Today is the long-awaited day! I moved back into my dorm room this evening after three long weeks living at my mom’s house for the winter break. I love my family and I get along quite well with my mom, so I never thought coming home for winter and summer breaks would bother me. Even my very first year living here, away from home, after four months of living on my own and doing things on my own terms, going home for that one month of winter break was brutal.

I think that tomorrow I’m going to sign a lease to live in an apartment next year. The lease will be twelve months, from August 2010 to August 2011. I leave here in May, so that means that I need to sublease an apartment again this summer if I want to avoid living at home for three months. It’s just so much work finding an apartment and finding a way to pay for it. But more about this new apartment: Jamie found a girl on a website for MSU students. The girl’s name is Julie and she currently lives in a four bedroom apartment with three of her friends. However, all of those three girls are graduating this spring and Julie doesn’t really want to move. Insert her advertisement for new roommates here.

As could be expected, I’m feeling pretty apprehensive about signing a twelve month lease but getting out of the dorms will be wonderful. Having a cafeteria is great. And so is being right on campus. But I feel very out of place, being 21 years old and living in the dorms; I’m surrounded by 18 and 19 year olds. And I hate having to make a 15-minute walk just to get to where my car is parked, I really loved being able to walk down a flight of stairs and be at my car when I lived in the apartment over last summer. The final nail in the coffin is that it costs me $10,000 every year that I live in the dorms. That’s eight months and includes my food and all utilities but it still comes out to nearly $1,300 per month to live in an 11×12′ room with a shared bathroom and no kitchen or living room.

More brown seemed appropriate for a day that I was doomed to be covered in dust and sloshing through dirty snow for hours:

#5 [01/10/09]: Earth

When I got back to my dorm, my suitemate, Jamie, saw me and said, “Your eyebrows look darker…” and then assured me that it was a good thing, so okay, the eyebrow definer is working.

Today, I used warm, shimmery browns. I overlayed a light mocha color on the ball of my eye with iridescent green and highlighted my brow bone with the same color. My waterline is super dark purple (it doesn’t even look very purple at all) with a forest green lashline. I have a little wing action in the outer corners on my eyes. And that is all! Oh yeah, and nude lips thanks to a new tube of lipstick I picked up by Revlon.

It’s 1:30 in the morning. I’m tired. I’m hungry. I’m menstrual. I’m grumpy. This is gonna be a quick one.

I begrudgingly give you…

#4 [1/09/09]: Mocha

Tomorrow, well, today actually, I’m moving back to my dorm in East Lansing meaning that today, well, yesterday, I had a lot of running to do. And Mocha is much more representative of what I usually look like.

I’ve mentioned that earth tones are really my bread and butter and here it shows. I don’t believe I had any less make up on today than I’ve had on in the previous three Days Of Make-up I’ve shown you, but I look practically naked and I think that’s as beautiful as any intricate rainbow-face job. Maybe even more beautiful.

Nitty Gritty: There’s nothing special here. You’re seeing shades of almost-matte, warm browns. I used liquid eyeliner for the first time in my life on my upper lid and while it was a terrifying experience (I never knew those ‘brushes’ were actually just eyeball-spearing toothpicks of doom) everything came out just fine after a few corrections and partial-redos. I also experimented with this odd eyelash primer I found. It’s just clear mascara, I guess, so I put that on and put black mascara on over when it was dry. I didn’t notice a difference, at all. Also, I bought Revlon Colorstay (love colorstay anything and everything, I do) eyebrow definer or something (I’m so grumpy and tired and hungry) and my eyebrows came out a lot less startling than yesterday. :p Okay, there is one special thing: It was a bad day and bad days belong to purple, so I lined my lower lash line with purple eyeshadow only in the outer third, not very noticeable, but enough to keep me happy.

Final Word: /grump. I’m going to bed. No one reads this junk anyway.

Today a very unwelcome visitor dropped in. Now I’m suffering from yucky girlmones, nasty cramps, and a general dislike for life. (TMI, I know.) Feeling as crappy as I do, I didn’t particularly feel like dolling myself up today. Some people have comfort foods, me, I just have comfort shopping and comfort colors. According to me, purple is the best color that ever existed ever in the history of all colors. Naturally I put on a purple shirt when I got out of the shower. It looks like a strange blue in my photos, but I swear it’s a grape-y purple. Anyway, after that it was all just a matter of time. I got inspired to do grape-y eyeshadow which turned into just good old berries.

I give you…

#3 [01/08/09]: Berries

This was soo much fun to do! Unfortunately, my cam just doesn’t pick it up very well. In the inner corners I have a shimmery silver, the rest of the lid is a light wash of a grape purple. Above the ball of my eye the purple is more of a plum color and blended with that along the top just slightly is a pinky-magenta-idkmybffjill color that reminded me of raspberries.

Nitty gritty: My waterline is black, lower lashline lined with the same plum eyeshadow I used in my crease. I used emerald shimmer mascara over a plain old black layer of mascara. The thinnest, barely-there layer of bronzer in the hollows of my cheeks to perk up my cheekbones (like I need it.. ugh). I also used deep matte brown to fill in my eyebrows… more on this mishap in a second. Lips are basically nude with a hint of pink.

The most unfortunate thing is that no matter what angle or lighting I used, you just can’t see the half-line of emerald eyeliner that I used along my top lid. It really gives my eyes a tangy kick. That tiny, tiny nudge they needed to go from mundane to wild. This is probably not something I’d likely wear during the day, but since I’m snowed in this suits me just fine today.

About those eyebrows… Now I’m torn. Yesterday when I filled in my brows, I thought it looked good, I thought it pulled the focus to my eyes quite effectively. But today I do it again and I hate it. Sure, my eyebrows look good… individually. But I do not have symmetrical eyebrows. Not in the least. The shape and altitude of my eyebrows are totally uneven — they’ve always been like this and no amount of waxing and grooming has ever tamed them. I feel like, filled in, they are a lot more ghastly now. I have no clue what to do about this. If you have any ideas, drop me a line.

Final word: Smashing success, love it. It’s hard for a girl with such green eyes to not adore purple eyeshadow. It’s the secret ingredient that never fails to make my eyes glow.

One thing I realized today is that I do need sponges in addition to brushes. Maybe I’m sort of a failure, but I’m much more adept at applying eyeshadow to the ball of my eye with a sponge as opposed to a brush. So I’ll pick some of those up the next time I’m at the store.

Today I found insane deals on beauty supplies online and I ordered a whole bunch of stuff! Most of my order was new brushes (eight new make up brushes! squee!!) and things that are no fun to anyone here like blotting paper and brush shampoo. I did, however, order some liquid eyeliner. I have never, ever used liquid liner, so this should be a very entertaining experiment when it comes in.

Other experiments will include trying out eyelid primer; I’ve used bases before but never a proper primer, and lip plumper (a potentially painful experiment) so… goody! Can’t wait for this package to come in.

Good morning! Holy snow, batman, I’m not looking forward to driving anywhere today.

I just wanted to drop in really quick to catch up on my 365 by sharing yesterday’s make up, so let’s get this show on the road so I can go do today’s make up!

#2 [01/07/09]: Sunburst — Yellow & Bronze

Click-through to Flickr for photo notes.

First I want to say that I totally jacked up yesterday’s photos by taking them and then deciding to do a whole bunch of stuff and not retaking photos. Missing from these photos: I experimented with defining my eyebrows for the first time and it looked great! I’ll definitely define them today after my shower and actually remember to take pictures of it. Also, I gave myself pink rosey cheeks after the photos, which lightened the mood considerably.

Jamie is my suitemate and pretty much the closest thing I have to a best friend. Jamie’s favorite color is yellow. Me? I despise yellow. Really. I just really, really have no love for the color yellow. So when I was looking at my palette yesterday trying to decide what to do with my face and my eyes were drawn to all those disgusting yellows I thought, “What would anyone ever use yellow eyeshadow for? Yuck.” Voila, a challenge was born.

The idea was that I have these strange green eyes that sometimes almost look yellowish right around the pupil so I thought maybe yellow in the corners would pull that out. Conclusion: My hypothesis proved to be incorrect. My eyes looked pretty sweet regardless, and rather exotic if I do say so myself, but still the yellow in my irises eluded me. Perhaps it was the wrong shade of yellow? Or maybe the wrong color t-shirt?

Final word: I’m tabling this look for the next time I catch my eyes looking a little yellow, then I’ll try again and see if I get the same effect.