Category: Products & Services (Page 13 of 24)

I’m not a big make-up user, but once in a while I like to prim out. Unfortunately, every time I buy make up my kids get a hold of it, so I don’t have it when I “need” it. That was the case yesterday, when I was going out with friends, and decided to make up my face pretty much at the last minute. Without time to go to the drugstore (I’d never buy make up at a department store, I could never pay those prices), my only choice was Grocery Outlet – as it’s just across the street from my house. It actually worked very well for me, but they have a dismal selection of make up, so I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone looking for something in particular. What they have, however, is both good quality and quite cheap.
I got some Almay Hydracolor Lipstick, which I liked quite a bit. It was very smooth to apply and had just the right amount of sheen for my lips. It also survived the meal. The “rose” color was probably a little bit light for me, but I never know what color to buy. They had about five or six different choices at GO. The lipstick was $2 – but apparently it is (was?) also available at the Dollar Tree for half as much. If I see it there, I’d probably get a couple more colors.
A better bargain was a kit consisting of Physicians Formula Mineral Wear Bronzing Talc-Free Veil and Physicians Formula Mineral Wear Lip Sheen. Separately they’d have cost about $12 online, while the kit was just $4 at GO. Alas, I’m not sure what I’d use the lip sheen for, so perhaps it wasn’t such a good bargain after all 🙂 I did like the “bronzing veil”, whatever that means, however. The fine powder worked well to conceal the redness on my face and I think merged well with my skin tone. Alas, they only had one color at GO, light tan – which worked well with my fairly light skin.
The color choices for brand-name eye make up were also limited. I got a kit consisting of Organic Wear Duo Eye Shadow and eyeliner for $4. The products sold separately online (I couldn’t find the kit) would have been $16. Alas, they only had the “brown eye kit” (which worked well for me, as I have brown eyes). I also liked these products quite a bit. The eyeliner provided good coverage and was easy to apply. So was the eyeshadow, though it was a bit light in color – wouldn’t work for a dramatic look. My only complain is that the kit didn’t come with an applicator – as I don’t wear make up, I didn’t really have any at home (but I found one from Mika’s make up kit). I should probably buy my own.
Anyway, after all is said and done – you can find quality make up products at GO, but there is very little selection.

I have been using Facebook quite a bit in the last year or so (it’s simple enough to have a window open with my facebook page), but I haven’t really gotten into twitter, though I have personal account and one for Derechos, the organization I run. To make things easier I wanted to be able to get my Facebook status to be automatically twitted out. That way I don’t have to tweet it as well. But doing so proved MUCH more difficult than I expected. The problem is that Facebook has now hidden your status RSS (as well as your link rss) and without it, it isn’t really possible to integrate it with twitter. The only way I’ve found out to do this integration is by a “hack” that involves creating a second account. This is how you do it:
– Create a new account on facebook.
– Friend yourself (and only yourself) from that account.
– While signed-in to your new account, go to http://www.facebook.com/posted.php
– On the right hand margin, look for “Subscribe to Links”. Underneath that you will find a link that says: “My Friend’s Links” – right click on it and copy the link. This will give you the RSS link to the links you post from your main account (the one you friended from the one you are currently using).
– Post the url (it’ll look something like this: http://www.facebook.com/feeds/share_friends_posts.php?id=100000716076162&key=2f5385ddb9&format=rss20) to a word processor.
If you would like your links to be twitted, keep this url.
If you’d like your status to be twitted replace “share_friends_posts.php” with “friends_status.php” so that you end up with a url that looks like this:
“http://www.facebook.com/feeds/friends_status.php?id=100000716076162&key=2f5385ddb9&format=rss20”
– Now that you have an RSS feed for your links and/or status, go to http://twitterfeed.com/ and create an account. Follow the instructions, entering the facebook urls for the feed that you want to send directly to twitter. Note that in the second step you will have to select “twitter” as the place you want your status/links to go to. You will also have to authenticate your twitter account with your e-mail address and password, so that twitterfeed can connect to it.
And that’s it. This hack works now (January 2010) and I hope it continues working – but Facebook likes to be sneaky and disable access to RSS feeds, so I can’t guarantee it’ll work forever.

My friend Desiree gave Mika a Color In Tattoo Party kit by Creativity for Kids, for Xmas – and Mika couldn’t be happier. The kit allows you to color-in 40 temporary tattoos – the type that children love to put on. The tattoos come with 4 markers, so your color choices are limited, but they come in a nice variety of designs. Mika particularly liked the long tattoos that can be used as bracelets. We haven’t tried putting one on yet, so we don’t really know how they work out. The little tattoos are easy to put on, however. How they look depends on how good your kids are at coloring within the lines.
Anyway, it was a very successful gift – my only issue is that there are relatively few stickers for the cost.
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As an update, as noted in the one review of this product on Amazon.com, the tattoos are somewhat long lasting, and difficult to remove with just soap and water (which makes sense, as it means you can still wash your hands without losing your tattoo). They come out quite easily if you use a somewhat abrasive towel and some rubbing alcohol. But they do last otherwise, my daughter kept one in her face for a whole week.