice to see. All four of my cats have staked out their southern-exposed windowsills. (And my contract actually won't be starting tomorrow, but Tuesday. Because there's a background check to be run, and one county - one SINGLE county - has not responded to the requests yet.)

After the chat this afternoon, I'm planning to get my iPod and earphones, and go out walking. Or...I will, if the iPod has charged up. Apparently its battery was zeroed out. Sigh...charging now...hurry up, dammit!

Friends' good news

One friend has been accepted to grad school, starting next year. Another got news that a family member has been released from hospital (NOT EBOLA GEEZ PEOPLE HAVE TO BE HOSPITALIZED FOR OTHER REASONS.) My mom got home from her trip to the Midwest, safe and sound. A neighbor has learned that she may be housesitting for four more years while the family continues their globehopping. Yes, these are other peoples' good news not mine; but it's been kind of nice to have positive momentum building form multiple angles!

How has your week been?

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