Birthday Haul and Life Update

In early February I finally celebrated my 21st birthday! As I'm sure many of you know, here in the US 21 is a very important birthday and I had been looking forward to it for a while.

I turned 21 at midnight on a Saturday night so I had a really fun weekend! It was also the weekend of the annual snowmobile race that is held in my area, so every bar and club in town was packed. I went out with a few of my friends and we had a lot of fun dancing all night. I took plenty of advantage of the free drinks everyone kept offering me! Luckily, I stopped drinking after a while so I didn't have a hangover the next day. I also didn't cry, throw up, or fight anyone so I'm very impressed with myself.

Anyway, I mostly received alcohol for my birthday from other people (thanks, Mom!) but I also treated myself to a few makeup goodies. Not a ton, as I'm still trying to control my spending, but some things that I had been wanting for a while. I had to take advantage of a free birthday gift from Sephora, right? I also had a gift card from Christmas I wanted to use on something special.

There were three birthday gift options from Sephora this year, and as usual I went for the makeup gift: a lip set from Bite Beauty. I love Bite products so I was happy to get a mini Amuse Bouche lipstick in Chai, a Matte Creme lip crayon in Glace, and a duo sample of the Agave lip balm and Agave Sugar lip scrub. The two lip shades are neutral and beautiful, and I'm excited to try the lip balm after I've heard so much hype about it.

I also picked up a 10 ml bottle of the Comptoir Sud Pacifique Vanille Blackberry perfume. It smells good, I definitely pick up the blackberry notes, but I don't think it's a scent that is worth so much money.

My last Sephora "purchase" was a 100 point perk, a 3 g sample of the Laneige Lip Sleeping mask. This is a great sample size and I've been wanting to try this lip balm for ages! If it works well I will happily spend $20 on a giant pot of the mask.

My main birthday gift to myself was something that has been on my radar for a while--the Chantecaille Philanthropy blushes. I didn't know Chantecaille was a cruelty-free brand, but I'm happy that there is another luxury brand that doesn't test on animals! Even better, this line of blushes goes to benefit animal sanctuaries. Depending on which shade of blush you chose, and which animal was imprinted on that blush, that is where a percentage of the sale goes to.

I was drawn to so many of these blushes, especially the bee, butterfly, and sea turtle ones, but I ended up going with the shade "Laughter" which had coral embossed on it. The blush is absolutely stunning and the formula seems good, but I was surprised at how small this blush is. It is only 2.5 grams. It takes me a long time to finish up a blush, but for a luxury price tag I expect more product. Still, I will happily try out this blush and see whether it is worth the high price! It definitely is a beautiful addition to my collection. The shade will be better for spring and summer, but I want to test it out ASAP.