Fall Trend Event

WOW! What a day, lets start from the beginning:

6:00 am: alarm goes off, hit snooze.

6:05 am: alarm goes off again, turn it off.

6:30 am: wake up.

6:40 am: get in shower, get ready.

7:20 am: I'm ready to go!!

7:30 am: head out to the metro.

7:45 am: arrive at metro where I stand on the platform for 15 minutes waiting for the train. There is such a drastic difference between weekday and weekend mornings!

8:15 am: sitting on the metro at the airport for almost a half hour because of track work.

8:45 am: finally make it to Pentagon City, once inside the mall I have to find the directory so I know which way Nordstrom is.
I then have to go out to the parking structure to get into Nordstrom since the mall entrance is closed. Once I got upstairs, I got my ticket stamped and was given my two train cases (one for the absentee husband) I am seated, given my breakfast, and fill out my raffle ticket. The show was interesting. Representatives from all of the brands came out to talk about their new products. Some were much better presentations than others. Some of the brands also gave out samples. The only sample I was able to score was the Trish McEvoy Blackberry & Vanilla Musk perfume. I have only smelled this from the bottle, but it is great! Somewhere in there I nabbed a mimosa, yummmm. The raffle prizes where amazing gift baskets from all of the top lines, which sadly I did not win. Le Mer gave out a $250 basket during their presentation to the person that got the sample with the yellow dot. The Smashbox guy also gave out a few bottles of photofinish and some of their other products to people sitting in the first and second rows. Lesson learned: next time get there way early to nab a primo seat and score mucho samples.

9:40 am: Show ends and everyone heads downstairs. When I got off the escalator I was handed two samples from Kneipp: their almond blossom hand cream and shower gel, along with flyer about the brand. I had never heard of them, I guess they do all natural products. Then I made my way to the Shu Uemura counter for my appt. I guess one of the make-up artists called in sick, which meant they were backed up and I had to wait. I went to the La Mer counter to get a sample of Creme de la Mer, one of the Holy Grail beauty products. The little jar probably has like $15 worth of creme in it, I will definitely be hoarding this:)

10:00 am: I get to sit down for my consultation. Since I didn't wear any make-up, there was no skincare consultation. She started by asking me how I normally do my make-up, which is emphasis on the eyes, lots of mascara and liner, and light lips. My make-up came out good, but its not a look I would ever recreate. I was totally mistaken on that blush I said I wanted. It turns out it was actually a lipgloss, oops!! I ended up buying what the real blush in antique pink; on me it is a nice bright, sheer pink. I also got the lipstick she used on me, lolishine in 922, a really pretty sparkly nude, which is totally the lipcolor of the season. Even though I didn't spend enough money (I was $10 short) I was still given the free eyelash curler. I told her about my issues with the curler and she told me to play with the angles, and tip it back a lot more than I had been. She also used it on me in the demonstration and it did not hurt at all. Now that I have another (free) one, I will give it a second chance and see if I can make it work for me.

10:45 am: I continued walking around the floor, very in the mood to get more stuff, and stopped at Laura Mercier. I was able to get a quickie consultation on the under-eye concealer system. On one eye, I demo-ed the entire three step process. On the other eye I demo-ed just the concealer. They both worked well, but the 3-step was definitely better. I was only going to get the concealer today, and buy the rest piece-meal, but they were doing a very rare and nice GWP, so I ended up getting it all. The first step is the Secret Brightener, followed by Secret Concealer, and topped off with Secret Brightening Powder to set everything. It was $77 for everything, but if you have been plagued by dark circles your whole life like me, it would be worth your time and money to get your own consultation. I did skip on the two brushes that are used to apply the products, more on those later. In my GWP bag I got: 2 fl. oz. tube of clementine scrub, yeay, I love scrubs; .5 fl oz tube of Laura's famous tinted moisturizer in Sand, I hope this is my color; a .11 oz petal glace lipgloss, a very pretty pink/peach color; and a full size powder eyeliner in eggplant, which is great because I am so into purple for this season.

11:00 am: I finished walking the floor and made two more stops. At the little Phyto stand I got my hair scanned. It was so cool, they take this wand to your hair, and there it is magnified on the screen. My diagnosis: I have very dry hair. She recommended a series of products which she wrote down for me and gave me a sample of Phyto-7 which helps to moisturize the hair. I guess I really need to step up my game when it comes to deep conditioning. I also went to this Norwegian perfume guy, Geir Ness, who was giving hand massages with his lotion, Laila. I can never turn down a hand massage, I just love them!! but Holy Euro-Trash bat girl; this guy was so over the top, and his package was bulging in ten different directions due to his skin tight pants, nasty!

11:15 am: I popped into VS to get the free lipgloss from my card in this months Allure. The color they are giving away is Hottie. I haven't tried it yet, but it looks just like Chanel's Spark.

11:20 am: of course no beauty shopping day is complete without a stop in Sephora. Now for all of my Blowout fans, remember when Jonathan gave us a glimpse of silky dirt and made us want it right then and there? Well it is finally out, although you wouldn't know because it was named Create Weightless Smooth. Tricky tricky, but it is definitely the silky dirt product, and I have it!! nanny nanny poo poo. I also bought a pointed concealer brush. I looked for a brush like the one that was used with the setting powder, but I couldn't find one, so that will happen later on. There was another card in Allure for a free Kinerase sample at Sephora, so I got that too. Sephora carries the Phyto line as well and I got a sample of the three products they make for dry hair, phyto-7, phytojoba shampoo and phytosesame conditioner. In my bag were also samples of fioravanti conditioner, sephora eyeshadow, and philosophy supernatural.

11:45 am: my final beauty stop was Origins. I wanted to get samples of A Perfect World face moisturizer and the scrub Swept Away. I also got to demo their new microdermabrasion alternative Modern Friction. The girl massaged it onto my hand and showed me how the product worked. The rice starch grabs ahold of dead skin so you can actually see if coming off in little blobs, when you don't see anymore blobs, your skin is clean!! This stuff is awesome and once my bank account gets replenished, I am totally getting this product.

12:00 am: There was no way I could come home with all these goodies and have nothing for my husband, so I popped into apple to get him an iTunes gift card.

Whew, what a day!!