Lorac GLOgetter Palette - Photos and Swatches

**All products mentioned were purchased by me. I'm not affiliated with any companies mentioned.**

I had been poking around on the internet and came across this lovely gem from Lorac. It's the new GLOgetter palette and is exclusive to Ulta. It contains 10 shadows and retails for $20. How could I resist, right?

 

At first I thought, oh the shadows must be chalky, not as high quality as the typical Lorac shadows. But when I went to Ulta and swatched them in person, I was pleasantly surprised at how nice they are. That sealed the deal for me.

The palette contains 2 matte shades: a dark brown and an ivory. The rest of the shades are shimmery/duochromes.

From left to right:
A dark warm brown matte
A shimmery sand color
A shimmery peach
A shimmery turquoise
A shimmery purple blue - Swatches lend more toward purple than I originally thought.
A cooler brown with a purple sheen.
A light mint with a golden sheen. This shade is real pretty.
A magenta with blue/purple duochrome

At the bottom of the palette are a matte ivory and a champagne sheen.

Swatches of the right side of the palette with the matte ivory at the bottom

 

Swatches of the left side of the palette with the shimmery champagne at the bottom

 

I don't know how long this palette will stick around for since it's such a steal. I definitely recommend checking it out the next time you are in Ulta. Let me know your thoughts if you picked this palette up.

Wet N Wild - Color Icon Spring Forward 2013 - Going in the Wild Palette - Swatches and Pictures

**All products mentioned were purchased by me. I'm not affiliated with any companies mentioned.**

I was one of the lucky few to be able to get my hands on one of the Spring 2013 limited edition 8 pan palettes from Wet N Wild when they happened to show up in the Harmon's in the area a couple weeks back. I consider myself lucky since these seem to have flown right off the shelves and never happened to appear in Walgreen's at all. So disappointing. I actually found the one I ended up getting tucked into the nail polish display and fortunately it was the one I was most interested in picking up.

I was on the fence about getting the neutrals one only because I've seen swatches and there are a lot of UD Naked 1 Palette dupes in there. Since I already own both Naked Palettes I figured I really don't need to buy something with so many dupes of something that I already own. Why don't I just use my Naked Palette, right? That being said, I'm sure if I actually came across it in the store, I'd probably buy it.

This palette contains 8 shades as follows. The left hand side has lovely purple shades and the right side has a great neutrals along with an awesome mint green shade. To be honest, the mint green shade is the reason that I wanted to palette so much. All shades have some shimmer except for the lavender shade which seems to be more of a satin.

Below are swatches over UD Eden primer potion.

Wish Wet N Wild would make these more widely available. The neutral palette does seem like something that should be available as part of the permanent line. Were you able to hunt any of these down in your area?  If not, I know you can get them online now at Non-Pareil Boutique but you have to buy them as a set and the cost is $15. The couple of times I've ordered from Non-Pareil, I've been very pleased with my order though so if you are looking for a way to grab hold of these, this might be your best option.

Link to the Shadow set on Non-Pareil Boutique

OCC Lip Tars - Sci Fi Lullabies - Clockwork and Zhora Swatches and Photos

**All products mentioned were purchased by me. I'm not affiliated with any companies mentioned.**

Okay, time for a much needed non-tea blog post. Today I'm going to be posting about 2 new Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics Lip Tars that I picked up from their spring 2013 Sci Fi Lullabies collection. This collection has 6 new lip tar shades. I'm kind of new to OCC so not sure if these are limited edition or not.

I picked up Zhora and Clockwork. I debated about Annika but I get the feeling it would just be too pale of a peach for me and make me look washed out.

Clockwork is described as a rich terracotta with orange undertone. On me it looks like a warm peach shade.

Zhora is described as a pale peach with pink/red metallic. This is my first metallic lip tar and I like it. The metallic effect is not as strong as I initially feared. It only shows up in certain lighting conditions.

Here are swatches: Zhora on the left and Clockwork on the right

And here they are on my lips. Zhora alone, Clockwork alone, and then clockwork with a little Zhora on top. I think these colors are super wearable for me and I'll get a ton of use out of them.

Did you pick up any colors from the spring OCC line?

Red Rose - Cinnamon Streusel Decaf Tea Review

**All products mentioned were purchased by me. I'm not affiliated with any companies mentioned.**

I'm a little behind on where I wanted to be with my tea reviews so I decided to post two this week to make up for it.

And now for something a little different. I know not everyone is into loose teas. Sometimes it's nice to have something a little more readily accessible either for work, for when you have guests over, or for when you just plain don't feel like dealing with loose tea (does anyone get like this? I know I don't). This is a tea that I came across a couple of months back at the grocery store and was blown away by how good it was/is.

Apparently Red Rose has a line of premium black flavored teas out called Simply Indulgent. They are dessert teas and each tea is a black tea flavored after a dessert item. The one I initially tried and am reviewing today is the Cinnamon Streusel one. I could not resist giving this a try when I saw it and let me tell you - it's awesome! This tastes like liquid coffee cake. You know, the kind you get from Entenmann's with the white powdery sugar on top? They really nailed this flavor.

Of course, since it's a black tea I've added milk after brewing. You can really taste both the cinnamon and the cakey sweetness with this tea. I really feel like I'm taking a bite of crumb coffee cake. Great if you are trying to cut down on your sweets since this has zero calories before creamer/sweetener. I also like the fact that it is decaf but still has flavor. I find decaf teas a lot of time are lacking in the flavor department. If you are someone that needs to avoid caffeine after dinner, but want to have a dessert tea fix, this one won't keep you wired.

I picked up mine at Stop N Shop and I'm not sure if they are available at other grocery stores as well. Let me know if you've seen these as well and tried any of them out. What are your thoughts? I picked up the Peach Cobbler one on a recent visit since I liked the Cinnamon Streusel one so much but I'm not quite ready to post a review on that one yet.

Harney and Sons - Earl Grey Supreme Tea Review

**All products mentioned were purchased by me. I'm not affiliated with any companies mentioned.**

Earl Grey has to be my favorite tea of all time. Any time I come across a new Earl Grey, I have to try it. There will always be an Earl Grey variety of some sort in my tea cabinet. In fact, right now there are about 4 or 5 different types. Today I decided to review one of them that I've been consumed with lately. It's Harney and Son's Earl Grey Supreme.

This is Earl Grey at it's finest. Nice strong bold Bergamot scent upon sniffing the leaves. Harney blends four teas together and then adds the yummy bergamot oil and silvertips to the blend.

I set my kettle to boil and then steep the leaves for about 4-5 minutes. It brews up a nice medium brown color.

Now some may say I'm a weirdo for doing this, but I add milk to my Earl Grey. It might revolt some of you, but I like my black tea creamy. Mmm, creamy Earl Grey.

I really enjoy this tea. As you can see, I've worked my way easily through half of a 4 ounce container. I think this is my go to for now when I want straight up Earl Grey. The Harney site says that the tippy teas in this blend add natural sweetness to it. As I don't add any sweetener to my teas, maybe this helps it nudge out other Earl Grey blends for me. I also really enjoyed ordering from Harney's. They have a lot to choose from and the price point is more than reasonable. I got the 4 oz. tin for $7.50.

Link to this tea on Harney's website: Harney & Sons Earl Grey Supreme

 If "elegant tea" is your thing, than definitely give Harney a try.

Adagio Teas - TARDIS Blend Tea Review

**All products mentioned were purchased by me. I'm not affiliated with any companies mentioned.**

This week's tea review is a tea that I've been enjoying for a couple months now. It's the Tardis Blend by Cara McGee on Adagio Teas. I felt it appropriate to review this tea this week since the premier of Dr. Who occurred this past weekend, and this has easily been one of my top teas since I first tried it.

Note that the tea did not come in the tin above. I had an extra David's tin around and decided this tea was so special that it needed to be transferred from the zip bag into a tin.

This tea is a blend of three of Adagio's loose leaf teas: Earl Grey Bravo, Blackberry, and Vanilla. All three of these teas are black teas on their own. I'm not sure of the specific ratio of the blend but on cold sniff I do detect the Earl Grey being the strongest.

I brew this tea using the boil setting on my Cuisinart Variable Temperature kettle and take around one scoop of tea using my David's Tea perfect measuring spoon (sometime a little bit more depending on how big my mug is). 

It's not the most interesting tea during brew, but wanted to snap a shot if you are interested in viewing the process.

This tea brews up pretty quick. I generally only need to let it steep for 1 or 2 minutes and it's nice and flavorful. In my experience, if you let it brew a little longer you will get a little more of the blackberry and vanilla flavors coming through. The below is with about a 1-2 minute brew time. 

And as a general rule for me, with all my black blends, I add milk. It's just how I roll. I think the milk definitely helps to temper down any potential bitterness and helps to bring the vanilla or creamier aspects of the tea forward. 

So, how does this tea fare? Well, I've worked my way through about 1.5 bags of this tea and have loved it each time I've had it. When you drink it, you can definitely taste the combination of all three of the tea ingredients. First you get the Earl Grey Bravo, but then as you drink it, the blackberry and vanilla flavors become more pronounced. The flavors combine wonderfully. This isn't a dessert tea per se, but it definitely fills that niche for me when I want something yummy. 

If you are interested in purchasing this tea, you can do so by clicking on the following link: 

TARDIS Tea Blend

This link will take you to the page for this blend on Adagio's site (www.adagio.com). There are quite a few Tardis type blends on Adagio's site so if you use the link above you will be sure to access the exact one that I reviewed in this post. The blend can also be found under Most Popular menu link under the Blends category on the Adagio Teas site. Currently a 4 oz. pouch sells for $9 on the site. 

Have you tried any of the blended teas from Adagio before? If so, let me know down in the comments what your favorites are. There are so many there, I could spend hours just reading through them.