Like the barren desert landscape which has been leeched of all colours but browns and dead grays, living here has similarly leeched the creativity and passion from me as time has gone on.



(Seriously, this is where I live. This is not a filter, the air is orange from the dust in the air during a haboob, and yes, that's a tumbleweed zooming by. And it's really that flat and devoid of greenery.)



My blog has been a tiny lamp in the obscuring gloom of life here, and last night, it sent me deep into the darkened recesses of our storage closet to find my art supplies.

Details

Full product name

Purpose

Postpones aging

Firms

Hydrates

Retains Water

Moisture

Nourishes

Radiates

Scent

Quantity

Availability

Price

Rating

Repurchase









And with that, we're done!

-Cat





Like me on Facebook or Follow me on Twitter; I will be doing giveaways as milestones are reached!





It's a good thing that I don't particularly care about having dark circles, because I am rocking the Panda Chic today.I'll get to what I thought of the MBD Natto Mask here in a moment, but first I wanted to talk about what I was doing all night and why I'm feeling flushed with accomplishment today.After my fiasco with RoseRoseShop and paypal's refunding of my money, I was gloomily sifting through various vendors online trying to find the products that I will now not be receiving. While searching for coupons/discounts, I noticed that one of them tends to post a lot of their flash sales and discounts on Twitter.Now, I hate Twitter on principle. It always seems infested with a lot of self-aggrandizing navel gazing and I detest that. However, if getting on Twitter means that I can keep up with sales from various Asian vendors, I will happily jump on that bandwagon!While pondering what to cover for a cover photo, suddenly I was struck by the urge to paint a image of my namesake, since "Snow White" is public domain but images are trademarked. I should just make my own! I used to be very involved with design as a career until I got married and was whisked away to a life of being the breadwinner, and it's been at least 7 years since I picked up a pencil or brush.So, while the idea of whipping up my own image was exciting, I was also filled with trepidation because I'm so out of practice that it was unlikely to be any good and would probably be an exercise in frustration and a hit to my self esteem. I had no idea if I could pull this off.I was looking for my watercolour pencils, but like I said it's been seven years since I touched anything, and I could only find a motley of graphite and coloured pencils. I am total crap at anything involving pencils, but it was already 10 pm and I wasn't going to dare watercolour pigments or gouache when I'm almost a decade out of the game.I'm also not great at drawing, nor am I fast. When I sat down to put pencil to paper, it was a disaster, and I had ruined some of the fancy sketch paper that was in my collection, so I decided that this was going to be unusable anyway, I might as well use printer paper.I realized, in the hours that followed, that 1. I have totally forgotten everything I ever learned about drawing, not that there was much in the first place, and 2. I had forgotten what it was like to use my creativity for something other than solving problems at work. Even if the work I was doing was total garbage, I felt ALIVE. It was like a large part of what makes me who I am has just atrophied over the years, becoming gnarled and wizened like something left out in the desert for too long.At 3 am, I was still going strong. I normally stumble around in a haze of insomnia and perpetual chronic exhaustion, but I was wide awake and intent- even with poor tools and faded skills, I was excited and full of purpose.After I finally took my photos of the finished piece, all half-assed and glaringly faulty, I stumbled into bed brimming with accomplishment like I haven't felt in years.So this means that I now have a Twitter account ( click here ) and a Facebook Page ( click here ) to boot!And lastly, here's a short review of the MBD Natto mask, which wasn't exciting enough for a full review:: My Beauty Diary Natto Mask: It's a sheet mask infused with Natto in some way, which, if you aren't familiar with Natto, is a fermented form of soybeans that is famous for being an 'acquired taste' and has a consistency that looks like congealed phlegm. Mmm.According to prettyandcute.com, which is where I bought it, this maskI was expecting some sort of ~*~*super sexy hydration and firming action*~*~, but it was nothing unique, just a typical mask. Fermented products are all the rage right now (SK II, Missha's First Time Essense, Su:m37 products, etc) so I was really looking forward to seeing what a fermented mask would do, but this was a dud.: Your granny's perfume exploded alllllll up in here. It was so bad I kept sneezing while I was wearing the mask, and that's not the time you want your sinuses getting frisky. I can only imagine what sort of fetid fermented funk must have been going on for them to liberally douse the whole thing in. I will never buy this mask again just due to the scent alone.: Single use sheet mask, and like all MBD masks, leaves behind enough essence for you to pat it on your face, in case you want to smell like a senior citizen before crawling into bed with your honey. Thankfully my husband was fast asleep, so I didn't have to worry about inflicting the stench upon his innocent person.: MBD masks are all over the place, but please be careful to buy them only from authorized retailers, because resellers and buyers alike are being bamboozled by counterfeit syndicates who are cleverly mixing in genuine MBD masks with fakes to trick wholesalers into thinking the entire order is legit: Customs officers bust syndicate supplying fake masks of popular Taiwanese brand : Single mask $2, box of 10 $16: Sheet masks are scored out of a possible 3, and this one is a 1/3. I didn't give it a zero because it didn't damage my skin, but it was nothing special in the effects department and it REEKED.: UH NO. Nononononononono.